EP #170: Build Your EQ: Practical Strategies for Self-Regulation, Resilience & Real Connection with Lori Woodley-Langendorff

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endwar Fence, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness and daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafnopoulos, and this week I am so excited to dive into the topics of social, emotional learning. Building our emotional intelligence skills, I think is so critical, not only for kids, which is where we focus this interview on, but really for adults. And when we learn how to equip children at younger ages with the skills and tools to develop better EQ, it really pays off in the long run, especially in their adult life. And so this week I had the pleasure of getting to speak with Lori Woodley-Lingendorf on the podcast. She's the co-founder of All It Takes, which is a nonprofit that equips youth, and those who serve them with essential, emotional intelligence skills, to successfully navigate their lives and support their communities. Lori's also the author of SEL, "Muscle Mastery," six tools for building resiliency and connection in schools and communities, which offers practical tools that helps foster emotional balance and create the foundation for a resilient, joyful environment. The take-home message from this book is that social, emotional literacy is for everyone. And that's exactly what we get into in this episode. Fun fact, Lori started All It Takes with her two children, Shaylene Woodley and Tanner Woodley. And many of you probably know who Shaylene Woodley is. She is a acclaimed actress and producer, and she's been in the "Fault in Our Stars," the "Divergent" series, and many other amazing films and TV shows. So it was so cool to get to talk to Lori and learn more about her path and really talk about how do we master the art of emotional intelligence? Before we dive into this episode, reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Hi, Lori. Thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It is so wonderful having you here on the show today. Stella, thank you for having me. I just even love the title Everyday Endorphins. Like, oh, it just gives me good, good juju, just that. Like, it's like, oh, yeah, let's go. I'm really, really happy to be here. - Thank you for saying that. You know, we were catching up before this interview and I gave you a little bit of an overview of the show, but what I forgot to share actually is that Everyday Endorphins, the name was created about a little over 10 years ago when I was in high school, and I started a fitness blog called Everyday Endorphins on Instagram. And the reason that name permeated into my mind was because I went to a very science-oriented high school here in New York called Bronx Science, and science was literally in the name. And I remember taking a biology class freshman year. I was so fascinated by the way the brain worked. And I also was, you know, a new joiner to this rowing team and I was a student athlete at the time. So I was, I got really excited by this idea of like, well, you know, Everyday Endorphins and Dorfins are that chemical that brings us joy. And we want to find that every single day. So I was learning about it in school. I share this because now in real time, I'm reflecting on the power that the education systems have on how they shape us actually as individuals. I always loved science and neuroscience. And then eventually went on to study that in college. But now that I actually put the dots together when I was a freshman in high school, we can thank my freshman bioteacher for instilling my love for science in me then and helping to shape the name Everyday Endorphins. So I'm so happy that it gives you that feel good vibe when you hear it. - Yeah, and I love that it's like you have a science name that most people are familiar with but also maybe want to know a little bit more about like what is that? I think I've heard that word before and those of us who really know it is like great and then others like, oh, you know, and you bring the neuroscience into the name of your podcast. Just it's all the way around a good thing. - Thank you, thank you. And, you know, I would love to kind of start this interview with just hearing a little bit more about you and your story and what that entry point was for you into education and really being a mental health advocate as well. - Oh, wow. So that's a story, right? It'll be 60 in just a couple of weeks and that's a lot of decades, but the reality is is, I think the mental health interests started really young when people started telling me mental health stories when I was still like 11. Like people older than me, like what is happening here? I was a person who was shy, introverted, completely insecure about who I was, but for some reason, I was a person that people in a grocery store line and adult would tell a life story to, like, you know, like you just don't know what that is. And so there was something I knew pretty early about wanting to support or help people. So that started early, then, you know, a psychology class in high school really changed some things for me. And then honestly, I went into education because I knew I would go into some kind of helping profession, some kind of therapy thing and I knew I didn't even have kids and but I thought education, school counseling, school psychology, something in that area would give me ability to have a working career, raise kids, which I knew I wanted to have and do. I got lucky enough to be able to do that and be able to still have some time off with them. So I was very calculated how I ended up in schools, but in the mental health side of schools through school counseling. So I was able to start that with my masters at about 27 years old. And so now I've been a school counselor for 30 years and once I got working with students, I never looked back. - Yeah, I mean, I love that and how this desire to help people dates back to like your early days and childhood and just who you are. I think that's probably a quality that makes for really exceptional counselors, like having that intrinsic desire to want to help people. And when I reflect back on my time, let's say in high school and working with our guidance counselor, it's a very mentally taxing time when you're going through the college application process, for example. Like I think I kind of blocked out how much stress and anxiety that I held specifically in high school being in such a highly competitive academic environment, feeling this pressure to succeed, to do well, to get into a good school. I really leaned on support from people like my guidance counselor and other resources because you know, at that time, you're so young, you really need it and you don't even know you need it 'cause you can't really even articulate at that age what stresses or how that feels in the body or how that manifests in different social dynamics at school, right? So there's the role of a counselor is so important in education systems. And I would love to hear how your perspective on that has shifted as you've grown in that profession, co-founding all it takes, you know, your work is so deeply entwined into this space and into this profession. So I'm just curious to hear kind of how you have seen the role of counselors perhaps shift over time and really help be that sounding board for students who are struggling with anxiety and depression and other mental health challenges. - Such a big question. There's lots of layers to it. Definitely my role as a school counselor changed, but from my early training, I was trained at school counselors have a big impact in mental health, but not all school counselor training programs are like that. So especially out here in California, school counselors recently have new state standards which I got lucky enough to be invited to be an author on. So I am part one of the authors on the new California state standards which is really great where we added a whole component as a standard for mental health. That didn't actually exist in school counseling in the past. That didn't mean school counselors weren't working in the mental health world, but then other, you know, some school counselors like that's not my job and we see the role of school counselors as having evolved 100% where all of us need to be a steward of student mental health. Now, not practitioners, not diagnosticians, right? That's other therapy modalities, but we can't work with kids in schools and not see or influence their mental health. See that there's a problem that we need to collaborate with outside people to get the supports that a student might need. So for me, the mental health component of school counseling has always been present from my training in my mid 20s. However, again, for others, it wasn't like that, but it's moving more that way in California. I'm very involved in the California Association of School Counselors. In fact, getting a 2026 school counselor advocate of the year for the State of California award this year. - Oh, congratulations. - Yes, thank you. So it is definitely there, my people, but I will share with you that my experience of a school counselor in high school was different than yours. I had a school counselor tell me that I wasn't worth helping get to college. So as interesting my friend group were. really, really, you know, like high achieving A's, honors, you know, like really, you know, really smart people. I was pretty smart, but I wasn't like that top smart. So I was really good grades, but I didn't really know where I was going, and I just didn't have family members talking about college, and when I asked, all I knew all my friends were meeting with my counselor, and I asked about my meeting, and she literally told me, well, you're not going to college. Like I, basically, I don't have time for you. It was an interesting thing, and it really was crushing. And so part of me and an advocate for all students is that yes, you still get what you need from a school counselor, but so do somebody, so does somebody like myself who knew I could go somewhere, right, and do something, but didn't really have any direction. And then also for students who don't even believe there is something next for them. And it's an amazing thing like you used to, you know, in a high school with maybe a thousand kids, 500, 2000, like all kinds of different sizes, and you have as many different mindsets, skill levels, dreams, hope, unique genius. You have as many of those different things as you do students on campus. And the beautiful thing about the role of a school counselor is that we get to be a champion for all of it. And the believer in something's there for you, you get to find it will help you get there, right, like whatever that is. And so more and more in today's world, the mental health part is an important piece of what school counselors need to do because we have more and more mental health crises, more and more mental health diagnosis, more and more impact of mental health concerns on educational experiences. And so beyond that, you know, beyond the getting students into college or into trades or into some next level of their, you know, creative adulthood so they can live into their dreams. Yeah. Would you say that COVID was something that was just a huge catalyst for that shift and focus around mental health, specifically in school counseling because luckily for me, you know, I experienced the onset of COVID while I was studying abroad in college and I was sent home, kind of finished out my classes online and I had my summer. It's not, I could imagine it be so much more challenging if I was a sophomore in college or in high school or a junior in high school and COVID hit. And I could just imagine it be a way more difficult transition to do school online in that setting versus how I had experienced it. So do you think COVID played a really big role in that shift towards mental health as a focus for school counselors? I definitely think that the pandemic had a big influence because there weren't enough support supports in place. I mean, every counselor had to take on the support of our kids, whether we wanted to or not. So I think actually the pandemic put a lens on the mental health of our kids that a lot of us counselors and school people saw before the pandemic happening like this trend, increased suicide, increased depression, increased medication, increased, right? Like it was already a big trend. Then the pandemic made it worse, you know, moved our numbers from 35 to 40% of kids, you know, acknowledging some sort of mental health challenge to 65, 70%, right? And so that became a thing. But then the world started to see, you know, the mental health concerns as needing to be addressed. And so I think that the pandemic, all the studies show so too, it's not just what I think. Like we know for a fact the pandemic really influenced our youth's wellness in a negative way for many kids in a way that was so of an alert that it did wake people up who were just kind of like, "Oh, they're just kids. They're just going through their teenage angst." You know, it's different than that. Right. And I guess that's a positive reframe to have the pandemic was kind of that wake-up call. And now, I mean, it's very exciting to see how the conversations have really skyrocketed and opened up to around mental health and mental illness. Like there's a big dialogue now on these topics in ways that I don't think were as prevalent pre-pandemic. But it's interesting too because when we think about social, emotional literacy and how that applies to the education system, like when we typically think about school systems, it's we're thinking about like academic curriculums. Like what are they learning across these different subjects like history, math, science, etc. But where does this social, emotional, literacy component come in when we're thinking about applying this into the education system. And perhaps even before we get there, I think it would be really important for you to kind of levels at a definition around what social, emotional literacy is. How do you define this? Yeah, thank you. So thinking about social, emotional literacy, one way to think of it if you're at all familiar with the term emotional, or emotional intelligence, EQ, many adults know that term. And they're like, oh yeah, that's the skills that help me in a recover from disappointment or it's the skills that help me manage a tough conversation. It's the skills that help me get to work on time, even when I don't want to get to work on time, right? Like those are, those are adult, it is called emotional intelligence. In schools for some reason, and I don't know the history here, in schools, it's called social, emotional learning usually. And I reframe it as social, emotional, literacy. And those are the skills that our students need. Our young scholars are young people to be able to move through the education system, move through boredom. Well, move through disappointment with the ability to recover, move through like an anxiety, you know, maybe kind of a little panic attack, not like full fludge, but like, you know, when your anxiety gets you and you're just like shutting down to it like, oh, recognizing, I'm having some anxiety. What can I do with that? Recognizing that I have fear over public speaking. So instead of staying home from school, you know, because I'm sick, I actually can name, I'm having big anxiety because I have to do this this oral report. And I don't know how to deal with that. And so those skills, social, emotional literacy are the skills that help us move through, especially the things that become challenges, move through a challenging friendship. And that's not just about our young people. It's about our adults too, right? Move through something that we're taking personal, whether it's at work or at home, with a parent, you know, at family, in our family lives, the social, emotional literacy to me are the skills that help us navigate our lives, both when our endorphins are high, you know, where we can be a really gracious winter, right? Because some of us sometimes are like, really poor winners as much as we used to, when I was a kid, we talked about poor losers, but you know, there's a lot of poor winners, right? And so how do you win something and not and celebrate for yourself, but not demoralize someone else? Those are all social, emotional literacy skills. They're the skills that help us work well on a team, at school, on a sports team, at work. They're the skills that help us really move through grief. Nobody escapes grief, right? We're gonna, we're gonna face it if we haven't yet. It's coming. You're not living on this planet long before grief hits, right? And so, and I think of literacy, schools do call it learning, and I think learning feels like a bullet point, like, you know, knowing the golden rule, do you want to others or treat others the way you want to be treated? You know, Stella Howold, were you when you knew that kind of core rule? Probably like pre-K, right? When I could talk, right? You know, I usually hear four to six. That's the window, right? Four to six, which is what you're speaking to. Well, just knowing that doesn't change our ability to practice it. And then we see that happening in our world right now. Right? It's such a good point. It doesn't. It does it. The application. Yes. And so literacy means like, once we know how to read, we don't think about reading. We just practice reading. And we may be read more difficult passages or we might get into poetry and different types of reading. And with your education, you did some pretty in-depth reading and neuroscience and stuff, right? So, but you don't think about reading anymore when you read. You might think about how much effort you have to give a certain type of reading. And same with math. And so we don't teach social emotional literacy as if it's a skill that we need to get so good at, we don't have to think about it anymore. - Hmm, well I think to that point, it's like what builds resilience when you face adversity in life. - Correct. - I feel like some of the harder experiences that I've had in life have come from like this resistance to act in a way that I knew would be supporting longer term happiness, like making the tougher choice now to feel better later. But it's like, well what if we could just make that tougher choice a bit more on autopilot? Like it just becomes a bit more second nature. So we're setting ourselves up for more success. And what I also hear you share is this ability to regulate, like to self-regulate. I feel like that probably is quite foundational to the skillsets that are in social emotional literacy and like what you were just describing. Learning how to regulate your own emotions, learning how to stay calm under pressure and how that skill in and of itself actually permeates across all parts of life, managing relationships, friendships, work, everything. - And all ages, right? We need to be able to do that as a kindergartner or when we, you know, or we need to learn how like a kindergartner's gonna be more reactive, a two year old's gonna be super reactive. And it's our job to help move reaction into response, conscious, intentional response. And so we have to teach it, practice it, fall down, get it wrong, practice it again, right? And if we don't do that, if it's just like, oh, word of the week, we're talking about compassion, check the box, we're done, but we're not actually practicing compassionate traits, practicing compassion, and then going, ooh, I was not compassionate there, recognizing when we aren't compassionate or we are not in self-regulatory manners, right? When we're not doing those things, we're not in our literacy of social, emotional or emotional intelligence. And we're also not thriving in our potential, right? And I, so I think you said something's called autopilot, so funny because I do this activity with people that is really just lands the autopilot thing. And I know you're holding a mic there, but just cross your arms as best you can for me. I'm just gonna, I've never done this on a podcast, but I'm gonna do it. - So you got your arms crossed, right? - Yeah. - All right, so how easy was that? - Well, minus the mic, normally it's easy 'cause you just remembered. - Yeah, exactly. - You gotta do it. - You don't think about it. Autopilot, I call it autopilot. You said that word, which made me think, I'm just gonna do this activity with you really quick. So it's autopilot, you cross your arms, you don't think about it. That is part of, I think, a bit of a problem that we're a less intentional and more on autopilot, more often than what is probably healthiest for us, right? We're autopilot towards convenience, autopilot towards what's simple in the moment, autopilot towards a reaction versus a thoughtful intentional response. Now, you've crossed your arms, you've crossed them, now I want you just one more invitation, cross them backwards now. - God. And I invite your audience, who's listening to do this as we go through this cross the other backwards. - I guess, yeah. - The other arm, the other arm, the other arm, the other arm. - That's definitely harder. - Yeah. - And what did it take to do it? - The actual cognitive effort on how to do it. - Right, cognitive effort, intention, thoughtfulness, but ultimately, was it really hard? - No, the act of doing it was not hard. Maybe our brains overestimate how hard something's gonna actually be, but we just need to take the first step to do it. - Right, and when you spoke to like you, you were thinking about my year long term future when you were making some of the more inconvenient choices when you were younger, like, I would love to clone that, Stella, because what we find, and I find in schools, and alarmingly, is that our kids aren't looking into their future. And I think society often at large is so committed to a convenient moment right now. Convenience, whether it's food, or it's the easy way, or the quick dollar, or the right, whatever it is, the convenient answer, we're not crossing backwards. - Yeah. - To think, oh, well, this might be the convenient thing in this moment, but really, if I don't, it's for a parent, for an example. I see parents all the time order food for their teenagers in a restaurant. - How's the teenager gonna know how to just say what they want? - Exactly. - If the parents doing it for them. - And when I talk to parents occasionally, like, I'm coaching, a parent might be like, well, they won't. Well, we have to cross backwards and believe that they will, and beyond that, believe that, well, it's inconvenient in this moment, might get some pushback, and I might have a fit happening, or whatever might be the inconvenience, if we're not allowing them to fail forward, right? Like, maybe you don't order food, you're not gonna eat. I'm ordering, you wanna eat, you order, and that's not mean, that's, that is actually setting our kids up to be able to make a decision, to be able to speak to another human being, to be able to have a job interview. - Mm-hmm, yes. These are all such good points. I have a few follow on questions, but something that is coming up for me too, at least when I think about and graining these skill sets into younger kids, and doing it in like the academic education environment. So when I was younger, I started practicing yoga with my mom, 'cause she was going to the studio, and she'd bring me and tag along, and I'd wait for her in the lobby, and then I'd get so bored, and so one day she was like, can I just have my nine-year-old daughter join these adult yoga classes? And they agreed to it, and so now I was like practicing yoga with my mom at the age of like nine, 10, 11, right? Young, like in elementary early middle school. And I don't think I understood it then, but as I reflect now, especially having done my 200 hours certification and teaching yoga here in New York, yoga is really a practice of regulating your nervous system, and I don't think I understood at the time, I was learning these foundational skill sets on self-regulation, just it happened to take form through the practice of yoga. And it's funny because I feel like on the inside, my brain is always spinning and overthinking, and I can get flustered, I can feel very anxious at times, but on the outside, at least to my friends, or with people who know me, like I come across very calm and zen and chill, and I'd like to believe that I am like a quite chill person, but then again, you know, we are internal monologues or always, they're always different and maybe how others may perceive us, but I do think a lot of at least the more calm demeanor or presence that maybe I exude can be attributed to the fact that I practice yoga at a young age. So I'm curious if you would also agree with that statement, or maybe I'm like completely left field with this, but just from what you know about bringing these skill sets into schools and into younger students and children, my hypothesis and educated gases that yoga is actually a great tool and method to help get kids to understand how to build these skill sets. - I definitely think it's a tool, a great tool, right? And I think that it will work for some settings, and I think more settings should give it a try. I do, I think that whether it's mindful practices or yoga or getting out in nature to the best you can with your kids in school, go do story time under a tree in the playground, right? Like, get out, change the state. Yeah, yoga is a practice of changing our state, right? State change. What I do like to talk about from my philosophy is that there's a lot of ways to do it. There's a lot of ways, and not every way feels comfortable for every person. And so what, you know, one of my things is like, look, if you don't like the word, or you don't like the task, but you like the concept, then find a word or task that fits with your concept, 'cause there's a lot of people would be like, well, I like the word yoga because it practices X, Y, and Z. Like, I literally had a situation in my school district. It was after I left and was doing what I'm doing full time now. But it was a lawsuit outside of our state coming in to our state and going after elementary school counselors for practicing mindfulness with their students. Yeah, because it was said it was a Buddhist practice. Well, here's the thing. Mindfulness maybe had some, I mean, I don't know. I think the word meditation or mindful one or the two literally did have like when you trace it back, it has its roots way back in, you know, Buddhism. So, okay, that feels scary for some people, right? That, okay, I get it. But if what you know is when your kids put their phone down and go for a hike in nature, it comes their nervous system, then that's a good thing to practice. And if you wanna call it a hike, call it a hike, right? Because it is what you're saying, the process of self-regulating, the process of slowing down, balancing our neural responses, right? And so for me, I think it's so important that we don't let good concepts get derailed because somebody, like, SEL, SEL is a really, it's a scary term for some communities and some school situations. And I'm like, okay, but if you like the thought of kids being able to manage a bad grade and recover from it and believe in themselves still, and then try harder and work harder to get a better grade, that's an SEL trait that helps us recover from a bad grade, reset, shake it off, re-engage, make a new plan and try again. - Yeah, and to your point, I think that approach helps meet people where they're at, right? And makes it a more approachable methodology or framework for them to get behind and to really see the value that this type of learning does bring in schools. And I know we talked about COVID as really that catalyst for opening up that dialogue in the school systems, but you bring up an interesting point now also around like phones and technology and how that's really, I think diluted our ability to be social. And I would actually love to pivot to this topic because it's something I've been thinking a lot about just how being here in New York in a city that is filled with things to do, tons of people, so many social events, in theory you would think that we're all very, you know, it's easy to feel connected with other people. However, in reality what I found is that it is actually very hard to feel connected and it's quite easy to feel very isolated. And I don't know if it's unique to New York City or you can find this across the board, but my intuition keeps coming back to, it's because we're all glued to our phones. Like we are just, we have lost the art of socializing and building connection and doing that very spontaneously and just finding those spontaneous points of connection and interaction because we walk around and we're looking like this on our phones. And we're not, we're not inviting like actual living to be had because we are so glued to a reality online. I'd love to hear your perspective on this and how you see the role that technology has shaped on our, you know, our own social skills, even as adults now. - For sure, I mean, I think that technology, the pandemic didn't help, right? Because we were all on it, it's all we had for a while. So then we got used to that and then people got afraid of other people because of disease and then we have so much going on with people right now and people being afraid of each other and attacking each other. And there's so much about the human spirit and element that has become scary for people that it does, it concerns me dramatically. Like I am, I'm very concerned about that. When technology first started getting big, I was like, oh, we're gonna fight it. Humanity will take, and then eventually it was not very fat, very long where I was like, I'm not fighting that. Like I need to learn how to run my programs and our trainings to a point where we learn in harmony, where we live in harmony with technology without losing our humanity. And so that's kind of where I'm at now, right? Like the way that we train and we have to open opportunities, whether it's convenient, whether our teenagers like it or not and they won't, whether parents like it or not because they don't wanna be put their phones down, right? We have to offer opportunities where our young people and our adults put their things away and have an experience that is an endorphin boost where they're like, oh, I want more of that. People will follow their endorphins, right? They will, they'll follow what feels good, even if it feels bad. Even if we know it's bad for us, we'll still go towards it like a moth to a flame. And so it is our job, I believe both as practitioners, mental health coaches, practitioners, trainers, writers, et cetera. But then also as educators and as parents, we have to invite and require our young people and each other, corporate teams, workplace teams, the managers have to invite their people into conversations, into each other in a way that is no longer just naturally comfortable, but all the science, 100% of the science, the research, the social, whether it's social, psychological, neuro, bring me a report, bring me a study that says, nope, we don't need humans. I'm gonna say to you, I think it doesn't exist. And I'm happy to have somebody email me like, you're full of it, Laurie, it does. Here's a study that says, technology should be our new best friend and we don't need each other. And I think the question is, how can we leverage these tools in a way to come closer to our humanity, not to diverge from it, but to actually get closer to the true human essence and human nature. But it's this cyclical thing because the humans are the ones controlling the technology at the end of the day. So how do we take control of ourselves so that we know how to engage with these platforms in the right way? And so that's, I think the new challenge now with AI, for example, that's like this is the newest part of the technology revolution that we're in, right? It's the AI revolution. How do we use these platforms so that AI does not divide us but it brings us closer together? I mean, something I've also been thinking about is people turning to chat GPT as their therapist. What are your thoughts on this? There's a lot of polar views. So it's kind of like the difference between an experiential opportunity to be with another human and to feel what that is and a PowerPoint bullet. You know, you get a PowerPoint or you get a slide deck, right? And it's like, here's your bullets, here's your info. It's the golden rule, you know it. And that's what AI is giving us, right? It's giving us one, two, three, do this, say this, think this, say this, don't do this, do this, right? That's what's happening. But the reality is it's taking away our intuition, it's taking away our ability to lean into our empathy outside of us because even if you ask AI to do an empathetic thing or tell you how to handle the situation and empathy is still a checklist. And we need to have our checkpoint in our hearts. We need to check in with ourselves. Now the challenge is gonna be how do we do that? And you ask that, well, here's the thing. It has to be cross backwards. It has to be that otherwise we will fall victim to an oh, like a society that doesn't think for themselves anymore. And that's my biggest fear is that 100%. Like am I losing my ability to think critically because I use AI so frequently every single day? - Yeah, so I think that you check that. Like are you putting your genius into AI and it's making it sound better? Or are you asking AI for your genius? - Hmm, it's a good, total question. - Are you? (laughs) - I don't know if I should answer that one. - Yeah, well, some rhetorical questions are just for mulling on, right? - Mm-hmm. - Right, maybe there's not for answering and maybe it is what that's up to you. But really, I think we have to check in with ourselves. Am I allowing my kids to find their genius or am I letting technology tell them what their genius is? And we will have more and more mental health crises if we're not helping our humans of whatever age continue to live their genius, find their genius, develop their genius. And whatever that is, the unique purpose and potential of every human and every human has it, we just need to develop it. So, you said a bit ago, how do we do that? Well, we have to stay purposeful in the engagement with others. We have to do the inconvenience still. We have to leave our apartments when we don't want to. Exactly. We have to not instacart and we have to go to the grocery store. Yes. Go and grocery shop in person. And then literally look someone in the eyes and say, hi. And then feel the, what I find and all of our work is experiential. We bring people together. We had a hundred people together, five year olds to 75 year olds. Wow. Latino, Mexican families and police officers. And right now, that's a scary mix. On Saturday, we brought a hundred people together. We celebrated our 15 year anniversary. Wow. Congratulations. We were, thank you. We were in nature. We brought strangers together and by the end of the day, we had this huge circle and we went around, said all it takes is everybody answered all it takes is all it takes is all it takes is. And we were in our late because anyways, we were running late for the day. No one left the circle. And we were done with the task. No one wanted to break the circle like everyone just stood in the circle. I basically said goodbye. Close the circle, close the time. These were strangers, everything from school resource officers to parents, people who flew in, drove six hours in around the neighborhood. And like it was just random collection of humans. And who really were not any one, any from any one type of organization. And nobody want to leave. People are craving that kind of connection, I think. You know, something that also came up for me too, and we were riffing off of, well, we live in this world of too much convenience was, you know, even in the dating market, we have these apps. And it actually makes it harder, I think, for people to meet other people or to, to learn how to meet people in the wild because we are, it's so foreign now to my generation at least on how to do that because we're living in this world of convenience. And I love that we keep coming back to this point around connection because connection is really the common denominator that I have found across my interviews. But then also this is supported in research and positive psychology around like what actually contributes to a happy, healthy and meaningful life. It's the quality of our interpersonal relationships. And I, the way I see SEL and how I frame it through the lens of everyday endorphins is that it's giving you the tools and the skill sets to feel more connected to yourself and to feel more connected with other people. And so by the transit of property, it's like once you are able to master that sense of connection, you feel more joy and happy. Happiness in life. I think this is a really beautiful segue actually into hearing your perspective, Laurie, on what it means to be happy. How do you define happiness? What does that look like for you? I read your questions ahead, right? And like it's such an interesting thing. I think happiness is a place within us that is satisfaction that has no real reason for it. Like a fulfillment, if it was Maslow's hierarchy, it's the self-actualization top of it, right? So we can feel happy, we can feel satisfied, we can feel fed and attached and things like that. But true happiness I think is this calm knowing that everything's okay. That's what I think of it. And for some people, they're laughing out loud and others is literally walking in nature. And you can find pure happiness in a lot of different settings. And I just, I feel like the older I got, there was less of a definition of what happiness is and more of an experience of it. That we go to bed feeling calm. And you kind of think, everything is a mess, but I'm okay. Yes, I love that. And it's like having a sense of safety, like feeling safe, regardless of the circumstances outside of you. Because we live in such a physically and emotionally unsafe world. We can't likely change that anytime soon. And I don't know if we're ever going to really be able to fully change that. Maybe that's just the reality of how this world works. But despite that, how can we create an inner world where we feel safe, no matter what's going on around us? I really like that perspective on happiness being more so the experience than some sort of definition. Yeah. And there's a lot of studies I have a friend who wrote the book, you know, happy for no reason. And she's like one of the first authors of happiness and did so much study and research and there's, and you're doing it, right? So I think that there's a lot of definitions, which is what I love that you ask everybody that at the end of your podcast. And I just, yeah, I just feel like there's this Nirvana, this calm place inside of us that reassures us that we're enough, that whatever's going on, we're going to be okay through it, even if we're not okay. Like that, that's, it's like a weird thing, right? Yeah. And, you know, I really love that perspective because there's this common misconception around happiness equating this with toxic positivity. And that's exactly what it's not, right? You know, toxic positivity is just saying, oh, he'd just be happy or we have to be happy all the time. And that's not what this is about. It's actually about acknowledging, you know, life is hard. And that's okay. And how do I remain joyful despite all the stuff that's going on around me? Like recognizing the realities of life, how do I dance alongside all of that and still feel a sense of joy and fulfillment from it? Yes. And not fear, yes, there's, and there's so much guilt that can come with that with so much pain in the world. Like there's so many things that we could get caught up in that derail happiness. So that, so when it's coming like so, our head could get us all in that stuff, you know, but I think there's something in our hearts and our beanness. That is a subtle place of happy, a subtle place of it's, it's okay. I'm okay. And I'm going to go do the next thing that's going to keep me okay and at the same time being service to others. For me, that's, that's what happy is happiness. I love that. And as an off-shoot of this question, it's the question that I land with every episode. What is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Like is there a practice? Is there a routine, a place, a person, a thing that just grounds you and brings you back to that state of how you define happiness? Yeah, I think home and my yard or being in nature, so I travel a lot. So if I'm not at home, I'm in nature. I love to garden my hands in the earth, right? Like vegetables from the garden. Like for me, that is a place where I find deep, calm, deep joy, happiness and just a sense of reassurance. And then at being at home. So, yeah, nature definitely, just getting to ground yourself in nature and escape, you know, if you're more based in a city, like escaping the chaos of a city, it's, it does wonders for at least my nervous system is to just get out in nature and get to find a little bit of peace and quiet, right? And I love that. Thank you so much, Laurie. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show and, you know, I'd love to have you share where my listeners can connect with you, can follow along all the work that you're doing. And also where they can purchase your book. I know we didn't even really get to dive into the book, but it really, I do think sets the foundation for your expertise and brilliance around SEL. So where can my listeners to stay plugged into what you're doing in building? Thank you. So for the book, which is SEL Muscle Mastery, thinking about our muscles need to be flexed in practice in order to be strong, can be found at SELMuscles.com. And then all it takes.org is the organization where you can see so much of the work that we do with youth and educators and parents and workplaces. So SELMuscles.com and all it takes.org. Amazing. Thank you, Stella. Thank you for the opportunity to be here in this conversation with you.