223 | Developing an Acclaimed App & Healthy Minds @Work with Dr. Cortland Dahl
Image of Dr. Cortland Dahl, Research Scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds
Our guest on the pod this week is Dr. Cortland Dahl. Cortland is a Research Scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Chief Contemplation Officer of Healthy Mind Innovations.
Resources mentioned in this episode are:
Dr. Cortland Dahl Interview on Developing an App for Wellbeing
Transcription by Otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Cortland Dahl
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this interview, someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce our guests and our topic today, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on your rating and review, it helps tremendously. Thanks so much for considering it.
Today. I am thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Courtland Dahl. And our topic today is Developing an App for Wellbeing and Healthy Minds @Work. Cortland is a research scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the Chief Contemplative Officer of Healthy mind Innovations. Cortland, welcome to the show.
Cortland Dahl 00:58
Thank you, it's an honor to be here with you.
Paul Zelizer 01:02
I just wanted before we even get into getting to know you, I do just want to say, listeners, we were joking before I hit the record. But it's not a joke. This whole idea of building an app and getting helping people in a scaled way is an incredibly exciting, but also not always the easiest thing. And just to give you a little street cred, does this person know what they're talking about? I was doing some research, and went to Google Play, and the Apple Store on Google Play. The app in question that we're going to tell you about currently has over 1000 reviews, and a 4.7 out of five stars. And the on the Apple Store, I've been told it's over 1000 - as of yesterday. Congratulations. And the average user rating on the App Store on the Apple Store is 4.9 out of five. So hopefully you get a sense these folks know a little bit about this topic. So enough about building street cred. Cortland, we're called Awarepreneurs. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is we like to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you personally use to help resource yourself for this important work.
Cortland Dahl 02:15
Great question to start with. Yeah, I love the title Awarepreneurs. You know, in our research, and with the Healthy Minds program, the Healthy Minds app, awareness is one of these pillars of well being it's one of the four pillars of well being in our framework. So when it comes to my own practice, I would say meditation is, you know, a huge part of my life. I've been meditating for pretty much my entire adult life almost 30 years now. So I could just share what I do. When even what I did this morning. Specifically, I usually meditate right when I get up. So I got out of bed, sat down to meditate. And usually what I do, there's a pretty simple formula to follow. I usually start with motivation. I just step back and think about not only why am I meditating, but why am I even on this planet? What do I want to leave this world with, and try to set a compassionate altruistic motivation, both my meditation and just whatever I'm going to do that day. And then I might do different things. Today, I did a simple awareness practice, where I was just repeating a phrase in my mind. And using that to settle my mind. And actually a lot of body awareness, I was actually just bringing awareness into my body, feeling the sensations in my body. And that's just a practice that I've done for years and find it very profound and helpful. So it varies from day to day. But that's that's what I did this morning.
Paul Zelizer 03:41
Sounds a lot like my morning. Thanks for sharing that Cortland. Okay, like I'm sure if you're like most of our guests, it's not a linear like simple answer. But the short version of your origin story - how does somebody become interested in being a research scientist on all these topics about mindfulness and awareness and helping people in the workplace have more well being like, how did you get interested in all that?
Cortland Dahl 04:12
It was completely personal for me actually, I started meditating and got interested in psychology, neuroscience, that sort of thing when I was just starting college. And it was really, as I mentioned, just out of personal need and interest I had, I was always kind of shy, the lemme anxious side as a kid. And when I got to college, that low grade social anxiety just kind of went through the roof and I was really overwhelmed. That prompted me to, to just get curious and to see what I could do to manage my own mind and emotions. I was very, very fortunate to stumble upon the practice of meditation. And, you know, to use the old cliche, it just changed my life. It completely transformed not only the challenges I was having with stress and anxiety, but even the Things I didn't expect, like, you know, my experience in school, I started to be much more passionate about what I was doing. I was much more focused, I became a better listener with my friends. So just all these benefits started to add up. And I knew I'd found something that was really going to define my life. And it has. So that's, that's really how it all started.
Paul Zelizer 05:21
Thanks for sharing that. Such a simple phrase I'm about to utter, but this phrase is, there's more to it than might be there on the surface. And that phrase is, I want to build a wellbeing app, or we need an app, right? Like, it sounds like such a simple thing. On one level, it kind of is right. And yet, a couple of things can kind of come off the rails like we see people build apps that, you know, when I went on the Google Play Store, you have not only all these great reviews, we have, like 100,000 downloads. Sometimes people build apps that people don't use, or they try to build an app, but it like falls apart. Because it's not always so simple. So just starting with, how did your team start that conversation of you know what, I think we need a wellbeing app, and anything just at a top level? Like when somebody who has a social impact or positive impact intention starts thinking about an app, what can we say right up front to help, like, let's point the direction of this going, Wow, as opposed to coming off the rails?
Cortland Dahl 06:39
Yeah, another super important question. And it's true, it seems so simple, like, oh, we'll just create an app, we'll just like you just just going to go and pick it from the tree or something. And needless to say, it is not that simple. And building an app for wellbeing is certainly no joke. But in a way, that's easy part, once you've built it, getting anybody to pay attention, as you as you said, it's maybe the harder part, I would say maybe the biggest the most important thing, and it's something we considered right out of the gate was the wider context. does the world need what we're doing? Is there a place for it in the world? Are we just duplicating efforts that are already out there? What was clear to us is that the world does not, did not and does not need another mindfulness app, there are really good mindfulness apps or are the marketplace is flooded with mindfulness apps. So we kind of felt like we don't need to just reinvent the wheel do something a little bit better or a little bit different. So we asked ourselves is there we we had an idea of what we were interested in, and we felt like there was something missing, that wasn't so much to compete with all these things that were out there, but something that was an unmet need, perhaps. So that's, I think, a really important first question, because you can build a great product. And if the market doesn't need it, or there's just so many competing products that, you know, it's it's just difficult to stand out all of that effort, it's, it's just going to be either it's possible that it's going to be wasted, or it's going to be very, very difficult to get it started in the first place.
Paul Zelizer 08:10
As Awarepreneurs, we have a Podcast Success Team where we help social entrepreneurs leverage the power of podcasting either as a host and or as a guest. And I went on a bit of a rant this morning, please excuse me if I was too much on my soapbox, podcast success team members, but it's all about product market fit. And I just want it like the very short version, but I just give some vocabulary. Product Market Fit means paying attention to who you want to help and what they need, right. And if you sync up, what's going on in the world, and the very specific nervous systems of the people you want to help and then think about what they actually need, and what's already out there. If you get that product market fit. It's like a frictionless, effortless experience of being a social entrepreneur, if you don't get that, right, if that's not a good fit there, then you have friction and stress in your sales and your revenue. And everything is like so much more work. So what I hear you saying or then is you all paid attention to what was already out there and saw like, hey, you know, yeah, maybe we could like have some other cool sounds for the bells, or maybe the screen could look at but between everything that's out there, that's not what's needed. But what we're seeing is a different need. And I'm going to ask you about that next. But is it fair to say even if you didn't use that word, you thought a lot about product market fit? Is that fair to say?
Cortland Dahl 09:41
That's That's exactly it. I you know, and it's true. We don’t necessarily using those exact words, but that, in principle, that's what we were looking at. Yeah. And we and we saw that there was a gap out there that there was sort of perhaps an unmet need and something that could be synergistic. I think we also fundamentally looked at all these other offerings not as competitors, but as a lot of other allies, and organizations that are interested in things that we're interested in. So rather than how can we compete for this limited market? How can we add to that and be partners and allies in that wider effort to to do some good in the world and to bring a little bit more balance into the world with these scientific insights and contemplative tools?
Paul Zelizer 10:25
So let's find it back just a little bit using the word we tell us about who is this team? And also like, what were you trying to get done? And this goes back to your earlier answer, like you did don't just throw together an app people, let's be intentional about it. What are your values? Or what's your desired impact? And who do you want to help? So tell us a little bit about this team? And what were you trying to do? What were you talking about? When you said we need an app? What was your intended impact with this app for wellbeing?
Cortland Dahl 10:56
Yeah, in a way, the app part of it was secondary. I think what we saw originally, if I go back to the very, very beginning, maybe first to say that the Wii at that point was, it was really conversations that I was having with Dr. Richard Davidson, who is the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds. And one of the most well known neuroscientists on the planet. He, you know, along with many other scientists, but probably more than any other scientists. He's the one who's credited with starting all the research on mindfulness and meditation, and getting that into the mainstream scientific world. So when I came to Madison, and I was getting my PhD, with Dr. Davidson, we were having all these conversations, really about the next chapter of scientific research on meditation. So he had, you know, written that first sentence in that first chapter. And we were looking forward to what's next. And we saw that there are so many different forms of meditation, that haven't been studied yet. And that haven't even begun to enter the mainstream, but that we'd experienced and we had known about, and we thought, we should really study these, both for our own scientific reasons, but also, because we just thought they could do some good in the world, we wanted to, to really understand what they are and how they work. So we from there felt, we kind of started asking, Well, what do we need to do that? How would that actually happen? And we realized that having a standardized program would be really important, because that would allow researchers around the world to study something similar, you know, you could have one, one intervention that many scientific teams could work from. So we did that. Along the way, we realized we needed a kind of a theoretical framework. So we published a paper on this, the scientific framework that has these four pillars of well being. And to make a long story short out, as, as we were having this more scientific conversation, we started getting tons of interest. And Richie, Dr. Richard Davidson, in particular, was receiving all sorts of requests from organizations, even from, you know, all sorts of leaders from across society, who, who just wanted these tools and these scientific insights in more practical ways. So that's when it started to dawn on us that something like an app could be a benefit, just as a way to scale these insights.
Paul Zelizer 13:21
When we were talking before we hit record, and you've mentioned it lightly, it seemed like Orlin, there's you keep mentioning these four dimensions of well being that's connected to the impact you want to have, is that fair to say?
Cortland Dahl 13:36
Yes, everything we're doing these days are not everything. But a lot of what we're doing is based on the scientific framework, and these four pillars of well being for which there's a lot of scientific evidence that we can train, train these aspects of well being. So that's a huge focus for us. It's true, what are they? So in short, these four are awareness, connection, insights, and purpose. So each of these four is central to well being their their core dimensions of well being, you could say, there is also networks in the brain and biological mechanisms that underlie these four. And they're also really important because they're trainable. So we'd like to think of them as skills. So awareness, connection, insight, purpose, these are all things that you can learn. You can practice and you can apply in simple ways in daily life. And in many ways, the Healthy Minds program that we've created. Is this really the means to do that? It's it's basically teaching us about these four pillars and how we can strengthen them.
Paul Zelizer 14:38
So would it be fair to say as you were like, seeing these areas, like okay, there's great things actually, right now I'm using the App Insight Timer to time this podcast we do 5055 minute episodes, right? We don't know. But there's so many like that. We don't need another that. But what we do need what the world could benefit from is an app that helped train these trainable skills at scale in these areas. And we have some ideas how to do that. And, and you were clear on that, and you did kind of a, an assessment of what's out there in the world and didn't see something that was fitting that kind of an impact desires that somewhere in the ballpark.
Cortland Dahl 15:19
Exactly. You know, when we first looked at what was out there, you have, on the one hand, you have really amazing programs like mindfulness based stress reduction, which is, you know, taught in hospitals and, you know, open to the general public been taught for decades, very focused on mindfulness, but a brilliant program. And then you have apps like the inside like inside timer, headspace calm, again, brilliant apps, brilliant offerings. And what we found, or what we saw is that at that time, the focus was very much on mindfulness. And oftentimes, what what, what was out there, especially in the app world was kind of a smorgasbord, you download an app. And maybe there's a five day or 10 day getting started curated journey. And then it's like, you just have all these offerings, and you can pick whatever you want to do. So we felt that a few things were missing from that equation. One was that the focus on mindfulness, which is great for some of the offerings, we felt like we wanted something that showcased some of these other forms of practice, like those related to connection, insight and purpose. And also other ways to do the practices like in a healthy minds app, every single practice you do, and there are hundreds, you can do either as an active meditation or a sitting meditation. So for people who are just not the type to sit down, and, you know, take a quiet minute, they can learn all the same skills while they are folding the laundry, or going for a walk or you know, doing other some other simple activity. And as scientists, we can then study that we can look at what the difference is when people do active versus sitting meditations. So we were interested in this diversity of practices and different ways to do the practices. But we also felt that a, a guided path was missing something where you could actually, you know, give expert guidance on the right step to take at the right time. And so the Healthy Minds app isn't really a smorgasbord. It's more of a guided journey through these four pillars of well being learning these different skills, and again, how to how to apply them in the complexity of our everyday lives.
Paul Zelizer 17:24
Luthers, I had one of the kind of frameworks that helped and I have some training in that's helped to kind of shape me as a coach, and just in my approach to the world is something called appreciative inquiry. And one of the foundational questions of appreciative inquiry is what's going well, and the second one is, what do we want to do more of, and as I'm listening to your quarter, then and for our listeners, I want to like, tease out a couple things. I'm hearing at least three theists doing lots of things really well. But I hear three that I think might be really helpful if our listeners are learning from. The first is I heard that you really thought about what you wanted to do before you like thought about the technology yourself, you had some very clearly identified buckets, we want to help people build skills in these four areas. Number two, I hear you, you looked out what was out there with, you know, an honest and open heart, like what's out there? Is there something that's already doing some of this or is got some of this combination needs to know there's, there's there's other stuff that's really good, and what we're wanting to help people build skills around and gain impact, not seeing it. And number three, is, He then moved ahead, in baked that in to the DNA of the thing your belt is led by telling stories that aren't true here.
Cortland Dahl 18:53
No, that's a great synopsis. That's very much the case. You know, we didn't start with let's build an app, we should build an app, we started with an idea. You know, something that we were passionate about something that we really knew could be a benefit in the world. But it wasn't an app that we were thinking about at that time, it was more these skills related to wellbeing. And then exactly, we look to see, is this already being done? And if so, you know, we can just stick to our research and leave it at that. And we saw that it wasn't there really wasn't anything out there. And the app, part of it really came later, that was more of the how, you know, how are we going to get this out into the world? What's the most effective way to do that? Then it became alright, you know, maybe an app, given that we're in such an app centric world, this makes sense as a way to do that. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But who knows, you know, maybe five years from now it's it's an AR or VR based system, or it's something that we can't even imagine yet, who knows. But it's more about the, the sort of the content and the ideas and the training, and the app is just the means to get it out there.
Paul Zelizer 19:58
In social entrepreneur lingo, might use the language of you started with your impact goals. Here's the impact we want to have. I'm such a fan, please Like, who do you want to help them? What's the dent in the world you're trying to make? And then you said, You know what I think an app might be a really good way to do this. Again, let's start with we should create an app is likely to create stress and to underwhelm you in terms of the results you get. So thanks for sharing that story with us. So help us understand now card then like, Okay, you had this desire to have impact in these four areas thought about it did an assessment now like anything, you can tell somebody who's like, you know, done some work? And they say, All right, yeah, no, it is an app, it's it, this would be really helpful for my goals, my values and my impact desires. Anything you can say about how do we do this? Well, like actually the build of itself. And then a follow up question is, once you build it, how do you get people to use it?
Cortland Dahl 21:01
Yeah, these are big questions and challenging questions. You know,
Paul Zelizer 21:05
three weeks, this is a three week course. Right?
Cortland Dahl 21:08
Yeah, yeah. So we had I mean, it's true, we had a lot on the idea front, we had a lot of material I actually wrote in my dissertation, part of my dissertation was essentially the curriculum for what is now the Healthy Minds program. So we, we had a 300 page document that was kind of laying out, you know, in a lot of detail, you know, what we wanted, what kind of content we wanted. So we have that. But there was really nothing about the technology. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know the first thing about app development and technology. So, you know, when we first got started, we, you know, one of the first questions we asked is, How is this going to be financially sustainable? We're a nonprofit, we still are, and we're committed to that the app is completely free. That's another thing that's quite very different about what we did. And then of course, leads important questions like, yeah, it's great for something to be free. But how on earth? Is that going to be viable financially? Like, how are you gonna just kind of make that sustainable? So that that part making the app free came a little bit later, but early on, right, when we got to the point of kind of taking it out of, you know, the the written word and the dissertation into, we're actually going to build something now, we were thinking about different models to make it financially viable. One of the things that we, that we started with and we've continued to this day, is that we felt that one way that we could do that, and this is something that proved to be, you know, quite central to the direction that has guided how we've tried to make it sustainable, is that one of the easiest ways not, I shouldn't say easy, because that's definitely not been easy. One way to reach a lot of people is to reach them at work. You know, we all spend a lot of our waking lives at the workplace. And so we also felt that it's one of the places where well being is both important, and we can struggle, there's a lot of challenges to well being at work. We were also getting a lot of interest from organizations in our research. And so we felt like we were hearing things that were pointing us in that direction as well. So we chose to focus rather than going straight to the end consumer, so to speak with kind of a b2c strategy. Without Why don't we actually work with all these organizations that are already seem to be interested in well being that have resources, and that have the means to get this kind of training these kinds of tools into people's hands. So that's what we did. And it's still a big part of what we do is actually working with companies, nonprofits, you know, of all shapes and sizes, from huge, you know, massive corporations to very small community based nonprofits. And that doing that has allowed us to use a very different financial model than most apps have most apps, you know, the economics or the app itself through subscriptions, freemium models, and so on. And we've chosen to take a very different path. But it's kind of built on that, that question of really, how do we, how do we make this viable and sustainable financially, we knew we had something or we felt confident we had something kind of in principle, but how that was gonna work financially was a completely different question.
Paul Zelizer 24:25
Ding, ding, ding, ding dang social entrepreneur radar going off now, right? So what I want our listeners to notice is that there is this very intentional thought about what the business model is going to be in what in innovation, right? Give it away for free to the general public, and then provide corporate trainings, organizational training that scale in those workplaces, and that's where the revenue would come in. So just notice that listeners and also notice that There is a very clear intention has this thing was being built and developed. What a great job you did there garland and you came to an answer that didn't have to look like other people. But he thought about it. There was intent, there is clarity there is. It sounds to me like how do we match up a business model with both our values and our desired impact? Is that fair to say?
Cortland Dahl 25:26
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I have this phrase, in my mind of being an enlightened market, disrupter, you know, there are all these apps that are that you pay for it, you know, you, you download it, and you get a few days free, and then you pony up, you know, some amount of money to keep using it. And from as a mission driven organization, we we were really primarily, you know, interested in access, how can we make this widely accessible, especially to the people who might not be able to pony up, you know, $100 or 10 bucks a month, or whatever it is. But we knew that that good intention, that altruistic intention on its own is going to be could be potentially misguided if we didn't also have the economics behind it something that would make it viable, you know, years down the road. So you need both, you know, I think anybody listening to this likely, probably is going to be starting with that, that impulse to do good in the world. But it's just as important to have your feet on the ground to ask the hard questions and to push and challenge yourself to make sure that, you know, you're, you're really it's gonna be it's gonna work when things get challenging.
Paul Zelizer 26:38
See, you all need to come out with a T shirt that says, enlightened marking disrupter. And I want to buy this first one. I love that that is. So what a great description of deep social entrepreneurship. Thank you for sharing that that like, how you're thinking about the business model, and how that fits with your values as that is exquisite.
Cortland Dahl 27:03
Yeah, you're welcome.
Paul Zelizer 27:05
So let's do this in a moment, I want to come back. And so what does that even look like? And how do companies pay them money? And what do they do? And how does that balance out what they're giving away all the social entrepreneur things that just a second, before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor? Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow, both in terms of helping more people your impact, and the quality of life, your income? If you do, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the AWARE printers community. We have a community of hundreds of social entrepreneurs from around the world who share information resources and support each other to grow both our impact and our income as well as our own well being while we're doing it. That can look like things like going into the Facebook group that we have as a community and say, can you take a look at my sales page? And how is this landing? And what about the visuals of this? What about my pricing? I need somebody to build me a website earlier today, I was talking to one of our members, she needs a new logo, things that will help you both on the real tangible as well as the just emotional support of like, stay with that you're doing good work, you got this through the ups and downs. And what we find in any endeavor, from business to getting in shape to quitting smoking is the single biggest predictor of our success is social support. So if you could use a little more support, both in the tangible and in the emotional realm, go check out the AWARE printers community for Audible starting at $25 a month. And we'd love to have you you can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community for sponsoring this podcast. So Courtland in the second part of the show, we like to say all right, let's get granular here, put on our social entrepreneur glasses you already had him on because you're already doing a fabulous job of this, like help us understand. Alright, so I got the app listeners, you can go check it out, go to your Play Store, go to the Apple store and see what's actually there. Okay, and it's free. So go download it literally cost you nothing. So that makes sense. And people can get that part of things help us understand the part where there is revenue coming in companies hire you, they hire you to do what for whom
Cortland Dahl 29:35
we essentially teach the science of wellbeing and help build cultures of well being within teams and organizations. So that's what we've been doing and what we call the Healthy Minds at Work Program, which is taking this model of well being that I mentioned and the Healthy Minds program and translating that into into tools to measure and cultivate well being within organizational settings.
Paul Zelizer 30:00
Give us an example. Like what kind of companies have you worked with recently? Like, what's the scale of those companies? Like, do you work with them? And one time session they like, like, how does it actually work the mechanics of working with companies? Yeah,
Cortland Dahl 30:14
it's been a broad range. So I'll just give you a few examples of the kinds of things we've done. So we've done a lot, a lot of the engagements we do are pretty simple wellbeing challenges, where we will work with an organization and give them a version of the app that is similar to the one that's freely available on the App Store, but has specific at work content. So there's, you know, practices you can do in team meetings, for example, like meeting starting starters, where you might do a short meditation. And there's like an email campaign and some webinars, but it's pretty much plug and play, you know, so an organization, any number of people in the organization can do a one month well being challenged, that's really based on learning and learning skills related to these four pillars of well being. So that we, you know, we've done many, many times, and is fairly kind of plug and play. As I said, on the other end of the spectrum, we've worked with companies, you know, for example, we've worked with some of the, you know, the largest tech companies, for example, like we've won engagement, I can't share the details, specifically, but it's one of the big tech companies that you definitely would know about. And we worked with one of the senior teams, and in a very intensive way, over a period of years, doing a very deep dive into the science of well being. So that was doing two day workshops, and really, really going deep with some of their leaders. So we've done everything, you know, at both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. So there's some things we do more routinely. And then for, you know, a few companies who have the resources and really want to go deep, we've done much more intensive engagements.
Paul Zelizer 32:02
So we know from research that due to COVID, and so many disruptions, that well, being in mental health, it's on a lot of our minds. We've seen, you know, so much research about how difficult what the past couple of years have been like, and we've seen conversations from Simone Beals that the Olympics, you know, taking a pause and explicitly saying, Hey, I've got some well being things and I don't want to get hurt. Jumping off the balance beam in like, you know, I'm not I'm not ready for this right now. And many, many, many, many other examples, like, how has what's happening in the collective right here, right now? How does what does that mean for healthy mine?
Cortland Dahl 32:49
Yeah, it's been a both a tragic period in some ways, but also one that I think has, has some silver linings. So if you look at some of the CDC numbers, for example, the amount of mental distress, depression, anxiety, potential related disorders, substance abuse, and so on, is astronomical. It's actually much more of a pandemic than the actual COVID pandemic, just in terms of sheer numbers in the US alone, it's something like, more than 40% of US adults in the past year, have struggled with depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorder or substance abuse. So the numbers are just off the charts. And they were bad and skyrocketing before the pandemic. But of course, as we all know that those numbers have just gone through the roof. The challenges that when we're facing that, you know, when we're the ones with anxiety, as I, you know, I shared when I was younger, I myself struggled with pretty severe anxiety. It feels so personal, and it can feel as though it's a personal failing, like, what's wrong with me? Why am I struggling in this way, everybody else seems to have it together. So the first thing that this shows is one, everybody doesn't have it together. You know, everybody's struggling and we're just, you know, we're just living through a very challenging time, in a very challenging world. And being human was never easy to begin with, but it certainly isn't easy now. So even when we do find ourselves struggling in this way, it's not a personal fault or failing. It's a natural response to to the incredible stress we face every day. The silver lining is that the awareness of these issues is growing and some of the taboos are beginning to shift. So having someone like Simone Biles or Naomi, Osaka and so on, talking so openly about their mental health challenges, simply normalizes it for the rest of us to feel like, you know, if one of these world famous athletes or superstars can struggle like this, then maybe I don't have to feel so bad for having these struggles. So people are finding it easier to come to terms with what's going on and to reach out for help. And as a result, you know, people like to do research on this, and are trying to put tools out in the world and help lend a helping hand, we're just getting a lot more requests and a lot more interest in these kinds of things, which is, which is really heartening to see, of course, we prefer that people aren't struggling the way they are. But given that this is just part of being human, the fact that people have more access, and can get the help they need is a really good sign.
Paul Zelizer 35:26
How do you and your team think about balancing, helping at scale, it's you're doing a fabulous job and the more like, either complex or just when it needs the personalized touch of an individual therapist or a coach, right? You're doing great work. And I don't get a sense. You're like, Oh, nobody should ever go to a therapist, or nobody should ever talk to a coach, they all do need is our app. I don't get that sense about you. How do you balance that? Like, where does that all fit? And what happens like somebody is using the app? And you know, in your case, it's mental health, but any scaled solution? There's times when things are, you know, more extreme circumstances, and it needs a human? How do you think about that? And how does, how does your team design for that? And what would you suggest to our listeners who are thinking about doing this kind of work at scale? How do you build in some safeties that you don't miss that sometimes there's a, you need an expert here who's like paying attention to an individual situation?
Cortland Dahl 36:32
Yeah, that's a super important issue. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we really think about our work and what we do as part of a much wider movement. What we do is, you know, serving a very specific purpose, but it's complimentary, with many other things. So we see ourselves as allies, with others, hopefully, we what we offer, can, you know, help, for example, like a therapist, as you were mentioning, and do some things that a therapist wouldn't be able to do. And therapists, of course, and other health care providers, many other offerings, can do things that what we're what we're offering, don't do. So we, we look at it as sort of an all of the above strategy, and that we can put tools out there that hopefully can complement other things that they may be doing. In some cases, it might be the first step they take, but it leads them to something else, you know, for example, they, it might be the easiest way for them to reach out and to do something that's going to, you know, promote their well being or if they're struggling to help help them with their mental health. And it might lead to another step further down the road, like they do seek out a therapist or open up a conversation with a friend or get some other kinds of support. And in some cases, it might be the opposite. Maybe they're, you know, somebody is already doing something for their health, their mental health, their physical health. And they find this as something that they can add to that, that supports it. So we see it as all complimentary. And I think that, you know, as we all know, from our lives, taking one step can open can open the door to many other things. But it's but it's totally true. We don't see this, as you know, any solution, certainly not ours is like the be all end all and the only one you need, that's going to solve every problem.
Paul Zelizer 38:17
When you think about where this conversation in, particularly at work, because I'm with you, many of the words that come into your mouth, I say them differently, but very similarly, like we spend the majority of our waking hours and my passion point is like, I want people to be doing work that's aligned with their values. Because if they're spending the majority of the waking hours working, and it's not alignment, their values, both in the internal of that human in their nervous system that has all kinds of ripple effects. And in our world, it has all kinds of ripple effects, and neither of them are good. In general, so we share that passion, even though it's being applied in slightly different realms, this realm of well being is blowing up like there are so many needs and so many conversations like, given Obviously, none of us have a crystal ball like to like say here's where exactly where we're going. But you are somebody who's paying attention to trends, and you're seeing things before the average person because you're building them and talking to people that are building them. Where do you think this well being at work, spaces going? And what are some of the trends you're seeing? What are the things you're tracking? And what kind of things might you be building on to meet some of those need?
Cortland Dahl 39:39
Yeah, you know, one of the the big developments that that we and others are working on is really connecting the dots between well being and other important outcomes. So if you look at a work, you know, to workplace setting and a lot of the work, a lot of what we do, you know, is an organizational context. I think historically, if you look at, you know, wellness efforts with like, in big companies, it oftentimes was this this side pursuit that was, you know, kind of this fluffy little thing that, you know, didn't get taken all that seriously, by most companies, it was just something, you know, you know, essentially to help the workforce be a little more well adjusted. This, what the science is beginning to indicate. And we are, you know, trying to push the science further to, to provide a little bit more clarity of what's really going on, is that well being, for example, these four pillars of well being that that I've mentioned a few times, they're not only central for having employees that are resilient and thriving, they're critical for all the hard nosed business outcomes that any nonprofit or for profit company organization is interested in. So if you just take the first one, for example, the first of these four pillars, which is awareness, and skills, like mindfulness, training, attention, and so forth, well, the research suggests that we are distracted, almost 50% of our waking lives. So think of that the cost of that it takes a huge toll on our well being. But it takes a huge toll on how we do our work, not only how we feel about our work, but really how creative we are, how productive we are, how onpoint we are, how focused we are, and so on. So it's not a choice between supporting well being and focusing on these important organizational things. I think our sense is that what the evidence is beginning to show is that if you really care about these organizational outcomes, you should take well being and the cultivation of well being very seriously and make it a priority. And it's one of the most effective things you could do. So in terms of that future trend, what we're one of part of what we're doing is creating measurement tools, taking the scientific measurements we use in the lab, creating digitized versions that can be used out in the real world, so that companies and people and teams can better understand the links between mental and emotional well being on the one hand and these other outcomes that we all care about whether personally or organizationally. So that's it i, that's what we see is a very important future trend, it's just beginning to emerge.
Paul Zelizer 42:16
I was thinking of the image like image of a car. And if you have a car with a four, six cylinder engine in there, four cylinder engine is only running on two cylinders, for your six cylinder engine is only running on our workforce is literally only running on half the cylinders. And imagine you could even cut that in half, it's like imagine business leader, you could get a 25% increase in your staff with no additional payroll. And all you have to do is help people be less distracted, and you get 25%. Like the output, right? These are big numbers. If you especially the bigger the company, the bigger the numbers are, when you look at payroll, the payroll is usually the single biggest expense in most businesses. So pretty big numbers. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Cortland Dahl 43:04
I mean, if you take actually another surprising, just to drive that point home, if you think about physical health, and any company healthcare costs, health care, you know, is huge, right? Like it's it's a huge driver of costs and a huge part of any kind of employment package. If you go to the doctor, and you're just talking about what can you do to improve health and health outcomes, of course, we all know, you know, don't smoke, healthy diet, exercise, you know, maintain a healthy weight these things, you know, we all know, nobody needs to be told this stuff, we hear about it all the time, what people don't realize is that the quality of our relationships, in particular how we feel and perceive our relationships, whether we perceive them as being supportive, and nurturing, or they're a source of stress, or tension for us. That is as big a risk factor for physical health as smoking. And it is more of a risk factor than diet, exercise, obesity, and so on. So, but nobody says that you don't hear when you go to the doctor's office, they don't tell you that, they certainly don't tell you that there are skills you can train and practice that help to strengthen that sense of connectedness. So that's, again, just another simple example that has massive implications for not only our emotional well being but how we work, our physical health, you know, all these real world outcomes that that everybody knows are really important.
Paul Zelizer 44:29
Building on that are then a little more personal question. Your research scientist, who's in this initiative that's very, very gritty, like feet on the ground. Like we're helping people in the app, individuals and companies in the paid part of it in very tangible ways. Anything you can say about how do you balance thoughtful attention to the research and in your case, you're actually either doing it yourself or over Seeing research and like that really granular, here's what's going on in the workplace. And I can quote the research. And I can tell it in a way that doesn't sound like I'm some super data geek, but it's really informed what you're doing. But I also understand what's going on right here right now in the workforce in an informed way. And I'm doing some I'm part of a team that's doing, how do you balance that? And any suggestions for our listeners of how to be skillful in that balance?
Cortland Dahl 45:26
Yeah, I think it's it's, you know, you mentioned something earlier, I think about appreciative inquiry, and it reminded me of actually, it's a one of the podcast, our lessons in our Healthy Minds app, there's one called what's right, you know, which is talking about the scientific research on what you might call a negativity bias that kind of comes out of evolutionary biology, and how we're kind of hardwired to detect threats and to focus on what's wrong. But we can train ourselves essentially doing things like what you mentioned, like Appreciative Inquiry, we can actually train ourselves to, to rebalance that. And I mentioned that because I think part of this is to, to really just step back from time to time in one's life and look at what is what is my place in this offering, I mentioned, we did this as an organization with, you know, building the Healthy Minds program and the Healthy Minds framework. But we can also do that personally, you know, we don't have to be everything and do everything. So what are our, you know, superpowers? What are our strengths, what do we uniquely have to offer? So it, you know, to, in this context, you kind of mentioned scientific research, but being, you know, pragmatic and feet on the ground, you know, we have people who, who are, you know, up to their eyeballs in the science, brilliant researchers, you know, and doing that, you know, day in and day out. And there's other people who are just on the frontlines, you know, working in organizations all the time and doing, you know, both of those, you know, the scientists and the people working out on the frontlines doing that brilliantly. My role, I feel like, has been more as a connector, I feel like, my life is sort of strange to say this, but almost like I'm a translator, in fact, I, I live for almost a decade in Tibetan refugee settlements, and I actually learned Tibetan was translating these texts, and I kind of think of myself as a translator, I'm the, my strength is to stand between these worlds, and help them make sense of each other. So I think it's just knowing one's place. Like, that's for me, you know, some people are the person who's on the front lines, and that's their strength. They don't need to be the, you know, the geek who's, you know, hardcore scientist, and the hardcore scientist doesn't need to be, you know, the one who knows, can answer all those practical questions. So the world needs all of these things. And I think it's just really to see what is our place on that, where, where can we contribute. And then really, at the end of the day, it's just all about trust and collaboration from there, we need to realize I can offer this one piece, but I can't and don't need to do these other pieces, I need to connect with others, and work with others. And then it becomes you know, about trust and how we really build those relationships.
Paul Zelizer 48:02
Super helpful answer, thanks for that. So part of that if somebody is interested in what you're doing in the workplace part, if you're interested in the app, go get it, folks. It's free, literally. So that part's easy. If somebody is interested in the healthy minds work, that you're doing healthy minds at work, it's called, that's the title of the work you're doing in companies and organizations. Tell us a little bit more about that, like, who might be a good fit, and where do they get a hold of you? What does it look like to hire you, etc?
Cortland Dahl 48:32
Yeah, yeah, well, as you said, the simplest place, if you're just curious about what we've been talking about today, you can just download the Healthy Minds program in the app stores, which you've mentioned, for the organizational side of things. You know, the Healthy Minds at Work Program, which you can find just by Googling it, or going to the Healthy Minds innovations website. That is really a good fit for organizations that want to explore the science of well being, and the practical application of that, in some way, shape, or form. So, as I mentioned, we do engagements that range from very fairly simple things kind of lightweight, healthy minds well being challenges to more intensive training and consultation. So yeah, I think you can, you can reach out to us any organization, no matter how big or small, you know, we work with a whole range, as I mentioned, you know, we'd love to start that conversation. And we've got a great team of people who kind of helped set up those collaborations and figure out what is the best path forward given the the unique nature of each organization?
Paul Zelizer 49:37
Cool, and I'll put a link in the show notes of how you can get a hold of pokes at the healthy mindset Work initiative there are that if there was something you were hoping we were going to get to today, and we haven't yet got to it, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with as we start to wind down. What would that be?
Cortland Dahl 49:55
I think I would just say, to trust yourself, you know, I think you My guess is that people who listen to this are dreamers who want to do good in the world. And I think the world needs dreamers needs, you know, people who have these kind of altruistic dreams and impulses. And as I've said, I think the key is just, you know, whether it's learning from others and collaboration or one's own kind of learn one's own learning and journey, is just to learn some of the practical skills to balance out those dreams with kind of feet on the ground, kind of real world rigor. And I think that the balance of those two is pretty magical, but always powered by those dreams, and just trusting oneself and falling was intuition. I think that at the end of the day, that's what, at the end of the day, that's what really keeps us going.
Paul Zelizer 50:43
Carolyn, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Cortland Dahl 50:46
It's been an honor to be with you. Thank you for the great conversation.
Paul Zelizer 50:50
Again, we'll put links to all the things we mentioned in the show notes. Before you go just one request. If you have an idea for an episode or a topic we love, I mean, love, love, love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea, go to the AWARE printers website, and go to our contact page and right on the contact page, we have three criteria we try to be really transparent. Here's what we're looking for. If you've see a story, that would be a good fit, just send it on in we'd really appreciate it. For now I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good Karen's intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.