"When we engage in acts of kindness, our brains release neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin, leading to a cascade of positive physiological effects, including reduced stress and lower blood pressure."
Dr. Nicole Roberts, DrPH, MPP
EFR 821: Generosity Wins: The SHOCKING Way to Improve Your Health & Become More SUCCESSFUL with Dr. Nicole Roberts
What if small acts of kindness could significantly improve your health and well-being? Join us as we welcome Dr. Nicole Roberts DrPH, MPP to discuss why "Generosity Wins." You'll learn about the incredible health benefits of generosity and kindness, including the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin, which lead to reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and an overall enhancement in health. Discover the science behind the "helper's high" and the transformative power of giving without expecting anything in return.
This episode also explores how intentional generosity can become a part of your daily routine. By committing to a 30-day habit of recording acts of kindness, you can create lasting behavioral change through neuroplasticity. We discuss the broader implications of generosity that go beyond financial donations, emphasizing the importance of balancing kindness towards others with self-care to prevent burnout. Whether it's a small gesture or a consistent practice, these acts can significantly impact your emotional well-being, confidence, and even your earning potential.
We delve into the nuanced challenges of setting boundaries, especially for those balancing demanding careers and parenthood. Hear personal stories about the struggle to find moments for self-care and how setting small boundaries can maintain well-being. The conversation also highlights the often-overlooked acts of generosity within the medical community and the importance of empathy and social health. From developing a supportive culture to fostering connections through small acts of kindness, this episode offers a comprehensive look at how generosity can enrich our lives and society. Don't miss this insightful discussion on making generosity a powerful tool for success and personal happiness.
Follow Nicole @Nicole.f.roberts
Follow Chase @chase_chewning
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In this episode we discuss...
(00:06) Act of Generosity vs. Personal Struggle
(06:41) Health Benefits of Generosity
(11:27) Generosity in Leadership and Its Impact
(18:00) Redefining Generosity
(23:17) The Power of Generous Listening
(52:36) Importance of Even the Smallest Acts of Generosity
(01:00:20) Parenting With Patience and Generosity
(01:03:26) Legacy and Forward Thinking
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Episode resources:
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Watch and subscribe on YouTube
Learn more at GenerosityWins.us
Transcript
00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production. Is there a health advantage to being generous?
00:06 - Nicole (Guest) Many, the brain, which is where everything happens. When you do something kind, you feel good. I mean there's a helper's high, it's called that for a reason but neurotransmitters, endorphins, all these things are released. You really feel better and the dopamine, the oxytocin that flood your brain, it cascades through the rest of your body and so we can actually see that when someone is generous, when they give of themselves with no expectation of return, they just give, and it could be small, it could be a smile at the right time, and you know you've made a difference in that person's day. Our bodies literally feel. It reduces stress, anxiety, it lowers your blood pressure, I mean. So it starts in the brain and it says we're doing something good for ourselves, for the other person, for society. I mean you can look at studies that show acts of generosity lead to everything from longer marriages, longer lives, better health, earning more how do we give unto others when we are barely able to keep our own lives together?
01:04 yeah, you really went with the hard question that's what we do at ever for radio onto others when we are barely able to keep our own lives together.
01:07 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you really went with the hard question. That's what we do at Everford Radio. This episode is brought to you by my friends over at Comrade Gradual Compression Socks. I'm talking about socks with benefits. These are daily compression socks for all-day energy, support and comfort. They got so many amazing styles, colors and collections to choose from, like everyday support and comfort, performance recovery, even specific medical needs.
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02:26 Head to ComradeSockscom and we have an exclusive discount for you to save 15% At ComradeSockscom, and then at checkout, use code ChaseC15 to save 15%. That's C-H-A-S-E-C-1-5, the number one, the number five for 15% off, linked for you as always in today's show notes under episode resources. But again, that's comrade sockscom code chase C one five to say 15%. What's up, friends? Welcome back to another episode of Ever Forward Radio.
03:07 I am your host, chase Tuning, certified health coach, army veteran wellness entrepreneur, and today I had a little nostalgia set in because I was back in my old stomping grounds back in Washington DC to sit down with the one and only Dr Nicole Roberts. We sat down to dive into really this culmination of her work and research with co-author Monty Wood, stemming from their new book Generosity Wins how and why this game-changing superpower drives our success. Personally, I'm a giver I found over the years, of course, through establishing and keeping healthy boundaries, which we get into in the episode the more I give, the more I ultimately get. So it raises the question how can generosity transform not just our relationships but also our health? Nicole and I are going to be exploring the surprising power of kindness, discovering how acts of generosity trigger beneficial changes in our brain and body, from reducing stress to lowering blood pressure. You're also going to hear about the helper's high and the long-term karma-driven benefits even of giving without expecting anything in return. You're going to walk away from this episode discovering why generosity is a superpower, how to use it, generosity's role in fostering purpose-fueled happiness, emotional well-being, confidence and even passion, and how generosity with no expectation of return really is going to ignite your success, your potential, even your income, your earning potential, and how to make sure you are giving unto others, but, first and foremost, giving unto yourself. Nicole even has this pretty interesting 50-50 rule that you got to tune in and learn more from. So if you're interested in learning how to maintain a balance between generosity and personal boundaries and learning even more amazing ways the scientifically proven ways that giving benefits our overall well-being, it's because not only did she write the book about it, but Nicole is a doctor of public health with a background in neuroscience. Trust me, she knows what she's talking about. You're in for a real treat.
05:13 I can't wait for you to check out this episode. If you're new to the show, welcome. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have not yet done so, tapping that follow button, that subscribe button, on whichever podcast platform of choice you are listening to or watching, maybe on YouTube. Please take three seconds, tap it. If this message gives you value, then that is the greatest thank you I could ever ask for. It helps us grow, it helps us attract even more amazing guests and, ultimately, my goal is to reach as many people as possible and to help by sharing this information with the masses, to help others live a life ever forward. Thank you, welcome to the show. For somebody tuning in right now that has never watched an episode, listened or heard any of your work before, or is like who the hell is this guy talking? Why should they stick around? What do you think they're going to learn most from today's episode?
06:07 - Nicole (Guest) think they're going to learn most from today's episode the power of generosity, which sounds a little cheesy, I know, I know. When I started doing the research I don't know that I fully had bought in, but what I have learned is that we are the only species on earth that is truly generous and it is what keeps our civilization alive. And I think to learn about us as just humans, because we can't help it. We're humans. What happens in our brains, our bodies, and then socially by acts of generosity. It's actually pretty magical. It's really powerful.
06:41 - Chase (Host) So you and I have a lot in common, and one of them is a background in health and the body. Is there a health advantage to being generous?
06:51 - Nicole (Guest) Absolutely.
06:51 - Chase (Host) What is it?
06:52 - Nicole (Guest) Absolutely Many, you know. I would start with, I believe, the brain, which is where everything happens. I mean when we and we know this sort of anecdotally right, when you do something kind, you feel good. I mean when we and we know this sort of anecdotally right, when you do something kind, you feel good. I mean there's a helper's high. It's called that for a reason, but neurotransmitters, endorphins, all these things are released. You really feel better, and the dopamine, the oxytocin that flood your brain, it cascades through the rest of your body.
07:26 And so we can actually see that when someone is generous, when they give of themselves with no expectation of return, they just give, and it could be small, it could be a smile at the right time, and you know, you've made a difference in that person's day. Our bodies literally feel it and we continue to feel it. It's really remarkable that cascade event. It reduces stress anxiety, it lowers your blood pressure. I mean so it reduces stress anxiety, it lowers your blood pressure, I mean so. It starts in the brain and it says we're doing something good for ourselves, for the other person, for society, and then it just spreads throughout our entire body.
07:56 - Chase (Host) What about maybe someone listening that goes I don't feel that way. Sure, I've tried to be nice, I've tried to be a generous tipper or give that smile and it doesn't do anything for me. Is there still something physiologically, scientifically happening that they just don't know how to really connect to? Or, you know, how can you describe that feeling for someone that doesn't get there?
08:18 - Nicole (Guest) I'd say there's a couple ways to think about it. First, we all have those days, periods. I can't speak for you but like I've had an entire period of I can look like a one, two year window where I didn't feel like it didn't matter how much I gave, how much I did, how hard I worked. It was in the early years of entrepreneurship. It just it felt like a time and energy and mental suck on me at all times. So to that I would say karma is real and I know we can't quantify it. But an example that comes to mind for me there was an event I live here in DC and there was an event at National Geographic and I went and I gave and I spoke and I did all these things and nothing came of it. It ended up feeling like a waste of time. I felt silly. Actually, I was like, wow, I must have really bombed, like they don't want anything to do with me.
09:13 - Chase (Host) Which I'm sure was not the case.
09:15 - Nicole (Guest) You know, questionable. But five years went by and someone reached out and said hey, my wife and I met you at this thing. We loved what you did, we have followed your career and I'd started a human rights firm. And they were like we've seen X and Y and we would love to pull you in to do this thing. And I'm leaving it kind of vague on purpose, because it was a special project and for me it was just this moment of like it mattered. It mattered, I worked hard, I showed up. Five years went by and I thought it was just a sunk cost. It wasn't.
09:49 And in fact that relationship has turned into incredible projects, all kinds of networks, someone sitting on the board of this global organization and what it said to me is people remember and when you show up and when they trust you. And that's part of what generosity really does. When you are kind to others, you build trust. That's what makes relationships. And so there's like this ripple effect.
10:18 Not only do people see generous acts and then go about doing more of them themselves, and that you may not ever know about right, but you've done something very positive, but there's also this karmic effect, and one in a business world I guess could even call it an ROI right? You're investing yourself in someone or something. It may not come back to you in a way that looks like what you thought. It may not be that they write you a check, right, but it will come back to you in some other way if you're genuine about what you're putting out. And then, in terms of the science side, yeah, we don't always feel the things that we're doing. We may leave a situation later and go, oh wow, that was really bad.
10:58 And I didn't realize how bad that was, but in turn, right, we can do small kind things. That was, but in turn, right, we can do small kind things. And just because we don't have that immediate euphoria doesn't mean something really meaningful didn't happen. I mean you can look at studies that show acts of generosity lead to everything from longer marriages, longer lives, better health, earning more like your potential earning increases.
11:27 Leadership is where I think you see the big difference in being generous when you genuinely I don't mean in a transactional way, like I'm going to be nice to you so you work hard, when you actually care about the people you work with, your clients, whoever it is.
11:44 They know that, right, we're pretty good, our BS meters for the most part are pretty good and we know. And then people work harder because they believe in you and they believe in your mission, because they know that you have their back, you're looking out for them. Oh, you have a sick child and they're like no problem, go to the pediatrician. You can do that tomorrow. What that does to a parent it frees up their mind to focus on what's important and it says you care about me, you care about my family, my child, my spouse, my parent. If I'm caregiving, you know, whatever, they'll work harder for you because they know you care. And so just because in that exact moment you don't all of a sudden see rainbows and puppies, doesn't mean there's not something really powerful happening inside of you and inside of the other person.
12:33 - Chase (Host) So, then, in order for us to get the health benefits of generosity, it can just be an act and doesn't have to be a feeling associated with it. Or is there a way to get more bang for the buck if we just so happen to act generously and get that warm, fuzzy feeling that's?
12:53 - Nicole (Guest) a great question. I'm not sure I have a good answer for that.
12:59 - Chase (Host) What would you speculate?
13:01 - Nicole (Guest) What I would speculate is that being intentional matters, so one of the things that we've. I have a coauthor, Monty Wood. This was really his idea. He should get all the credit for this. I just did this.
13:11 - Chase (Host) Shout out, monty.
13:12 - Nicole (Guest) Monty. I just did the science, but you know he's a very successful business leader and has started and sold companies and it's what he found, which is I'm successful because he's such a giver, he's such a kind person, he's more generous than anyone I've ever met, and what I would say is we've challenged people to be. When I say intentional, I mean not just setting out to do something for behavior change sake, but actually like writing it down. And so one of our challenges is like a 30 day right, because it takes a couple of weeks for your brain, for those neural pathways to start getting stronger. Each night, write down something you did for someone else and something you did for yourself, and, if you want extra credit, how did it make you feel? What happens is you get to relive it all over again.
14:03 And that actually matters? Yes, so in a way you can be very intentional about how do I feel in the moment and then later, reflecting upon it Going how do I feel now, knowing what I did? Or let me think about my day, what did I do? You can be very focused and intentional in that way and sort of help train your brain, if you will.
14:28 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah.
14:29 - Nicole (Guest) What we find is that it becomes easier and easier. I mean, it's like anything else. You do it a couple weeks and all of a sudden it starts to become second nature and you start to see the benefits.
14:40 - Chase (Host) You said, it kind of takes a little bit of time for these neural pathways to get laid down for this kind of habit, we'll say, of generosity, to even get more of that biofeedback aspect of generosity. Or even is there an expectation someone could or should have to go? All right, I want to commit to X amount of time, x amount of reps in practicing generosity to really get that return.
15:11 - Nicole (Guest) Sure, so we say a month and there's no real pinpoint on the month of what happens. In terms of neuroplasticity, I would say it takes, like I said, a couple weeks for a pattern to become a habit, and it doesn't matter where you are in your life cycle. Our brains are plastic, they change right. Neuroplasticity is real. And so, if you, continually go down a certain pathway a negative one, for example like this happens and you immediately go. This is what's going to happen. You're strengthening that pathway because every decision you make, where?
15:50 - Chase (Host) you Reinforcing it in a positive or negative way? Right, you validate?
15:53 - Nicole (Guest) So when you go out of your way, like I said, it could be small, it could be a smile, it's not really going out of your way. There are limitless ways to be generous, but when you're intentional about it and you say I'm going to do this thing when I arrive at work today, the first few times you have to remind yourself. Or you have to say I'm going to do this today, After a couple of weeks you don't have to think nearly as hard about it. In fact, if you've done it for about 30 days, it becomes your brain's expectation I do X, it's followed by Y and every single, as you called it rep, every rep strengthens that pathway and it detracts from the other pathway. So we really, with every repetition, we're telling our brain what to do.
16:41 And those pathways. As they build, they get stronger and stronger and stronger, and it becomes your default. And so within a couple months, you literally can become a more generous person, and some of us grew up with wonderful role models. We saw generosity demonstrated every day. We lived in homes with, if not abundance, some sort of just giving giving spirit, as we call a lot of spirit.
17:06 - Chase (Host) Or even just lack of taking.
17:09 - Nicole (Guest) Yes, and there's a lot of other people who don't have that opportunity. They don't live in an environment where the people around them are natural givers and it could be because of lack of resources, right, it's hard to give when you're struggling and in the book we actually say we encourage 50 50 and I know a lot of people think that's crazy but 50 of your generosity should be towards others and 50 should be towards yourself, because you really cannot give from an empty place and when you do back to the very beginning, you start to become resentful. You start to say it doesn't matter what I do, nothing's happening back for me, so you have to take care of yourself. You really do. It matters.
17:53 - Chase (Host) The few examples that you've shared thus far, I think someone could just say well, that's just being nice, that's just being kind. Are we being generous with the term generosity, or is kindness the same thing as generosity?
18:06 - Nicole (Guest) I would say it's a subset. There are lots of ways to be generous and we actually redefined it. You bring up something really important. So in the US in particular and other English-speaking countries, but really in the US, what we found is that when you look up the word generosity, it is almost always associated with donor dollars and philanthropy.
18:27 - Chase (Host) So if I just Google generosity or people just look it up some other way, it tends to go more financial.
18:33 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, you'll mostly get examples of someone who is generous with their donor advised fund.
18:37 - Chase (Host) A generous donor, yeah, yeah, a generous tither, even Exactly.
18:41 - Nicole (Guest) Yep, and what we found is so what we decided to do. I guess taking a step back, is we decided to redefine generosity, and for us it is any act of kindness done with no expectation of return. And so for us it's about removing that transactional component. A gift, when you give it, the moment you put it in somebody else's hands, it's not yours. They might love it, use it every day, they might sell it on eBay, they might throw it in the trash.
19:11 - Chase (Host) Exchange it for something completely different which we all. It kind of stings a little bit, oh it hurts, but you gave.
19:18 - Nicole (Guest) That's a gift. You let it go Once it's out of your hands. It's literally out of your hands, and being generous is the same way, and so we redefined it and, following that, what we found through all of our interviews is donor dollars. Philanthropy is actually to me I can't speak for Monty, but to me the least tangible way to be generous.
19:42 - Chase (Host) Why? Because?
19:43 - Nicole (Guest) you can go online and you can say food security, I want to help feed children. You Google, you get a bunch of hits, you pick one. You're like I'm going to give $10, $100, doesn't matter, I just fed children. You feel good. You get the little email that says thank you and may have a picture of a cute kid.
20:01 - Chase (Host) And you're saying that's not generosity.
20:08 - Nicole (Guest) It is generosity, but it's the least tangible in the sense that it's then done. It was a transaction you did online. What we found is and we all know this the one thing you can never get back is time. When you give of your time, especially in person, mentorship, that's we found to be one of the most powerful forms of generosity. When you take your wisdom, your knowledge, your experience and you share that with someone else to help them in their career, give them advice about their marriage, prepare them for parenthood, whatever it is when you give of yourself emotionally, mentally, physically.
20:49 What that does for the other person and what it does for you, it sticks with you. You feel it, you can recall those memories, you remember those conversations. You may learn something in return that you take home and do or say hey, did you know? Those things stick with you in a very different way than going click, click, click, done right. You don't feel it leave your bank account, you don't feel it see it feed a child. So of course it's generous and I do encourage everyone who can to give where they can to what's meaningful to them.
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22:16 Personally, ice Strong. I love Morning Fix. That's the red bag. Or if you're looking for a traditional cup of just black cup of Joe, then we'll reach for the black. It blends so easily, easily, goes down so smooth and I promise you you're gonna feel the difference. So start your day strong, get your cup of coffee in plus essential nutrients all whipped together in a matter of seconds. They offer even a 60-day money bag guarantee. So run through the bag. If you don't love the way it tastes, love the way it mixes, if you don't feel the difference, then you got nothing to lose. And speaking of money, I want you to save some on the front end. So when you go to strongcoffeecompanycom, throw down code CHASE at checkout. That's C-H-A-S-E, just my name. You're going to save 15% each and every time, linked for you, as as always in the show notes today under episode resources.
23:06 - Nicole (Guest) But again, that's strongcoffeecompanycom, code Chase to save 15%, so is that the most?
23:17 - Chase (Host) beneficial way for both the recipient and the giver to practice generosity.
23:19 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, I really believe it's time. It's your time and your energy and, like I said, we call it a spirit. A lot of people live with a spirit of generosity, listening. We've all been in that situation where we were wound up about something. We were disappointed, we were hurt, we were frustrated, we were scared, we were whatever that emotion or combination of emotions is and we needed someone to listen. They didn't even have to give advice, they didn't have to say oh, I've been there.
23:53 - Chase (Host) You just needed to get it out.
23:54 - Nicole (Guest) I need a warm body with two ears that can just sit there and take it in. Absolutely yeah, yeah. And to do that for someone to listen to them could be the most meaningful thing you could ever do for them. But that involves your time and your energy things you'll never get back. You can earn another dollar and you could even say, in the time I lost this many dollars because I wasn't yeah, yeah.
24:13 But what you, as a human connected to another human, get, just because you can't fully measure it or put a monetary value on it, doesn't mean that it's not significant to your brain and body and theirs.
24:26 - Chase (Host) Yeah, as you're describing that, I'm kind of just getting flooded back with a lot of people that have done that for me and it's easier for me to not only remember the person, but the event, the, the, the, the value, exchange, the time, the experience, the emotion for me, compared to anytime someone maybe gave me a gift or I haven't gotten any donations I don't run a nonprofit or anything, but you know I mean I've had people, friends, family members.
24:55 You know I've gotten money in the past, you know, but it, you know that is helpful of course, and at the time I would definitely say, oh, that was very generous of you, but it's more of a laundry list of the people that gave me their time and mentorship.
25:07 - Nicole (Guest) And in those situations I would even argue the giving of a dollar. And it could be that you were fresh out of a situation and broke and like how am I going to pay my rent Right To keep a roof over my?
25:18 - Chase (Host) head. I call that year one of entrepreneurship. Oh, only one year, good for you.
25:24 - Nicole (Guest) Call it year one through like five, but I would argue that the person doing the handing of the check or the dollar or whatever what they did, is they helped you feel secure?
25:38 - Chase (Host) Yes, it's not just here's a dollar, go get a Starbucks. Yeah, more security than generosity there you go.
25:46 - Nicole (Guest) What they were giving you was I feel safe, there's a roof over my head and clean water that I can drink. Right, they were preventing you from lots of other things. That, to me, is exceptionally generous, and so I don't want to demean the giving of a dollar, but it absolutely. But it's about what's behind it.
26:06 - Chase (Host) It wasn't just done so you could go get some extra Whole Foods lunch whatever, maybe, or in my case, it would be like spending my paycheck at Erewhon Do you know, what Erewhon is? No Okay, so imagine Whole Foods, but like on crack. It's literally like a $30 smoothie. But in LA it's a small chain of like high end super healthy farm to table all this great food Um, the best hot bar ever but you'll literally spend like $35 on lunch.
26:36 - Nicole (Guest) How is an East coast person Do you just like move to the West coast? You just get beads.
26:42 - Chase (Host) you go out West, you get beads and then boom, you're, you're transformed. Yeah, Okay.
26:46 - Nicole (Guest) All right, when I was out there, that's what I missed. I missed the beads, yeah.
26:52 - Chase (Host) Can we live a life of generosity while also keeping personal boundaries?
26:57 - Nicole (Guest) Absolutely.
26:58 - Chase (Host) Or do we have to completely abandon our sense of self?
27:01 - Nicole (Guest) No, and in fact I would say boundaries are one of the most important elements of generosity.
27:08 - Chase (Host) So how do we establish and how do we maintain healthy boundaries while also being generous?
27:15 - Nicole (Guest) So this is, admittedly, a place where I don't always practice what I preach, and, as a new-ish mom, I don't know that there's enough hours, time, energy in the world for me to actually take care of myself right now. But that's okay, this is a phase, right, this too shall pass. But earlier I said, you know, like you can't give from an empty well. So in that regard and wearing my hat as a new mom, you know, for me it's often as simple as five minutes. This is my new thing is I go outside. I have a new role that I've taken on in a work capacity that is incredibly demanding, and I work with some of the most difficult personalities out there.
28:12 After my career, I can say that and mean it. And so to be a good wife, to be a good mother, all I ask for at the end of the day is five minutes, and I literally go outside and I just take a deep breath. Luckily it's summer and it's hot, but I just stand there and I just sort of like breathe. And then I come in and I don't bring a lot of the baggage. I'm not saying it all goes away, I don't just go.
28:39 - Chase (Host) Oh, I'm going to forget these people said or did things I've put a buffer, that's a great word for it right Between the work and the personal and so bath time and all that stuff.
28:50 - Nicole (Guest) Again, I'm not saying it's all gone, I'm still thinking about it, I'm still irritated, but I didn't bring all of that into the house in this really heavy, sometimes ugly, frustrated way and for me that's a simple boundary and my husband and I had to find it and I had to compromise, right? If it were up to me, I'd take an hour and I'd go for a run and I would do whatever.
29:13 - Chase (Host) But it's like honey.
29:13 - Nicole (Guest) No, no, no no, no, no, no no no, come down a little bit. Right, but I had to put in this thing for myself so that I could be a better me and my husband could see it. Right, like, yes, she needs to go breathe. And now he's even changed his behavior a little in twice, which is probably a bad thing. He's been like why don't you go for a walk around the block, right? Why don't you take 15, honey? Yeah, take 50. We'll be fine. Why don't you just go for a?
29:45 - Chase (Host) walk, but he sees the difference and that sounds like him being generous. It is.
29:48 - Nicole (Guest) I'm going to take the toddler right. I've been with him today and I'm frustrated, but, like you need to go do something for yourself. We have to put boundaries in place and it can be our time, it can be our energy. For me, I will say the one thing about parenthood that's made boundaries better is the lack of time.
30:08 - Chase (Host) What do you mean by that?
30:11 - Nicole (Guest) Tiny people take up a lot of time and your priorities have to shuffle and I have found, as a woman in the last year I have gotten exponentially better at saying no, I can't, and sometimes I'm disappointed. There are things especially living in DC right, there's events, there are things I would love to do. I'm traveling all of next week preparing for I host an event at the Super Bowl, so I'm going to New Orleans next week to start planning, because you've got to do that at least six, eight months out.
30:44 - Chase (Host) Super Bowl is pretty big. Yeah, a lot of planning I'm sure involved. Yeah, it's a thing.
30:48 - Nicole (Guest) Um, but I had to completely rearrange. Do I fly out at 6am and come home at 10pm because we have a toddler? Do I pack up the toddler and my husband and go? I mean, he packs himself, but you know what I mean. Uh, do we keep him at home? And I try and actually like work and have a toddler at the same time, what do we do?
31:09 And so I lived a world in which most of my work is in public health, in human rights, humanitarian work. So there's an earthquake and I'm on a plane and I go and I stay and I help set up clinics and do things like that. That doesn't happen anymore. The boundaries I've had to put up about what is and isn't possible are because of the child, but they've also I mean, they've changed everything about me and sometimes, like I said, sometimes I'm actually disappointed. I want to go help. It's who I am.
31:37 I'm a giver by nature and I feel like when I'm not giving, I'm letting people down or I'm not doing enough. But then I also see him and I think if I left, then I'm not doing enough for him and he is what's next right and he's learning, and we see it every day, Like you don't realize how much you're being watched.
32:00 - Chase (Host) Shout out Liam, Sounds like you're killing it Killing it right now.
32:04 - Nicole (Guest) But you don't realize you're being watched 24 seven until they do the behavior, they act the way you act, they mimic the thing, and then you're like oh no.
32:14 - Chase (Host) Oh, that's me.
32:15 - Nicole (Guest) Or oh, yay, oh they picked that up from me Right, or they picked that up from my husband. That's awesome, um and and so those boundaries you have to put around yourself no matter where you are in life. It could be a young person early, especially both of us being entrepreneurs. You push, and push, and push, and I don't know where you stand on hustle culture. I'm glad we're moving away from it.
32:41 - Chase (Host) I gave up on hustle culture like five years ago Same yeah, and I was in it, right.
32:45 - Nicole (Guest) And I was all about it and I think I even hashtag like hustle.
32:49 - Chase (Host) I went from hustle culture to sleep culture.
32:51 - Nicole (Guest) Ooh, I like sleep culture. Yeah, team sleep all day. Well, I'm jealous.
32:58 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I shouldn't have said that I'm bitter. Now I'm bitter and angry.
33:03 - Nicole (Guest) But when you're early in entrepreneurship, that hustle mindset, I mean you're passionate, there's something you believe in, you want to do. I feel like, as a culture, we glorify this exhausted and busy for the sake of busy. No, nobody has time for that. So I think in those early years I would say boundaries are so important because you have to know when to turn off, you have to know when to let your brain and body heal. Sleep is the best.
33:36 - Chase (Host) Honestly, that's why I shifted.
33:38 - Nicole (Guest) Sleep. Nothing but good things happen when you sleep Seriously. It's when all your little tea helper cells come out. Your body heals. You don't feel good? Go to sleep, drink water and go to sleep. You're angry? Drink some water and go to sleep. It makes everything better, and I think so many young people and older people. But like at different stages of life, our boundaries change. Of course, and it's so important, though, to have them and know what makes you a good you.
34:05 - Chase (Host) It's really important for the listener to pick up on what you just said, because I think we get attached to boundaries because they serve us. I never had boundaries with this person or this thing. Now I do.
34:16 I feel safe, I feel secure, I'm thriving, all these things. But then you're going to grow and evolve and you're going to come up against those boundaries because it's time to let go of them or it's time to expand them. Boundaries for this. Keeping boundaries for the sake of keeping boundaries at least in my experience can inevitably turn into a disservice, just as much, I think, as not having them in the first place. So you need to kind of be aware of why do I have this? When did it come into my life, and is it still necessary at?
34:43 - Nicole (Guest) that level. Is it serving? It serving? Yeah, I think that's so important. Thank you, that's a wonderful call out, because what I'm noticing is I'm right at this stage, like technically millennial, but like, not right, like and and those of us who I think are year one or two, what they call, like the oregon trail generation or whatever.
35:04 - Chase (Host) Um yeah, like you grew up on using play oregon trail yeah, there whatever. Um, yeah, like you grew up on using play oregon trail.
35:08 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, there's like a whole window. It's a great article.
35:10 - Chase (Host) The amount of times I had dysentery in my whole family died and like the wagon wheel cracked. Oh yeah, I'm with you. Okay, so we're in the same yeah and there's a great article.
35:17 - Nicole (Guest) If you guys haven't seen it or read it, google like oregon trail. There's this article that was written about like a five-year window of people who used card catalogs and went to a-.
35:29 - Chase (Host) The Dewey Decimal System Went to a computer lab and learned how to click by using Oregon Trail.
35:35 - Nicole (Guest) But then we didn't have cell phones until we were like high school, college, so like we're a really weird cohort, anyway-.
35:41 - Chase (Host) Did you learn cursive? Yeah, you know they don't teach cursive anymore. No, yeah, I think it's a whole nother, we need to add that to the wagon wheel. The Oregon Trail Group.
35:50 - Nicole (Guest) I just looked down at my notes. Yeah, did I use it.
35:54 - Chase (Host) Yeah, they don't even teach cursive anymore.
35:56 - Nicole (Guest) I guess it doesn't really serve a purpose. I mean, I guess it makes me angry, but it's just wow, like the next generation is just I mean because they grew up doing this point being our, my cohort of friends like we're at a place where our parents, speaking to your boundaries and not serving you like our parents, are reaching a point where the dynamics and relationships we've had, those boundaries are changing a lot, because people are getting sick, people are passing, they're losing their parents or they're having to be caregivers all of a sudden because of that generation's health, and some of them you've got young. I have the youngest child, most of my friends have 10-year-olds, but like you've got children, you've got parents to care for you. Like all these dynamics are shifting and so the boundaries they're having to put into place are no longer what they were five years ago.
36:55 Yeah, that's such a good point because the dynamics have changed and when you're having to help care for a parent, make sure they're taking their meds, trying to get them to go for a walk right, those relationships really change and it's hard because that parent also the boundaries and rules and the way they see you is very. They still see you in a diaper.
37:17 And all of a sudden you're trying to dictate their days, and it's tough, and so boundaries are so important. You cannot give in ways that serve you or serve other people if you're not in some sort of good place with yourself. So boundaries, whatever they may be for you, are very important.
37:40 - Chase (Host) Love that answer. Thank you so much. It was long. No, no, no, it all matters and it involved more of the trail. I love the tangents. I'm keeping it all in. I'm just going to label this episode dysentery. Question mark generosity.
37:55 - Nicole (Guest) Generous dysentery.
37:57 - Chase (Host) Where I want to kind of get the listeners head wrapped around this concept, where it might already be familiar for them in their life. So if a lot of times when we're trying to build or establish new habits it's kind of hard to grasp something that like doesn't exist in our life yet, but I think in a lot of different areas we have little like micro doses of that thing already. We just don't fully realize it. So my question is where might we already be generous and not realize it? What are some common areas of generosity where we could possibly double down on instead of trying to just out of the blue create this new generosity lifestyle?
38:34 - Nicole (Guest) This is a great question and it's actually really pertinent to me, because I've been tasked with and asked and it shocked me to work on some curriculum and I haven't done it yet. Well, I've started, but I've not gotten to the finish line Like school curriculum.
38:49 - Chase (Host) Yeah, okay, oh, wow.
38:50 - Nicole (Guest) Right, Shocking. I did not see that being a component of the book or my research or work, but after the book came out, the area and it's pertinent to my background, but the area where I have gotten the most response is medical schools. And so when you think about people who go to medical school and want to be doctors, for the most part I'd say almost across the board, unanimously they're givers, they want to help and they realize they're making a many year commitment to going into debt, delaying family, all those things. And so, by and large, these people are at 18, 19, 20, you know or like. They're givers and they know they want to help.
39:31 What happens is a number of things in the current system. It's lots of medical records and computers, it's lots of debt, it's delaying often marriage, homeownership, all these American dream type things until your 40s. And sometimes you've missed the boat and you've pulled all-nighters and I would then add we won't go down the rabbit hole. But we had COVID, so many of these younger people early in their careers residency, new positions were faced with. I won't even call it like a lack of gratitude, it was hostility.
40:08 Yeah, we saw it in nurses too. So, I should say we see this across the medical community.
40:12 - Chase (Host) It's medical schools that have been reaching out.
40:15 - Nicole (Guest) And to work so hard and believe in helping people and then have a lot of those people look at you and tell you they don't believe in you or your work or what you're doing. It was like its own crisis of conscience.
40:28 - Chase (Host) Yeah, the cause.
40:29 - Nicole (Guest) Moral injury.
40:30 - Chase (Host) It was thrown in people's faces for years, yeah.
40:33 - Nicole (Guest) Moral injury is what I would call it, and I never compare military service with anything else, but there are lots of comparators about that moral injury that exists and how we process it and how we process it, and so a lot of universities that are teaching hospitals are looking at ways to move. Like we mentioned, hustle culture and entrepreneurship. So in medical school there was a big time in which we've talked about more grit or resiliency. You need to be more resilient. Your forefathers pushed through and faced adversity.
41:06 - Chase (Host) Every time someone says grit. Does Angela Duckworth get a royalty, I wonder. Does she have that trademark? She should.
41:13 - Nicole (Guest) You deserve a round of applause for that.
41:15 - Chase (Host) That's incredible, well done so.
41:18 - Nicole (Guest) Point being, since the book has come out I'm really impressed with that A lot of medical schools have actually been reaching out talking about how do we support and tap into that innate ability to give and be generous with oneself.
41:40 To your point earlier, the spirit of generosity, people who come with a spirit of giving but they're burnt out, they're tired, they're in debt and they're facing hostility. How do we nourish that? How do we harness it? How do we help them not lose it? How do we support them as they grow and hopefully become leaders, right? And so I've been thinking about what does curriculum look like? How do you teach generosity? Can you teach generosity? How do you help harness it? How do you recognize it? And so I don't yet have that curriculum fleshed out, but I'm really working on it and we have talked to some elementary schools about what that means in young people and how we demonstrate it, how we show it, and what I have found is that some of the examples you asked everyday examples are how we interact with our, I'll say, colleagues. A lot of us work remotely now, but the space, even on Zoom or whatever right that you give your colleagues and a lot of us, I think innately. Again, I'll go back to being a new parent.
42:42 I don't think I ever would have judged anyone in the past if they said I've got to go to a pediatrician appointment, I'm taking the afternoon off. I don't think I would have judged anyone. I'm like, okay, cool. Now I'm like, oh, I just sat your whole day and if you're going, it's either a checkup or you're worried or there's a developmental milestone. Let me know if I can pick up X or Y for you. Like to have your back or don't worry about it, take the whole afternoon off. I know how these things spill over. And if you've already got the person, the baby, out of the house, don't worry about rushing home or daycare off those things. I think as humans, when we certainly have experiences, I think we extend generosity and generous behaviors to people in all kinds of ways that we in real time aren't thinking like, oh, I'm being really nice right now. It's empathy.
43:32 Actually, if I boiled it down to one word, I would say it's empathy. And I think those examples are abundant every day. If you stop and think about how are you being empathetic to someone? Or how are they empathetic with you and not sympathetic, like they don't feel sorry for you, but like empathy?
43:50 - Chase (Host) Put yourself in my shoes and vice versa.
43:51 - Nicole (Guest) And because I work with a lot of people who are older than me, the generosity that they have extended towards me and being an older first time mom is off the charts, and sometimes I'm scrambling and in real time I don't think like, oh wow, that was really kind. But even the follow up the next morning of how'd it go? I'm like he has an earache. It sucks. We were up all night, thanks. You know we don't need to lose more work hours talking, but thank you for asking.
44:17 - Chase (Host) I feel seen, I feel heard, I feel respected.
44:19 - Nicole (Guest) That is so generous and, as in a lot of those cases, a mother-to-mother especially an older mother, asking me how I'm doing it, does so much for me that just sort of says it's okay, it's okay, you're not an inconvenience, you're not setting the company back, you're dealing with something in real time and I know what that's like.
44:40 Those are acts of generosity. They're abundant throughout your day and I guarantee everyone listening has has done many today already or they've been the recipient. I think a lot of it is just becoming aware, really self-aware, of how you interact with others and how they interact with you, and what you give and what you receive. Another quick little nugget that we found is um and monty really gets all the credit for highlighting this and finding it and going there's something here, especially for women, because he mentors so many people, but especially young women. He said you know, what I found is that when one is more generous, it's like they're open to receiving it in new ways, and I had to have him explain it to me a couple of times, a few times probably.
45:27 - Chase (Host) In order to get, I have to give.
45:30 - Nicole (Guest) No, it's that you just sort of wake up and go oh, all of those little things were generous. And I didn't realize what small little things were happening because they weren't some-.
45:45 - Chase (Host) I see what's going on here. Yeah, they weren't some grand gesture, right?
45:52 - Nicole (Guest) Someone behind me or in front of me didn't buy my coffee, right, like some gesture that you could-. Well, the example I just gave logging in first thing at an 8 am meeting or 7 am and having someone on my team in India, it's the end of their long workday. It's 7 am my time. They and it's the end of their long work day. It's 7 am my time. They're in Chennai. I'm in DC and having that woman go. Oh, I heard you had to go to the doctor. How's Liam? Never until now, maybe selfishly, would I have been like oh, that's so generous.
46:18 And now I'm like she's exhausted, I know what time it's 6 pmm her time. She's worked a full day. She's about to go home to four kids. But she stopped and asked me how I'm doing and how my son's doing. Like that connection. We've never met in person. We've been colleagues for years over zoom right. I've lived and worked in india but I've never met her. I've never been to that office. Um, those sorts of things to me are. They're so meaningful, they, they're so powerful, they connect us. That's what I said earlier about building trust and relationships. And those small things I don't think I would have appreciated before, but for writing this book, but for going through these certain experiences. And now I see like throughout the day and I really do have to like my life has gotten better and I'm much happier than I used to be, even with lack of sleep.
47:12 - Chase (Host) Love to hear that by the way. I'm happy for you. That's good to hear.
47:16 - Nicole (Guest) I'm in a great place. I'm really content with life and I think it's because I have become so appreciative of, from my work overseas over the years, like simple things like clean water and a roof over my head, and those small acts of people connecting from all over the world every day. It could be your colleague, it could be your parent, it could be somebody you pass on the street, but for me it's the work I do, those small things. It's like all of a sudden. I'm open to them, I recognize them in real time and when someone asks, oh, how is so-and-so doing? I can tell you their job performance is like 70% of the equation for me at this point, because I'm like they're good at their job.
48:01 But she's a really thoughtful person and if she extends those courtesies to me, I know she's great with her team and she may be having a bad month I don't know what's going on in her house, I don't know what's going on in their office, right, but I know what kind of person she is. Here's the kinds of things that are being extended to me. Let me ask some of those same questions to her, because I know how it made me feel when someone asked how I was doing and last week, shockingly, I had a colleague again I've never met in person. She cried on the phone for a while. It hurt. The rest of my day sucked right because I felt so awful it's hard to bounce back after a phone call meeting right or a crying meeting, yeah.
48:43 But the next day it was like we had had a complete reset and even other people commented at the meeting like she was more engaged.
48:52 - Chase (Host) She was this, she was that, I was like because you share that vulnerable experience with her. I was like I just listened.
48:58 - Nicole (Guest) I just listened and I don't deserve a medal for it. I don't deserve any generosity award. Like people have extended those courtesies to me. I then said what can I learn from them to do for someone else? I didn't expect that to happen. I expected most of us to be like I'm fine, walk it away, don't open that Pandora's box. But she opened it and I just listened and we, I think I think as a team no one else on the team knows, but I think we as a team are better for it.
49:28 - Chase (Host) That's really good to hear.
49:29 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, someone just needed the space to be like this is shit, it sucks, I hurt and I don't know how to express it, because she has three kids, right. She's like I can't just break down. I have a full more than a full-time job. It's just an hour that I've listened. Have a full more than a full-time job. It was just an hour that I'd listened and, like I said, I think we're all better for it. And the rest of the team has no idea, but they know she's happier.
49:57 - Chase (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and that's ultimately what matters most, right, yeah? Another thing that might come to mind for somebody when they think generosity it did for me was it's kind of like acts of love. You know, to to be generous is to to be loving. Um, and you know what is it? The, the golden one of the golden rules, right From uh, I'm showing my Southern Baptist here Um, love thy neighbor as thyself, uh, but what if we struggle with self-love?
50:20 What if we are not at a place where we really truly love ourselves and we're not maybe being loving or kind to ourselves? Therefore, we feel like we can't be generous to and for and with ourselves, so we can't give it out. What would you say to that person?
50:35 - Nicole (Guest) That's a really powerful question because it is so hard this is not criticism towards anyone, myself included, who's been there it's really hard to get out of your own way and so, when you're in a place, it's really hard to get out of that place and to be self-aware and have, if you're already there, to have the space and time and bandwidth to just pull yourself up right, like it's so much harder than that, up right, like it's so much harder than that. I would say, taking on some of the things we've already talked about. When you're in a really unhealthy mental and emotional space, first of all, there is help, right, and that can come in any form. That can come in therapy. For some it's pharma, for others it's someone to listen, it's empathy, it's relationships. But if you do acts that are generous to yourself and to others, what I would say is there's no magic, it's not pharma, right, there's no pill.
51:48 But through those acts, through being more open and receptive and aware of what you're doing, I think it really shows you how connected we all really are. You're not alone, you're not on an island. Even if at this moment, you feel that way and you're not in touch with your family or something right. Shit happens. Not everybody is a good person and not everyone is going to be good to you or for you right Back to boundaries. And sometimes relationships that have existed your whole life don't need to exist anymore because you can't be a good, whole person, a healthy person with those relationships. And that's hard, I mean. There's nothing harder than breaking off. It could be a relationship with your family, alcohol, I mean. Pick your thing right, whatever it is.
52:36 If you've had a long-term relationship that was codependent in any way or you leaned on in a time that was hard, those are so hard to break Our brains. Hate change, absolutely hate change, and so I think for me, part of writing this book it's about the little things. The little things really add up and they really matter. No one month of doing something nice every day is necessarily going to pull you out of that place, but it will show you that things can be better.
53:11 - Chase (Host) So generosity doesn't have to be a grand gesture.
53:14 - Nicole (Guest) It doesn't have to be going out of our way.
53:17 - Chase (Host) It doesn't have to be giving all of our money away, giving all of our time away.
53:20 - Nicole (Guest) It doesn't have to take anything away from you or your day at all.
53:24 - Chase (Host) Would you say. Generosity shouldn't take anything away from the person giving.
53:30 - Nicole (Guest) I'd say it depends. I don't think it should take away in the sense of causing any harm. So one of the things that we actually we also define in the book is sort of self-generosity, and we say anything that's taken to like extreme, that's not self-generous, right? If you're doing something that's overindulging, that's not actually being generous with yourself. It's masking or muting the way that you're feeling. It's covering it up, it's sort of putting a Band-Aid on it or distracting yourself. That's not really self-generous. It's something that moves you towards the person you want to be, those things. So doing something really hard and frustrating could be generous to yourself because you're moving yourself in the direction that you want to go in.
54:21 - Chase (Host) It's very generous to your future self, to your higher self, exactly.
54:25 - Nicole (Guest) And so you know small acts every day, little things that make a difference to you and to other people. It is a slow process, it is a self-aware process, it's an intentional process. There is no magic pill. We know that by now Humans have existed long enough to know there's no magic.
54:46 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I want to ask one more question before my final, kind of being mindful of your time here. How do we keep the generosity mindset when times are tough? How do we give unto others when we are barely able to keep our own lives together?
55:02 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, you really went with the hard question.
55:05 - Chase (Host) That's what we do at Everford Radio.
55:09 - Nicole (Guest) This is where I would say it goes back to that social. And so when people talk about health, for the life of me I do not know why we say mental health versus physical health. It's your health.
55:21 - Chase (Host) Health is everything, everything it's emotional right.
55:24 - Nicole (Guest) How you feel is your health. It's all there. But there's another area that I think we don't talk about enough. This is the doctor of public health and me coming out. It's the social health. We are social beings. We are wired that way, we are built that way. That's how we've survived. We are social and we saw what happened, particularly to young people in the COVID days of isolation. I thought the marketing around that was so stupid. When we say like you've got to be socially distant, I remember here in DC in the very early days it was like we'd be socially distant.
56:00 I was like, no, we don't. We have Zoom, we have phones, we have. We're not socially distant at all, we're physically distant. That mindset to me is completely different. And if we told people, stay six feet apart.
56:12 - Chase (Host) Wholeheartedly agree.
56:13 - Nicole (Guest) But we can. We can do this, we can look at screens, we can. We can be social. I think we are social people and I think we have to recognize and appreciate at all times that everything we do impacts the fabric of society.
56:32 And I think about, like an example I sometimes give it's transportation related, but hear me out, just you know when a mother, for example, or a father, but we'll say a mother makes a decision and she has a sick child and she has to take three buses right, three buses to get there. I've seen this in practice. I had a mother who went through the same thing when I was living in Chicago and I was working in an emergency department and the doctor was like do this, do this and come back tomorrow. I don't know. Like there's no way she's coming back tomorrow. First of all, she's got three kids. She took three buses and had to take a whole day off work for these shenanigans. That's three buses home too. That's her whole day. It's shot.
57:15 And if she's taking a bus to get here, that means she doesn't have a car, that means she's not got other public transit or family resources. Like there's a reason she's not coming back tomorrow. There is no follow-up, and so, for me, examples like that of seeing you know we're humans, like in real time, we have to, as I see it, always be thinking about that fabric. Transportation is public health, housing is public health, education is public, they're all the greater public. And so, wherever we are in our life a great place, a terrible place, just sort of surviving, whatever phase we're in everything we do impacts people around us and impacts their behavior towards us.
58:05 - Chase (Host) Ooh, yes, absolutely.
58:15 - Nicole (Guest) And so I say that to say there's no small act that, even if you aren't feeling it in real time, isn't having an impact or an effect on someone else. If you are thoughtful about the people around you and what they're going through or you've, you've made a difference. That sort of awareness and thoughtfulness, it completely changes how we interact with each other. And it's not hokey, it's not like I don't mean it that way. I really mean it like we're all in this together and this is all we get.
58:42 - Chase (Host) That's the beauty of what you're talking about and your work is. You can choose to believe that generosity is just this airy fairy karmic energy vibe thing out there and it's still going to work, or you can look at the practical applications and what happens in that energetic exchange physiologically like we talked about at the beginning. So it doesn't matter what you believe about generosity. The fact is, when you act through and because of generosity, all of those things begin to happen the smallest little step or the biggest leap.
59:15 - Nicole (Guest) You just did what I think has taken me like an hour.
59:19 - Chase (Host) a matter of seconds, well that's because I had an hour with you to kind of extract all this information and I was like the best marketing job ever, right there.
59:28 I'll send you the clip. I'll send you the clip. Well, I have an idea of how this is going to help me move forward in my life, but I want to get your interpretation of those two words, kind of highlighting your work now and having my audience here, you know your definition and explanation of how we can live more generous. Live more generously so that we can move forward in our life ever forward. What do those two words mean to you? How do you live a life ever forward?
59:55 - Nicole (Guest) I think the short answer is how do I make the world better, happier, healthier, whatever that means for people? My body of work, I think, is committed to that. It could be making sure that girls can go to school or someone has access to food or clean water. We take so many of those things for granted, and so I think I'm just sort of committed to that. But I would add this layer and I've already brought it up, but as a new first-time mom, it is wearing my neuroscience hat the number of connections that my son makes every day, watching him learn in real time, get frustrated but then go to sleep at night, wake up and do the thing.
01:00:41 - Chase (Host) You're watching neurons fire in real time. Literally yeah, and I literally go oh, look at his little frontal lobe work.
01:00:50 - Nicole (Guest) Emotional regulation not there, absolutely none. But when I think of ever forward, it now has this new meaning to me because, the way I see it, to all the things we've talked about and no, I'm absolutely not at all perfect and always kind and always generous to him, to my husband, to myself, but I am so self-aware of all the things I do determine how he's going to interact with the world. And no, I can't just stick him in my backpack and run off to Haiti after an earthquake and say this is how a clinic works.
01:01:23 This is how we set up supplies, this is how we treat people. I can't do those things anymore with a toddler, but I can constantly demonstrate for him how to problem solve, how to be empathetic, how to do acts of kindness or generally just be more generous. And I have found that I am more generous with him, honestly, since writing the book, because he gets frustrated when he can't do something he's never seen it before, never done it before, doesn't even have the motor skills to accomplish the thing he wants to do Fair enough Right, not even his fault.
01:02:05 - Chase (Host) Fair enough?
01:02:06 - Nicole (Guest) But to see him get frustrated, to see him get upset, or when he's sick and feels so helpless. I really do think that is where for me at the moment, moving forward and impacting his life, I have been a more generous person because my patience, even if it's shot, I'm in a better place where I can pause and go. What's the best thing I can do for him right now? What's the best thing I can do for me right now? Do they work together?
01:02:37 - Chase (Host) And if not, what's the compromise that?
01:02:39 - Nicole (Guest) nobody gets hurt, and so just thinking constantly about all those things and how they impact him, and I hope he is a much more patient and kind person than I think I was, or my husband was, when we were younger. Oh, I'm sure Because he will have it demonstrated for him constantly given that we had him so late in life. I think I really do think about forward in a different way than people, maybe in their 20s do, because there's a legacy component there that he'll probably be our only child, and that's it, right.
01:03:15 This is what we leave to the world. I can leave a body of work, but most of my work's humanitarian, so there's no building with your name on it. There's nothing like that right. It's just knowing the good work is out there. People live longer, healthier, better or got resources they didn't previously have. That's my forward. That's what I give to the world, but he's a tangible thing that I'm putting out there. So to me that's a really new but powerful way to think about forward.
01:03:45 - Chase (Host) I love that interpretation. There's never a right or wrong answer.
01:03:48 - Nicole (Guest) I tell everybody.
01:03:50 - Chase (Host) So I'm going to highlight the book here real quick. We're going to have it linked for you guys down in the show notes in the video box. But generosity wins. How and why this game changing superpower drives our success. Where can my audience go to connect and learn more about you and your work?
01:04:04 - Nicole (Guest) I'm easy to find, nicole F Roberts. I use my middle initial because I have the most basic name on the face of the earth. So, nicole F Roberts, I'm everywhere, and we actually have our own site, generositywinsus. And the reason is because, in our entrepreneurial spirit as well, you can buy from the big retailers, but for the same price, same quick shipping. We knocked a few dollars off and what we really encourage is actually gifting.
01:04:35 - Chase (Host) We set a big goal Don't buy the book, gift the book I mean really serious Like we encourage people like get one for yourself but gift it to other people.
01:04:43 - Nicole (Guest) Like the point is especially, you know, like right now we're doing graduations and things like that, but like to help others, like be generous, give them a book about how to be more generous, like the best way to help someone else is literally give them resources to help, and if you go to generosity one status we actually have a resource page. Uh, and all of our mission, vision, purpose, how, purpose, how to build your own, like all those things, all those resources are there for free.
01:05:09 We also have. I don't know if I can find it, but so we wrote a business fable. It's not just like a how-to book, you actually get to like read about a person who's somewhat interesting, I think. So she's kind of like a young version of me in a way, but at the end of each chapter, because they're real people are QR codes, so you can actually hover over the QR code. Every single story and chapter takes you to a real person, to their LinkedIn page On the way.
01:05:33 - Chase (Host) Wow, yeah, so you can connect with everyone. What a great idea. I love that idea. Like you just saw, Beth is the one I say you just hover over it it'll your own adventure.
01:05:50 That's exactly what it's like. I love it. Does that also date us as choose your own adventure? Is that in the Oregon trail category? Yeah, all right. Well, team Oregon trail team. Choose your own adventure team. Uh, no, dysentery, we're good now, but um, nicole, this was incredible. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the show here today. It was my pleasure.
01:06:02 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, thank you so much.
01:06:06 - Chase (Host) For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to EverForwardRadio.com