I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Ellen Wong, a naturopathic doctor and happiness expert.
During our conversation, Dr. Wong emphasized the importance of understanding that happiness is not a destination, but rather something you create. We also discussed the importance of self-care and self-compassion in achieving happiness. Dr. Wong stressed that taking care of yourself, both physically and emotionally, is crucial for your overall well-being. She also emphasized the importance of being kind to yourself and treating yourself with the same compassion and understanding that you would offer to a close friend.
Finally, Dr. Wong offered some practical tips for cultivating happiness in your everyday life. These included:
✅ Making time for hobbies and activities that bring you joy.
✅ Surround yourself with positive and supportive people.
✅ Practicing mindfulness and meditation to help you stay present at the moment.
✅ Setting realistic goals and celebrating your accomplishments, no matter how small they may seem.
To learn more about Dr. Wong and her upcoming Happiness Summit, visit her website at Dr. Ellen Wong, ND – Chief Happiness & Well-Being Officer. https://drellenwong.com/
“Productivity is not about doing more things” – Dr. Ellen Wong
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Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey podcast listeners. Welcome to another edition of Nonprofit Lowdown. Today, my guest is a friend Tom Pyun. He is a consultant like myself after a long career in nonprofits. So today we’re going to talk about, so you want to consult because I literally have people all up in my business every day asking how they too can be a consultant. So Tom and I are just going to pull back the cover. Tom, welcome to the show.
TOM PYUN 00:36
RHEA WONG 00:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners! Rhea Wong with you, once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. I am very happy appropriately because today my guest is Dr. Ellen Wong, who is a naturopathic doctor and chief happiness officer. Today, we are going to be talking about sustaining happiness. Ellen, welcome to the show!
DR. ELLEN WONG 00:24
Thank you so much for having me, Rhea.
RHEA WONG 00:26
This is awesome. Also, I had to do two Wong’s, we’re going to make it right because I had to do it. All right, before we jump into the content, tell us a little bit about yourself and your path. What is the chief happiness officer? How did you get there?
DR. ELLEN WONG 00:41
First of all, I need to ask you like, how long have you been thinking about that 2 Wong’s me the right thing? It just popped into my head right before you got on. I know. I have to be forgiven for not thinking that one through. I have never had that, obviously, because I haven’t had another Wong interview recently.
DR. ELLEN WONG 00:56
This is pretty. This will stick with me for a long time. Okay, but to answer your question, like with a background in naturopathic medicine, I’ve always focused on working with people who struggle with anxiety and depression. And it was a path that I connected with patients who experienced that because it was a path that I experienced a lot as well for myself.
DR. ELLEN WONG 01:17
And what I started to realize was that a lot of people want to resolve their anxiety and depression, or any level of that, right? Like, anxiety doesn’t have to be like panic attacks and depression doesn’t have to be crippling, and you can’t leave your home. It can be all sorts of levels. But what I started to realize was most people wanted to not feel anxious, and not feel depressed.
DR. ELLEN WONG 01:40
But then they wanted. And it’s interesting because as a doctor, that’s not what you’re trained to do. As a doctor, you’re trained to help people not feel sick. If you can, for lack of a better way of describing it, you’ll get rid of the symptoms, then you’re good. The things like most people don’t want to just be free of disease. When I say feeling healthy, there’s an image that comes to most people’s minds, right? You’re vibrant, you’re energetic, you have this kind of zest for life, and you want to be able to do the things you want to do and the things that are meaningful to you.
DR. ELLEN WONG 02:18
And there’s a bit more than just being on paper. You measure fine or based on your blood work, you measure “fine.” So what I realized resonated, because that’s what I wanted. Like I was given a “clean bill of health.” I was no longer measuring the anxieties. You’re no longer measuring on a depression scale. But that’s not all. I wanted more. And I realize that my medical training only got me so far. And I say that with a lot of respect to doctors because they feel like there’s a very important role that doctors, whether it’s conventional, naturopathic, alternative, whatever, it is a role to play for that.
DR. ELLEN WONG 02:56
But then I wanted to take people beyond that. And I wanted to take myself beyond that. And so my journey then started off with what everyone does when you want an answer to something, and you go to Google. And then you start there. And it just combined my research background, and I did a lot of reading about what it means to be happy, and what contributes to our happiness. And honestly, the research is nowhere near the amount of research we have for drugs, like pharmaceutical drugs, because that’s where real scientific research is really focused on in the last.
RHEA WONG 03:30
Happy people don’t buy pharmaceuticals. What’s the incentive for the research dollars?
DR. ELLEN WONG 03:39
No, it’s totally true. Because research goes where, unfortunately, research often goes where money can be. And you can patent a drug, and you can sell a drug. It’s actually really hard to package happiness in the cellar. And so, unfortunately, it’s not just happiness, a lot like mindset research, psychological research, like none of that stuff really exists to the level of pharmaceutical research.
DR. ELLEN WONG 03:59
And that could be a podcast on its own, right? But regardless, I dove into the research. And then I started realizing a lot of this. It’s not just about research. It’s about the experience, and what it means to live a very happy, joyful life. So I took a lot of courses and trained with some meeting experts that teach at Harvard or Yale or universities where they are focusing on research like this and have departments entirely dedicated to this. I learned from them. I also discovered that there were countries in the world that range on this happiness index, consistently every year in the top 10.
DR. ELLEN WONG 04:34
And I’m like, they’re doing something there. That is different than what we’re doing in North America. So I traveled there. I wanted to actually experience the culture and what it felt like and I wanted to absorb what it meant to live in a country that ranks so high on happiness. And so combining all of those things, it made me realize that yes, happiness is very individual, but honestly, there are specific temptations that if you address, you will be a happier human being.
RHEA WONG 05:08
Okay, I love that. I’m going to put a pin in that because I want to go deep on that topic. But one thing that is occurring to me is coming out of the pandemic. I’m just reading all these stories in the news about high levels of anxiety and depression, particularly among young people. Is that what you’re also seeing? And if so, what do you think have been the factors contributing to it?
DR. ELLEN WONG
One big factor is this idea of uncertainty. Because the pandemic threw us, everyone into a unchartered, unknown territory. And when things are unknown, they feel unsafe. And our brain then tries to come up with all these scenarios to help us feel safer. But when we don’t have a solution to that, it can make us feel a very lack of peace. It’s how I would. There’s this constant state of turmoil because you just don’t know.
DR. ELLEN WONG 06:03
And I would say, yes, definitely a lot of younger people, but a lot like the way you work, the people you worked with, how we did our work and delivered our services. And to that point, no one knew what was going to happen at the end. It’s one thing to be thrown, just throw things out and be like, I don’t know how this is going to land.
DR. ELLEN WONG 06:24
But I know it’s going to land in a year or six months. And it just there will be an end to this. This was a situation where no one knew what the end was going when it was going to happen and when it did and how it was going to look. So that was one big thing, uncertainty. I think there was a forced learning curve for a lot of people around just how to manage day-to-day things.
DR. ELLEN WONG 06:45
And again, when humans are allowed to learn and grow at their pace, it feels fine. When you’re suddenly thrown in, and even as simple as like, suddenly, all students, no matter where they were, grade school to university suddenly had to learn all these online platforms. it’s a massive learning curve on top of the education you were supposed to receive. And that causes a lot of angst and anxiousness, particularly, if you are in a situation where you don’t have unlimited resources to solve this problem.
DR. ELLEN WONG 07:15
At the very beginning of the pandemic, we suddenly realized how many students did not have access to stable Internet, which a lot of people take for granted. How do you do online learning if you don’t have stable Internet, right? And we had students sit in the parking lot of the school because that was the only way they could figure that out. That bright light is something that we haven’t really considered in a really long time.
DR. ELLEN WONG07:34
So I think the other thing that pandemic was like unveiling all of its stuff that is happening in our world that we haven’t really thought about. And three, the lack of social connection. We, as human beings, have always thrived when we connect in person. I think the pandemic has opened the doors to connecting in different ways that we didn’t think about before, but also I think social media, Zoom, and all these things, there’s good and there’s bad, right?
DR. ELLEN WONG 08:03
The good is it is a sense of connection. You can actually form meaningful connections with people through Zoom. You truly can. It depends on how it’s facilitated and how you do it. The flip side of that is, I think, again, spending more time on things like social media, if you haven’t specifically curated your social media to positively feel you’re going to be in situations now where you’re comparing yourself to other people, Other people’s lives look better.
DR. ELLEN WONG 08:28
Even if you know that filters solve this problem. Even if you know that this current background, I’m sitting in front of looks fine, you have no idea what’s happening right outside my Zoom walls. It doesn’t matter. We logically know that but emotionally, we don’t always understand that. And so you end up in situations where there’s more ability to compare, which always doesn’t feel good. And the ability to filter through that noise and understand what is happening outside my Zoom wall right because it’s complete chaos. And you don’t know that to logically keep that in mind and filter your reality that requires a lot of effort.
DR. ELLEN WONG 09:10
That mental effort is available to us when we’re not sitting there fighting things like a pandemic and all the other things that need to happen. Right? There are a lot of things that have probably been underneath the surface that we haven’t really addressed. We didn’t realize those are there, or that we had the capacity to handle them. But then when there was a pandemic, on top of that, all of our attention and mental energy went to that and we no longer had the capacity to filter the messages that we use. It would be able to filter.
RHEA WONG 09:38
Yeah! That’s really helpful. As we’re recording this. I’m actually at my old high school and I’m teaching a class to teenagers, I’ve just noticed a very high level of anxiety and just connectedness, and certainly, amongst my executive director friends, we talk about the younger generation workforce. So I guess I’m wondering, is it that in fact, their experience of stress is different than previous generations, or is it just that they’re better talking about it?
DR. ELLEN WONG 10:08
I think they are under more stress ad they are talking about it. I think it’s both because I talked about this with someone else the other day, like the more tools we now have to speed things up, the more we expect ourselves to get done. So when it was normal to have to pick up the phone and call someone to get an answer to something if they didn’t answer, you’re like, I can’t do that right now.
DR. ELLEN WONG 10:32
I guess I’m gonna have to wait for them to call me back. And that was okay. That was a piece at which we were. Then, emails came in. And we’re like, when I email someone, I assume they can see it, and they can get back to me within like X amount of days. Then, we surpass that. And now we are messaging. We’re like when I message you, and I can see that you’ve seen my message, how come you’re not replying to me?
DR. ELLEN WONG 10:54
And we fill in brakes, sudden, faster, we are able to do things, the more we expect ourselves to do. And so I think and I also teach at an educational institution, I work at the naturopathic college. So I see that in the students. I totally get what you’re saying. Like, we are expecting them to do more because we have the technology to do more. And because as the world progresses, at least in my situation, yeah! We used to teach medicine because that’s what you needed to do. Now we teach medicine, and we teach practice management because you have to build a business.
DR. ELLEN WONG 11:25
And then to build a business, you have to learn how to use social media. And I’ve got to teach you that as well. They didn’t. They weren’t able. We haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve reduced the amount of basic knowledge and basic background knowledge they have to learn. We still teach that. And then we teach them more because that’s what is needed now.
DR. ELLEN WONG 11:43
And what I find interesting is what we haven’t adapted in the education world to reduce the amount of information we teach them that they can actually look up. Because there is that, right? Like we still teach knowledge and factual things that they can look up. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach it. I’m saying we have adapted the way we teach it. And so when I look at the student, we’re still teaching them the structures of the human body because you need to know where the bones and the muscles are.
DR. ELLEN WONG 12:12
Fine! We spend the same amount of teaching as we did when we didn’t have this information at our fingertips. Whereas now I can literally ask Siri, and she will tell me the accurate answer, and we haven’t adapted. So we think we put more pressure and more things to learn on our younger generation. They’re also now more open to talking about it.
RHEA WONG 12:35
Yeah! That’s such an interesting point, too. With my students, what I’m finding is, and again, maybe it’s just the environment, but it feels like they’re under pressure to perform to a certain standard. There’s this idea if you don’t go to college, you failed. And so it’s almost the growth versus fixed mindset thing. What’s the right answer?
RHEA WONG 12:57
And sometimes, I just wondered, are we doing them a disservice, putting them in this world where there are right answers, and you get an A, and you’re performing as opposed to helping them to learn a process or learn how to think or learn how to struggle through something where there is no “answer.” I think educators are wrestling with this.
RHEA WONG 13:19
As I’m making some sweeping generalizations here, but I really find that education doesn’t evolve. How we teach and how we think about education don’t evolve classes. Technology in the world has evolved. So there is this gap between not and it’s like educational. Again, for lack of a better word, there’s an old school thinking around education and how it needs to be delivered, and what used to be taught. And it’s just a different world out there now, and I say this all the time. Happiness and all the things that contribute to happiness is a fundamental human desires. And we don’t talk about it. We don’t teach about it in school.
RHEA WONG 13:58
Why not? Ellen, let’s talk about it. Let’s teach about it right now. You say happiness, you being the kind of cranky New Yorker I’ve become. That just seems so fluffy. What does that even mean, Ellen? So walk me through, if you will, what is happiness.
DR. ELLEN WONG 14:15
I really love this question because it’s something that I wrestled with for a while, too. Because when you think about the idea of happiness, you’re like, it’s fluffy. It’s like the concept that’s just floating out there. What is it truly mean? And I differentiate what happiness is versus pleasure versus joy. And the way I separate it is that I think pleasure is a sensation. It’s often what we mix with happiness. It’s a sensation of I feel good at the moment.
DR. ELLEN WONG 14:50
That can come from many things. It can come from watching something funny. It can come from eating a piece of chocolate. It can come from buying something. It’s not bad. It’s just a level of that feeling of positive emotion. Happiness, then to me is an experience. It’s something that you dive a little bit deeper into. It lasts a little bit longer. It has more ripple effects on the things around you. And then there’s this concept of joy, which to me is, it’s a state of being.
DR. ELLEN WONG 15:16
It’s literally how you wake up, how you think, whatever. All of those things are important. It’s just that society has a spoken thing on the concept of pleasure, more than any interview, like you can have sitting down and eating a great meal with a good friend you connect with can be both pleasure, happiness, and joy. It’s just that sometimes we’re really focused on like, the pleasure part, which again, is important. It’s just a shorter-lived thing.
DR. ELLEN WONG 15:44
And to your point about like, why is this important? Why do I need to be happy? I actually wanted to answer that question because that was something that I thought it’s weird. It’s a fundamental human desire. And yet we ask ourselves, like, but why is it important to be happy? And if we really wanted to get down to the actual part of it, happier people are healthier. They have stronger immune systems. They have stronger cardiovascular or a heart systems. They have healthier relationships.
DR. ELLEN WONG 16:13
They are more creative. They are better problem solvers. In a workforce, happier people have less absenteeism. They’re more productive. They’re able to function better within that organization. Organizations with happier people actually make more money. Salespeople who are happier make more money. So we’re going to actually get down into the ROI. There are some very concrete things that happiness can bring you. And now they’re looking at the fact that people who are happier may actually live longer with a better quality of life.
DR. ELLEN WONG 16:16
And so if you actually sit there, you’re like, why do I need to be happy? This is why. These are all the things that people want, they want to live healthier, they want to live longer, they want to have a better quality of life, they want to solve problems, they want to do more things of the things that they want to do, and they want to contribute more. Happier people actually also give back to society. Why not be happy is actually the question.
RHEA WONG 17:16
As you’re talking is really reflecting on the fact that a lot of the ways that we talk about mental health is with respect to a from a lack, right? You don’t have peace of mind, you don’t have calmness, and you don’t have happiness. So we talk a lot about depression, we talk a lot about stress, we talk a lot about anxiety, but we don’t actually spend any time talking about the opposite of how do you find happiness? So Ellen, how do we find happiness?
DR. ELLEN WONG 17:44
That’s a million-dollar question. So the first thing I want to say is to textualize and look into that. I try very hard to think about happiness as something that I create and not something that I choose. One thing that really triggered me and upset me when I was feeling depressed and anxious was when people told me that it was my choice. When you’re feeling that way, when you’re very stressed when you’re overwhelmed like you don’t feel like you have a choice.
DR. ELLEN WONG 18:08
And to point, what do I choose from? To have a choice is to assume you can choose from something. So from what am I choosing this happiness, right? Like, it’s just a really weird thing. And so I have really, and I still work on it, it’s like I always remind myself, it’s something that I create. So then what do I create it?
DR. ELLEN WONG 18:27
And previously, earlier in our conversation, I said that happiness is extremely individual, and it is. But there’s this fundamental set of things that I think we all address. We will become happier. And so I created this framework called the nine pillars of happiness, and happiness is the acronym for the nine things that I think we need to attend to. And now for all the high achievers and the high-performing people listening to this, you do not have to ace all nine of them. No one perfects the nine pillars of happiness. That really is not the point.
DR. ELLEN WONG 18:57
The point is to go back to these nine pillars and go, I am not feeling as happy as I would like to be, which one of these pillars can I attend to raise my level of happiness, they all interweave, right? And with your audience being such a huge group of people who are in the nonprofit sector, I think there are a couple of pillars that you’ll all score very high on because that is what drives your work. But I’m also willing to bet some of these other pillars are also sliding because we’re focused on specific ones.
DR. ELLEN WONG 19:26
So let me walk you through the nine pillars and then we can dive a little bit deeper into whichever one you would like to dive into every episode The acronym happiness, H stands for health, and the A is authenticity, living an authentic life true to you. The first P is purpose. The second P is productivity.
DR. ELLEN WONG 19:44
And my definition of productivity is not trying to do as much as you can in the least amount of time. It’s about being able to control your use of time toward what matters to you as a human. The I stands for inner peace. The N stands for nature. E is emotional mastery. The first S is social connection. And the second S is sustainability.
RHEA WONG 20:14
I am reflecting on all of this. Okay, this is going to be a high-achiever question. If I listened to you and I was like nine things, Ellen. That’s a lot. If I really nail it, this is going to make a huge difference.
DR. ELLEN WONG 20:31
It’s a really good question. I would say, the first thing to master is that productivity piece because again, productivity is not doing as much as you can in the least amount of time. It’s controlling your use of time. Because when we master how we use our time, we can then dedicate it to other things, like making sure that we attend to our health, making sure that I am making sustainable decisions, making sure that we live a life of purpose, and everything revolves around the fact that we have the ones sort of on renewable resource, which is time. And if we can master our use of that, then I think we have the ability then to attend to any of the other pillars.
RHEA WONG 20:16
When you say something that I think is really interesting and relevant, I feel like especially in the nonprofit sector, we’re so purpose-driven that we actually use purpose as a way to avoid other things. I can’t tell you the number of EDs I know who have burned themselves out or don’t take care of their health or whose relationships have really gone by the wayside because they’re a martyr to the cause. Oh, I’m so purpose-driven. I’m so about the mission. Can you talk about the ways in which some of these concepts can also maybe be weaponized in a not healthy way?
DR. ELLEN WONG 21:50
I’m gonna be very blunt, and offer a perspective. Sometimes, I think, when we really get stuck or hung up on one of those pillars, it is because we are using it to avoid dealing with other things. It is a method of avoidance. And I can say this, as a doctor who saw people who are obsessed with their health. There is a healthy level of managing health, then there is the deep dive into the super strict diets.
DR. ELLEN WONG 22:26
It’s the deep dives into one thing after another to solve one thing, you know what I mean? Like, obviously, we all want to feel healthy. Particularly, this is my personal opinion, it’s always been how I treated my patient because I don’t actually think while I’m on an extremely restrictive diet is healthy. Because you will eventually start to feel things like I’m feeling deprived because I can’t eat this thing.
DR. ELLEN WONG 22:50
And then if I do eat it, I feel guilty. I feel deprived of social connection because I can’t actually go out and eat with my friends. Because the restaurants they eat at don’t necessarily give me the ability to eat the things that I think I need to have to stick to eating. Any obsession with any of those pillars is just a mechanism for you to do something else that you are afraid of doing or thinking about.
RHEA WONG 23:17
I 110% agree with that. And actually, in some ways, I’ve been talking about the fact that I’m a recovering workaholic. And I think my husband might say I’m still very much in workaholism. But the ways in which I use work as a way to validate that I’m working hard therefore like I am I get lots of praise from that externally, but also maybe allows me to avoid other things in my life that I don’t necessarily want to spend as much time on totally.
DR. ELLEN WONG 23:49
The workaholism thing is really interesting because that’s how I landed in the hospital the first time I just burnt myself out to the point where it was the way of avoiding dealing with other things in my life. You’re right. It earns you praise, and it earns you validation. We also are in a society where our self-worth is tied to our work, right? Our identity is tied to our work, right?
DR. ELLEN WONG 24:15
And it just fuels that. If your self-worth is tied to how much your output is, nothing you do is going to be good enough. Because you’re always going to feel like you should be doing well. And therefore if you’re not attending to work, somehow you are less worthy, and you’re less important and you’re less valuable.
RHEA WONG 24:33
That is such a deep concept. Do you find that there are aspects to this as well? Because I just think we’re both Asian and I think at least in the Asian culture, it’s very much predicated on work and work is your value. So I’m curious if in your studies on happiness, there are culturally like aspects to how people define happiness or pursue happiness or don’t pursue happiness.
DR. ELLEN WONG 24:58
This is such a good question. And there are so much many areas we could talk about this. So here’s the thing. I also think there are a lot of cultures where your ability to feed your family came from your ability to work. We go back generations ago. Your ability to feed your family came from how much time you spent in the field. And could you sell the thing at the market, which then you had to spend time at the market? There are a lot of deep, inherited beliefs around this. Your ability to feed your family came down to like how many hours you put into work. But again, technology has changed that for us. And then we fill the void, and we fill that gap mission. It now takes us less time.
DR. ELLEN WONG 25:37
So it’s taking an hour to take 10 minutes. So now you have 50 extra minutes. So what do we do? Well, let’s do something on top of that, right? It’s just how we fill that gap. I think it’s also very interesting then to contemplate the idea of this inability to sit still and just be because we just want to fit in. Like we do something really quickly and then we can’t sit still because we’re so used to being that hamster on the hamster wheel. So we find another wheel to go run on because it feels weird to just sit down and do nothing. I think there’s like a whole aspect to that.
DR. ELLEN WONG 26:07
It’s interesting you actually brought up this conversation. This point is actually like the way when we first started, but it’s interesting that there are some cultures that don’t talk about happiness as something that is important. To the extreme that if you’re unhappy, you can’t talk about it. So again, it’s a really interesting fact, a lot of the countries that rank really high on a happiness level, a lot of those Nordic countries, have one of the highest use of antidepressants in the world. Now, this is interesting because I’m going to take you to the flip side, which is there are countries like Korea and Japan have the lowest use of antidepressants.
DR. ELLEN WONG 26:48
They also have some of the world’s highest suicide rates. So now when you think about that, the use of an antidepressant is predicated on two things. One, they have access to it. They have access to the medicine but they can’t use it. So like automatically countries that have less access to antidepressants rank lower. The antidepressants are useless because they don’t have it. So we’ve moved to think about that. Two, it’s predicated on digital culture. Talk about. It is an Asian culture, we typically don’t talk about mental health. Sweeping generalizations, I think it’s changing. But it’s still a very big taboo topic.
DR. ELLEN WONG 27:23
So if you don’t talk about it, I guess you’re not talking to your doctor about it, which also means you’re not using the antidepressant because you have no access to it. You ask for it, right? Thirdly, in the Nordic country, they study this. It’s very interesting. To them, they have access to medication. They also have fantastic health care. So what happens is, they don’t feel happy. They seek health care. That health care comes in the form of antidepressants, yes, and other things, but we’re measuring antidepressant use. We’ll talk about that. So they’re open to talking about it. They have access to health care.
DR. ELLEN WONG 27:56
They get medication supported by their government. They actually are happier because they have access to medication. They can talk about it, and they feel supported by their governments. So it’s interesting that this is like in the mix of people, I’ve heard people say to me, I don’t believe that those countries are actually happy because they are antidepressants. And I’m like because we’re looking at the idea of antidepressants incorrectly, there are too many factors in there for you to make that direct one-to-one. And also, I actually don’t think depression is the opposite of happiness.
DR. ELLEN WONG 28:32
I really don’t. I actually think depression is a slew of negative emotions. The opposite of this is having a lot of happy emotions. It doesn’t necessarily equate with happiness because to me, again, if happiness was the complete opposite of antidepressants, then we’ll go back to that argument, which is some people who are on antidepressants aren’t happy. And I actually don’t think that’s true. If people can be on an antidepressant and live a good life, and happy life. And there are people who aren’t on antidepressants. And even if you were to give them that, it wouldn’t solve it.
RHEA WONG 29:02
It’s such an interesting point. One thing that comes up for me and again, let me know if this is beyond the scope of what you study, but I’m doing a lot of reading right now independently about epigenetics and inherited trauma. And one argument I can make is okay, like, Ellen, certainly, the happiness is the thing I created my life but also what about all of this stuff that is coded in my DNA that is inherited trauma from generations or traumatic events or the trauma like slavery or whatever it is. How does that fit in the happiness framework?
DR. ELLEN WONG 29:41
You ask fantastic questions. So up until this point, we do know the research will tell you that there’s X percent of your happiness is determined by you’re okay. That X percent depending on what you read will hover, let’s say around, I’m going to say 40% on average However, this research was done at an era when we were just understanding how to study this. And not even close to the era of what you’re talking about, which is understanding epigenetics. So what we do know about our genes is that the expression of these genes, we all inherit genes, and that’s fine. That’s the fact.
DR. ELLEN WONG 30:20
The expression of these genes is turned on and off, depending on life situations and events. So that 40%, of that science is hovering around because we don’t have any other evidence around it. I would say, maybe 40% is like the pin point in the middle/. I would say the circle around it is actually probably really large because of the life situation. So if you Google it, it will tell you that like your happiness is dependent partially on genes. And that’s 40% of your happiness. I think this was a number that science sort of concluded at the level with which we could study it.
DR. ELLEN WONG 31:00
We are nowhere close to understanding epigenetics and how that affects us. And again, to the point is, as I say, there are lots of people who may have inherited epigenetic trauma, have resources to work through some of that, and therefore increase their capacity and their potential to be happier. And some that don’t have that. So I think it’s a really interesting question. I don’t think there’s a hard limit. There’s like hard science research backing my answer to this, but based on what I understand of epigenetics, I don’t think we’re anywhere near understanding or studying.
RHEA WONG 31:40
Yeah! It’s such a fascinating field. And I think just understanding that even the concept of inherited trauma or trauma at all, it’s evolving so quickly. I’m just now finishing reading what happened to you and the extent to which all human beings have experienced some level of trauma. So much more than we ever thought. So I’m listening to you, and I’m an ED or a leader of an organization. And I’m like, cool. Ellen, yes, I hear you, having my workforce be happier will benefit me, will benefit the organization, and will benefit the people that we serve. Tactically, what does that look like? How, as a leader, can I help my people to be happier?
DR. ELLEN WONG 32:25
It’s another really big deep dive, but when I take my pillars of happiness and then apply them into sort of a workplace organization, I think, the first thing I got control over is the use of time. We have to start there. Once people feel in control of how they can spend their time and what they spend it on. I’m not delusional. But I understand that there are parameters within what things were like, I understand happiness. I study it. I’m not always happy, obviously. So there’s a parameter.
DR. ELLEN WONG 32:54
So with that in mind, controlling your use of time, allows people to be their authentic selves, which to me, it means allowing them to use their strengths in situations that allow them to showcase what they can contribute. I think a lot of times, we try to keep an organization organized. And sometimes that feels like, therefore you’re in this role. And that was the role you are hired to do. And so even though we’ve discovered that you have this interesting skill that could contribute elsewhere, we’re like, but this is your role.
DR. ELLEN WONG 33:27
So you still stick to your role and do this thing. And I think people need the ability to be able to use their strengths. Organizations also need to make sustainable decisions. And I have seen this in multiple situations where the organization has a lot of things that they want to do. So they keep pushing through and doing it without really considering the people who are helping push this through to make it work.
DR. ELLEN WONG 33:51
It is this sustainable work for them. And that’s also partially why people burn out, right? It’s the idea that just keeps pushing. Sometimes slowing down a little bit is more beneficial in the long run for everybody who was working there, including the organization as a whole, right? These are some things that I want to talk about with organizations and things like health. I have spoken to people who are like I have we give people health benefits. And we have a wellness program. People don’t get involved in it.
DR. ELLEN WONG 34:18
And I’m like, yes, because you haven’t facilitated a culture where this is important. Like, we host yoga things during lunch break. So now we have to choose between lunch and yoga. There’s just the culture that has to be there. And I think the most important way to cultural shift is for the people leading the organization to embrace these things themselves. I did it multiple times, right? We have workplace wellness programs. The person who leaves the organization during those workplace wellness things because you lead by example.
RHEA WONG 34:52
Yeah! That’s so important and I’m guilty as charged. I definitely recall being an ED. You should definitely take your weekend. Don’t answer your emails at 11 o’clock, and I will, but don’t feel pressured to do that. And it’s a “do as I say,” not as I do sort of situation and didn’t really work. And I see that now.
DR. ELLEN WONG 35:12
Yeah! And there’s again, there’s no blame. I think we are in this environment in society right now. And you’re supposed to keep going, and you’re supposed to keep hustling. In order for your organization to thrive, you have to meet all these goals. And I have to report to my stakeholders. I hear all of this. And I’m not saying that there’s a simple thing that’s going to switch like that. But I’m just saying, we need to get a lot more mindful of what we are doing and how you’re doing it. And I feel like sustainability and making sustainable decisions is really going to mean something in the long run.
RHEA WONG 35:46
Let’s get to that question of sustainability. What does that really mean? Or, what does that really look like? I guess what I’m wondering is, according to who, right? Because I think we all have different levels of what I can handle or the output. And then there are ways also, what the organization needs to do, like the deliverables. How do we manage the tension between what I think is sustainable as an individual and like, what the business needs are?
DR. ELLEN WONG 36:14
It’s very hard to separate. If you’re the person leading the organization that business ED needs, and in your needs as they tried so hard to describe it. It’s like they mold into each other. And then they affect each other and all those things. I would maybe summarize it like this. If you’re the person leading the organization and driving all of the KPIs and the ROIs, and all the things that we measure, and all the projects and all the deadlines and all the deliverables, and you feel tired looking at it, and thinking about it, the people who are helping you deliver it are probably also tired.
DR. ELLEN WONG 36:48
Because there’s a pace at which things become not sustainable when it’s constant. So I will say this. There are going to be times in a business, whether you are new to this, or whether your organization has been running for many years, there are always ebbs and flows. There are seasons of launches, and there are seasons of downtime. No one is like the stable floating along the river all the time in their business.
DR. ELLEN WONG 37:12
That’s not what I’m advocating for. I don’t think that’s realistic. I think there’s gonna be times when there is a massive push because we have to get something out the door. And that’s fine. We are insanely uncomfortable with that downtime afterward. Because then we’re like, oh, look! There’s a void again. Let’s fill it with the next project. And the next thing we’re gonna do is to allow for recovery.
DR. ELLEN WONG 37:35
Your body is not meant to be like that high gear all the time. And if your organization is actually just made up of a whole bunch of bodies working towards the same thing, then your organization can’t also be in high gear all the time. We don’t allow for rest and recovery as an organization as a whole. And I think we need to do that because the organization is simply just a bunch of bodies working together.
RHEA WONG 38:03
Oh! That is so good. And that resonates a lot because I just think about it from an agricultural perspective, when we are all farmers or whatever, there were times of harvest and times of hibernation, right? But in this modern-day era, it’s all harvest all the time. Ellen, this has been so fun. We can talk to you forever. But there are a couple of things coming up that you want folks to know about. Do you want to talk about your summit coming up?
DR. ELLEN WONG 38:29
Oh, yes! For the first time ever, I am launching Happiness Summit. I’m half laughing because Rhea knows that I didn’t realize I was running a summit until I was told I was running a summit. So essentially, this is going to be a series of interviews and presentations from entrepreneurs and thought leaders in their respective fields on those different pillars of happiness. And I’m hoping that this experience is very critical because I understand the idea that happiness doesn’t always feel practical.
DR. ELLEN WONG 38:59
And so with each presentation, I wanted to make sure that there were key takeaways, and actionable items, and I will reinforce this message over and over again. You do not have to go to the summit and think you have to figure out all of those actionable items and do them all at the same time. The whole idea is to give you information so that when you think about, I’m not as happy as I feel which area can I work on, there is a resource for you to tap into, to then reflect on that particular area that builds happiness.
DR. ELLEN WONG 39:32
And so I’m launching this on March 20, which coincides with the International Day of Happiness as declared by the UN. And so it’ll run that whole week. Again, it’s actually free to sign up. Tap into whichever sessions you feel will benefit you. And I’m really just hoping to spread the message. Like I think happiness is probably the most underutilized tool of positive impact in the world. And I really want to change that. I’m going to start that with this Happiness Summit.
RHEA WONG 40:00
That is awesome. And if people happen to be listening to this past the 20th, is there any way to join the summit or get recordings?
DR. ELLEN WONG 40:10
Yes! That will be made available.
RHEA WONG 40:12
For sure! Awesome, I will make sure to put all of the information about the summit in the show notes along with your LinkedIn profile for folks who want to get in touch with you. Ellen, this has been so great. Thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing.
DR. ELLEN WONG 40:24
And thank you so much for providing me with an opportunity to share this message.
RHEA WONG 40:28
Go forth and be happy everyone!
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