Are You Feeling Connected Right Now?

Tam Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True. I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org.

You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Dr. Kristine Klussman. Kristine is a Harvard-trained, positive health, psychology researcher, clinician, and community organizer dedicated to helping individuals more effectively solve societal problems by emphasizing personal accountability and transformation. She’s the founder of the Purpose Project as well as its research on a connection lab, a nonprofit think tank, committed to the scientific research, exploration, education, and practice of authentic connection. With Sounds True, Kristine Klussman has written a beautiful new book called Connection: How to Find the Life You’re Looking for in the Life You Have. Kristine is remarkably soft-spoken, practical, and generous. Take a listen. Here’s my conversation with Kristine Klussman. 

 

Kristine, as the founder of the Purpose Project, as well as its research arm, Connection Lab, let’s start by having our listeners learn a little bit about what is the Purpose Project. And then we’ll also talk some about the research you conduct at the Connection Lab. But let’s start with the Purpose Project. What is it?

Kristine Klussman: Sure. Well, the Purpose Project is actually all about the research. It really is a think tank more or less, and a place where my colleagues and I, who are interested in looking at these topics of meaning and values and how to live our best life, come together. We’re focused on just trying to put out research that we find really important, in a way [where] we’re not as constrained by academic institutions, where we also get to take that research, and the results of it, and build it into programs or writings or educational offerings for the community.

TS: By way of example, help me understand a piece of research you conducted, and what the takeaways were from it.

KK: Yes, sure. For instance, one of the studies that actually I was just looking at this morning, was about the relationship between mindfulness, well-being, flourishing, and connection. One of the takeaways from that study is that the three, they all affect each other. That mindfulness in fact, increases our sense of being connected to ourselves, which therein increases our sense of well-being and even our sense of flourishing. We’re looking at what comes first—the chicken or the egg? Is it enough just to be mindful? Or where do we start with all of these well-being practices? How does being connected to ourselves fit in the mix? That’s what we’re honing in on: how does mindfulness interact with self-connection? How does self-connection interact with all of these different markers of well-being?

TS: Now Kristine, you’ve developed something that you write about in your new book, Connection, called connection theory—a new psychological approach to well-being. What is connection theory?

KK: Thanks for asking. It’s a repackaging of everything that we know that works best. I’m big into trying to look through a holistic lens—or I’ve always craved meta theories when I was in my graduate school program. Even throughout this whole positive psychology revolution—which I’ve just been consuming and obsessed with and a part of—I love all the individual tools that we know about gratitude practice and forgiveness practice and self-compassion and mindfulness. But what it has left me with is a sense of just this bulging tool bag. Personally, I’m not good at remembering all of those things, especially in any given day or week, what to implement or to keep practicing.

This is my attempt at coming up with one thing, one frame, one lens to look through, so that I can ask myself, and help my clients look at, “When I’m not right with myself or with the world, I can ask myself this question: ‘Am I feeling connected to myself?’ Yes, or no? And if not, what’s blocking that connection? Is it that I need to move my body? Is it that I need to deliver an undelivered communication? Is it that I need to just tune into the present moment? Do I need to practice some forgiveness?” It’s a way to access […] and organize all of those tools, but under one umbrella that can be your doorway, so to speak.

TS: You describe asking this question of ourselves—”Am I feeling connected to myself right now?”—as the cornerstone technique that you offer in connection theory. Cornerstone technique—”Am I feeling connected to myself right now?” So imagine someone hears that question. And they think, “I don’t know, am I feeling connected right now? I don’t know.” What does that even mean? So, let’s work with it a little bit. I’m going to throw at you, Kristine, what I think some of the possible responses are when people work with this. Because it’s a really profound question. I’m starting to feel into all of its various applications. But I am going to be a little bit devilish here. “Am I feeling connected to myself right now? I have no idea.” What would you say to that person?

KK: I love that answer. That’s exactly where I started with it. That’s how I felt when I first started asking that question. I think that what I like to say in the beginning to people is that feeling your way into whether or not you’re connected is to just simply tune into “Am I feeling a sense of ease? Or unease?” That can be anywhere in your body and your mind. Just are you feeling—if you want to be literal about the word—are you feeling really in tune with what it is that you’re doing? Who it is that you’re with? If I asked my—it depends where you’re asking yourself that question. But if I asked that question, and I’m having lunch with someone, I think “Am I really here right now? Or am I thinking about the million things that I need to do? Am I listening to this person? Am I really tuning into the closeness between us? And am I just 100 percent in my body with this experience?”

So it’s about being present, and awake and aware, but also intentional, and just aligned with what you’re doing? Is what you’re doing right now what you want to be doing? Are you giving yourself to that? That’s one way into the sense of “Am I feeling connected?” I use it also when I’m when I’m with my kids, even when I’m doing certain activities like—it can be even washing dishes. It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary. But it’s really just trying to play with, and amplify I think what we’re used to thinking of as mindfulness, and just being present with what’s happening, but also being really in tune with “How is this consistent with my values? How is this aligned with what I deeply care about?”

It takes it a step farther than mindfulness. It’s asking you, first of all, are you even awake? That’s the very first question. “And am I connected?” Are you conscious of what you’re doing? And can you tune into a sense of intentionality to what you’re putting your energy towards? And then we unfold it and unpack it from there.

TS: Let’s keep going with some of these examples. I think it’s really useful. So, you’re with your kids, and you ask yourself, “Am I feeling connected to myself right now?” And let’s say your kids are doing something that you have absolutely no interest in. Yet you’re with them and you don’t feel particularly connected. How then do you work with connection theory to become more connected and increase your sense of well-being? Maybe you could give us an actual example from your life.

KK: Sure. yes, just last night that happened to me with the kids. We were all in our respective rooms doing our own thing, not hanging out at all. I woke up from what I was doing in my emails for just a second, and noticed that we weren’t together, but being together is not a prerequisite of connection. I asked myself, “What am I doing right now? Is this what I want to be doing? Do I want to be doing my emails? Do I feel connected to my intention of how I want to be spending my time this evening?” But also, “What’s the feeling in our household? Are we numbing ourselves? And just wiling away the time mindlessly? Or does this feel OK?”

The answer that I came up with was, “Actually this is really nice. There’s a nice comfortable, warm cohabitating feeling with the house. We’ve all interacted a lot recently, even just an hour or so ago. And now everybody’s just happily doing their own thing.” My other son was playing his guitar in the next room, and my older son was doing his homework. I felt just a warm sense of—I don’t want to say invisible connection to them—but contentedness within myself. I felt like, “Yep, this moment feels as it should be, and I’m good with it.” The connection part for me was just being awake and asking myself that question, and having the opportunity to course correct. If for instance, we hadn’t talked all day, or if it didn’t feel right that we were all holing up in our rooms for far too long, then maybe it would be an opportunity for me to say, “Let me see if I can drum up a little more connection here.”

Connection isn’t just about whether or not I’m going to open my door and talk to the boys or we’re going to get together. It’s first and foremost about connecting to myself, and just for checking in and doing an inventory for a split second and saying, “Are my actions right now aligned with my highest values and priorities?” No big deal. I don’t put a ton of thought into it. It just—does this feel right? Right now?

TS: OK, so let’s say there’s a moment in time and you say, “Am I feeling connected to myself right now?” and the answer you get is, “I feel like zoning out right now, I don’t feel like being connected. I feel like turning on some of that television series that—I think I’m in season seven, episode 99. And I don’t want to ask this question, and I don’t want to be connected.” What do you think about that?

KK: I love that, because I really do. I live that example so much, and just did the other night. I would call that being connected. That is a moment where you’re connecting, listening to what your deepest need is, or just a true need, and honoring it very intentionally. Then you’re deliciously savoring it in doing it. And that’s perfectly fine, and a great example of being connected to yourself. When you’re not connected to yourself is when you’re doing that a little mindlessly, a little unintentionally. You’re numbing; maybe you’re escaping and you’re losing time, and you wake up from, after three or four episodes with a little bit of a “What happened? I didn’t mean to do that.” Maybe in the process, you neglected some other, bigger priorities that you would have liked to have attended to, or that you should have—or that were needing you.

TS: Now you mentioned that connection theory, in some ways takes us even further than mindfulness. What I’m trying to understand is, when somebody is assessing their level of connection in the moment, what underlying skills or capacities do they have to have? Like for example, I’ve done a lot of meditation work, and I’ve done a lot of body scan type practices. So, for me, when I asked myself, “Am I connected?” I’m tuning in at a somatic level. That’s what I’m doing and I’m seeing like, “Am I here? Is there tension in my body?” But do you think—is that a necessary skill to have? To assess our level of connection? Or can I just go and start thinking about it? And just reflect? Will that do the job as well?

KK: It’s such a good question. I’m really glad you asked that. It’s such a good point. Because I do think it’s amazing, if you have those skills, and you know how to tune in somatically. I think many people don’t, and a lot of us are cut off from the neck down. And you don’t need those skills—it’s a bonus to walk through that doorway of connection. I find that it can be a little bit simpler for people, a little more accessible for people that don’t do meditation or haven’t done somatic work, to simply just be asking themselves this question, “Do I feel close to myself right now? Do I feel in tune with my needs? What am I needing?” And back to this question of ease versus unease. “Am I needing to rest? Am I needing to take care of something that I’ve been avoiding? Where is the unease coming from?” It’s just really asking yourself to wake up for a minute and survey what’s happening, what you’re doing right in the moment, and decide if that feels congruent with your values.

It’s great when you can unpack the values part and really know your values and do all the exercises to be more acquainted with that side of yourself. But you really don’t have to. When I first started doing this work […] I was doing it mostly with my parenting, because I found that I was so often just tuned just elsewhere. When I was with my kids, I was going through the motions. I was dutifully doing everything, but just not really given over to the moment, for lack of a better way to say it. Or really tuning into the joy. When I started, I just would ask myself that question over and over, “Am I connected right now? Why not? What am I doing right now? I’m looking at my phone while my kids are playing Legos. What if I put my phone down and just join in with them a little bit? Do I feel more connected then? Yes.” Just super simple.

You don’t even really have to actually know what connection means; you can just have an idea. People can have different ideas of it themselves. But the idea is that it feels better than it does to feel disconnected.

TS: One of the parts of the book that I’ve really enjoyed reading about, and I thought was really illuminating, had to do with how you can transform and become more connected to things that are perceived as everyday chores. You give a great example of cooking dinner with your kids, that I’d love for you to share, that has to do with pizza night in case you’ve forgotten. I just thought it was a great example. Because I think sometimes whether it’s doing the laundry, or you mentioned washing the dishes, or there’s various times—well how can I be connected? I’m doing this like X, Y, Z thing that I have to do in my life that’s not that interesting.

KK: Right?

TS: But you offered some interesting suggestions for how we can change those activities, mundane activities, into connected, meaningful activity. I wonder if you can talk some about that.

KK: Yes, thanks. No, I love that example about the pizza night. That came about just from me taking a 24-hour inventory of, “Do I feel connected, yes or no? And what are the circumstances?” One of the circumstances I found that was when I’m cooking. I just felt alone while I was doing it, which is fine. But I also felt just like, “I just want to get this over with. How fast can I just slap this together? This is just—” When I checked in about that question, I noticed a sense of unease: I’m not enjoying the activity that much; I’m not hating it but […] I don’t particularly feel that connected to what I’m making; I don’t really care. I just want to get it—whatever is the path of least resistance, of slap something down.

I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot of time that I spend every night doing that and being in that state. I don’t get a lot of time with these guys after school.” So, without wanting to make it a Herculean effort, I just thought, “Can we do any better here? Can this become a more meaningful activity?” Meaning, when I start teaching people how to seek out and inject more connection into the equation, meaning is one of the low hanging fruit. If you’re doing something meaningless, turn on your creative brain for, how can I make this act to this mundane activity a little more meaningful?

In my case, I decided, “What if I brought the kids in here? And got them a bit involved? And what if we made something a little more fun that is more engaging?” Pizza was the thing, and I thought, “Then they can put their own toppings on it.” I was just really amazed, I had some resistance to it at first where I thought, “I’m not trying to be supermom here. The last thing I want to do is set the bar really high for myself.” But I’m at the store anyway, it was just as easy to grab some premade pizza dough, some stuff, it just took a little bit of thought and connecting to my intention of “How would I like this night to go? What would I like it to feel like?”

It’s just amazing to me how the incremental amount of effort is usually so little compared to the payoff of how much better it feels when you bring that intention to “I want to connect to this experience of making food, to the experience of having the kids in the mix.” They ended up of course loving it. We’re sitting there watching it, waiting for it to rise. Now it’s become this famous little pizza night in our house and just something that’s brought unexpected joy to a situation that was just whatever, kind of joyless. So, to me, I wouldn’t have gotten there if I hadn’t asked myself that question, and if the connection weren’t my “why.” If you asked me, as a fully busy mom who’s working and has a full plate, “Hey, can you do a little extra effort on your dinner presentation?” I would have a thought, “Screw you. No way. I’m only doing so much.” But if you ask me, “Hey, do you want to feel more connected in your body and have a more fulfilling experience from this 5:00 to 6:30 period?” That sounded a lot better.

TS: OK, so let’s say someone’s listening, and they’re scanning their life right now, their seven-day week life and they’re thinking, “These are the moments when I zone out. It’s not particularly meaningful, I’m just trudging through it.” What’s the next question they can ask themselves to transform those parts of their lives into something that will feel more nourishing? More useful?

KK: Well, it really depends on what they’re doing.

TS: True.

KK: I feel that way when I’m doing emails, and there’s no way around it for me. I have a couple different things that I do or try. It’s not always just asking the question, it’s also about taking inspired action. Frankly, the best action that I’ve found for some of the things where I’m trudging is to pair it with something else. In the case of me doing emails, I do them while I’m walking on my treadmill—which I don’t particularly like either, but I at least feel like […] I’m getting two things done.

TS: Two things you don’t like equal one thing that’s not so bad.

KK: Great. But the most important thing I would ask people—and when I’m working with my clients or in workshops, this is the first place we go—is to do a values inventory. I don’t know one person who doesn’t benefit from me refreshing themselves on their values and going, “Oh yes, these are the things that I care most about in life. And from that, what are my priorities? Which ones matter the most?” That’s where I would go right away with people and say, “How do we link this?” The drudgery to something that you actually—it’s a reframing exercise. Something that you care about deeply. That sitting here doing these emails is in service of this work that enables you to provide for your family.” It’s trying to find the meaning again and anchoring it in the values.

That can go a long way towards—there was a study on that. I think this was the Stanford study about the kids who were on their spring break. Some kids were asked to just report what they did. The other kids were asked to say about how what they did was really consistent with their values. The kids that journaled about the values—how driving their little brother around was actually in service of helping their family (they tied everything to something more meaningful)—reported having such a better experience and having these more lasting effects of well-being months later. That works to really reframe any drudgery that you’re experiencing […]; you’re transforming it from being a disconnected, unintentional activity to something intentional that you’re very connected to. You still may not feel like doing it, that’s fine. Not being connected is not always about having a happy, positive, enjoyable experience.

That’s one of the things I love about working with connection; we’re not just focusing on positivity. You can be connected while having a very difficult conversation with somebody, or having to show up and have some courage, or sit bedside with somebody who’s not doing well in the hospital. It’s about just connecting with the deeper intention of it all.

TS: Now in the very beginning, I mentioned that you’re the founder of the Purpose Project, and we’ve been talking a lot about what’s meaningful to us and finding meaning in activities. I think a lot of times people get confused about meaning and purpose—“I’m on purpose, so my life’s meaningful, yes.” So, first, let’s just start, if you can share how you understand the difference between focusing on purpose and focusing on meaning.

KK: Yes, I spend so much time thinking about these distinctions. They are so important, and they get blended together even with values. I think that meaning—I’ll start there—are incredibly important clues to what your values are. Your values are incredibly close to what your purpose or your purposes can be or are. Meaning also are important clues to your purpose. I think meaning in and of itself is not just the endpoint. That’s the point of self-discovery of “What matters to me? What gives my heart an explosion? What lights me up? What do I care about? What feels meaningless?” It’s equally important to notice what feels meaningless. That’s, to me, just incredibly rich information about—what you care about and what matters to you are all indicators that you’re looking for on that pathway to discovering “What am I here to do? What are my greatest gifts to give?”

That’s all about uncovering the many purposes that we have in this lifetime. I think purpose—let me give you an example, and I’ll tie it to parenting for a second. Purpose can look more, and often does look more, like a mission statement. When I’m doing work with people on uncovering purpose, I ask them to create a mission statement around parenting, or around their romantic partnership, like “What kind of partner do I really want to be? What is my ideal? My vision for myself? What am I here to do and develop a purpose statement?” Purpose, I’m thinking about it and describing it a little differently than how most people think about it which is, “What’s my calling, or my one thing that I’m supposed to do here in life?”

I think that it’s important to break it down and realize that we’re here to do many things, and that we want to bring a sense of purpose to whatever we’re doing, when it’s that big and that important to us. Then those moments of meaning, are the things that really inform and fuel that purpose and make sure that you’re on the right track. When we look at meaning, I find it’s not useful really to think about meaning in an all or nothing way, like binary: “Is my life meaningful? Yes, no.” That doesn’t really give us a lot of information. So, what we study, like in one of our research studies, we do micro moments of meaning, where we really look at “Is what I’m doing right now meaningful? Is this conversation you and I are having meaningful?” and be informed at a more granular level of how you’re spending your time. 

What choices you’re making—and whether I’m just slapping something together for dinner. Or am I doing something, creating my first lasagna, that feels just more meaningful. Those are a part of maybe a larger mission statement, my purpose of what kind of parents do I want to be? What kind of family do I want to have? It’s just about having more intentional, purposeful, on-purpose living, where there’s something that you’re aiming for. That’s what purpose gives us, it’s really more goal directed. You’ve got your sights set on a vision. I hope I answered that.

TS: Well, there’s a little bit more I want to try to tease apart. I mean, one thing you write about, and you pointed to it here, is misconceptions people have about purpose. One of them is that it’s singular. It’s possible we could have many different purpose—I’m just joking, many different purposes. The other misconception you write about is that our purpose is forever: you’re loosening it up and talking more about the many different kinds of purposes we can manifest, and how it grows and changes in our life. I think that’s important.

KK: I do too. I think that, when I talked to a lot of my girlfriends about the concept of purpose, I find that so many people are just in a chokehold about it, really constricted, even just feeling a tremendous angst like “I haven’t found my purpose yet,” or, “Am I really living my purpose?” Again, like meaning, instead of looking at your life and […] asking it in a binary question, all or nothing, what I find loosens it up is to really honor and step back and recognize that purposes have—we are just constantly evolving creatures. We’re constantly in a state of having things that are either just beginning to bud like a flower, or we have things that are in full bloom, that are happening in our life.

We also have things that are beginning to wither away, and that have served their purpose and are on the back side. Rather than getting focused on just the answer to that question—“What is my purpose?”—I find it a lot more useful to scrub through your life and really tune into what’s trying to emerge. What are the things that might want to be budding? What’s capturing my imagination lately? Then also pausing to take stock of—”What’s blooming? Is it my career? Is it my family? Is it my friend? What’s really going well for me and is still in full stride?”—and honoring that. Even though you might have more to give in this world, and more purpose that needs to be discovered, it’s still important to honor what is working.

The most important exercise I think, where we tend to hang on too long, is the things that are past and the bloom has come off the rose, and they’re withering. We cling a little bit and we’re maybe not ready to let go. But making room for purpose is really also about creating space and letting go of the things that have served their purpose and are no longer serving. I find that that’s a much more active mining process, that if you’re asking that question of yourself, then it takes a bit more excavation than just asking the question and hoping that an answer will materialize.

TS: I love the flowering metaphors as well, and the different phases of the flower. That’s beautiful. Now I want to ask you a kind of edgy question—comes from my own experience—which is, I’ve found that in my life I can often feel very on purpose, even in the way you just described of the different phases. I always seem to have a project that I’m either done with and letting go of and a new one coming. It’s fine, great, so many projects, OK wonderful, Tami. But at the same time of being very on purpose, I can have this weird, sneaking feeling of everything being meaningless. It’s a difficult feeling. It’s a bleak “What’s the point, really?” When you look, what’s the point? Help me understand how even it’s possible, to feel very on purpose, and have this strange empty, meaningless feeling?

KK: That’s an awesome question. I really like that one. I can relate to that. Even personally, I’ve had that experience as well. I think it can be a little bit more complicated. But where I go with myself, around that duality of that experience is I am often humbled and reminded about how meaning-making, very much like gratitude, is a practice that if—you use it or you lose it. That doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re going to turn around and just cultivate and practice a lot of meaning and gratitude for what you’re doing. You’re going to be right back on purpose, feeling 1000 percent fulfilled by what you’re doing. I think that it means that in some way, what’s working against us at all times is hedonic adaptation, where we get used to what we’re doing, we get used to what’s going well, and we get used to the good. It just doesn’t impact us or mean as much to us.

In order to still get the goods from what we’re doing, we do need to practice savoring and tuning into how in which this is meaningful to us, and how this aligns with your values. Even if you know what you’re doing is on purpose and on track, and you’ve already vetted it, it’s still a really healthy and important exercise to remind yourself and to go back and look at your values and go, “Oh, yes, that’s right. That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I love helping people and I love talking about these types of things.” And refresh. So, I think refresh is one part of it.

Healthy skepticism is another where, even though you’re living on purpose, if there’s an ache or a nag, that’s the part of asking yourself to tune in and connect to that, what is that? I doubt that that little ache really has to do with everything feels meaningless, but maybe that’s more of a yearning, that something else—that there’s more to give. We all want and need to be continually evolving and growing. So, is there more that’s emerging, like that metaphor with the bud, something that wants to come out. I think that I use those feelings of meaninglessness. Right away, it rings my bell to say, “OK, I need to start cultivating my practice again.”

What that looks like for me, is just right before I go to bed, I jot down the things that stood out to me as particularly meaningful, like a gratitude practice. It’s highly, highly effective, even in just two or three days, to reset and refresh and imbue me, even neurologically helping me re-experience and re-imbue the experience with more meaning, then also go in an inquiry mode. Those will be my two answers, is to reconnect to the practice of savoring and reminding yourself of how what you’re doing is aligned with your values. But then also inquiring skeptically, using healthy skepticism to say, “What am I not seeing?”

TS: Kristine, I think a lot of people are familiar with the idea, at the end of the day, of doing a gratitude practice. But I don’t think a lot of people are familiar with this suggestion your offering, of doing a practice of reflecting on what’s meaningful. Can you say a little bit more about how to do that at the end of the day? Maybe give an example from your own experience?

KK: Yes, sure. It is something that I play with a lot with myself. I keep a journal by my bed. I try to write down three to five things at the end of the day that really jumped out to me. There were meaningful moments, it might be something funny one of my kids said. Or just a really poignant moment in a therapy session with a client. Or something that I was grateful for, gratitude and meaning are really intertwined. I think recently, a more powerful example is one of my clients, who had a lot of hardship, had lost everything. She’s a frontline worker. And one of her explicit complaints to me was—she also lost custody of her kids. And she said, “I have nothing; my life is just meaningless.” And in a really heavy, heavy way, objectively, that looked to be very true on paper. I wasn’t trying to refute her reality in any way. But I said, “Let’s just do an experiment with that, a thought experiment for the week, let’s just test whether that’s—how true is that? And let’s challenge you to see, and let’s go meaning hunting.” She was up for it.

In a way that didn’t really—we weren’t invalidating her experience. We very much said it’s absolutely true; we’ve had all of these horrific losses and yet there’s no one asking the question, “Is there still meaning in life? And where can it be found?” She agreed to jot down and push herself to find as many moments of meaning, as little. I gave her a lot of examples in which really helped prime the pump of it. But she came back just bursting with examples at our next session of just moments. She works with homeless folks: just moments where she was helping people, or somebody held the door for her or just noticing some spring flowers outside her door. She was tuning into all kinds of micro moments of meaning and connection with others. And by the second week, she did come back and say, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but my life is filled. There’s meaning everywhere. I’m just not in the habit of seeing it.”

That’s really true for all of us, we just become habituated and—not numb, but we are just not in the habit of seeing it. But it is so easily cultivatable, that when you train yourself to look for things that like I said, make your heart burst, or make you smile. It’s not hard at all. You can go take a walk around your block and come back. If I challenged you to go find five things you could do it.

TS: You share a very inspiring story in the book about how you borrowed your son’s Polaroid camera and did a photo capture of meaningful objects in your house. I really loved that. Tell me about some of the things you took photos of, and what the meaning was for you in those photographs.

KK: Oh, it evolved. At first, I think I—it’s funny, we ended up using that intervention in our studies, and then in subsequent studies we published it.

TS: It’s interesting that you call it an intervention. That’s interesting in and of itself. Maybe you can explain that.

KK: We do now because we use it in […] a couple of our published studies; we called it photographic meaning. But it came from—I can’t remember what started it and I was challenging myself. I think I was part of a workshop or something where we were supposed to find meaning and I just didn’t feel like doing writing or journaling it; sometimes that works great for me and I love it. But photographing is just a much faster way. So, I decided, “I’m going to take pictures of things that are meaningful.” I just quickly exhausted my usual suspects of taking photos of every single animal in person that I love. Then I had to get more creative. I found it really interesting to take photos of things where you’re not trying to create a beautiful image; they don’t have to be photo worthy.

Then I started to just maybe take photos of an empty room in my house that I just loved the way that I decorated it, and it made me so happy. Or something that I cooked, or I took pictures of some things I cut out of my vegetable garden. Just started collecting moments throughout my day of—I took a picture of my notepad; at the time, I was working on this book; I’d jot my ideas down in this notepad. That notepad was so meaningful to me. I took a picture of […] my favorite mug of coffee, that I use every morning when I sit down to write. It just started to just become what seems maybe really mundane or meaningless things to probably anybody else. At the end of it I was amazed at how much I loved this personal collection of little photos. They all just touched me in a certain way. Yes, it’s one of my favorite photo albums—more than the photos that I intentionally take.

TS: When you say that you use it in your studies as an intervention, how do you use it? What are the results?

KK: We use it as I was just saying, we found it really helpful to bypass the thinking brain. We can get a little bogged down on “Is something meaningful? Is it not?” Snapping photos can be a little more immediate and impulsive. When we asked people to have these bursts experiences, whether it was either for 24 hours or for five days. We did different time settings of—run around and just find as many meaningful things as you can, whether it’s a hummingbird, or a this or a that. Doesn’t matter. You be the judge. There are no criteria. Then we ended up [and found] that that increased people’s sense of self connection, and lowered their anxiety, and [gave them] a better sense of well-being.

But we decided to repeat that study during COVID. We wondered if people, during the most strict period of quarantine, who were looking at their life as really limited, and their options, and seeing a lot of scarcity, if doing this exercise could reframe what their experience was and give them a sense of abundance and possibility.

We asked them to do the same thing and figured on their smartphone they could just run around their house or immediately outside their door or on a walk. We did find significant results that people not only had more improved well-being immediately, but then I think we got a month or two follow-up out of that. So, it works. It’s really about priming yourself to—once you start to see meaning, even after 24 hours, it’s like shopping for a car: if you decided that you’re looking for a red car, and then all of a sudden you notice them everywhere on the road; that’s how cultivation of meaning is; you let it out of the gates, and […] because it’s naturally reinforcing and enjoyable and rewarding, it does take on a life of its own very easily.

TS: Beautiful. Kristine, we talked about purpose. You mentioned how there are these misconceptions, and that our purpose can be plural, it changes; you give the example of the different phases of flowers opening in a garden. There’s also, though, a section in the book where you’re talking about purpose where you do describe what it’s like to find a sense of higher purpose or a grand purpose in your life. I wonder if you can talk some about that. Does everybody have this higher purpose? This grand purpose?

KK: Not necessarily, everyone has the opportunity for that. It’s something important to know about, but not from a sense of feeling pressured; it’s something that you have to do. But I was laying that out for my readers as part of the Maslow’s hierarchy. The very top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization. All human beings, once we get our lower needs met, it’s a natural instinctive yearning for ascension to that place—whether that’s “Know thyself” or finding your purpose. I view your grand purpose as the very tip of that triangle. The one ingredient that that requires, is that what you’re doing, whatever gift that you’re giving to this world, whatever your work is—and that can be paid work, non-paid work, parenting, you define it—if it’s in service of something beyond yourself, something greater than yourself, and that transcendence, and it’s not just about you and it’s not just about making money or getting some of the  lower-level needs met, that’s some of the greatest wisdom thinkers in the world talk about that being just the ultimate bliss, that not all of us get to do. Many of us are still, just have to do what we have to do as a means to an end. But it’s a wonderful thing to aspire to, and to think about. How could I show up to that next level? What does that look like for me? And maybe that’s just in the form of volunteer work? It’s that feeling that I think we all want to access.

TS: In writing about this, and this idea of giving of ourselves something to serve other people beyond ourselves, you write about yourself in what I thought was a very vulnerable way. I wanted to ask you about this, it really struck me. You wrote, “One of my gifts is thinking, learning, researching, and writing about authentic connection. Not because I’m good at it, but because I’ve always had a huge hole in my heart.” I thought, “Huh, Kristine Klussman’s always had a huge hole in her heart?” And that’s what’s informing this work underneath connection theory. I want to know more about that. If you still feel like you have that, is that just part of your design this lifetime? Or is all the work that you’ve done with authentic connection change that in some way?

KK: Oh, well thank you for asking that question. I actually forgot about that part in the book. That is a tender part that—where that was the context of why I was offering that as an example: I was pointing out that often, our grand purpose, our highest gifts to give this world in the service of others is the place where we’ve been the most wounded. That is where we are often the most expertised. Only through our experience, can we offer some guiding light to others. Yes, I am one of those people that has had to hustle for connection. I’m not one of those people where it comes naturally to me. You wouldn’t know it, when I talk about that with other people, they’re always surprised. But one of the things that I learned when, through our research studies, especially—we were hunting for people that are identified in their community or self-identified as really connected individuals, connected to themselves, to others; they’re doing what’s meaningful to them. What I noticed from these individuals, they were all extraordinarily embodying this feeling of self-connection and all kinds of connections. Connection to their community, and their beloved people. You’re immediately magnetized to them regardless of what they do or what you do or don’t have in common with them. We’re not all born like those people. Some people have had just a really lovely combination of upbringing and circumstances or ability to really be close to and acting from a place of being at one with themselves. But many of us, with the society that we live in, just pulls us constantly towards disconnection and towards dishonoring ourselves and our deeper truths.

I certainly didn’t get that modeling from my parents. They’re great people, but we weren’t thinking or talking about any of this type of stuff. I think that most of my life has been characterized by […] death by 1000 cuts, following someone else’s path rather than my own, just not tuning in, acting from a place of really doing what I feel like I should be doing and without asking the deeper questions. So yes, it doesn’t come natural to me. I don’t think it comes natural to a lot of people. But there are some, the lucky few that it’s just who they are and how they operate.

TS: And with the work you’ve done, to learn, you say this is a teachable skill. We can learn how to be connected. Would you say that that’s changed for you? That you’re a living laboratory experiment with have your own connection lab? If you will?

KK: Oh, my God. I wish I could say that that was true for most every day. But the real truth is that I think that what it’s done is, it’s definitely taught me how to reconnect, how to pause and rest, how to stop weeks, months and years of disconnection from going on that long. I can much more quickly recognize when I’m off track. I know the things to do or to try to reel it back in, for that skill has changed my life immeasurably. I think I’m a completely different person, post prioritizing that as my number one thing than how I was living my life before. But does that I’m immune to going for long periods of being super disconnected and out of tune with myself? No, not at all. I’m still really human in that regard, and still battle moments, days, weeks of disconnection. The only difference is I just know how to get it back on track faster.

TS: OK, Kristine. I just have a couple more questions for you. I’m imagining that person who’s listening who says, “I think the reason I’m not more connected with myself is that there’s things inside, I just don’t want to feel. I just don’t want to feel them. I’d rather not connect, because if I were to connect, I’d have to feel those things. So no, thank you.” What do you have to say to that person?

KK: I would say you’re not alone. That is a really common coping style, and actually, really societally rewarded. It’s avoidance. And it can be at the most minor or the most extreme level. The only thing I would say to that is—at what price? What I’ve come to learn is that the price that you pay for that, when you can’t— Connection is a very contagious thing and being more connected begets having more different types of connection in your life. So, if you’re blocked in one very important large area, then likely you’re going to be blocked elsewhere. It’s hard to advance, I think, or even evolve as a human. When you’re really disconnected from a large part of yourself, whether that’s from your body, or from your emotions, or from your other people. When you’re using avoidance, it has a way of slowly taking over and just becoming a primary coping skill. I’m not saying that facing your emotions is easy, but it is also a skill, something you can titrate and make friends with.

There’s a process for that too. It’s a really worthy process. Because when you can invite those emotions to have a seat at the table and let them know that everybody belongs there. Not let them run the show necessarily, but it’s often surprising how much less scary and painful and difficult that process really is and how great the rewards are. When people are operating in that way, they’re overestimating the threat, and they’re underestimating the reward of doing it differently.

TS: Beautiful. Then also, let’s imagine that person who says, “You know, as I’m listening, the challenge I’m having is, I don’t feel as connected with X, Y, Z person. I wish I was, but I’m not as connected to this other. But I don’t really want to say that things that I haven’t been saying that would allow me to be more connected, because I don’t really want to say those things. I don’t really want to say those things. I don’t have the courage or it’s too risky, or something like that, therefore I’m not as connected as I would like to be.” What would you say to that listener?

KK: Yes. I would say, so that’s really then settling, right? That’s saying, “I’m going to settle for less than the closest, most unblocked relationship I could have with this person.” And in that scenario, maybe it’s somebody at work. Maybe that’s an appropriate coping, just to get through what you need to get through for a period of time. Or if it’s somebody else closer, maybe the cost is really great. I think that it’s really about looking at that cost benefit ratio of “Where am I trading off being connected?” And being connected doesn’t mean you have to be close to everybody. Or in a close relationship with everybody that you’re relating with. It’s about knowing what your priorities are, and who and what really matters to you, and even knowing what doesn’t serve you and who doesn’t serve you.

Ideally, if you can move those people to an outer periphery of your life, that’s better. But I think that tuning into what the cost is, is a really important starting point of being able to make the decision about being conscious, so that these don’t become unconscious trades that we’re making.

TS: OK, Kristine. I’m going to ask you just one final question. First, I want to thank you for being so forthcoming, vulnerable, straightforward, and helpful, thank you—

KK: Thank you.

TS: —for that. My final question has to do with this whole notion of introducing a new theory in the world. Here you’re introducing connection theory. It’s interesting to me, I mean you’re such a humble person, and soft-spoken, and yet you’re introducing a new theory in the world of psychological research and understanding. So, I’d like to understand a little bit why make it a theory versus just like, these are some thoughts you’ve been having? What does it mean that it’s a theory? What’s your hope for connection theory? That’s the note will end on.

KK: Such a huge question. OK. Let me tackle that. Thank you. Why a theory instead of a component? I think I’m just done with all of the components in the psychology, psychiatry, the field of well-being, and all these tips and tricks, and everybody in their own little corner, not considering each other’s work. I felt frustrated as a graduate student, and even as a therapist, trying to help my clients. I craved a holistic framework—and one for my own life too. Like I said, I don’t have the time or the patience to remember more than a few things—and simple is everything to me. Believe me, I want to just stand on someone else’s shoulders—and I have—and piggyback. I guess I’m just not satisfied. I want to be able to use everybody’s work and bring it together in a way that I feel has been boiled down and condensed and provides a logical order of “Here’s how you use all of this, and here’s where you start.”

More than anything, I didn’t necessarily want to offer a new theory, but I felt compelled to because it just didn’t exist, and I needed a language, and something honestly to be able to test and measure, and not just look at it in isolation, but see how it works with everything else. So, I think just mainly because I have found that to be the most useful with myself, with my clients, with my research subjects. I think that theories—there’s a ton of them. They’re a dime a dozen. It’s not particularly groundbreaking to introduce a theory. It’s really about is it useful? Does it have that on-the-ground value. If so—I mean, I’m really just repackaging what has already been said and done and we know works, and is very useful in helping people take it in, in a really digestible way, and simplifying it. That’s my whole goal: is to simplify this whole vast question of “How do we live our best life?” and everything that we’ve come to learn from the field of psycho positive psychology and all the western traditions?

TS: Well, I do think it’s useful. And quite honestly, I think it’s pretty cool that you came up with the theory. Kristine, I think that’s cool, connection theory. I’ve been talking to the founder of the Purpose Project, as well as the research arm, the Connection Lab, Kristine Klussman. She’s the author of the new book Connection: How to Find the Life You’re Looking for in the Life You Have. Really enjoyed our conversation so much. Thank you.

KK: Thank you, Tami. I really did as well. It was an honor.

TS: I felt really connected to you the entire time for real.

KK: I did as well.

TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. If you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge review, I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.

 

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