“People do not decide their futures: they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.”

– F.M. Alexander

If you want to improve, be kind to yourself. That’s the message from this week’s guest, Dr. Beth Cabrera, a positive psychologist, professor, and author of the new book Being Well: A Positive Path to a Healthier, Happier You. Beth is also an old college friend who's now the first lady of Georgia Tech.

In her new book, Beth argues that willpower and guilt are the wrong tools for lasting change (sorry, Catholic and Jewish moms). Because our brains are wired to survive, not thrive, and default to scanning for threats instead of good things, feeling good is actually the more effective fuel for building habits that stick.

We cover the chicken-and-egg question of whether happiness causes success or success causes happiness, why optimistic salespeople at MetLife outsold others by 88%, how much of optimism is genetic versus learned, the brain's negativity bias and why social rejection registers like a broken arm. (So, please don’t reject me. Please!)

Beth and I talk gratitude, hedonic adaptation, the basics of diet, sleep, exercise, and meditation, what it's actually like being the first lady of a major American university. And how the way to cheat death is to have a Purpose (capitalized intentionally).

Get Beth’s book here. See her website here.

Follow Me (Paul Ollinger) on Instagram here or on X (fka, Twitter) here.

Can You Fake Happiness? w/Beth Cabrera