Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Terri-Ann Richards: Welcome to the Happy Stack Podcast, where we explore the science and strategies behind creating a happier, more fulfilling life. I'm Terianne Richards and I partner with organizations to address the root causes of burnout, disengagement, and stress. Equipping leaders and teams with the tools they need to thrive, both organizationally and personally. Each episode we dive into practical habits, insights, and strategies to help high performers like you level up from the inside out. Let's get stacking.
All right. Welcome, Tyler. I am super stoked to have you here on the Happy Stack Podcast, Darien.
[00:00:41] Tyler Hayden: I'm happy to be at the Happy Stack. It's kind of like a Big Mac of happiness. And I'm a vegetarian and I still love it.
[00:00:49] Terri-Ann Richards: Are you Sagittarian?
[00:00:50] Tyler Hayden: I am 100%. Yep, 100%. Powered by plants, 265 pounds of solid legumes.
[00:00:58] Terri-Ann Richards: This is not even part of the show, but how long have you been a vegetarian?
[00:01:01] Tyler Hayden: About eight years. So, yeah, just one day I thought I was cooking. I was cooking. I was cooking and I love to cook. I was a chicken farmer, so I was raising about a thousand chickens, killing about a thousand chickens a year, making, like, I had 60 laying hens. I was doing the thing. I was the farmer. And I was like, you know what? Like they say, like, I have adhd and if you eat more plants, it'll get rid of some of that brain fog and yada, yada, yada. And I love to cook. And so I thought, well, I'll try cooking. I want to, you know, cook some vegetarian meals more every week. Just wasn't doing it. So I stopped eating meat and like, I don't know.
[00:01:35] Terri-Ann Richards: Wow.
[00:01:35] Tyler Hayden: About six or eight weeks. Six weeks. Weeks later, I realized that I hadn't eaten any meat. And I felt great. And I just, you know, like I was just away on vacation. So we were in Punakana, but ate some fish. But for the most part when I travel, I'll eat fish only to increase some of the options. But, you know, it's not ethical. It's actually health related. And I feel amazing because I eat plants.
[00:01:59] Terri-Ann Richards: That is amazing. That is the coolest intro that I've ever had on the show. So that was amazing.
[00:02:03] Tyler Hayden: Well, that's it, everybody. You can turn it off now. It's over. We're done. That's what we get.
[00:02:08] Terri-Ann Richards: Okay, so, Tyler, this is what I'm really curious about right now. What are you doing in. Not in this moment. Cause I know you're hanging out with me right now, but in your present world, in your business, what has got you revved up? What are you excited about? What are you working on?
[00:02:23] Tyler Hayden: Yeah, super stoked, so I guess so. I have adhd, so can I have a couple?
[00:02:27] Terri-Ann Richards: I love it.
[00:02:29] Tyler Hayden: So I still. I mean, the speaking, the training, all that stuff that I do on a regular basis. So I've got a beautiful full docket of clients between now and the end of the summer. So that's awesome. So I'm doing that. But the thing that kind of keeps me fired up, that I'm really super invested in, is I've been building this thing called team building school. For those of you watching on video, you can see it behind me. I've got a beautiful logo in the back, so I've been working on that. And so I've got content. I've got all these things. I've been kind, kind of a. Like a labor of love over the last few years. I started during COVID and I've been learning about how to write sales copy, and I'm building this automated thing to help to sell and to get people into the school, learning how to build better teams. You know, my passion is team design, and I hate the fluffy bullshit that keeps getting churned over and over like, we've got to stop playing people bingo. You know, like, this shit has just got to stop. So I'm basically opening my hard drive and I'm uploading everything that I've been doing for the last 30 years in team design into team building school and giving people access to the tools that they can customize and do it themselves. So it really gets me juiced up to know that I can finally put a stop to people bingo. That's really what it's all about.
[00:03:44] Terri-Ann Richards: But I love people bingo.
[00:03:46] Tyler Hayden: Oh, come on. I play people poker. I've got people poker is way more exciting. Way more exciting.
[00:03:52] Terri-Ann Richards: I would like to be invited to one of those, because I don't even know what that is.
[00:03:55] Tyler Hayden: It's poker. It's like people bingo on crack cocaine with kittens. Like, it's amazing. Yeah, it's people poker.
[00:04:03] Terri-Ann Richards: Oh, I love it. Okay, so you kind of brought us there. You've been in the team building space for decades.
[00:04:10] Tyler Hayden: Yeah, a long time.
[00:04:11] Terri-Ann Richards: What sparked your passion for designing better teams?
[00:04:14] Tyler Hayden: You know, so I started a thing when I was in high school with some friends. We started a thing called the NSS A, which is the Nova Scotia Secondary School Students Association.
[00:04:25] Terri-Ann Richards: I love that you remember that.
[00:04:26] Tyler Hayden: I do. It actually has four S's, So really I only have to remember Three of them. But anyway, people are now writing it down. They're like Nova Scotia. So I helped start that. We were just doing some really cool leadership development stuff for kids. It's now the largest student run student leadership association in North America. It's great foundations, has great energy. And so I started there and I was doing team building. I took recreation in university, so I have a degree in outdoor and environmental education. Started an outward down school and you know, I got told I was funny. I got invited to do a speech. And anyway, so long story short is I landed doing that, but my intention was to go do team design work with incarcerated youth in the woods. And I really love seeing people kind of connect. I love seeing them start to improve. I love watching people get to their highest heights. I love watching another company be more successful because the people are trusting and they've got better relationships and all those types of things that just, I mean, it speaks to me. It's what this whole thing is all about. You can work anywhere, right? You can work anywhere, whether it's for yourself or whether it's for an organization. So why work at a place that doesn't respect, value, love, nurture you? So, you know, my whole goal was to help people to do that better at the end of the day.
[00:05:40] Terri-Ann Richards: So going from sort of the early days to today, how has the landscape of engagement, you know, team engagement and culture changed since you started?
[00:05:50] Tyler Hayden: Yeah. So in the beginning, so I have a background in recreation, so in the beginning, we used to be sought out by businesses. So people would come to a camp or want to do the get to know you fun team building. Right. Which is awesome. And there's a place for that. So that's where it kind of began. But what's kind of transpired over the last three decades is it's formalized now. We're designing teams. We're looking at how we can integrate business objectives and business learning into that collaborative, fun things we were doing that were recreational. So team building has become professionalized, I guess. You know, I'd say there's three different types of team building. There's fun, there's three Fs. Well, there's four Fs, but the fourth F is a bad word. The three Fs have to do with team building. So there's fun, fast forward and fix fun. Team building is that recreational stuff, that stuff we do to get people together, break out the cobwebs, get to know each other, all that stuff. Then there's fast forward, which I'll pause There for a second, I'm going to tell you about fix first. Fix is when you bring in people like me where you have a dysfunctional team and you need a, you know, an independent third party to kind of work you through all the garbage that's there, get you resettled, get you with a strategic alliance of where you're going in the future, all that stuff. And we can use team building for that. And then there's fast forward, which is the stuff that I am absolutely passionate about, which is where we take a business objective. So maybe you're building our strategic plan. How do we integrate team building into that? Maybe we're launching a new product. How do we integrate team building into that? You know, maybe we're opening a new office. How do we integrate team building into that? So it's about how we take us. Because I often have managers say, I just don't have a budget for team building. I'm like, well, what do you have budget for? Right? And then once we figure out what you have budget for, let's start to inject team building into that. Let's start to inject, you know, the relationship building and all that kind of stuff alongside of the work we're doing. Because no matter what work you're doing, the team is running alongside of it, right? So if you're not building the team at the same time as you're introducing or building these new projects or initiatives, then you're doing a disservice to the opportunity for the outcomes of that project.
[00:08:03] Terri-Ann Richards: Fair game.
[00:08:06] Tyler Hayden: Did you see me standing on the soapbox, man?
[00:08:08] Terri-Ann Richards: I felt it through the screen, right?
[00:08:10] Tyler Hayden: I felt it. I know.
[00:08:12] Terri-Ann Richards: Fire. I need like a fire button. I'm gonna get one of those things. What did you call it? It's like a stream deck, right?
[00:08:18] Tyler Hayden: I have a stream deck. I just don't have it on right now. I could be doing.
[00:08:20] Terri-Ann Richards: My son, who just turned 19 last Tuesday, has one in his room and he's trying to hustle me and sell me. And I'm like, dude, I can go online and buy it for like this price. And he's trying to get, like, sell it for about the same price.
But I did teach them how to negotiate.
[00:08:33] Tyler Hayden: So you set up your own problem, Terianne.
[00:08:36] Terri-Ann Richards: I did. I did. So I know you use this tool called the. Is it the M iq, the multiple intelligence quotient, and you use it in your team engagement work. Can you break that down for us and kind of let me know how that helps leaders unlock the potential of the Individuals that are within their teams love it.
[00:08:53] Tyler Hayden: So for the last three decades, been working with teams, all that kind of stuff. And it was funny because I was pretty good at it. Like, I could kind of figure out how. How people would want to be inspired, engaged, all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't until my ex wife, she was doing a master's in multiple intelligences. So there's this dude from Harvard, he's really, really smart, who wrote this book called Frames of Mind. Frames of Mind is all about how kids learn. So there's eight different types of ways that people learn. We've heard kinesthetic, we've probably heard visual, we've probably heard linguistic, and those are the way that kids learn. He then expanded that list of three to eight. Now, since then, it's expanded even more, but there's eight core ways in which that people learn. So those are multiple intelligences. The way Howard Gardner was looking at it is he was looking at it from the perspective of if we can find the way people like to learn, we can teach them the way they like to learn. So multimodal learning. So, you know, teaching math with blocks as well as paper, as well as maybe a story about the math. So there's three different ways that you can learn about parabolas. And I was listening, and one of the things he said was, we could also encourage students that they should follow a career path based on their type of learning because they could be successful in that career path. Because you're kinesthetic, you'd be a great firefighter, construction worker, dancer, you know, insert, insert, insert. And I'm like, huh? So if I'm working with a group of accountants or engineers, there's a good chance that they're all pretty good at math. So they're mathematical, logical learners. So I started looking at the team building things that I was doing. I was like, okay, well, how is this like, I believe that good team building is good team learning. So I was looking at the activities or the activations that we were doing, and I'm thinking, okay, well, how is that mathematical? And then we applied it to that particular group. And how come this group of engineers loves it but the. I don't know. Let's insert like salespeople don't. Interesting. So this activity works with one group, but not with another. Okay, but if I did something that was interpersonal related, the salespeople loved it. Okay, so we're onto something. Then I read a book by Kelcik Sezhent Mihalyi, which don't try to spell that name. But he wrote a book called Flow and he talked about like peak experience and optimal arousal. And it was about like uniqueness and challenge and all those in skill levels. And then I realized that as the challenge had to meet that skill level, when we were able to kind of marry those two theories together, we could come up with miq and we could come up with a laser focused way of giving managers the opportunity and leaders the opportunity to say, if I use this activity, I'm going to have great results. And that's it. So we're taking that learning curve out. We're miq, because I've gone through and I've tagged each one of the activities with the top three learning styles that they apply to managers are able to go, okay, well, let's do this one because it matches my team's profile.
[00:12:02] Terri-Ann Richards: Love that side note.
[00:12:04] Tyler Hayden: Side note?
[00:12:04] Terri-Ann Richards: The name that you just said, which I will not try to repeat. I had to do my own audiobook for my last book, Success Takes Courage, and I mentioned him.
[00:12:15] Tyler Hayden: Okay, cool.
[00:12:16] Terri-Ann Richards: And the amount of takes it took. And if you ever listen to my audiobook and listen to just that section, you'll be like, you did not say it right. Terianne. I could not for the life of me say it.
[00:12:26] Tyler Hayden: So I studied him in university and it's. It's chick sent me high.
[00:12:32] Terri-Ann Richards: I'm pretty sure that's how I said it though.
[00:12:34] Tyler Hayden: Sent me high.
[00:12:35] Terri-Ann Richards: Yeah, but very slowly.
[00:12:36] Tyler Hayden: But such a guy. Have you ever, have you watched him? Like, he's got a great. His TED talk's awesome. He studied under, like, I don't like the top psychological, like, gurus of like. Because he's old as Derbil. He's dead now, but he's old. And he studied with all the great German philosopher, like, amazing, amazing, amazing mind.
[00:12:56] Terri-Ann Richards: Anyway, I love it. I love side notes. Okay. You actually said it when you were just talking. You sort of make this distinction between team building and team learning. And like, why is that shift important? And why should that matter to leaders in terms of how they're approaching engagement?
[00:13:11] Tyler Hayden: Yeah, because you know that audible cringe when you see on the agenda that it says, we're doing team building and people are like, oh. Or they're like, because they've been.
[00:13:21] Terri-Ann Richards: Because we're playing people bingo.
[00:13:22] Tyler Hayden: Yeah, exactly. It's like PTSD of team building. Because people have disrespected you for so many years and they're like, you know, my brother's cousin's sister's neighbor did this thing and it was so much fun. And you're like, it's not fun, you know, and so when we start to look at how we want to teach people, then we put them, I believe it's. Then it's learner centric. So we're putting them at the center of what it is that we're doing. And I mean, I don't know about you, but more people have these. I'm holding up a device, a cell phone, you know, people of those. And it's all about that. You know, my social feed looks different than your social feed. Right. People want things to be about them. You know, Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. Make have your conversation about them. Right. And so if we take team building, we make it about the people in the room, then we have a better chance of helping them to be more successful together. And that's taking team building to team learning. It takes the fluff out of it. We're adding, we're professionalizing it. We're adding educational objectives. We're able to measure it at the end of the day. It's not fluff. If you can measure it at the end of the day and you can say to your bean counters, yeah, we were able to move our objectives from A to B, Right. Because of this one hour. Right. That's the difference between fun and fast forward. That's the difference between team building and team learning. Right. I believe, you know, it's about designing the team that you want. That's what I help managers do. I help leaders to design the team that they want by starting to really think about and get passionate and get measured and get strategic about what it is that they want out of that group. Right.
[00:14:59] Terri-Ann Richards: I love that I've heard you say that when you increase engagement, it sometimes can equal that. You may not have to hire as many people. Can you walk us through that connection?
[00:15:09] Tyler Hayden: For sure. So we look at stats as to why, what, how engagement matters. Right. You know, so engagement matters because of. And if you're watching on the video, you'll see this very beautiful graphic. It's blue and red. Some of the things that we see in engagement is 70% fewer safety incidents, 20% higher sales, 21% higher profitability, 17% higher productivity, you know, 40% less defects. So this is where the money is for team building. Right. As people become engaged, we have fewer defects. You're throwing less of whatever you're manufacturing or whatever you're doing away. That's money in the bank. Right. You know, we get 20% higher sales, well, that's money in the bank. Your profitability goes up. So the thing I say to managers is, you know, if we look at, because there's this talent war, actually this is a great stagnation they're calling it now. But you know, we were going through the talent war where people are like, I just don't have enough people to do the work that needs to be done. And I would talk to the manager, I said, okay, well why don't we focus on the people who are in the room? And if we can get, say you have 10 employees and we can get 10% more out of each employee because they're more engaged, they show up on time, they don't take extra time in their breaks. All those little things become aggregates. And if we can get 10% more out of 10 employees, that's like having one free FTE. You know, I was working in healthcare, I was a management consultant for a long term healthcare facility. And the one thing we did that made a huge difference is people will go out to have their break. They would leave five minutes early because they'd want to heat up their food or go get their smokes out of their locker. Then they would leave for their 15 minute break. They would have their 15 minute break and when they were done, they would bring their dishes back, they would wash their dishes and they'd take them over to, to their locker or they'd put their smokes away, they'd wash their whatever and then they go back to work. Well, all of a sudden a 15 minute break is 30 minutes. You get a hundred staff in a facility. I flunked math in grade 10, so I can't do it in my head. But I'm telling you, that's a shit ton of time, Terry.
[00:17:18] Terri-Ann Richards: Right.
[00:17:19] Tyler Hayden: So what we did was we worked to get those 15 minute breaks to 50 minute breaks. Right? That's engagement. Right. We did it because they huge. And that's because they wanted to come back to work because they knew that taking extra time adversely impacted people on the floor who are their colleagues, but also themselves because their colleagues are doing it to them.
[00:17:40] Terri-Ann Richards: Right, Let me give you a fun number just based on what you just said. Yeah, 15 minutes.
[00:17:45] Tyler Hayden: Yeah.
[00:17:46] Terri-Ann Richards: A day. A day equals 128 hour work days a year.
[00:17:51] Tyler Hayden: There you go.
[00:17:52] Terri-Ann Richards: Yeah. That's a lot of money.
[00:17:53] Tyler Hayden: A lot of money, right?
[00:17:55] Terri-Ann Richards: Yeah.
[00:17:55] Tyler Hayden: That's engagement. Like that's it, like that's all you have to do. You want to put money back on the table, right? That's where it is. It's in the minutiae of what we're working on. And that's what team building does. Team building works on the minutiae. You know, so often C level folks and I work with the YPO, I work around those really big, you know, Fortune 500 tables and they talk in 30,000 foot views, right? And that's how they move the needle. But if you're a manager or a leader or supervisor, you're moving the minutiae of the needle. And the difference between the C level and the supervisory level is there's a hundred of you moving the minutia. And that creates just as much impact as the C level does, right?
[00:18:41] Terri-Ann Richards: A hundred percent. So let's speak to those leaders right now. If a leader's listening and they're dealing with disengagement and that stagnation, where should they start?
[00:18:52] Tyler Hayden: This is a great question. You know, where do you start when people aren't there? You know, the beginning is authenticity and being there. So first of all is you have to know who you are as a leader, right? So that you're leading from a place of authenticity. So, you know, there's lots of great programs that can help you to be able to do that. Start to understand, like what does your leadership style look like, how are you best at engaging with others, those types of things. I coach people around that. So you start with that, then you put yourself in place. So if you're gonna have lunch, have lunch in the staff room, right? Really start to put yourself in a place where the people are and listen, right? Listen to what's happening around you. And then it's about doing the little things, right? For those of you who are just listening, this show you part doesn't really work out all that well. But for those of you watching a video, the show you part really does work out well, I believe. It's like a, you know what a Venn diagram is? It's like the, the circle over the circle of the circle and there's a space in the middle. Those are for you who are listening. For those of you watching, you're going to see that I have like three really big, cool, big ass rings. And these three rings, right? There's a hole in the center, there's a Venn diagram right in the middle, right where this is where the magic happens. And too often managers spend too much time inside one of the big circles, right? Where they're a content expert or they're a process expert and they're just doing their expertise, but they're forgetting about the people, and they're forgetting about the community. Right. Which are the other two rings. The trick is, is to do things in the middle of the circles so that the effort that you place as a leader trickles into all the circles. So, for example, with speakers, I tell them, you know, write about what you speak about, what you train about, what you consult about. It all happens in that center. So managers are no different. You know, when you're out on the floor, be a practice expert, be focusing on the community, be focusing on our people, be focusing on our strategic plan. Be focusing on the organization in the actions that you're taking. So. And it's about doing little things. You know, it's about adding one degrees of input every time. You don't have to move a mountain. You just have to move one rock at a time. Right. And just move one rock and one rock and one rock. That's it.
[00:21:19] Terri-Ann Richards: I love that. So you've built hundreds. And I think I'm right when I say this. Hundreds of team building products.
[00:21:26] Tyler Hayden: Hundreds.
[00:21:27] Terri-Ann Richards: Yeah. What's one tool or exercise that every leader should have in their toolkit?
[00:21:32] Tyler Hayden: Okay, so you can go to teambuildingschool.com and you can take my quick. It's called Quick Start program. The Quick Start program has this activity in it, so you can download it, you can go through. There's like a little hour teaching, and then all of a sudden you bang. And, well, maybe you'll put a thing in the notes for this. And you go in and there's an activity called Commonalities. And Commonalities is one of my faves because it actually hits a lot of different domains. Okay. I was working in. Where was I? I was in Orlando, and a project manager walked up. He said, you don't understand, Tyler. I have all rocket scientists that I work with. They're all type A engineers. They don't do team building. They're not interested. And I said, okay. I said, try this. So I said, do Commonalities. Commonalities your rocket scientists will love because they're making a list. The person who gets the most number of things on the list wins the most interesting wins a second prize. So there's all these ways of measuring our success. Math people love to measure success. They don't want to give out purple ribbons. So we give Commonalities. The way you present it is all right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to break everybody into teams. And there's actually a video of me leading it. So you don't even have to learn how to do this inside the course that you could take at team building school. Anyway, okay, so here's what we're doing. We're breaking the teams. We've got 20 people. Everyone's going to get into teams of four. And when you're in your team of four, one person's going to be the scribe. Scribe, raise your hand, that person raises their hand. You're going to be in charge of making a list. The list has to be things that you have in common with your entire team. So, for example, we all have passports, We've all traveled overseas. It can't be like, we all have hair, you know, some of us don't, you know, or we're all wearing thongs. That would work, you know, like, so some of. And crack a few jokes. And then you say, all right, so you're gonna have 60 seconds to come up with as many things as you can on that list. And the team that has the most creative interesting is gonna get a bonus point. Then you give them 60 seconds to grind it away. And then you find out who has the most number on their list, you give them a fabulous prize, and then you go through and you ask them to decide which is the most creative, most interesting. And then you be the judge, jury and executioner and you give that person or that team a prize for coolest commonality together.
[00:23:49] Terri-Ann Richards: Love it.
[00:23:50] Tyler Hayden: And so the project manager did it with her rocket scientists, and she did it the day after our training program. And her email said, when she responded to me about how it went, she said, what do I do next? They loved it.
[00:24:04] Terri-Ann Richards: Where there's a will, there's a way.
[00:24:06] Tyler Hayden: Well, where there's team learning, there's a way, right? She took it from team building to team learning. She didn't call it team building. She called it, you know, like, then we're going for a prize. We're warming things up. Up. Here we go. And there's a whole other body that we could talk about around, like how to pick the activities that you're going to do based on the type of learning that you're going to do so that you can kind of like break the cobwebs around, like strategy, design or whatever is happening. You could pick the activities that are team building that will help to metaphor and to table set for what's about to happen, you know, and she was able to do that with this activity. And anyway, she's card carrying, you know. Love it. Happy, happy. She's happy. Staff.
[00:24:44] Terri-Ann Richards: I like it, well, you're kind of segwaying me into sort of how I want to flip the switch a little bit here. And I want to learn a little bit more about you as the human. So what is one habit, a ritual, something that you do on a day to day basis that brings you joy?
[00:25:01] Tyler Hayden: I would say. Okay, so every night before bed, my partner and I, before we close our eyes, I always ask her, I say, meg, I say, what was your favorite part of the day? Today. Day. And every day before we go to bed, we talk about the thing that we liked best. And there are some days that one of us or both of us will go.
It's hard pressed to find something today, but in finding that thing, that's where we, you know, A, we're ending our day with a happy feeling or a happy memory. And B is we're, we're consciously taking note of those things in our days. I'd say that's a ritual that is super important to me.
[00:25:41] Terri-Ann Richards: Me. I love that. Do you have a book, a podcast, a quote that has deeply influenced you in your life?
[00:25:49] Tyler Hayden: Well, I have 28 books that have deeply influenced me, but I wrote all those once only because that took a shit ton of time.
[00:25:56] Terri-Ann Richards: Yes, it would.
[00:25:57] Tyler Hayden: So books that have been really important to me, I really, I mean the Alchemist is a great book. I'm sure everybody's read the Alchemist. There's a book by Shakidi Gawan, Creative Visualizations. That's what it was called. And she takes the reader through the process of drawing pictures and visualizing so that you can gain better understanding. And so I'm an artist, so I do art. Like if you're watching on tv, this is the little mug that I painted. When I grow up, I own Folkart Nova Scotia.com. i will be selling, reselling my folk art, which I've done at the folk art festival. And well, they wouldn't let me in because I was too educated. That's another long story. So I sold it in the parking lot. So I sell my folk art. So I really resonated with her style, which was, hey, draw that picture and think about what this concept is that you're trying to understand. It was just eye opening for me. Eye opening. So I travel with books. That's how I travel. I travel with books where I draw pictures and I come up with thoughts all based like drawing pictures and then figuring it out.
[00:27:04] Terri-Ann Richards: I actually love that I've recently started, you know, know key complex concepts that you know when you're reading them in a book. I'm currently doing an MBA in happiness. And there are concepts that come out that you're just like, that doesn't make sense. But when you draw it into a picture format, all of a sudden it's like, I get it.
[00:27:23] Tyler Hayden: Yeah. Or you could draw two different things, two polar opposite things. Right. And see how they connect. Oh, so exciting.
[00:27:31] Terri-Ann Richards: I love that. I feel like I've just learned two things about you that I did not know prior to today. You are a vegetarian and you draw and do folk art like.
[00:27:41] Tyler Hayden: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Terri-Ann Richards: Bing. Mind blown.
[00:27:43] Tyler Hayden: There you go.
[00:27:44] Terri-Ann Richards: If you had to describe your approach to happiness in one word, what would that word be?
[00:27:52] Tyler Hayden: Action.
[00:27:53] Terri-Ann Richards: Action. Oh, do tell.
[00:27:55] Tyler Hayden: Because I think that people can talk about being happy, people can think about being happy, people can feel being happy, but really what matters is that you're taking the opportunity to go out and to be in that happiness and to share that happiness. Others. So for me, I'm a survivor of sexual abuse. I was a fat kid growing up. I flunked math in grade 10. I had a lisp like insert, insert, insert. I got lots of things right. And it's really easy to be in a place of sadness because of stuff that happens around you. But when you go and you like, you think about like laughter, yoga and you know, those things that help people to be happy, it's because you're actively engaging in the happiness. You know, whether it's fake it till you make it or whether it's, you know, know it's the releasing of the endorphins or what it is. If you're not actually taking the time to take action to be happy, you'll get stuck in that rut and continue down the road of dissatisfaction.
[00:28:59] Terri-Ann Richards: Bam. That is very true. Here's a question for you. What are some things you do to stack happiness in your world? Stack it.
[00:29:08] Tyler Hayden: Stack it. You know what, I think it's a matter of having practice. So I think that stacking happiness means that you're going to do things in a similar way in that, you know, go to the gym before you go to bed, you know, ask your partner what was the favorite part of the day. Take the dogs for a walk, start your day with happiness. You know, if you find yourself sitting and scrolling, stop, give yourself a two minute warning for scrolling. You know, that kind of stuff. So it's about setting practices or parameters around things that can either either take away from your happiness or can influence your happiness, but it's about setting practice at the end of the day, you know, we don't do anything unless we practice that. We don't gain results of things if we don't practice it.
[00:29:55] Terri-Ann Richards: 100%. Yeah. And I think it's important, right? It's taking those intentional steps. Sometimes the steps are a little crooked and they go a little sideways, but it's the intentional steps and taking action, as you said, and just allowing yourself to be on the journey.
[00:30:10] Tyler Hayden: A hundred percent, 100%. Life's not a destination, right? And it's like getting drunk with your friends. Like you don't remember the entire evening. You remember a slideshow, right? That's all you get is a slideshow. And life is a slideshow. And the more people you can have around you, they'll have more slides. And, you know, then we get to put our slides together and have a wonderful, you know, one of those choppy movies like from the 1920s, right? That's what it's all about. It's about those moments. And the inside the moment is the happiness that it's not going to last forever. So you have to go and create more moments of happiness.
[00:30:45] Terri-Ann Richards: Before we go into the lightning, questions I want to ask you, like, what's the one message, the piece of advice that you would hope our listeners took from our conversation here today.
[00:30:58] Tyler Hayden: So my motto, my trademark is living life large. It's about grasping a hold of every single moment of every single day. That's what living life large is all about. It's not about who leaves this place with the most money because as I say, there ain't a U haul attached to your hearse, but it's about living every single moment of every single day. You know, it's about being intentional with the teams that you're with. It's about being there with your kids. It's about being there for yourself and your health and your wellness and your intellect. It's about all those things. It's about living life large. It's about grasping a hold of every single moment of every single day. If you try to do that, you'll have a much bigger slideshow.
[00:31:34] Terri-Ann Richards: All right, you ready for the lightning round?
[00:31:37] Tyler Hayden: I didn't stretch Terry, but I'm going to do the best I can. I'm a five fifty year old man. I'm going to do the best I can without stretching. For your lightning round, I'm in.
[00:31:49] Terri-Ann Richards: All right. Morning person or night owl?
[00:31:52] Tyler Hayden: Somewhere in between.
[00:31:53] Terri-Ann Richards: Oh, interesting. I've had that answer. Okay, what's your favorite way to unwind after a busy day to go for?
[00:32:00] Tyler Hayden: Go to the gym. Or go for a walk or sit and snuggle.
[00:32:04] Terri-Ann Richards: Snuggles. I love snuggles. What's the best advice you've ever been given? Given?
[00:32:09] Tyler Hayden: Shut up and get back to it.
[00:32:10] Terri-Ann Richards: If you could only keep one habit for the rest of your life, what would it be?
[00:32:14] Tyler Hayden: Loving those around me.
[00:32:15] Terri-Ann Richards: Beautiful. Thank you so much Tyler for being on the show for sharing your wisdom. I will be sure to add any of the comments that you've added today into the show notes and I hope you have an amazing day.
[00:32:29] Tyler Hayden: I am so thankful that you do. The Happy Stack this is so cool and everybody out there keep listen. The Happy Stack Therian is one of the good ones so love it. Loving her.
[00:32:39] Terri-Ann Richards: Thank you.
[00:32:40] Tyler Hayden: See ya.
[00:32:42] Terri-Ann Richards: Hey, thanks for listening to the Happy Stack podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who could use a little extra happiness in their life. Let's keep stacking those wins together. See you next time.
