1KHO 889: One Of The Most Novel Things We Can Do Is Be In Nature | Dr .Elaine Obrien, The Power of Play

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast.
I'm the founder of 1000hours outside and I have the privilege to talk today to a woman who is doing so much in the field of positive psychology, but really just helping us to and I guess this is what the field of positive psychology is about. It's about our well-being. So you're talking about well-being in work. We're talking about well-being in our daily lives with a lot of play and fun. Well-being in the pool, we're going to be talking about. Dr. Elaine O'Brien, welcome to you.

**Elaine O'Brien** (1:32)
What a joy to be with you and I love you and your work is amazing. Thank you so much for advancing your platform around 10,000 hours outside. Thank you.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:43)
I thought it was really neat. So you have a book out called The Power of Play. You have three books I want to tell the audience about. So the first one is called The Power of Play, Optimize Your Joy Potential. Now, this is a book filled with information about play and adding more joy and excitement into your life. It's about this word, fun-taneous, about being fun and spontaneous, which I hadn't heard before, and it's split into two parts. Like one of the parts is learning about why you need to have more fun, why you should have play throughout your life. And then the second part of the book is play ideas in all sorts of different categories. So we're going to be talking about that. You have a book called Splash Dance. This is where aqua fitness meets positive psychology. And you talk about, we're going to talk about this later, you have classes where you have kids, you have kids that are coming that are elementary age, all the way up to adults that are in their nineties. And this is a wonderful way to spend your time and to have a lot of fun enjoying the pool. And then also in work, there's a book called Leading Organizational Well-Being. So how do we have this joy in our workplace? And I thought it was really neat how in The Power of Play, when you do your dedication at the beginning, you have pictures. I'd never seen that before in a book. Elaine, pictures of you like, I dedicate this to my darling dad. And you have this beautiful picture of your dad and you're on a bike. And then also dedicated to Martin Seligman, father of positive psychology. And there's a picture there as well. Can you tell us how you got interested in positive psychology to begin with?

**Elaine O'Brien** (3:11)
Thank you Ginny. So as I mentioned, I was early in my career, I was an outdoor recreation, urban and outdoor recreation major.
I just loved it and I was also a psychology major. So back in the day, I felt there was like a good psychology. So what happened was I was studying briefly to do a masters in psychology, and I learned to teach aerobics, like at the beginning of the dance fitness, I guess, craze, which is like to me such a joy and blessing in my life because I've been teaching for over three decades. I started teaching, I was the worst one in my fitness class, and what happened was I just loved it. I think I was infusing positive psychology before it was even like a science.