Wellness & Life Advice 

Sam Saperstein:

I would love to be remembered for work that I've done for women. The fight for equality and being a mom now and having a young daughter, that's my motivation simply to make the world a better place for my daughter and all the kids in her generation.

Sam Saperstein:

Welcome back to season four of the Women on the Move podcast. I'm your host, Sam Saperstein. Women on the Move is a global initiative at JPMorgan Chase designed to help women grow their businesses, improve their financial health, and build their careers. This season, we're taking you inside JPMorgan Chase's annual Women's Leadership Conference, where we addressed critical issues affecting women. Our diverse speakers, shared leadership lessons and career tips, and taught us how to take care of our wellbeing. Overall, they had one thing in common, optimism about the future and unwavering positivity. It's a fascinating season you won't want to miss.

Sam Saperstein:

As women, the idea of focusing on ourselves can seem radical. Who's going to take care of everything else while we're addressing our personal needs? But focusing on our wellbeing is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Not just to help us survive the pandemic and support our family and friends, but also to ensure that we're physically and mentally able to perform better. The speakers highlighted in this episode will give you step-by-step tips on how to be happy, how to secure yourself financially and how to remain focused on your goals. We're starting with a topic that's critical to us at JPMorgan Chase, setting up a secure financial foundation. Journalist, Janet Alvarez, whose covered the economic impact of COVID-19, will share what she's been seeing through the pandemic and actionable tips we can all use.

Janet Alvarez:

Hello, I'm Janet Alvarez, a bilingual personal finance and credit expert for The Motley Fool's Ascent brand and a financial news anchor covering the pandemic's economic toll. I'm also a Latina woman and I've seen firsthand the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on Latinx and black communities. On top of that, multi-generational households like my own, where I care for both my four year old son and my 78 year old mother, place greater economic and personal stress on the working aged women who run them.

Janet Alvarez:

Even for professional women like myself, I've realized how important solid financial footing is during such a turbulent time. Through my work, I've seen firsthand the fear and the anxiety consumers are facing. And the top two questions I hear the most are first, how can female workers and small entrepreneurs protect their finances? And second, how do we build a stronger post COVID future, including educating our daughters and sons about money? With these questions in mind, I want to share a few tips for setting yourself up for the long-term success that you need.

Janet Alvarez:

Now, coronavirus won't be with us forever, and we can make choices today that set us up for that greater success, when the time does come. I've created a checklist to empower you, to take control of your finances and to ease that anxiety today. First, it's important to take stock of where you are financially, how much money is coming in every month, and how much are you spending? If you can't answer these questions, then it's time to examine your financial picture and create a budget. Knowing your current position, is the only way to know what your next step should be. And as you make your budget, consider what has changed in the last few months. Are you dining out less and eating more at home? Spending less on travel and apparel? What good habits can stick with you after we return to normalcy? Then think about other ways you can cut down on spending.

Janet Alvarez:

Next, review all of the subscription services you're currently paying for. Things like streaming services and content providers and evaluate if there are opportunities to consolidate or even to scale back. And once you've assessed your spending patterns, it's time to focus on your current savings and investing plan. On savings, if you have less than three to six months of savings in your emergency savings account, put money there first or pay extra toward that. Emergency needs will always arise and you want to be prepared. Spending just a dollar less every day would add up to over $1,800 over five years and $3,600 over 10 years. Consider tools such as Chase auto save have set it and forget it, so saving becomes an ingrained behavior. A great way to assess your financial health is by keeping an eye on your money, monitoring your credit score and credit report, and be on the lookout for fraud.

Janet Alvarez:

During the pandemic, criminals are increasingly trying to take advantage of people online. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to one free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, every 12 months. Review these and ensure there's nothing erroneous, and if there is, get it fixed as soon as possible. To minimize the chance of fraud, don't give out your personal details or account numbers to anyone who calls or emails you, and ensure all of your passwords to financial websites are robust and well-protected.

Janet Alvarez:

Now my final piece of advice, think about what you're doing to create the path forward for others, for the future generation of young women, and for women around you. Having your kids at home can be extremely challenging as you try to get work done, but it can also be a great gift. It can be a wonderful opportunity to teach our daughters and our sons some simple, but very important money lessons.

Janet Alvarez:

And don't forget to lift up other women around you. This crisis is causing us to shop at small women owned businesses when we can instead of big box stores. And this crisis calls on us to gather our female friends on a Zoom call, not only for book club and wine night, but also for talking about budgeting, talking about investing and helping each other get a little smarter financially. Thank you. It's been such an honor to share my thoughts with you today. I know we all see the road into a brighter tomorrow, and then we'll walk that path together.

Sam Saperstein:

Now more than ever, it's critical for women to understand their finances, to ensure long-term financial success. Thanks to Janet for those insights on protecting our money. Next we'll turn to another critical topic, happiness. Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale University, will share her tips for investing in our emotional wellbeing. They include things you can do every day to take better care of yourself.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

Hi, my name is Laurie Santos. I'm a professor of psychology at Yale University. And today we're going to talk about how you can start with your wellbeing. Why start with your wellbeing? We often think that career success involves focusing on our resume virtues, building up some skillset. But the data really suggests that if we want to boost our job success, we need to focus on wellbeing first. The research really suggests that focusing on our wellbeing can be a quick path to improving our creativity, our job performance, and even our job satisfaction.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

One study found this by actually looking at our creativity, what are the kinds of things that allow us to be a little bit more creative at work that cause us to react to these tough situations with innovative solutions? The data really suggests that our positive mood might be one of the things that really matter. Studies show that doctors who were given really tough problems of how to diagnose a really hard to figure out physical diagnosis, and what researchers found is that doctors who were in slightly more positive moods were more likely to find the creative solutions.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

One study by Berger and Caldwell looked at this directly. They brought out college seniors and had them take us through a standard happiness survey. Just kind of give a sense of your mood and how you're feeling, what your wellbeing levels are like. And then they came back to those college seniors about three months later and asked about, "Hey, how is your job search going? Did you get the dream job that you really wanted? And one of the things they found was super surprising is that the college seniors happiness on that standard survey actually predicted there jobs success much later. So there's a correlation between higher levels of happiness and job success months later. In addition, they found that happiness levels were also correlated with job performance three months later.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

Focusing on our wellbeing first, could be the kind of thing that we need to enjoy some job success. Another study by Roberts and colleagues did exactly the same thing, but on an even longer time horizon. So they brought in 18 year olds and surveyed their positive emotions. You get a test. How often do you feel things like joy, laughter. Then they came back to those 18 year olds when they were 26 years old and looked at what was going on in their careers. Did positive mood at 18 years of age, actually predict how people's jobs were going many years later. And the surprising thing is that in fact, it did. Usually people's positive emotions at 18 years of age, predicted first whether they'd be having a job and whether they had occupational attainment at age 26, but also surprisingly your financial security at 26 is predicted by how you were feeling 18.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

As a college professor, this is sort of mind boggling to me. If we want to be sort of focused on doing well at work, we need to be focused on doing well in our lives. We need to focus on our own happiness. And of course, this raises a big question, which is how on earth do we do this, right? How do we protect our own wellbeing, and how can we really invest in our happiness? Happiness isn't just the kind of thing that you sort of have, or you don't have, it's the kind of thing that takes work. Just like a financial portfolio where you have to kind of think about it and work on your investments, this is exactly the kind of thing that you need to do with your wellbeing too. And so I decided to teach a whole class, trying to look at what we could do to teach students, to invest in their own wellbeing.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

And I'm going to give you my top three tips that come from the science of wellbeing on how you can invest in your own happiness and invest in your own happiness in a way that I think will increase your career success in ways that you don't often expect. First tip, I think is the most important. And that is, that if you want to be happier, if you really want to invest in your wellbeing, you also have to invest in your social connections. Every available study in the field of positive psychology frankly, suggest that social connection is the path to happiness. If you look at happy people, they tend to report prioritizing their social connection. They see it as something that they need to invest in just as much as they're investing in their career success. That social connection is actually causally involved in increasing your wellbeing.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

One of my favorite studies comes from Nick Epley and his colleagues. He had folks on a train heading to work, talk to the person next to them, talk to a complete stranger and try to be a little bit more social. But what Nick found is that people tend to really enjoy this brief momentary interaction with a stranger. In fact, people reported significant increases in positivity simply by talking to someone. And so that's what the research really suggests is that we need to be taking time to invest in our social connection. We're having this conversation right now in the midst of COVID-19 and what the data really suggests is that this might be one of the reasons this time in 2020 has been so stressful for everyone because we're actually reducing all our really simple social connections in ways we often don't even realize.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

If we want to be like happy people, we need to invest in gratitude. What is gratitude? Just this feeling of thankfulness for all the stuff we have out there and taking minutes of our day to count our blessings. Happy people spontaneously look to the bright side of life. Happy people spontaneously recognize the things that they're grateful for. The data suggests that the simple act of scribbling down three to five things that you're grateful for every night, can significantly improve your wellbeing in as little as two weeks. But what's surprising is that gratitude doesn't just make us feel better, it also allows us to perform better.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

And this comes from some lovely work by Dave DeSteno and his colleagues, that looks at what this emotion of gratitude is for, because gratitude is really about kind of giving back when you feel like you've gotten a lot out of life, and the data suggests that it can increase what researchers call self-regulation. This sort of trait that we have that allows us to do stuff that we kind of don't really want to do.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

It's saving a little bit more when we kind of feel spending. It's eating a little healthy, when we feel like we want a splurge. It's going to bed a little earlier, because we know that that's good for us. It's all the things that we have to do in the short term, to invest in ourselves in the longterm. His data suggests that the act of experiencing gratitude can help us save more for retirement and can allow us to kind of take on investments that are going to pay off later. He finds that the active experience in gratitude can cause you to eat healthier, right, because you're sort of protecting your future self. Gratitude can also help you achieve that first tip that I just talked about. It's an incredible way to boost social connection.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

One study by Francesca Gino and Adam Grant found that the act of sort of expressing gratitude in teams can actually increase performance and team members. My favorite study on gratitude by Marty Seligman and colleagues actually had people write what he called a gratitude letter. So scribble down a thank you letter to somebody that you've really wanted to thank for a long time, but haven't had a chance to. He finds that the simple act of thanking someone you've been meaning to talk to for awhile, can actually boost up your wellbeing significantly, your ability to eat healthier, the connection you feel with other people, your performance. So that's tip number two. If we want to be like happy people, we need to take time for gratitude and really invest in it. Tip number three gets us to the final tip that I think is most important. We need to invest in being present. We you need to invest in being mindful, paying attention to what's in the here and now.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

A lot of us experience what researchers call mind wandering, where our mind is here and there, thinking about lunch, thinking about that project that's coming up. Dan Gilbert and his colleagues actually looked at this giving people a little survey where they kind of pinged people on a cell phone at different times and asked, "What are you doing right now? Are you paying attention to what you're doing? And how are you feeling?" And what Gilbert and colleagues found is that when people self-reported mind-wandering, which they did in a huge way, that people self-reported mind wandering over 50% of the time.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

What they found is that when researchers asked people how they were feeling on top of their mind wandering, what they found is that people self reported feeling pretty bad while they were mind-wandering. And so the data really suggests that if we want to be happier, we need to focus on reducing our mind wandering. How do we do that? With the simple practice of meditation, the simple act of taking five minutes to focus on your breath and every time your mind wanders away, yank it back.

Dr. Laurie Santos:

It's powerful for increasing your concentration, but it's also a powerful mechanism of investing in your happiness because it trains your brain not to mind wander, not just while you're meditating, but actually while you're doing other things during the day. So you're looking at your Excel spreadsheet and rather than having your mind wander, you can actually be present. The data also suggests that meditation can help us increase our resilience over time. It can actually protect us from burnout in part, because we're able to non-judgmentally accept whatever's going on and really be present in a way that improves our well-being. And so those are three quick tips that you can use to invest in your wellbeing. And I think it's really important to kind of walk through and acknowledge. So I hope I've given you a path towards the kinds of things you need to do to feel a little happier. And now it's up to you to put those into practice. Thanks so much.

Sam Saperstein:

Laurie's presentation really resonated with me. In particular, I'm going to make sure I focus on my social connections, even if it's still talking to friends and family over more Zoom calls. In our final segment, we have Jenn Piepszak, the Chief Financial Officer at JPMorgan Chase interviewing the most decorated track and field Olympian ever, Allyson Felix. Allyson talks about how she focused on her goals in quarantine and used her platform to advocate for mothers and female athletes. It's amazing to think that an Olympian also faced challenges working from home, just like the rest of us.

Jenn Piepszak:

I'm Jenn Piepszak, Chief Financial Officer here at JPMorgan Chase, and I'm joined today by the all inspiring history, making Allyson Felix. Allyson, thanks so much for being with us today, we really appreciate you doing this.

Allyson Felix:

Thank you, Jenn. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Jenn Piepszak:

You are the most decorated track and field Olympian in history. That deserves repeating. You are the most decorated track and field Olympian in history, so congratulations for that. I'm sure your sights were set on continuing that streak at the 2020 Olympics. So what was it like to get the news that the games were postponed until 2021?

Allyson Felix:

Thank you. It was definitely extremely disappointing getting that news. I think everything that was happening in the world at the time, so many people with a loss of life or a loss of jobs or just normalcy, really helped put things in perspective. And obviously there was no way that the Olympics could proceed safely, but I had to take time to really grieve that loss and just really be kind to myself in those moments.

Jenn Piepszak:

In addition to being a top tier athlete, you're also an advocate for mothers everywhere. Did this start with your own experience as a mother to be, facing career uncertainty because of your pregnancy?

Allyson Felix:

It absolutely started with my own experience. The decision to move forward in starting a family was one that I almost felt like I had to accomplish so much before I could even give myself the ability to let my mind go there. And I think it's really unfortunate that women have to have those feelings and to even think about that when it's a time that really should be celebrated.

Jenn Piepszak:

And you've made such an impact. So tell us about your experience taking on Nike and eventually guaranteeing maternity protections for all of Nike's female athletes.

Allyson Felix:

It was really scary. It was terrifying because I wasn't sure the consequences or what was going to come because of that. And after I did speak out about two months later, Nike did change their policy and it's really not just a Nike issue, it's an industry-wide issue. And so we continue to push for change across the board. Change is happening, but still a ways to go.

Jenn Piepszak:

So true. Your courage is so inspiring. So who inspired you to take a stand on these kinds of issues?

Allyson Felix:

Definitely my parents. And I think it's just the way that they live their life. My mom was a third grade teacher and my dad, a pastor, and it was just really important for them to do things with character and integrity. So I think that really inspired me when I saw something that wasn't right, to be able to find a way to speak on it.

Jenn Piepszak:

How has your experience been managing both being a mom and working during COVID?

Allyson Felix:

I was training here at home in my gym and my daughter, she can actually see me from where she usually hangs out upstairs. And so she just can't understand, why can't I get to mom right now? And she loves to bust through the doors and try to help me through a workout. She loves to make her way onto Zoom calls as well, and I've been just embracing it and trying to ask for help when I can and just trying to make the most of the situation.

Jenn Piepszak:

It's great advice. You also use your platform to raise awareness on the risks and dangers that black women face during pregnancy and childbirth, an issue that I understand you experienced directly. So can you talk a little bit more about this and why it's so important to you and how other women can help?

Allyson Felix:

Yeah. I went into my doctor's appointment, a regular checkup at 32 weeks and I was diagnosed with a severe case of preeclampsia. I felt like before I had kind of known the statistics around black women and women of color. We are three to four times more likely to face complications or even death while giving birth. Being a professional athlete, I trained throughout my pregnancy to find myself really thrust in the middle of this emergency. I just felt like I wasn't prepared. And so I just want to raise awareness around these risks. And so to be able to just help others through that and share stories, I think is really just what my heart is called to do.

Jenn Piepszak:

Your passion also extends to inspiring and promoting the next generation of women in sports, and we see that girls' participation in sports is decreasing, especially it seems at around the middle school age. So why do you think that is and what can we do to change it?

Allyson Felix:

That's the age where there's a real social stigma around girls participating in sports. You have bullying starting, also just these other factors of the access to sport, costs,, transportation. So I think it's really by giving girls positive role models to look to breaking down some of these barriers for their participation, are always ways that we can continue to uplift them and encourage them to stay engaged and involved in sports.

Jenn Piepszak:

And we know through research and just our own experience, how important and life-changing being involved in sports can be. Can you talk about some of the things that you think are so important for girls to take away from sports?

Allyson Felix:

Yeah. There are so many just life lessons that give you a foundation, no matter what you go into. Time management and work ethic, dealing with defeat, picking up the pieces, and how do you move on from that. Being on a team and how you do that, how you work with people who are different from you. It doesn't matter if you go on to be a professional athlete or a field altogether different, you constantly go back to those lessons that you learned. So I am always an advocate for kids being involved in sport because I know that it has the ability to really change their lives.

Jenn Piepszak:

On advice, what advice would you give on maintaining focus on a goal in the midst of a crisis as we've all had to do?

Allyson Felix:

Having hope and still pushing forward through this time has really helped me. I want to come out on the other side of this crisis, feeling stronger and feeling better and having used my time to the best of my ability. What small things can I work on today to be able to come out feeling better and stronger?

Jenn Piepszak:

When you think about your legacy, what do you want to be remembered for?

Allyson Felix:

It's interesting. I think, had I been asked that question years ago, it would have looked something like records and gold medals on the track, but the journey has really changed me and shifted my focus, and I would love to be remembered for work that I've done for women, the fight for equality and being a mom now and having a young daughter, I think a lot about what the world will look like as she grows up. That's my motivation for really tackling a lot of these issues and topics. And so I hope that I can be remembered for work in that area and just simply to make the world a better place for my daughter and all the kids in her generation.

Jenn Piepszak:

You're amazing. Thanks again, Allyson, for being with us. Know that you will always have a huge fan base at JPMorgan Chase, and we really, really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your wisdom with us.

Allyson Felix:

Well thank you so much for having me. It's been great to chat with you guys.

Sam Saperstein:

I think Allyson's hope for her legacy will certainly become a reality. The work she's doing for women is so critical and I believe it will lead to improvements for the next generation of women, including her daughter, Cameron. Thanks to Janet Alvarez, Dr. Laurie Santos, Allyson Felix, and JPMorgan Chase's own Jenn Piepszak for sharing their insights with us. If you're like me, you took some advice away from this episode that will help you finish the year as strong as possible.

Sam Saperstein:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Women on the Move, recorded at Women's Leadership Day 2020. If you'd like to see more from our event, visit JPMorganChase.com/leadershipday for the replays and additional content. The mission of Women on the Move is to help women in their professional and personal lives. Our goal is to introduce you to people with great ideas, inspiring stories, and a passion to make a difference. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, so you won't miss any others. For JPMorgan Chase's Women on the Move, I'm Sam Saperstein. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA is a member of the FDIC.