Anyone Can Play, Anyone Can Win (Cornholing with Michelle Hastie Thompson)

How do you put your life back together after your home and your neighborhood's been destroyed in a wildfire? By tossing beanbags at a hole? That's what Michelle Hastie Thompson did. Michelle ("Cornhole Meesh") loves the backyard game of cornholing - and uses it to help her relax, share time with her loved ones, and meet new people. So what can cornholing teach Dr Laurie about happiness? Find more about Michells's work at https://www.cornholemeesh.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Laurie Santos?

  Pushkin.

• 1:15Speaker 04

  In Northern California, fires are fairly common.

• 1:18Laurie Santos?

  This is psychology PhD student Michelle Hasty Thompson.

• 1:22Speaker 04

  And so when I heard that there was a fire, it didn't seem that close. And so it was nothing that caused me any concern. It's like, oh, OK, another fire, whatever. That's what we do here.

• 1:31Laurie Santos?

  But Michelle's calm attitude on that fateful November morning in 2018 wouldn't last. She was getting her son, Broome, ready for his usual daycare drop off when she noticed that the sky was a bit darker than usual. With her husband already at work on the other side of town, Michelle called to compare notes and figure out how concerned they should be.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  You know, do I need to evacuate? Is this serious? He said, no, I'm on my way to you. You stay there. The fire is on this side of the town, so you're fine.

• 1:59Laurie Santos?

  But then Michelle got an unexpected notification. Her son's daycare was closing for the day because of the fire.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  I was like, well, this must be serious if the daycare closed. And then I looked outside. It was about 9:00 a.m. and it was black as midnight. I mean, there was no light in the whole sky, and it was eerily quiet.

• 2:17Laurie Santos?

  Home alone with her two dogs and a young toddler, Michelle began to panic.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  And all I could hear was propane tanks exploding. But there was no sirens, there was no evacuation warnings, there was no texts coming through. There was no communication as to what was going on, but my body kind of said, you need to go.

• 2:35Laurie Santos?

  She called her husband back.

• 2:36Speaker 04

  And he's like, I'm on my way. I said, I don't know, I don't feel safe. I'm just gonna take Rome and the dogs and get out of here. And so he said, just, you know, grab the contents of the safe and grab some of my paintings, because he's an artist. And that is literally all I grabbed, nothing else. And I got out of there as quickly as possible. It was, it was very scary.

• 2:53Laurie Santos?

  Michelle corralled the dogs into the car, buckled in her son, and began driving out of town.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  I'm at the bottom of the town and I looked up and it was just straight cars as far as you can see. My sister-in-law was only 30 minutes behind me and she sent me a picture and the fire was on the road, what I just drove on, travelling that quickly. Turns out, the fire completely trapped everybody in the town, so I was very lucky to get out when I did.

• 3:18Laurie Santos?

  The fire would later become known as the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. It burned for two weeks straight, destroying nearly all of Michelle's town of Paradise, California. More than 50,000 people were displaced and over 80 people lost their lives.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  I got out and I was safe, but my husband and my in-laws were all trapped all day. I had no idea if they were gonna make it out. Luckily, everybody did and we were all safe, but we did lose everything. We lost all of our homes. We were renters, so no insurance, because they don't give you insurance in fire towns. And it was a really difficult process to rebuild from that.

• 3:56Laurie Santos?

  How do you cope when you and all your family and friends have lost everything? When the town that you loved and called home is now gone? When you need to start life over and build a totally new community from scratch? Would you turn to religion or philosophy? Well, Michelle turned to an unexpected solution, one that she knew could help her find connection and community during this tough time. What was Michelle's unexpected coping mechanism? Well, it was...

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Cornhole.

• 4:24Laurie Santos?

  Yes, you heard that right, cornhole.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Beanbag toss.

• 4:28Laurie Santos?

  Beanbag toss, okay, yeah. And so it really is like, there's a board with a hole and you're trying to get the beanbag in the hole.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 4:35Laurie Santos?

  Michelle, who goes by the Instagram handle of @cornholemiche, is more than just a fan of cornhole. The lawn game is also the topic of her psychology PhD dissertation. In her thesis, Michelle argues that cornhole is a surprisingly powerful way to create connection and community, a benefit she experienced firsthand long before she lost everything in that paradise fire.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Cornhole was the thing. Like, our garage was open, everybody came over, we threw bags.

• 5:01Laurie Santos?

  Cornhole was Michelle and her husband's go-to activity for bonding with old friends and connecting with new ones.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  It just breaks the ice. You're not just sitting staring at each other, hoping conversation comes up. And so it made it easy to kind of invite people, "Hey, you want to come over and throw some bags?" And so I've really found it to be that sort of connector in all different aspects of life.

• 5:20Laurie Santos?

  And so, with a new home to settle into, a new routine to adjust to, and a new community to get to know, Michelle and her husband knew they could rely on this one familiar tool.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  We built new boards and got some bags. And then when we would be out, we would invite people to come play cornhole with us. And then ultimately, we decided to start our own club because there wasn't one in our county.

• 5:42Laurie Santos?

  Turns out, Michelle wasn't the only person in the area who was stoked about cornhole.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Our very first night of our very first cornhole club, where we don't have a big community here that we know, we had 60 people. We were like, whoa, that's a lot of people that came and they don't even know who we are. We built that club up to over 100 people on a Wednesday night weekly, so it got really big. And it created this entire family. We definitely felt like we had our people very quickly after a very tragic situation where we completely lost everything. And it would be really easy to get stuck in that and isolate yourself and just feel like, why did this happen to me? And why was my town taken? And why was my community taken? And it was easy just to go, okay, well, this is our new friends, our new family, our new community, and we're thriving.

• 6:29Laurie Santos?

  All thanks to an outdoor game with a goofy name. But is tossing beanbags really all that different from any other social activity? Michelle certainly thinks so. And in this final episode of the Happiness Lab's season on creative ways to cope, we'll find out why.

• 6:46Laurie Santos?

  If you've ever been to a backyard barbecue or college tailgate, you might already know how cornhole works. But for those of you who haven't, here's a quick rundown. The game involves a pair of wooden boards, each with a circular hole near the top, and a set of four square bean bags. The rules are simple. Toss a bag toward the board, aim for the hole, and score points if the bag lands on the board, or even better, if it falls through the hole. The name "cornhole" comes from what used to fill the bags. Yes, back in the day, it was dried corn kernels.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  I don't know if they still sell them like that, but they did when we first started. We would leave them outside and the rats would eat them and we had to keep replacing them over and over and over. It was a whole thing.

• 7:25Laurie Santos?

  The origin story of cornhole is still hotly debated.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  There are so many stories. I honestly have no idea which one is true.

• 7:31Laurie Santos?

  One popular theory traces cornhole back to 14th century Germany. Some even suggest the game's roots go all the way back to antiquity. But the version of cornhole we know today seems to have emerged from Cincinnati, Ohio in the mid 1900s.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  You're gonna find it in the places that have a lot of land and maybe not a lot of stuff to do.

• 7:50Laurie Santos?

  Michelle's entry into the sport that would later change her life started off unremarkably enough.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I started just like everybody else at someone's backyard, just at a barbecue or a party, and never really thought much of it because I was horrible. So you don't think, oh, I'm gonna like make this my career. It's just this fun thing that you do, right? And I didn't really get into it until my husband was really into it and I realized if I didn't start playing, I was never gonna see him. So that's when I actually started competing, was to connect with him. And also, it was something to do in that sort of elusive 5 to 8 p.m., right, like after work. You just mostly would watch TV or something like that, but he would wanna go outside and throw bags. And it got us in that, you know, side-by-side type of configuration to have conversation.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  So that was a way that we really connected.

• 8:41Laurie Santos?

  At first, Michelle just played casually, but a few tips from her spouse got her thinking more competitively.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  And I saw an instant change in my results. And I thought, wow, if I can see an improvement that quickly with a little tweak, that means I might actually be able to get good at this.

• 8:58Laurie Santos?

  And it turns out, some people are really good at cornhole.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  One of the things I did not realize, embarrassingly maybe, until I got interested in your work, is that this isn't just like the kind of thing people do in their backyards. This is actually a professional sport.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  You're not alone. I'm not alone. Okay. Yeah, I travel all the time, so I always talk to people at the airport. And they're like, I'm sorry, what? You're going to be on ESPN? Excuse me.

• 9:20Laurie Santos?

  The game started getting a lot of attention in 2020 for a rather obvious reason.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  So the boards are going to be 27 feet apart. So it's quite a distance aways. So this really sets it up to explode during COVID because it's naturally socially distanced. So it was one of the only sports on TV in 2020 for a period of time there, which is how it grew so fast. It was just the four players out there. And then you have your two broadcasters, obviously, set aways. And that's the only people in the room, really.

• 9:48Laurie Santos?

  The big leagues of beanbags, as it were, are run by the ACL, the American cornhole league. ACL pro players earn sponsorships and compete in tournaments all over the world.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  When it elevates to that next level is when you start to see all the craziness these pros can do. They push, they cut, they roll, they air mail.

• 10:07Laurie Santos?

  For the uninitiated like me, these are all just advanced techniques for getting the bag into the hole.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  I mean, they block. And I think what's fun about the game in terms of a spectator is it does have defense. You can play an entire defensive game. You can just try to force your opponent to miss. And I think that's a fun way that the game gets really interesting to watch and you get to see all the different strategy.

• 10:29Laurie Santos?

  And Michelle was especially excited to help cornhole players master one particular aspect of strategy, the psychological side of the game.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  I did food psychology. I worked with the mental part of weight and food. So obviously, coming from the world of psychology, it didn't take long for me to realize that this was more mental than physical once you get past the initial mechanics, similar to golf, right? It's a slow paced game. And as you know, the more time you have to think, the more dangerous the mind can be. As opposed to a reactionary sport, right? You're playing football, basketball. There's no time to think. You completely rely on training. You don't have a choice. Well, as much as I tell my cornhole players to rely on their training, their brain can take over and be like, well, I better make this bag. If I don't make this bag, it's going to be bad. I'm going to lose, like all that stuff. So the mental perspective became really interesting to me.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  And I basically started just applying the same things I was teaching people with weight and food to cornhole. It's about presence. It's about mindfulness. It's about breathing, body awareness, your thinking, your limiting beliefs, all of that. All the things I taught there, I just brought over here.

• 11:36Laurie Santos?

  And so your path to taking part in the sport was not just kind of helping cornhole players play better using your psychology training. You also became a cornhole announcer.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Tony steps up to the board. He looks like he's going to start off with a block. That's a perfect block right in front of the hole. It's funny because, you know, as a kid, I did musical theater. As a seven year old, I wanted to be a singer. That died quickly, but I definitely loved being in front of a microphone. So it's going to make it harder for Mark to be able to slide his bag in and could kick off right. Bag kicks off right. Tony should be able to clean this up, get two. I like to perform like that's the theater geek in me still. And so I always saw myself being on a mic or in front of people. I like to speak, things like that. Never did I think I'd be a commentator, but I had started a girl's cornhole podcast

• 12:29Speaker 04

  and ACL heard it and then asked me to come on board because they needed a female voice. And that's kind of where it went from there and silent reporting came after that.

• 12:37Laurie Santos?

  Seems like you've become a bit of a big celebrity in a very tiny world.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  That's exactly it, in a very small world.

• 12:43Laurie Santos?

  But Michelle got more than small world glory out of her love of the sport. When we get back from the break, we'll dig into the surprising psychological benefits of cornhole and why what looks like a simple lawn game might be the key to greater presence, play, and even self compassion. The Happiness Lab will be right back.

• 13:04Laurie Santos?

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• 14:32Laurie Santos?

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• 15:17Laurie Santos?

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• 16:27Laurie Santos?

  A recent poll from the American Psychological Association found that 76% of US adults are so stressed that it's affecting their health, leading to things like headaches, fatigue, anxiety, depression, and trouble sleeping. I know that when I hit a point of extreme stress, I just want to shut off my brain. And that's when I tend to reach for mindless scrolling, even though I know that it usually amplifies my stress rather than fixing it. But researchers have found that there's one powerful way to reduce stress that we often forget about. That stress remedy is simply having fun. Professional American Cornhole League announcer, Cornhole Mish, aka Michelle Thompson, is writing her PhD dissertation on the psychological effects of cornhole.

• 17:10Laurie Santos?

  And fun is something that she thinks about a lot.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  So going back to when I was in the wellness community, I would work with mostly middle-aged women. And they came to me because they were struggling with weight and they had tried everything and nothing was working. They were eating healthy, they were moving, the weight wouldn't budge. And I would work with them and I would immediately notice what was lacking was play, hobbies, social, all of that. It was like their life was just about maybe their families, their work, and the obsession with their bodies and being thinner and being fit. It's so easy to get sucked into that external world when you don't have all of that passionate stuff happening, the soulful hobbies, if you will. But I didn't have a solution back then. I just knew they needed it. So that's why when I first started Cornhole,

• 17:57Speaker 04

  I was like, this is it. Instead of focusing on every calorie you burn and everything you eat and what your body looks like, you're going into a room with people and you're just having fun on a Wednesday night. Don't put all your energy into obsessing about your body. Go have some fun. Put all that energy to trying to throw the bag in the hole. Fly out there.

• 18:18Laurie Santos?

  It makes sense that Michelle made this connection. Psychologically speaking, the most effective fun activities tend to be ones that are social, a little physical, maybe a tad thrilling. Our usual mindless scrolling doesn't qualify as fun in any of these senses. And unlike screen time, true fun tends to get us out of our heads. That low-stakes challenge of trying to land a beanbag into a hole can help us snap out of negative self-talk. Michelle seemed so confident that cornhole was the ultimate solution to stress, I had to check it out myself. My husband Mark and I drove to Burlington, Massachusetts, where the Boston Cornhole Group was having their weekly tournament.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  All right.

• 18:57Speaker 06

  Look at this.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Oh, this is like where it's happening. There's a bunch of people here.

• 19:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't know about our chances.

• 19:05Laurie Santos?

  Mark and I did end up playing, more on that later. But we also had the chance to speak with some of the local competitors. And a lot of them mentioned that stress relief was their main reason for showing up week after week. Some players even used cornhole to cope with big life changes. Take one guy I spoke with, Matt. He started playing cornhole after joining the military and moving very far away from home, all the way to Kuwait.

• 19:30Speaker 07

  So I was deployed overseas with the army and the USL ran cornhole tournaments every Thursday. It was a great reliever. It's honestly probably what I looked forward to every week. It was very hot, but the boards were very sticky. It was like 130 degrees. So a little bit different playing back in New England, but yeah, that's how I got into it.

• 19:49Laurie Santos?

  So the stress-relieving fun of the game is one big psychological benefit. But Michelle argues that cornhole can also make players more present.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  You cannot play your best game if you're not present. Probably my favorite part, because I was a yoga teacher for many years. Now, let's not beat around the bush. There is a component of cornhole that is connected to alcohol. I know. We can't pretend that's not there. I know that's not the healthiest component of cornhole.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  I heard it's called throwing juice, is this right?

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, aiming juice.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Aiming juice, aiming juice.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  That's what my co-commentator calls it. So that's there. And I always tell people, look, the mindless state is going to be when you're consuming alcohol. And that's okay. That's what you want to do that night. And you don't care about throwing your best. You just want to have a few beers and throw bags, and that's the night you want. You could have that. But if you want to really compete, you cannot. Not successfully do that if you are not in the flow or the play state. And both of those states require presence. You have to be in the body. You have to be aware of when your nervous system changes. Because it impacts your physiology. And when you're in a game, an accuracy game, if your physiology changes by a teeny tiny amount, your bag is going to go somewhere else, not center.

• 21:01Laurie Santos?

  You've also talked about how cornhole can be a way to practice being kinder to ourselves. What do you mean by that?

• 21:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, as humans, we're sort of meaning making machines. So I use cornhole as a way to teach my players not to make so much meaning out of things. Because immediately what they do is they, let's say they miss a bag. Oh, that means I'm off. That means I'm horrible at this. Oh, that means I lost it. And so I've taught them, don't make meaning out of it. Because the truth is, even our top pros don't make every bag in the hole every game. You're not going to make every bag in the hole. But once you make meaning out of it, well, that means I'm off. And then they can spiral. So if we can stop making meaning out of everything, we're going to play a lot better. And guess what? That's pretty helpful for life as well.

• 21:45Laurie Santos?

  I got to see this helpful aspect of cornhole firsthand. Because even with the addition of a little aiming juice, I was pretty bad at my first cornhole attempt. I played three rounds of games and hit the board like twice. Which was embarrassing enough. But cornhole tournaments aren't played solo. When you show up, you get randomly paired with another player. And my unfortunate first partner was George, who happened to be a very, very experienced player. As I continued to whiff shot after shot, my meaning making mind went into overdrive. It kept shaming me, saying that George was going to be pissed. But when I chatted with him afterwards, I learned that all that self criticism was completely unfounded. George, as it turns out, was totally chill about it.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Thanks for being my partner.

• 22:30Speaker 08

  Sure, no problem.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Do you have any comments on my cornhole skills?

• 22:35Speaker 08

  No, just, you know, it takes some practice and, you know, like anything else. You just, you got to kind of feel like it's going to go in. As opposed to when you get too stressed and I think it's very psychological.

• 22:47Laurie Santos?

  Psychologists called these kinds of irrational thoughts cognitive distortions. Things like jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, or all or nothing thinking. And when you're thinking distorted thoughts like these, it's very relieving to realize that your brain is lying to you. Eventually, I switched from George to other partners, and I continued to play like crap. But it quickly became clear that no one seemed to care about my performance as much as my inner critic did. And with that realization, I could finally relax and start having some fun. My husband had a similar takeaway.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  How'd you do?

• 23:22Speaker 06

  Well, I won the game I played against you.

• 23:28Speaker 06

  But other than that, I've had a great learning experience.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, good.

• 23:34Laurie Santos?

  And so it's not just making meaning, though. We can also use cornhole to kind of watch how we change over time. You've talked about how cornhole really is a growth sport. And that can help us promote something that we definitely know is good for happiness, this idea of a growth mindset, like I might not be perfect, but I'm getting better over time. I have time to improve. Is this something you've seen in the players that you've worked with?

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so if you come into the room and you think, I'm never going to be good at this, then you're basically going to be set up for failure, right? But then you walk into this room and every single person in the room says, I was there. That's how I threw too. You're good. You're fine. Hey, just try kind of doing this with your hand. And you see those immediate changes and you realize, oh my goodness, if I actually put time into this, I might actually get better. And if I can get better, then I can get to a point where at least I can compete with the people in this room. And I think as humans, we love that opportunity for quick growth.

• 24:28Laurie Santos?

  And this idea of competition, I think, gets to another benefit of cornhole, which is it's a kind of healthy way to exert our competition muscles a little bit.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely. I am someone who dreams big and dreams often. Maybe other entrepreneurs can relate to this. I was like obsessive about competing in my business. How can I be better? I can get more clients. I can make more money, like just obsessive about it. But it can be very toxic and unhealthy for me to have a goal and then obsess. About that goal so much that I can't be present. I can't be with my family. I can't stop thinking about achieving. And that is not a healthy place for my mind or my body, or the people around me.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  But cornhole is a spot where you can kind of get that kind of competition in a healthier way.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think the reason why it works for cornhole is because it's easy to keep it to that space, at least for me. So if it's a, you know, a Wednesday night and I'm playing in a competition, I can channel all that there if I want. And then when I get home, it's over.

• 25:28Laurie Santos?

  A healthy form of competition, a form of stress relief through play and fun, an evening activity that gets you outside and keeps you mindful and present. All of these features of cornhole can offer a meaningful boost to our well-being, especially when times are tough. But there's still one huge benefit of cornhole that we haven't touched on, the one Michelle says matters most. We'll hear about that benefit, plus a few more takeaways from my own cornhole adventure when the Happiness Lab returns.

• 25:57Laurie Santos?

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• 26:41Laurie Santos?

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• 27:26Laurie Santos?

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• 28:10Laurie Santos?

  That's why I'm headed to CVS Pharmacy to get my flu shot. And honestly, I was really impressed by how easy it was to schedule. With CVS, you can schedule appointments for up to four family members at once, so you can take care of everyone in one go. Just visit CVS.com/flu or use the CVS Health app to find an appointment that works for you. So make protecting yourself this flu season one less thing to worry about. Did you know that flu shots are free with most insurance plans? Visit your local CVS Pharmacy for your flu shot and get a $5 off $20 coupon with any vaccine. Schedule today at CVS.com/flu. Flu shots are no cost with most insurance. Eligibility varies by patient and insurance plan.

• 28:54Laurie Santos?

  Coupon offer not available in select states and is subject to availability. Restrictions apply. Visit CVS.com/flu for details.

• 29:07Laurie Santos?

  If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you've probably already heard that social connection is vital for happiness. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study of human health and well-being that's been ongoing for 86 years, has found that strong relationships are the single biggest predictor of long-term mental and physical health. Unfortunately, building those strong relationships in the modern world can feel pretty tough. But not if you show up at a Cornhole tournament. When I visited that Boston Cornhole group, I quickly realized just how easy it is to strike up a conversation with a total stranger when you're tossing bags right beside them.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  I mean, there's not a lot of spaces right now where I could show up and just meet people from all over Massachusetts with all kinds of different backgrounds.

• 29:51Speaker 06

  It's almost like networking, but you don't have to put the effort in because you're next to somebody. So you're kind of forced to do it, but not in a bad way, in a good way.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Just chatting.

• 30:01Speaker 06

  You're just chatting, yeah, because you're next to each other for 10, 15 minutes at a time.

• 30:05Laurie Santos?

  I had more interesting conversations with more interesting people at Cornhole than I'd had in a while, which made me especially surprised to hear that lots of the folks I spoke with at the event thought of themselves as introverts.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  This is my opponent who demolished me, ruined my score. I'm at the bottom.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  No, I'm too shy for something like this.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Oh, you're too shy?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 30:23Laurie Santos?

  But even after expressing his reserve, this player stuck around and chatted with me for a while.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Catch me out of the house, enjoy playing.

• 30:28Laurie Santos?

  There's something about Cornhole that makes connecting with total strangers feel easier. Academic Cornhole expert Michelle Thompson has seen this benefit play out across all kinds of players.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Probably my favorite thing about Cornhole is the way that it connects people, but I didn't realize how powerful it could be. And there was a player, he was a teenager, who would come to our club, and he was very shy, and he would come with his dad every single week. And in terms of the average Cornhole player, he didn't necessarily fit the mold of what you would expect. He was a little bit eccentric, and when he started playing, he got fairly good fairly quickly. And then he pulled my husband aside and he told him that Cornhole saved his life. And the story that he shared was that he didn't have a lot of friends. And he wasn't super connected to his dad because they didn't have a lot of things in common. And when they started coming to this club, not only did he connect more with his

• 31:24Speaker 04

  father, he found this family that completely accepted him exactly as he was. It didn't matter that he's interested in other things that we're not interested. It didn't matter that everybody there was probably twice his age. None of that mattered. And now it's really fun to watch him because he's older now. So he's taken jobs out of town and he'll come back and play whenever he's in town. And he's just a completely different person. He's 100% himself. It just seems like he's so comfortable in his skin. And that was not the way it was when he first started.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  And this seems in part because cornhole is this unique sport when it comes to kind of connecting with other individuals. Talk about the ways that cornhole uniquely allows us to connect.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  The way that most of these clubs set it up is it's a swap, which means you're randomly paired with four people and you play a game with each person. And so you have four different partners. That's four different connections that you build and you're working together. Now you also have your opponent directly next to you that you're probably talking to as well. And so now you've met eight people, right? Your partners and these different opponents. And then you have a partner going into bracket and that's another person. Now you're playing multiple games with this person. So you build this relationship, this connection, not to mention all the time in between games, that you can connect with these people. So you have to make friends, even if you're sort of shy and sit in the corner in between games,

• 32:47Speaker 04

  you have to play with and against someone every time you walk up to the board. And that to me is what makes it so special is so much time to connect in an environment. And so many people have said, you know, I have social anxiety. I am uncomfortable in these environments. And it still works with cornhole. They're able to overcome that.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  And it seems like being able to overcome that allows for something else to develop that's super good for happiness, which is this sense of community. Talk about the kind of community that gets built, especially when people have cornhole clubs.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  The community is like nothing I've ever seen. Once again, as a someone who geeks out on psychology, this is the stuff that like I can't help but notice. This community comes together for everybody. I mean, we've done cancer fundraisers, like someone who's in chemo and the people in the room don't even know the person and they're more than willing to contribute to make this person have an easier time in that really tough time in their life. My brother-in-law unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago unexpectedly and the entire cornhole, all the clubs in the area came together to raise money for his kids, my nephew and my niece. And my in-laws showed up to this tournament and they were blown away at the amount of people that were in the room and how they were all coming

• 33:59Speaker 04

  together to support them and us. And I've just never seen anything like it.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  We know that doing nice things for other people and having these communities, especially during really tough times can be so important. But so many of us just kind of lack this community. So if something bad happens, we don't have anyone to support us. But it also means if other people are going through tough times, we don't have as obvious mechanisms to support them either. It seems like one of the things that Cornhole is doing is it's creating the kind of thing that the political scientist Robert Putnam talked about as a third place, right? This place that's not home or work, where you can get together and form these relationships that cut across so many different things, but kind of become a really serious community in your life.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, not just locally. Local communities are super important. There's a lot of research on that. But I have found that it extends so far beyond the local. And I know that I could literally move anywhere in the US and I would have an instant family everywhere I go. And it makes it so that there's no fear. It's like, we could move anywhere and we would have friends no matter where we go.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  This idea of a family, I think, gets to another social benefit of Cornhole, it seems, which is that in a funny way, it really promotes belonging. The slogan of the American Cornhole League is, anyone can play, anyone can win. Like, it's just a like, super inclusive sport.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's another thing that's super unique about it is the inclusivity because the rule is just get the bag to the board. You don't have to be athletic. You don't have to have any experience playing any other sport. I've never played sports, ever. So I'm a theater girl, right? I had no athletic training and was able to pick up this game. The cool thing is, because it is a one-pound bag, there's no limitations to who can play. So we have, for example, under 18 players competing in the pro field against adults. I've seen players throw on crutches. I mean, we have players that have no arms, throw with their feet. Dayton Weber is a quadruple amputee. He was a pro for many years. He's that good.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  So, I mean, what sport can you think of where a quadruple amputee would be competing with people with no disabilities at the same level? Literally, anybody can play. So now, all of a sudden, you get to compete and there's no limitations or boundaries to that.

• 36:12Laurie Santos?

  It might seem cheesy, but I did get that feeling of inclusivity at the Boston Cornhole Tournament. There were people of all ages competing with totally different backgrounds, education levels, political affiliations. But everyone just seemed to get along.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  It has a different socio-economic demographic than maybe some other sports, right? A set of boards you can get very inexpensive, or you can make them yourself. And bags are very inexpensive if you don't want to go pro level, if you just want any bags to throw. And so it's just very easy to get started in it, and it doesn't have the same barriers that I would say like golf does, right?

• 36:48Laurie Santos?

  Several of the players I met in Burlington made the same point.

• 36:52Speaker 06

  Maggie, who plays usually here, what is he like, 10 or 11? 14, yeah. He's better. He's like one of the top players. And wait till he grows up and like gains some muscle and strength. But yeah, all ages can play.

• 37:08Speaker 07

  All you need is some grass and some flat land.

• 37:12Speaker 06

  But a lot cheaper than a set of golf clubs, for sure.

• 37:16Laurie Santos?

  Cornhole was starting to sound like the world's most ideal sport. But Michelle is willing to admit that, like everything else, it has its flaws.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  You know, it's not always perfect. I don't want to make it sound like every person that plays cornhole is the best ever, right? I work really hard to make sure that our club is inclusive and that we're so warm and welcoming to new players. And I know that a lot of club directors feel that same way because we want it to continue growing. We're all so nerdy about cornhole that we want the entire world to play it with us because we're like, you're missing out. You got to get over here and play with us. It's too fun for you not to. We're trying to tell everybody. We're screaming from the rooftops, come play cornhole with us. I promise you're gonna fall in love.

• 37:56Laurie Santos?

  What's some advice that people can use to get started? If this discussion has piqued their interest in sort of being a cornhole beginner?

• 38:02Speaker 04

  I hope it has. And if it has, whether you're going for a local tournament or you just want to get equipment, I definitely recommend the ACL.com. So you can put in where you live and it'll show you all the different events there. There's also a forum called Addicted to Cornhole and you can go in there and say, I live here. Is there any clubs nearby? You'll get tons of comments. It's an extremely active community. And obviously you can build your own boards if you want, you know, on a budget. And I've even seen people make their own bags. So, you know, whatever you gotta do to get, to get started, I'd recommend giving it a go. And it gets kids off screens. It gets couples playing together. It brings families together. It's a way to make friends because you could, like I said earlier, you can bring them over to your house. Let's throw some bags.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  It's an easy way to get started.

• 38:49Laurie Santos?

  I hope today's episode inspired you to give this lawn game a chance. My husband and I had such a blast at Boston Cornhole that we're planning to go back and we're hoping to bring some friends. If you're in the area, you should drop by. Just promise not to be annoyed if you get stuck with me as a partner. But if you're still not convinced that an elevated beanbag toss competition is for you, there's still plenty to take away from today's show. First, having fun is one of the most powerful tools we have for reducing stress. And doom scrolling doesn't count. Get outside with other people and do something that's a little thrilling. Second, try to recognize when cognitive distortions are holding you back and find ways to counter your inner critic. My throwing partner, George, wasn't mad at me for missing.

• 39:32Laurie Santos?

  And the people you're convinced are judging you, odds are, they're not either. Third, acknowledge the little wins and celebrate your personal growth, whether that's small improvements with a new hobby or simply making it through an event that triggered your social anxiety. And finally, find a third place, somewhere that's not work and not home, where you can spend time and build community. It doesn't have to be a cornhole league in Burlington, Massachusetts. It could be a community theater, a yoga studio, or a Dungeons and Dragons group. Whatever it is, try to carve out time each week to show up and get to know someone new. This marks the end of our series on creative coping. And since it's summer and I've got a new game to play, The Happiness Lab will be taking a bit of a break.

• 40:15Laurie Santos?

  But not to worry, because we'll be back in a few weeks with our next season of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 40:27Laurie Santos?

  The Happiness Lab is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. When it comes to taking care of their customers, Amica goes the extra mile. From listening to your insurance needs to following up after a claim, Amica provides coverage with empathy. Because as a mutual insurer, Amica is built for its customers and prioritizes you. It's the way insurance should be. Amica: We're your priority number one. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. A business gift should do more than check a box. It should reflect your brand and show someone they're appreciated, recognized, and truly seen. That's why teams trust Forimprint. With thousands of high-quality customizable products, like premium apparel, drinkware, tech, and more,

• 41:11Laurie Santos?

  it's easy to create a gift that feels meaningful and on-brand. And with Forimprint's expert support and their 360-degree guarantee, you can be Forimprint certain. Your order will arrive exactly as intended. Explore gifting with confidence at forimprint.com. Forimprint: For Certain. Life is full of transitions. A new job, a new routine, a new season you didn't quite plan for. So when things shift, it's worth asking. Does your car still fit your life? The right choice won't change everything, but it can make daily moments smoother and a lot less stressful. Cars.com makes it simple. With over 2 million new and used cars,

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