S3 Ep27. From Bartending to the Classroom: Wellbeing, Work and Small Acts of Kindness with Tara Salinas

In this episode of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson speaks with Tara Salinas, an educator, mother,and fervent supporter who brings warmth, humor and practical wisdom to conversations about wellbeing, work and relationships. 

Tara shares how becoming a mother later in life reshaped her priorities and taught her to be more purposeful in her attention, and she reflects on the surprising joys and challenges of parenting a kind and curious 10 year old. She describes her journey to teaching, from an unexpected first class that sparked a love of mentoring to intentionally choosing a small university environment so she can know students by name and support them beyond course content. 

Tara explains her identity as a fervent supporter, the value she places on deep friendships and how small acts of recognition and kindness can create meaningful differences in other people's lives. 

She discusses practical strategies for resilience including movement classes that require no thinking, short naps, solo writing retreats for brain dumps and trying tapping and breath work to reset during stressful times. Tara and her colleague’s Psychology Today blog, The Problem With, translates social science research into accessible guidance, and she celebrates the satisfaction of reaching readers beyond academic journals. 

Looking ahead Tara will launch a new undergraduate course called Wellbeing Work and You that brings together research on happiness, resilience, relationships and workplace practices to give students practical toolkits for living well in their careers. 

The conversation closes with Tara’s invitation to treat people like people, to lean into causes and relationships that matter and to remember that even small gestures of recognition can ripple outward in powerful ways.

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Transcript

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:01.236)

Welcome to another edition of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast that uses overwhelmingly positive questions to learn about our guests, where every episode uncovers extraordinary stories of triumph, growth, and empowerment. Hi, I'm Aderonke Bademosi Wilson, and greetings from Bermuda. My guest on today's show is Tara Salinas. Tara is an educator, a mom, and a fervent supporter. Tara, welcome to the show.

Tara (00:37.612)

Hello, good morning from San Diego!

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:40.96)

So Tara, I'm gonna go to your second descriptor. Mom — tell me about being a mom. What does that look like and feel like for you?

Tara (00:48.782)

It looks like a wild ride that I did not anticipate at all. I would say, well into my mid-thirties, I was solidly on the "I will not be having babies" bandwagon. And then I met my husband. He really liked babies. And I said, okay, we can have one baby. And we did, after some trials and tribulations.

I am somebody who had a kid much later in life, and so I think it's interesting to be somebody who feels very fully set in who they are — in their career and as a person, and who is a bit of a self-admitted control freak — to then have a baby injected into that. Because I learned very quickly that babies do not care what your plans are. They do not care if you're having a good day or if you're very tired or very sad. So there's been a lot of adjustment to that. But now I have a 10-year-old, and we've moved into this phase of life where we're both starting to see our own genetics play out in this unique individual. And it is amazing, but also terrifying. And sometimes hilarious, to hear the things that this kid says.

But it is crazy to me to just witness the way that he interacts with people and how kind he is. My husband and I always joke — we say, like, where did he get that? He's so nice, where did that come from? And so I think, especially in recent years, being a mom and knowing that I'm only doing this once — I have one chance — has really shifted me in terms of what matters and what's important. I definitely was a workaholic. I was tied to my job. I worked a lot, just because of the nature of what I do — there's no nine-to-five in being a faculty member. And so what I've realized, especially in the last few years, is how purposeful I need to be.

Tara (03:14.67)

...in my interactions with him, and in the way that I'm directing my attention, because we know that no matter what we do, he is always listening. Even when we think he is completely ignoring us, he is listening. And so I think that's a useful reminder to me, in just thinking about how I talk and how I act and the way that I interact with other people.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (03:45.92)

Thank you. And so you touched on it — your first descriptor that you use, educator. Tell me more about that.

Tara (03:53.794)

Yeah, so I don't think I realized that teaching was gonna be where my life took me. In fact, I had no desire to really do that. I was on a very different career path, and I kind of randomly got the opportunity to teach a small section of a class called Business, Government and Society at the University of Pittsburgh.

And it wasn't necessarily my discipline — I didn't know much about the topic. All I knew was I needed to stay one week ahead of these undergraduates to get through the semester. And after probably my first week in the classroom, it was like a light bulb turned on, and I realized: A, this is a career opportunity, there's a path to do this full time. And then I really recognized how much joy it brought me to interact with these students and how cool it was to see them get it, to have them be able to put things together. So that sort of developed throughout graduate school.

But then I purposefully came to a university with smaller classes — I typically don't have more than 40 undergraduates in a class. And that means I know their names. I know what they're trying to do with their lives. I can check in on them when they look like they're having a bad day. So to me, education is — yes, it's the content of the classes — but I also feel this really strong responsibility to try and educate them for how to be in the world, and what life is gonna be like, and how they can manage some of the challenges that are gonna come their way. So I feel like, in some ways, I'm always kind of teaching — or lecturing, as my son likes to point out — but I think there's just some great value in sharing what you know and helping other people develop their own points of view.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (06:18.746)

And your third descriptor is fervent supporter. What does that look like?

Tara (06:23.619)

Ha ha ha!

So I think, to me, that means: if you are my friend, if you're someone who I know and I care about — I jokingly say, like, I'll fight a bear for you. I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure that you have what you need. I don't know if "tenacious" is the word, but I also feel like...

I'm one of those people who doesn't have this massive group of friends. I have this smaller circle of people who know that if they call me, whenever it is and whatever they need, I will be there. Do you need me to take you out for a drink because your family is driving you insane? Do you need me to pick you up in the middle of the night because you made bad choices? I do not care — I will be there. That's just kind of fundamentally who I am.

And I don't want it to sound like she only supports the people she cares about — also, we have to acknowledge there's only so many hours in the day, and I only have so much bandwidth. So I find that that steadfastness extends to the people who I know I have the same relationship with —

Tara (07:52.13)

— that I could go to them and I would get the same reaction. And I find that that is not always the case out there. So you have to kind of curate that circle, especially as you get older.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (08:04.438)

And I agree — I believe in really, really strong friendships, and I liked your description: I'll fight a bear for you.

Tara (08:16.236)

Yep. My best friend and I met on the first day of high school, in 1991. And a few years ago, my family were all talking about best friends, and my husband said, well, Mama's my best friend. And my son looked him in the face and said, well, you're not hers — it's Tia Mel Mel. And I said, he's right. And my husband was like, I know.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (08:45.015)

Yeah.

Tara (08:45.016)

She's been around longer. Right? That's just — there are friendships, and then there are those female friendships that sort of defy definition, that will stand the test of time no matter how many people come and go in the process.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (09:07.68)

Tara, thank you. Thank you. And I feel your energy when you say "fervent friend" — I really do, I really do. Please share three interesting things about yourself that our listeners may not know, and your friends will be surprised to learn.

Tara (09:23.768)

Oh my gosh, I don't know. Well, my close friends wouldn't be surprised to learn some of these things, but maybe people at large. In college, my main job was that I was a bartender. And that job prepared me better for being a professor than anything else I've ever done, because I really believe in transferable skills, and how things that seem completely disjointed are connected.

When I think about all the things you have to do to be a bartender — you're multitasking, you're listening to different people, you're remembering things, you're on the move — to me, that's what being in a classroom is like. I have to be able to read the cues, see the people, read their faces, and tell if they're mad, right? And I have to be able to softly respond sometimes to things that are said that may be a little bit off the rails. All of those different skills have really helped me a lot. So I honestly credit that bartending job with being crucial to who I am as a faculty member. And, in more ways than one, I also make delicious cocktails, which was an exceptionally handy skill during COVID.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (10:43.222)

Okay.

Tara (10:46.446)

Also — and I've believed this since probably college — naps are a form of self-care. When I get to a point in the day where my brain is overloaded, it's like, I need a little reset. My 15 to 20 minutes a day is my magical reset button.

Tara (11:11.718)

And I was thinking about this question — the other thing that my inner circle knows is that I love garbage television. Like, just absolute trash where your brain is not engaged at all. Maybe it's dissociation, maybe that's what I'm doing. But I had a friend in graduate school whose theory was: the harder your brain works during the day, the more terrible your television at night needs to be. So that's where I go to reset — I take my nap and then I watch my weekly garbage, and it resets me.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (11:52.406)

Do you want to share some of the shows that you watch?

Tara (11:57.998)

I mean, I will watch anything in the "90 Day Fiancé" category, everything. When my husband and I first started dating, he was like, what is this? And now he's like, oh, it's Sunday, it's time for 90 Day Fiancé. I brought the whole family into my garbage watching. And honestly, when I really think about it, the garbage that I love is about trying to understand why people do what they do. I watch it and I go, like, are you not seeing the red flags? What are you doing? And at the end of the day, is that not what I do for my job? My whole thing is, why are people acting like this? So maybe secretly, my love for trash — I'm just doing research. Really.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (12:53.568)

Tara, thank you. Okay — can you tell us about a recent accomplishment or success that you're particularly proud of?

Tara (13:04.558)

So for almost two years now, my very good friend and I have been writing a monthly blog at Psychology Today. Part of why I'm proud of it is because, first of all, it's fun. But I'm also proud of it because typically in academia we have to write in a certain way, and the audience we reach is very limited — studies show that a typical academic paper has fewer than 10 people read it. So, who cares? You spent all this time.

Instead, my friend Ed Love, who's a professor of marketing — he and I went to grad school together — we said, let's write about stuff that we care about for an audience it might actually be useful to. So every month we pick a topic that's on our brains and that's important to us, and we write about it. We use peer-reviewed social science research, but we try to frame it in a way that normal people would actually enjoy. We always keep an eye on how many people have read it, and I think by the next post we should be up to about 70,000 readers — which isn't a lot; it's not 70,000 readers per post, it's a few thousand — but what we think is that people find what we write when they need it.

Some of the blogs that have really gotten a lot of traction — we wrote one about grief that I wanted to write after a friend of mine passed away. A lot of these are things that Ed and I are kind of working through ourselves, but it makes me so happy and proud that other people resonate with it. When we post something and see other people repost it, or say, wow, this was really helpful to me — that is so fulfilling. And the fact that I do it with a friend, that we genuinely enjoy writing it — we've gotten to the point where...

Tara (15:23.778)

...when we're editing it, we no longer know who wrote what. So we joke about sharing a brain when it comes to this. And I think there's also just something joyful about doing something that's work, but that you find meaning in, and that you're doing with someone you enjoy working with.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:46.614)

It is very rewarding. So how can people find your articles?

Tara (15:52.558)

They can just search my name on Psychology Today — our blog is titled "The Problem With." We frame things around that. This month's is going to be called "The Problem with Empathy." Empathy is great in theory and we love it, but empathy can also be a recipe for burnout, and it's sometimes driven by our own biases — which isn't the way we normally think about it. So we like to present things that seem great on the surface and talk about how there might be different ways to approach that particular problem.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (16:38.24)

Can you go a little bit more into that? I'm gonna go look for the article, but tell me a little bit more about it.

Tara (16:42.318)

Yeah.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (16:48.338)

Looking at our biases, our own biases — I'm just curious.

Tara (16:53.142)

Yeah, so when I was doing the research for this one, I was reading about how empathy evolved as a biological instinct that favors the people — essentially the animals — in your in-group. So you feel more empathy towards similar others, and I was like, okay, wow, that seems problematic.

And honestly, the reason we started working on this particular topic is because for us it's the end of the semester, and the end of the semester is when Ed and I get the emails from our students that are a lot, right? It's like: all of this happened, and this is why I didn't get what I wanted in the class, and I would like you to give me a higher grade because if I don't have it, the entire future of my life is done. So we get these pleas that elicit empathy in us. But it's not like we just get one of them.

I teach ethics, Ed is in marketing — he talks a lot about human behavior — and we need to remind ourselves that there is an entire other group of students who need to be considered. Yes, this situation may be unfortunate and we feel for you, but we can't change this grade just because it will help you. That kind of knee-jerk empathetic response, where we just want to make you feel better because then we'll feel better, is actually harming you in the long run. If every time something goes wrong you send a sad email and people go, okay, it's fine — that's not going to work. You've got to figure it out. So we try to reframe empathy, to put a little space between yourself and that feeling. We talk about the use of rational compassion — in social psychology these are different constructs, they use different parts of your brain. Rational compassion is all about being an observer of the situation, not letting...

Tara (19:21.934)

...your emotions drive your behavior, but understanding: hey, I see that you're having a hard time, this is unfortunate and I feel for you. However, I have a syllabus and there are guidelines, and I often lean on the fact that this is an ethics class, and it would be unethical for me to treat you differently than I've treated other students.

And that can be really hard, especially because — like I was saying earlier — I know these students. I know if they've been struggling and I want to help them. But that kind of help isn't actually going to be beneficial to them long-term. It's a very band-aid solution to a much larger issue.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (20:11.222)

Thank you, Tara, thank you — for helping me see empathy differently, but also for helping me think about rational compassion, and the difference between the two, and helping me work through and find balance as I'm navigating life.

Tara (20:37.838)

Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about empathy is: when you see someone else in distress, our brains mirror that. So when I get that email from a student, I feel the same way that they feel. And if I get 10 of those, or 20, or 30, I'm then having to manage that. Though I feel for them, that's not part of what I need to be doing. So honestly, part of it is about setting up a little bit of a boundary for yourself and saying, I can't be taken in by this, because it's going to lead to decisions that aren't the best for everybody.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (21:25.718)

Thank you, thank you. Please tell us about a time when you made a difference in another's life. What were the circumstances? Paint a picture for me.

Tara (21:37.644)

Okay, so — while I was thinking about this question, it made me realize how infrequently we recognize when we do good stuff, and maybe that's something I need to think about. But last night I was thinking about this and I had to call my son over. I said, I need your help, please come here. He said, what do you need? And I read him the question, and he said, well, you always help me. I said, like how — I feed you, you mean like that? But how? And he said, well, when I feel sad or when I'm upset, you always help me think through it, and we talk about it, and then at the end I always feel better.

That made me feel good, but it also made me realize that's my approach to a lot of things — the "okay, so how do we fix this, how can I help, what do you need" approach. That's been a shift for me — maybe a shift since having kids. It's not "what do I think you need" or "here's what you should do," but more of "I'm here, I am able to help you, tell me where to go — or if you need me to tell you something because you can't even think about it, I'll do that as well." This idea of trying to make people feel better about life in general, and sprinkle in a little lightness, sunshine. I love giving a random compliment to a stranger — if I see you wearing a cute outfit, I am gonna tell you.

And it takes two seconds, but the smiles that people have on their faces when you say, girl, those shoes are amazing — I feel the same way when people do that for me. I'm just realizing that making a difference in someone's life can be so minuscule. Often I think we convince ourselves it has to be these massive overtures. I'm a fan of just a random note. Lately —

Tara (23:59.278)

— I don't even remember what I was reading, but it gave the suggestion: if you think about somebody, if they're on your brain, shoot them a text. Say, hey, I'm just thinking about you. How long does that take? We're on our phones 24/7. It's stuff like that where I'm realizing those interactions are good for me as well — they infuse a little bit of joy into the day, and I've been trying to do more of that. Because, first of all, we know from research that just recognition — people being told, hey, I see you and you're doing a good job — goes a long way, but that is not the norm right now. It's not the norm in society, it's not the norm in organizations. So much of it is: could we just treat people like people? Can we just acknowledge that we're all just trying to make it, and that most people still don't actually know what they're doing — we're all just figuring it out along the way. So, be a kind person at the end of the day.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (25:13.886)

Indeed. And it seems so simple, right? Be a kind person. Be a kind person.

Tara (25:19.031)

And yet... we seem to be not doing a very good job of it as a society at the moment.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (25:32.446)

What are some of the key strengths and qualities you rely on to make a difference — as your son said, helping him think through situations, and then determining, by asking people, how best to help and support them?

Tara (25:52.75)

So I think there's a lot to be said about just your character as a person — fundamentally, at your core, who are you? I teach about this, I research this, I think about this. And to me, the idea of purposefully trying to show kindness is important. But then in other situations, it's also about being a fervent supporter, like I said earlier. I feel like part of my character is that people know: if I say I'm gonna do something, I'm going to do it. You don't need to remind me, you don't need to ask me again. That is, at my core, who I am as a person.

And I think, because of that, it has led me to do things people didn't think I should or could do — like getting a doctorate, which is not something anyone in my family has done. I didn't know anything about it. I am not the smartest person in the room, but I sure as hell am determined, and if I decide I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it.

I think that ties into the importance of character, and people knowing who you are. A lot of people don't necessarily have a read on that, or who they are depends on what situation they're in. I tell my students, when I come to class, this is me — you're not getting a different version of me. I'm going to talk to you the same way I'm going to talk to anyone else. I got to a point in my life where modulating who I am for the audience no longer interests me, and it no longer serves me — I think it's actually detrimental to those around me. I am who I am.

Tara (28:15.084)

For better or worse.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (28:19.328)

Thank you, Tara, thank you for sharing that. Can you recall a situation where you overcame a challenge that led to personal growth? What did you learn from that experience?

Tara (28:34.316)

Yeah, so when I thought about this question — in academia, and this isn't necessarily something we were prepared for, there's a lot of rejection. Rejection from faceless journal reviewers can actually have an impact on your career. Earlier on, you spend all this time and energy and you write this paper, and you need it so you can get tenure and keep your job. It's this cycle, and then you get roadblocked by things that are out of your control.

I think the resilience I have — that I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing — has been really helpful. And one thing all of those rejections, as terrible as they've been, have taught me is that there are a lot of different paths to success. Maybe your article got rejected at a particular journal — okay, pivot it, what are the other options? When I think about what happens every time I get a rejection — because they're constant — I wrote down my process. The first step is: you get mad, because you're like, how dare they, who are these people to tell me my ideas are not good. You get to be mad, and then you've got to shake it off and move on.

I think sometimes people say, be the bigger person, don't care — well, we're still people, and it sucks when someone you don't know, who isn't in your life, says this isn't good enough. That's a bad feeling, and you're allowed to feel that, and just say, hey, this sucks. You can be upset for a few days, but you can't let it fester. For me, what that sometimes means is: that paper — alright, friend, I'm going to put you in a drawer...

Tara (30:46.018)

...and I'm gonna work on something else. In my case, I'm gonna go write another Psychology Today blog that makes me feel good, take some deep breaths, then come back to it. This idea that one roadblock isn't actually a roadblock — it's a reframe, it's a reset. It still is frustrating, but it's not the end of the game.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (31:22.272)

So what tools do you use to keep going — to step back, feel your feelings because they're valid, and then say, okay, I've got to go write another article, but I need to figure out this academic paper I'm writing. How do you do that? How would you guide somebody to stop and then go?

Go ahead again.

Tara (31:53.208)

So I realized that for myself, I really needed to find outlets where I wasn't thinking about work — because if I'm in my office, I'm in my head, I'm kind of spinning out. One of the things that I realized was so beneficial is finding workouts where I don't have to think about anything.

I'm not a person — and I had to learn this — who can go to the gym and get on a treadmill or lift weights. I'm going to get bored, I'm going to space out, I'm not actually going to do it. What I need is to have a class on my schedule, on my calendar, just like it's a meeting — I need to go there and have someone else, an expert, tell me what to do. I do not want to think about it, I can't think about it. I make decisions all the time, my brain is always on, so having somebody else say, pick up that weight, do this — great, whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to do it, I'm not even going to think about it. Those three or four times a week that I go to a workout like that, your brain just gets to space out.

I know for some people it could be going for a run, movement in general — the research shows it's so good for you. But I've also learned that, for me, that's exceptionally useful. The other thing I do is: once or twice a year, I book myself into an Airbnb by myself. I take my computer and I essentially do a brain dump, where I stay up until three in the morning writing, making lists, doing whatever I need to do to get all of the crazy out of my brain and organized in some fashion — because learning the times of day when your brain works best is really important.

Tara (34:17.518)

And the way my life is structured is around the life of an elementary school kid — I'm up at 6:30 in the morning and in bed not that late. But I know my brain works best starting at 4 p.m. and until after midnight — that's not the cycle I typically have. So when I have those few days, not having to worry about who's going where, or if we need groceries, or anything else — that helps me feel a lot more settled, and I love a plan, that's how my brain works. Having that time allows me to finish projects I want to finish, to plan, to reset, and also to go to bed without setting an alarm, which makes me super happy.

The third thing — and this isn't foolproof, but — if and when you can just check out, whether for a day or a few days... the reason our brains work so well on vacation, and we come up with great ideas when we're away, or even in the shower, is that disconnecting from the norm and letting your brain wander is where I'll come up with a new idea for how to fix the paper that got rejected. So I think, for me, getting a better understanding of how and what works for my brain has been really useful.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (36:09.718)

Thank you.

You are listening to ABWilson's Heart of the Matter podcast.

Welcome back to ABWilson's Heart of the Matter. My guest today is Tara Salinas. Tara, we've talked about your job as a bartender that actually prepared you to be a college professor, and how it taught you to deal with different types of people at different times. You've talked about the work you do with your colleague, writing for Psychology Today, and the fact that you are indeed a fervent supporter of those closest to you. What self-care practices or strategies help you sustain your energy and motivation while navigating your journey?

Tara (37:20.718)

So I thought that was what I answered for the previous one.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (37:28.406)

So, okay.

Tara (37:31.17)

The self-care is all about getting time to myself to reset, because what I really realized during COVID was how much time I spent on my own as a professor. It didn't actually occur to me that I spent so much time just thinking, processing things, and writing. During COVID, when the ability to spend any alone time went away, it really impacted my mental health and my ability to accomplish things.

So now I carve out that time for myself — it's on my calendar, my family understands it — and I think that's one of the places I'm really fortunate: when I start to get a little squirrely, and my husband can tell I have too much rattling around in my brain, he'll say, please go — just go, take an afternoon, go spend a night someplace else, just go. So I think a lot of the self-care piece is about finding that self-awareness — if you don't get a read on yourself and what you need, and you push that aside, it makes it a lot harder to allow yourself to reset.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (39:07.026)

Thank you. And when you take these times for yourself, what do you do during them? I know you talked about doing brain dumps on your computer — but is there anything else you do to cleanse and clear your mind while you're in that quiet space? Presumably quiet.

Cause you don't —

Cough, cough.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (39:56.45)

So Tara, can you talk about, when you have these alone times, what happens? I know you've talked about doing a brain dump, but how do you clear space for yourself in order to come back to yourself, as it were?

Tara (40:15.054)

So part of it is — I've tried many times to be the person who meditates. I love the idea of it, and when I do it, I feel amazing, but I don't often take the time to do it. What I've caught myself doing lately is: when I'm feeling a little unhinged and unsettled, I'll just take a minute to do some slow, deep breaths. It's so easy, but it makes you feel so much more settled. So sometimes, when I'm away in that sort of space by myself, that's a thing I do.

I also started learning about, and doing, tapping, to reset my system. I learned about it at a conference recently — I knew about it and was a little skeptical, but I did it at a conference, in a 15-minute session, and at the end of the 15 minutes I had halved my breathing rate. I could just feel the calmness in my body. Since then I've worked with a friend who's certified in tapping, and I've started doing it, and to me — it works. It's tactile, it's quick, and there's something about it — it just feels kind of like instant gratification, which maybe isn't the best descriptor of it, but it feels like it resets my brain and brings me back to a really solid baseline.

I know for me, as someone who was diagnosed with ADD way later in life — my brain, she goes, right? Trying to shake it off and focus can be really challenging for me sometimes. And I think the physicality involved in the tapping —

Tara (42:37.088)

— is just something that works for me.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (42:42.827)

Thank you for sharing. How might sharing your experiences of success and growth create a positive ripple effect in your family, community, the world?

Tara (42:54.616)

So I think about this a lot, and it's really important to me — because when I think about my own life, it's taken me almost 50 years to really step into my capabilities and who I am as an individual and as a woman, and I don't want other people to wait that long.

This is something I really talk about in my classes, especially my Women in Management class, but I bring it up in all of my classes, and it really comes out when I speak to women's organizations. My heart — where I love doing discussions and conversations — is with women who are graduating college and going out into the workforce, and women who've been in the workforce for less than 10 years. Those individuals who are really trying to find their footing. I feel like we don't often hear somebody else say, you've got this — there aren't necessarily enough female mentors in the workplace, and I love being able to say: there is value in who you are and the experiences you've had.

An organization that doesn't acknowledge that isn't a good organization. Because what I see happen is my undergraduates, especially these young women who are leaving, say: well, I had an internship, and people didn't necessarily listen to me because they didn't think I knew what I was talking about. I love being able to use the position I have to say: you know more than they do, in some cases. You have a different experience in the world, and that is valuable — valuable to a leadership team, and, frankly, valuable in business decisions. So trying to get them to rethink their position in —

Tara (45:10.882)

— the world is something that, if I can convince them of it, makes me so happy, because that's the ripple effect. Every semester I have a hundred-ish students, and they're gonna go out into a hundred-ish different organizations, and before long they're gonna be managing people. So I feel like if I can infuse some humanity and respect, and some acknowledgment that everybody has their own set of valuable skills, into that — going out into the real world makes me feel really good. That's where I think the contribution is that I can make.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (45:53.591)

Thank you. What exciting opportunities do you see on the horizon? How do these opportunities align with your passions and aspirations?

Tara (46:05.614)

So, I'm super excited — starting in the fall, I am launching a new class at my university for undergraduate business students called Wellbeing, Work and You. To me, this feels like a culmination of all the things I care about coming together. I've been on a learning path about what makes a good life — I'm an ethics professor, so when I think about what a meaningful life entails, part of that is understanding yourself, but there are all these other components that don't get a lot of attention in the business world, and they're so important.

I've been spending the last few months — I'm going to spend the whole summer — putting this class together. It brings together all of these things that I love. I get to talk about mindfulness, stress reduction, resilience, and the importance of finding a different path. I get to talk about relationships and communication and all of these things that seem squishy, like a gray area, but are really the core of a well-lived life — and a lot of these things can be implemented in business organizations. These are not separate ideas: if your employees are living well-lived lives and their wellbeing is being considered, that's great for the employees and it's great for the organization.

Honestly, it's going to involve a lot of self-reflection that I'm going to do with them — they may not like some of it, and I may not like some of it — but I feel like this is the kind of stuff that, if you don't take the opportunity and carve out time in your life to do it, it's just not going to happen. I'm super excited that it feels like the academic research I've been doing on —

Tara (48:31.64)

— happiness and well-being, along with the Psychology Today blog, which is more mainstream, and then this class for my students — it all feels like it's coming together, and it's all stuff I think is important. It feels like the potential to have a legitimate impact is there, and that's what makes me really excited. I have 24 students signed up in the fall, and if half of them engage in what we're doing, I feel like they're gonna leave with a toolkit of things that will make them feel better in themselves and in their jobs out there in the real world. That is why I do the things that I do.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:20.98)

Congratulations and good luck. I look forward to hearing of your successes in this new class — and actually, I may check in with you, because I want to see what some of the other topics are, the areas you get to cover, and get to learn a little about as you're going through it. So, good luck.

Tara (49:40.546)

Thank you.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:42.678)

What brings you joy?

Tara (49:44.398)

Joy is one of the topics I'm covering. What brings me joy is watching this kid in my house develop into a full-fledged person with compassion, who asks great questions and who is obsessed with his dogs.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:50.912)

Bye.

Tara (50:10.316)

Right? What brings me joy is stuff that I didn't used to think was a big deal. It's randomly deviating from my plans to have coffee with friends and laugh — because spontaneity is not my strong suit, but leaning into it, and chucking my plans for a good connection with somebody. That's the kind of stuff I'm finally realizing is what legitimately brings me joy. Conversations like this, right? Leaving a discussion where your face hurts because you've been smiling so much — that is what brings me joy.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (51:00.023)

Thank you. What book recommendations do you have? It could be a book or books you've read recently, or something that has stayed with you over the years.

Tara (51:11.104)

Okay, I had to whittle down my list because I love this question. I'll go to two categories — nonfiction and fiction. For nonfiction, as I've been prepping for this wellbeing class, I've done a lot of reading. One of the books that really got me was called "Happiness Is a Choice You Make," by John Leland. In this book, he spent a year interviewing people at the end of their lives — spending time with people in different areas of New York, listening to their stories. It was just such a good reminder — some of these people had great lives, some of them had hardship after hardship, and it's just them saying, yeah, that was terrible, but what am I going to do, be sad forever? Just the mindset of it. It was so good, I bought several copies of it to give to other people as gifts. So that one was excellent.

The other one I read that I think about constantly is called "iGen," by a sociology professor at San Diego State University — I think her last name is pronounced Twenge. It's awesome, because as someone who's teaching Gen Z students right now, and they're so different in so many ways, and I couldn't get my brain around why — this is one of those books where I felt like I highlighted 90% of it, because it clarified so much in terms of how different generations have raised their kids, and how that plays out when they come to college campuses. For me, especially if any listeners have Gen Z employees, or, like me, our faculty — this was like a mirror into understanding why these students and individuals are how they are. And it helped me think about, okay, so now what, how do we handle that. So those are my two nonfiction picks.

And there are two fiction ones I read lately that I loved. The first one is called "Culpability," by Bruce Holsinger — a little mashup of ethics, AI, and family drama that I really enjoyed. The other one was called "The Measure," by Nikki Erlick, and it's really a question of how you want to live your life. The premise is: one morning, everyone in the world wakes up and there's a box at their doorstep, and inside the box is a string that represents the length of their life that they have left. So it's this question of — would you want to know? If you knew, what would you do differently, what would that look like? It had some really good questions to think about, but the storytelling itself was also really good.

I could probably give you like 30 other books, because — and this may be a function of my ADD — I always have my book on my Kindle, my hard copy nonfiction book, and my hard copy fiction book, and my audiobooks as well, in both fiction and nonfiction, and I bop between all of them at all times. So maybe I need to be better at being alone in the silence of my brain, but sometimes it's a lot, and so I go to other people to get me back on track.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (55:15.019)

Tara, Tara, you — I'm not familiar with any of these books, I'm going to look them up and put them on the website. So, we're drawing to the end — this has been an amazing conversation. Do you have any final thoughts? Is there anything else?

Tara (55:41.774)

I think, for me, one of the things I say in my class all the time, and that I think is just valuable, is to remember that the people you work with and interact with are also people. We're all bringing our own sets of frustrations and experiences, and just life, with us. I think the idea of finding some kindness and giving people a little bit of grace, especially now, is so important. And I know it's often not easy — that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be kind to people who are purposefully being unkind to you, but having the resolve to just ignore the...

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (56:21.943)

Thank —

Tara (56:40.332)

— dramatics, and lean in and give your energy to the people and causes who matter to you — that is so important, right? You've got to pour yourself into something, and I think thinking about what that is, and where you can make a difference — even if it's the tiniest thing, saying thank you to a colleague at work, bringing your friend a cup of coffee that they didn't ask for — just recognizing that those little things you do, to let people know that you see them, are so valuable, and can turn around somebody else's day. And, not to be dramatic, they can turn around somebody else's life. You don't know what people are managing, and frankly, you don't have to know. All you have to know is that if you treat them like a person, it's good for them, and it's good for you.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (57:40.599)

Tara, thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time to join me today. And here are some appreciation nuggets that I'm taking away from our conversation. One of them is what you just said — lean into the people and causes that matter to you. You also said —

as you're talking to young women about to go into the workforce, or who are already in the workforce and young in their careers — there is value in who you are and the experiences that you have.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:25.27)

And what you also said in your reflections — that you've learned there are a lot of different paths to success. And you've also indicated that, for those you are a fervent supporter of, you will fight a bear for them.

Tara (58:47.854)

Indeed I will.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:52.118)

Tara, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you taking the time to join me on ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast dedicated to asking overwhelmingly positive questions as we uncover incredible stories and wisdom of people you may know. Tara Salinas, thank you so much.

Tara (59:14.392)

Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun, and a great way to start a Friday in San Diego.