We are here with Ariel today after the lecture. Thank you so much for coming to UCI and talking to our students. Your presentation was so inspirational. I almost wanted to leave the classroom and go start running in the nature. But I couldn't because I had to sit there, so thank you. You're welcome. I was a good student and I took notes when you were talking. I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions from what you presented. Okay. One of the points that you brought up was this notion that if you have a bad day, go help someone. Yeah. I think this is brilliant. This is such a brilliant idea. Thank you. Can you give us some examples of how we can do it? Well, it's always helped me and I came from, I guess an environment or a town where you're always helping people, where you're helping your elders. Mine go back to that. It's like if you're having a bad day, usually I'll go help my grandma chop wood. I can't really apply that to kids here. I don't think you guys are chopping wood. No, they don't chop woods here. Well, it could be simple like if you see an older person carrying their grocery bags, ask them to help them or to roll their cart. If you see someone crossing the street or an elder person crossing the street, help make sure they're okay. If you see a student, I don't know, carrying multiple bags, ask them for help, go and help them. If you start looking around, there's always opportunities to help people. If you see someone studying, ask them if you can help quiz them. I'm trying to see more things that you could do in the city. It doesn't even have to be helping, it could just be a random act of kindness. You could always let someone skip you in line if they look like they're in a rush or if they have less things than you do, let them go first. There's all these little ways that you could make someone's day or make someone else smile. It doesn't have to just be about helping, it could be about just being kind. It's amazing how when you help someone really differs. You're helping somebody, but you're the one who gets the immediate benefit and it makes you feel so much better. You don't have to spend money. It's free. It is free, I just think. You see even if you smile at someone and then they smile back, it's an immediate boost in your self-confidence. That's true. You could change someone's day or trajectory of their day. You could even change your life in simple ways, just being kind. Also, you never know what people around you are going through. That's true. Someone could be having a horrible day and just by you being nice to them can make their day. How good does that feel? I don't think it's a bad thing to say, "Oh, I'm having a bad day, I should go help someone." That's good. It makes you feel good. If you have a bad day, go help someone. Yeah. You also talked about happiness and be all obsessed with happiness. You are a nation that is obsessed with happiness. You talked about how many books you have on happiness and self-help books on happiness. What are some of the things that you do to make you happy, except for helping others? First one, just being outside. That's my church and I go there every day. But I just love being outside and I told them there's never a time where I go outside and I feel worse. I always feel better, even if it's negative 60, I just feel better breathing fresh air and it's home. So going outside. Other things that make me happy, I love reading, I love learning. There's a quote, I learned it from Oprah, but she says, "Happiness is a joy you feel while working towards your potential." It's like when you're bettering yourself, if you're learning, if you're being creative, if you're trying to grow, you feel good. I think that's when you find true joy and happiness as even you're trying to become the best version of yourself. That makes me happy. Being with my sisters. My sisters are my two best friends. I have two of them, and so my little sister and my other older sister, and just being around them, those are what matters, my friends and my family, so to spend more time with my friends. That's my superpower, picking the best friends. I love my friends. I'm superwoman at picking friends. Just spending time with people I love, being in nature, and then just help, trying to be kind to people and then trying to better myself even if it sounds selfish. But I love learning, and I love growing, and I like challenging myself. That's what makes me happy. That's very interesting. I was going to ask you about challenging yourself, but you brought it up yourself. What are some ways that you think our students can challenge themselves? Because in the class, you talked about scare yourself, do something that is uncomfortable, do something that is challenging. What are some of the ways that our students can challenge themselves, in simple ways? First, if someone gives you an opportunity, even if it's scary, say yes, because these doors may open. Just by saying yes, so many opportunities could come about. That's always my first rule; if something is scary, say yes. That's a hard question. I was starting a new hobby, a new activity in the nature that they are not comfortable. Because you talk about minus 60 here in California. When it's 50 or 60, it's too close for us. I'm talking about plus 50 and plus 60. We stay home. Try a new activity, try a new hobby, try hanging out with people that are completely different from you. We're all stuck to people that are so similar to us and we like being around like-minded people. It's like Facebook algorithms, everything that's on your post is like-minded. You get all the news that you think you want. All your friends are just like you, so maybe that could be a big challenges to go hang out with someone that is completely different. Go eat something that you've never eaten before. That's my favorite part of traveling is I try to find a food in a market that looks weird or that I've never heard of and I'm like, yeah, this is going to be it. That could be the challenge. Just go try something new, hang out with someone that is completely different from me or that has a completely different belief system because you could learn and that's the thing choose if you hang out with people that are not like you, you learn from them and you realize, oh my god, just because they believe in a different political thing, if they're from a different religion, who cares? They're still a person. They still may have a kind heart and that's how you grow and that's how your perspectives change too. We're all humans. I told the kids just like, we're all people. We all want similar things. We want to feel loved, we want a purpose, we want a mission, and we want to tell our stories and feel like we have a purpose in this world. That's very true. You said that in the class too. Yeah. I loved what you said when one of our students asked you the question about traveling and how your interactions with people. You said, "People are usually nice." It is true that really, by nature, we like to help someone. We like to help people. It makes us feel good. It's so much harder to say no to people. If someone asks you to help them, you always are like, sure, yeah. It takes so much more energy to be like, no. In general, people are kind and people want to be helpful. I think we're so wrapped up in the news and media and you only hear the bad stuff and so you have this thing in your head there's so much bad out there, but we don't report on all these amazing things that people are doing. I think in general, people are good. Yes. Yeah. This is my last question. Can you tell us about your nonprofit foundation? Yeah. My nonprofit is called Popping Bubbles and it started as a suicide prevention. But for me, I wanted to make it positive because I think life is great. In order to stop suicide, you have to show people that life is worth living. There's so many opportunities out there. Life is sometimes really hard, but just getting it into our heads that life isn't just a straight line. It's up and down, and up and down. At those high moments, no. Then the next thing might not be that great. Prepare yourself mentally to be like, okay, things couldn't be bad. What are your coping skills? Is it going to be to sit in my bed all day and pity myself? Or am I going to go on a walk? Am I going to call my friends? Am I going to help somebody? Go into nature. Go into nature, that's so important. Then in those low moments, it's going to get better. If you do these things that make you happy. It's always going to be up and down because also how boring would it be if it was just always just a flat line. That's what we do with Popping Bubbles is we travel a lot to mostly Northern communities and in Northern Canada. But we're going to a lot of Indian reservations and talking to kids about just setting goals for themselves, having dreams, exposing them to all of these opportunities that are out there for them. Because the more exposure, the more they'll want to get up in the morning, and they will want to get excited about living. That's what Popping Bubbles is. Very good. Well, good luck with that. Thank you. It sounds very, very interesting. Thank you so much. I promise this is the last question. Ask away. Will you come back to UCI? Yes. I would love to come back. I have her on camera. She's coming back. Yes, I would love to come back. It's sunny. Everyone's nice. Please have me back. You will be back. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming to our campus. I'm going to give you a hug. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to us. You heard Ariel, she is coming back to UCI. Thank you.
