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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating 10 Years of #HappyActs With Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 457 of Live Happy Now. We're headed into March, and that gives us plenty of reasons to celebrate. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Live Happy's Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, because, well, we love March. In addition to Daylight Savings Time and March Madness, it's our Happiness Month. Deb is here to tell us what's new as we celebrate our 10th year of #HappyActs. Let’s have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:32] PF: Deb, Happy Anniversary, 10 years of #HappyActs. [00:00:37] DH: I know. It seems like just yesterday we were doing our first #HappyActs campaign. I really can't believe it's been 10 years but – [00:00:43] PF: I know. Time flies. [00:00:45] DH: Looking at my pictures of first #HappyActs walls, which I have some pictures of that on the wall, my kids are really tiny in those pictures. I guess it has been 10 years. [00:00:54] PF: Now that like one's driving, and they're all doing stuff. [00:00:56] DH: Yes. It happens. It happens. [00:01:00] PF: For the uninitiated, before we get into what we're doing this year, tell us what a happy act is. [00:01:06] DH: Well, a happy act is a small thing that you intentionally do to make the world a happier place. They can be little things like paying someone a compliment, opening a door for someone, buying a cup of coffee for someone, planning a date with a friend that you haven't seen for a while, going out to lunch, giving someone at the office a thank you note, any little thing that you do to make the world a happier place. Here's the catch. I think most people do those in their everyday course of life. I mean, I certainly am nice to people and polite. I know you are as well. I think most of our listeners certainly fall into that category, and we kind of do it out a habit. When you do a happy act, do it with intention because that way, you benefit from it, as well as the person you're doing it for. All those studies show that when you do something nice for someone, when you say thank you or pay someone a compliment, yes, they feel good. But by doing those things, you actually feel even better than the person who you likely did something for. [00:02:08] PF: Absolutely. [00:02:09] DH: Do them with intention. [00:02:11] PF: I love that, and it reminds me of the very first year that we were doing #HappyActs. We're going to get into that in a little bit, but we had a wall in Chicago. The weather was horrible. It's March and it's Chicago. We moved inside a mall. We walk around. We're getting people – for those who don't know, we have people write down, “I will share happiness by,” and then they fill out the card and tell how they're going to share it. We saw this woman walking through the mall, and she was in her 80s. She had this bright yellow flower on and this bright red hat. I walked over to talk to her and said, “Did you know it's the International Day of Happiness?” She didn't know what that was or that it was. I thought maybe she had planned it since she was dressed so happy. She told me that every day when she left her home, no matter where she was going, even just to the grocery store, she would put on that flower, and she would put on that hat because it made people smile. She goes, “When I see people look at me and smile, it makes me feel good.” I thought this is a woman who's doing a happy act intentionally every day of her life and didn't even know #HappyActs were a thing. [00:03:17] DH: No. I love that story because so many people do things every day to improve the world around them. What we want to do is encourage that. We ran into so many people that first year that were like, “What is this about? Are you selling something? We don't really understand. You want me to make the world a happier place. Huh?” One of my favorite stories is from one of our wall hosts that year who was talking about they were in a restaurant. Someone came in and basically said, “I don't believe in all that garbage,” and blah, blah, blah. They talked to him for a while, and he hung out, and he saw everybody else kind of come in. By the end of the day, he was actually working at the wall with them. Just seeing people take activity to make the world a happier place encourages those around us to do the same. That's really what #HappyActs is about. We're hoping that it's a pass-it-on kind of moment that you do something for someone. They do something for somebody else. You brighten the mood, the atmosphere wearing colorful clothes, whatever it is to make somebody smile. That they take that positivity with them to their next interaction because we carry with us the interactions we have all day. If you can have positive interactions, which is what #HappyActs is about, then you can, hopefully, pass that along to the next person who will then have more positive interactions. You become the center of a ripple of positive activity not just for that day but hopefully stretching into weeks and months and genuinely making the world a happier place. [00:04:45] PF: Yes. It can seem trite or even cheesy if you say just do this one act of happiness, and you're helping change the world. When it ripples like that, it truly does. [00:04:55] DH: It does seem cheesy, and we've been accused of toxic positivity before. That's not really what we're talking about. We aren't talking about be happy in the face of all discomfort, in the face of everything that ever – no, we're talking about just doing the things you can do to make the world happier, the world you live in happier. It's not a cure-all for everything, but it certainly makes finding those solutions easier if you come at it from a point of positivity. [00:05:21] PF: You brought up something fantastic on your Built to Win podcast, where you explain that this isn't the kind of happiness where it's, “Hey, we're riding a roller coaster and getting ice cream afterwards.” People tend to think, when we talk about happiness, they tend to think that's what we're saying. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? [00:05:40] DH: Yes. I do think that the definition of happiness is important. I think one of my favorite definitions which I've heard is that happiness is the joy you feel when you're striving towards your full potential, which is great when you're looking at it from a business perspective. That Built to Win podcast that we do is really for business and entrepreneurs, but it's really for everybody because it is about personal development. That would really apply there. Happiness is also the joy you feel when you find congruence in your life, when you are the place that you're supposed to be. Realize that what you're doing is meaningful to you and has purpose in your life. You feel engaged, and you find those moments where you're doing it, and you're feeling great. Whether it's being the best parent you can be, whether it's engaged in your social groups or your church or whatever it is, you're living a life of congruence. You're not finding that little thing where it's like, “I'm doing this, and it's not really me.” That's the happiness we're looking for is the part where this is really me and I really fit and I have joy in my life, which doesn't mean don't learn new things, by the way. New things make us uncomfortable, but that discomfort is good. That leverages a lot of other things. It really is finding the joy in the life that you're living and living in congruence with your values, who you are, what drives you. That's what we mean by happiness. [00:07:10] PF: Very well said. The whole #HappyActs movement and campaign grew out of the International Day of Happiness. This is a two-part question. First, I'm going to ask you to explain to everyone what the International Day of Happiness is. Then I want to know how that became 31 days because I don't think I even know exactly how we went from having one day of happiness to Live Happy saying, “You know what? We're going to have 31 days of happiness.” [00:07:37] DH: Well, the International Day of Happiness, which is March 20th, is the day that the United Nations declared in 2012 to be the International Day of Happiness. The Kingdom of Bhutan actually petitioned for that, and the UN granted that day as the International Day of Happiness. It's sitting out there on the calendar. Well, that happens to coincide about with the same time that we were launching Live Happy. There were other companies in the happiness space that were looking at it. But we really said, “Look, if this is the International Day of Happiness, we need to do something on that day to drive forward the idea that you can choose to be happier and make more people aware of it.” We still talk about #HappyActs as a social intervention project, meaning we're trying to educate people that they can do things to make the world a happier place and, hopefully, promote them to take action to do so. We felt like the International Day of Happiness, as declared by the United Nations, was the perfect way to do that. I and my co-founder, Jeff Olson, have both had the privilege of speaking at the United Nations on the International Day of Happiness and talking about how human well-being is just as important as economic development when you're looking at countries, companies, communities. We can't just talk about whether people are monetarily successful. We have to talk about their quality of life. That was really why the UN was focused on it. We went out of that position into, “But people can choose to be happier. How do we get them to take action in that direction?” That's where #HappyActs was born. Then, of course, one day is not a lot of time to do that, so we spread it out over a month. We ask everybody just to kind of spend their month focused on doing happy acts. Really, studies show us. You and I have talked about this before, and if you've listened to this podcast for the past six years, seven years, eight years. How long have we been doing this? [00:09:27] PF: Nine years. [00:09:28] DH: Nine years? You've heard us say this before. Take those 30 days and do the #HappyActs because studies show us that if you do something for 21 days, it can change the way you think. It can change the way you view the world. There's that great study on gratitude which says if you practice gratitude by recognizing three things you're grateful for every day for 21 days and then you stop, even six months later, that activity for 21 days means that you are happier or you have a better, greater perceived well-being six months later than you did before you started those 21 days. Having our 30 Days of #HappyActs is a way for you to build in a habit of doing happy acts and the benefits that come from that habit. Remember, the benefits come with intention, not accidental. You don't get to say, “Oh.” Think back and go, “Oh, you know what? I did open a door for somebody today. That counts.” That’s not the way this works. Do it with intention for you to receive the benefit. Then, of course, we hope that we do it for the 31 days, and you continue to do it throughout your lifetime because that is the goal. To make the world a happier place, it's going to take all of us doing little things every day. [00:10:40] PF: Yes. We really can't underestimate the power of one small act of happiness. We hear stories over and over about how that act came just at the perfect time when someone was going through something. Someone was having a horrible day, and we don't know that. Just one act changed their day, which think about how that changed the next day for them. It's really an incredible cascading effect. [00:11:05] DH: It is and you don't know. Making that phone call to someone you haven't heard from for a long time or you haven't spoken to her for a long time. Or calling your grandmother or reaching out to your neighbor and just saying hi and having a chat. That could be a life-changing moment for them or for you that you don't even recognize until later. There are so many people in this world that are lonely that need to be reached out to. There are so many people that feel like they're on their own or that they're not visible. They aren't seen. See people. Share with them how they feel. I mean, share with them how you feel. Share with them something meaningful, even if it's a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee can be meaningful. A side chat in the hallway at the office saying, “Hey, I heard what you said in that meeting, and I thought that was really insightful.” That can make somebody's day. Those are the little things to do. They don't take anything away from you. It's the great thing about happiness. It's abundant. Giving thanks, giving gratitude, expressing appreciation, taking the time to talk to someone and really listen to them, we do all of those out of a place of abundance. You don't run out of that. It's not like if I talk to you, I can't talk to somebody else. [00:12:15] PF: Right. It's like oxygen. We're not going to just run out if we keep taking it in. [00:12:19] DH: Exactly. [00:12:20] PF: You have created the happiness walls that we've been doing for all these years, and they were physical walls. This year, 10-year anniversary, we're doing things a little bit different. We're getting digital. I want to hear all about the brand-new and improved digital walls. [00:12:38] DH: I want to talk about those, but I also want to let our wall hosts, many of who I know listen to this podcast regularly, know that we are not discouraging physical walls. So many put up in schools, put up in offices. We want to continue to do that, but we also want to reach more people, and we want to reach more people around the world. This year, we are launching a digital #HappyActs wall. You can go and post stuff directly there. If you are hosting a physical wall, please go and post directly on our digital wall what you're doing at your physical wall. [00:13:14] PF: Or they can take a picture of the physical wall and post it on our digital wall. [00:13:19] DH: Exactly. Or you can say, “Hey, we're going to be hosting a wall at X and X school or at X and X business.” We don't want to discourage physical walls, but we want to grow. In fact, we want to encourage that. Please, if you've been a wall host for several years, you know what kind of an experience it is. It's a lot of work, but you get so much joy and so much emotional uplift and positive feedback, simply from being the wall host. You can interact with everybody all day and talk about happiness. What could be worse? It’s a great thing to do. If you want to host a physical wall, you can go to livehappy.com, and there's a menu called Happy Acts. Drop down. It'll share with you how to host a physical wall. Please, we're still doing those. But digital wall, we want to post and share our digital wall. Host to and share our digital wall as widely as possible. You'll be able to see our digital wall at livehappy.com/wall. Add your contributions. Point out happy acts you're seeing. Post a happy message. Take pictures of a physical wall and put it there. Announce that you're hosting a physical wall. Create a happy message, a happy video, whatever it is you want to do. Post it on Facebook. Post it on Insta. Create a TikTok. Whatever it is you do to celebrate the International Day of Happiness and celebrate happiness, we want to see it on the livehappy.com/wall. I think that it's going to be an easy way for you to tag that wall and share it with people and say, “Check this out.” We want to build that wall globally. We want it to be as large as it can be. We're going to launch that, or we launch that on March 1st, and we're going to keep it up for a while. Really, take the time to go check out what other people are doing. Add your contribution. Be as creative as possible. Keep in mind we're trying to spread joy. We're trying to create happiness. We're trying to share #HappyActs. It’s a new way to do a wall. Also, make your commitment. Tell us how you are going to share happiness. Create your post on our virtual wall that says, “I will share happiness by.” It's the same thing we do with the physical walls. Do it on our virtual wall. We don't care if you're doing it in video. We don't care if you're just typing it out. We don't care if there's a picture associated with it. Whatever we can do to share #HappyActs in the month of March and commit to sharing #HappyActs in the month of March, we want to see it. [00:15:44] PF: I'm really excited to see what people come up with because I know we have some very creative listeners. I'm really eager to see what happens when they're not confined to the space of a five-by-eight to tell us how they're going to celebrate happiness. I'm really excited to see what this is going to do. [00:16:01] DH: Me, too. I think that we have a very creative group of listeners and followers. I think we all know that because we see it all the time. I'm excited to see some of that creativity show through. Let's just share happiness. By the way, if you're looking for happy acts ideas, we have our 31 Ideas for #HappyActs calendar up already on our website. You can already download your 31 Ideas for #HappyActs. You don't have to do them all, but download it. Print it. Put it on your refrigerator. Remind yourself to do something. Then, of course, just share what you're doing to make the world a happier place as widely as possible. Invite other people to join us. This is a social awareness campaign. People can choose to be happier. Most people don't know that. There are things you can do to be happier. There are things you can do to improve the lives of your family and those around you. We just want as many people as possible to learn that they can make a difference in their own lives. [00:16:58] PF: We have to admit that we might steal some of their ideas and use them for future #HappyAct suggestions. [00:17:04] DH: We absolutely will. Absolutely will. A lot of the happy acts in our calendar are easy to do. Some of them are big. We have foster an animal on there. Please don't if you're not equipped to do that. If you are, it's a good idea. Make sure that you're sharing with us what you are doing, though, as we go through this. [00:17:22] PF: Yes. This is going to be a lot of fun. I know we've got some new shirts coming into the store in time for International Day of Happiness. That's a great thing. We'll be posting on social media about those as we get them in. Is there anything else you want us to know as we head into March and we head into this, what we consider at Live Happy the season of happiness? Really, it's our Christmas. Honestly, it's like our big day, and we celebrate it. What do you want people to know as we enter this month? [00:17:53] DH: I really just want them to know that this is a practice. We celebrate it every March, but it's something that we want to promote every day. I want people to know that even though we're not running in an International Day of Happiness campaign, we're not doing #HappyActs campaign, what we're about here at Live Happy is giving you the tools and the information that you need to build the life you want and to live a happier life. It doesn't matter where you're starting from in your own life. Wherever you are, you can do things to improve the community. You can do things to improve your own life. You can do things to live a happier life. We've got resources here for you, but what we really want to see is you taking action. You can read about it all day long. You can listen to this podcast. I hope you go to livehappy.com and read. I hope you listen to this podcast every week. In reality, you have to take action. This is an opportunity to take action. [00:18:50] PF: I love it. I can't add anything else to that because you just nailed it. Deb, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I know how busy you are, and I appreciate you taking the time to sit down. I also know you love this topic, so I'm glad we were able to have this conversation again. [00:19:07] DH: Me, too. I wish I could be on the podcast every week. Paula, you do such an amazing job. You don't need me every week. It’s always a joy to be able to chat with you, and I hope to see everybody out there doing their happy acts. I want to see them on the wall. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:19:24] PF: That was Deborah Heisz, talking about Happiness Month, the International Day of Happiness, and #HappyActs. If you'd like to learn more about us, download your 31 Days of #HappyActs poster, learn about our happiness wall or literally anything else related to Happiness Month, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now. If you don't receive us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Embracing Self-Love with Brittany & Sarah [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 455 of Live Happy Now. This week, we celebrate Valentine's Day. Today, we want to talk about the greatest love of your life, yourself. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Brittany Derrenbacher and Sarah Pavey of The Healing Collective in Louisville, Kentucky. In their practices, Brittany and Sarah teach clients how to discover a deep lasting love for themselves. They also hold workshops on creating self-love vision boards. Today, they're sharing some insights on how self-love improves our lives and our relationships. They also give us some tips for starting your own self-love practice. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:44] PF: Brittany and Sarah, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] BD: Thanks. [00:00:48] SP: Thank you for having us. [00:00:50] BD: We're excited to be here together. [00:00:52] SP: We’re so excited. [00:00:53] PF: I know. I don't usually do tandem things, but this is absolutely too perfect, and I'm really excited to be able to do this. All of the month of February, we are talking about love, the different types of love. One thing that really struck me is all of our guests have mentioned – all of our guests. Both of the guests prior to you have mentioned just how important self-love is. Everything begins with self-love. No matter – whether you're trying to build another relationship with a person, it still goes back to self-love. Can you talk about that? Why does everything really start with self-love? [00:01:28] BD: I think our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship that we'll ever have in our entire lives. If we don't cultivate that relationship with ourselves, we always consistently show up in our other relationships with people with a glass half-full. I think when we lean into this idea of self-love, we're able to embrace all of the parts of ourselves and realize that I think we're the ones that we've been waiting for, right? We can love every part of ourselves and really sit in the ooey-gooeyness of our essence and our being and our greatness. [00:02:13] PF: To make sure we're talking about the same thing because self-love can seem kind of this concept, tell me what true self-love is. What are we actually talking about here? [00:02:23] BD: I think self-love is the unconditional acceptance of self. It's showing up for ourselves the way that we would a best friend. It's seeing and hearing and valuing and just loving every single part of ourselves and the way that we do our friends, our animals, our family. We’re projecting that back to self. I think that is one of the most beautiful relationships that we can cultivate. [00:02:56] PF: But that's a tough thing because we aren't really taught to love ourselves. Even it's difficult sometimes to be comfortable with the concept of trying to learn to love ourselves. We really do oftentimes try to get that love and validation from the outside, and we don't even know how to go inside. Where do we start even learning how to do that and how to discover self-love? [00:03:19] SP: I kind of like what you said, Brittany. That was a really beautiful approach to it. When we look at ourselves how we do our best friends or even loving ourselves how we would a child, when we’re tough on ourselves, almost visualizing yourself as a child and sitting down and how we take care of ourselves in that way or talk to ourselves. Sometimes, I mean, we can be really tough on ourselves. It's easier to show yourself self-love when you think about like, “Little me,” and making sure that every child gets what they need or just showing ourselves that same love that we would our friend or a child or even our pets sometimes. Yes, I think that that's a great place to start is how we take care of other people. [00:04:01] BD: I also think this is inner child work. We're getting back to the root of when we are born into this world, we have unconditional love for ourselves. We want to get our needs met. We think we are the best thing ever. [00:04:19] PF: Especially if we're only children. [00:04:21] BD: Yes, yes. Like there is no one greater than us. Then we start to grow up and life happens and society happens. That changes over time. So I think we have to lean back into that. We're almost reclaiming that love for ourselves that we are born innately with. [00:04:43] PF: That doesn't feel natural for a lot of people. It doesn't feel natural to go back and say, “I'm going to talk to this wounded child that I was.” How do you kind of start taking steps toward that? [00:04:54] BD: I think the first thing that we have to do is start understanding the parts of ourselves that maybe are uncomfortable to look at. That is usually what I do with my clients, right? It's like this road back home to self, embracing and holding all the parts of ourselves that maybe we wanted to push away or overlook. You may have heard the phrase shadow work. This can also teeter into shadow work. I think, ultimately, the first step that we have to take is to view that all of our parts are good. They are there for a reason, and they make up who we are as we sit here today. [00:05:37] PF: What happens when you run into someone who's like, “I hate this part of myself.” I hear that from people where it's like, “I hate this about myself.” They are so hard on themselves about this one thing. How do you get over something that was very strong feelings about what's wrong with you? [00:05:54] BD: I think this will be an interesting thing for Sarah and I to both answer because we do this both innately in our work but differently based on our professions, right? My step is to always work with the person to identify why this part of themself exists, how it used to show up for them in the past and protect them and help them survive. It's like a reclaiming of that part of you and coming to understand it so that you can love it and also tell it that it can take a break. Like, “It’s okay. I don't need you to jump in and protect me right now.” [00:06:34] SP: Like you said, seeing how those parts did serve us at one point and how it was a protection of armor. Also honoring the valuable purpose that that armor has but also being able to take a step back and set it down to find a way to love those pieces and see how they can flow into your life and, yes, just look through a different lens. [00:06:57] PF: One thing that you ladies did, and I am just so fascinated by this, you've done it last year. I don't know if that was your first year. I know you did it again this year. That was a self-love vision board workshop. First of all, tell us what that is. [00:07:12] BD: It is a fun, playful, imaginative, and creative way to reclaim a part of ourselves that oftentimes we lose from childhood into adulthood, right? Imagination, creativity, play. We lose that, and we become really serious adults. I think it's a really beautiful way and a tool to allow people to dip their toes into self-love because they're essentially sitting with themselves. We usually start with the meditation and have them call in their higher selves and really kind of do a heart activation to where they can drop into their bodies and into their hearts and sit with themselves. We ask that they essentially create a board that encompasses all of the things that they love about themselves and also the things that they want for themselves. It's really interesting to see how that plays out for each individual person. [00:08:14] SP: Yes. Also, it's hard when you have glitter glue and scissors and stickers. It's hard to take yourself so seriously. I think that that really allows people to get into that inner child. Also, by the time they're done, they look at it, and they're like, “Wow, this feels really good. This is something I would love to look at every day.” But they're like, “I had so much fun doing it. I didn't – I can't believe time went by so fast.” I think it's a really fun way for people to get in touch with that. [00:08:41] PF: What kind of things do they look at in terms of self-love? What kind of pictures and words do you see people gravitating toward to create these self-love vision boards? [00:08:50] BD: Well we ask that people bring in an inner child photo to also work off of, too. [00:08:55] PF: Oh, nice. [00:08:56] BD: But a lot of times, especially with women, there will be something that they're working through with their bodies, their relationship with their bodies. Learning to love their bodies and meet themselves where they're at. You'll see a lot of language and verbiage around their relationship with their bodies. Also, it's interesting to see a lot of people will reclaim parts of themselves that maybe they've lost. Maybe life got in the way, and they haven't been able to travel in a while. Maybe they've had complicated romantic relationships in the past. So they're calling in a partner that is exactly what they want for themselves and knowing that it's not asking too much. [00:09:38] SP: It's also incredible to see how everyone will relate to each other. But when everyone holds up their boards at the end how different they are. Also, everyone's like, “Oh, that is so amazing. That feels so good to look at.” Then you look around, and everyone's so different and so unique to them. It's just such a beautiful feeling. [00:09:57] BD: I'll share a story of this woman's board that was really moving for everyone. Everyone gets one board, but really there's no limit. You can do what you want, and she did. She got several more, and she attached them all, and it became this expansive board of – she used different imagery of women and a lot of bright colors, very vibrant inner child colors, and created this board for herself to remind herself how beautiful she is. That not only is she beautiful but she's surrounded by beautiful amazing women all day. It was almost like this love letter to herself and to all of the feminine energies around her. It was incredible. [00:10:44] SP: It really was. That same woman, she asked everybody to sign her board, which has never happened before. It was just so beautiful for her to make those connections with herself and everyone else. [00:10:55] PF: What happens when people do this? Can you talk a little bit about how that changes what's going on in their brain? You're focusing specifically on this self-love topic, and you're getting into the magazines. What does it change with them, and how do you see that just over the course of this workshop which takes how long? How long are you there? [00:11:17] BD: About two and a half hours. [00:11:19] PF: Okay. How do you see people change, just during this two and a half hours that they're working on this? What's it doing to their brains and to their hearts? [00:11:28] BD: I'm glad asked this question because we did something a little differently this year. I use a lot of essential oils and breath work in my therapeutic practice. I used a specific oil that's good for heart activation, and I had them do what's called a manifestation breath. Really what that helps them do is drop out of their brain and into their bodies, and begin really focusing on the wisdom of their body and focusing on their heart. I think when we drop out of our minds that tend to worry and overthink and criticize and intrusive thoughts, we drop into the natural wisdom and rhythm of our bodies that's like, “I love you. This feels good. This is fun. I want to do more of this. I like this.” You start to get more of the I am affirmations, which is powerful. [00:12:23] SP: Yes. What's been so exciting to see the last couple years is by the end of it, everyone's like, “Wow, I didn't think I would have so much fun doing this.” When they first walk in, they're kind of – you can tell everyone's like, “Okay, what is this going to be about?” Then by the end of – [00:12:38] PF: What have I signed up for? [00:12:40] SP: Yes. They're like, “Wait, it's been two hours already?” It’s like show and tell. When they hold it up at the end, they're all excited to share. I mean, it's a really vulnerable thing to share, but they're so happy and excited to do it. It's really beautiful. [00:12:55] BD: Sarah and I, we’re super excited this year. We had a surprise come to our workshop. We had a man come. It’s not that – self-love is not just for women. In fact, I think it is incredibly healing modality for men. I think it helps just as a collective healing to bring men into this work. Yes. Do you want to tell the story? [00:13:21] SP: You could tell when he came in, he was nervous a little bit like, “I don't know what I'm getting into.” But it was so beautiful to see him come in and just see him feel supported by that feminine energy and really settle into kind of the womb space we created and to have that that nurturing healing energy around him. [00:13:38] PF: Is there a home version? How does someone do this if they're not in a group, and they're like, “Maybe that would help me.”? How do you sit down and create your own self-love vision board when we don't have you guys to walk us through? [00:13:53] SP: There's no right or wrong way to do it. What I love to do at home is sometimes I’ll even use a bulletin board and pack it and change it throughout the year. But really on construction paper, on anything, and cutouts from magazines. Or you're walking and you see something that resonates with you, just putting little images or anything that calls you. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. For me, at least, the whole purpose of a vision board is something that you can look at and see. It’s a little cliché, right? Every day, we get to reset and get to start. But that's true and having something to see and set your intentions towards, it gives you a direction to go in every day when you want to start new. Really, there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's not. [00:14:42] BD: I think whatever your creativity level is, whatever your capacity is, wherever your imagination takes you, go with it and have fun and don't limit yourself. Collect weird things. I dare you. Collect cool stickers. I dare you. Cut out pictures of yourself as a kid and create a masterpiece. You will be so proud of yourself. One thing I will say about the vision boards that we've created together is I look at them with so much pride. I love her. I love that version of me from a year ago. I love her, and I'm a different woman today. So I got to create something new in this workshop, and I love her. [00:15:29] PF: That's so great. How do you use it properly? As we all know, you can put the affirmations up on your mirror. But after a while, you don't see them. How do you make sure that this stays fresh every day? You kind of make a ceremony out of making sure you look at it and remind yourself and kind of reinstill that self-love every day? Or how – what's the best practice? [00:15:52] BD: I think probably Sarah and I do this two different ways because I tend to leave space on my board and add to it throughout the year. It does always kind of lead me back to it. [00:16:06] SP: Yes. For me and a lot of people in our groups, they like to put them in the bathroom or in the kitchen. But kind of like you said, we put it up there. Then we kind of get too used to seeing it. For me, I just fill my board up. When I meditate, I like to look at it but I mean really what aligns to that person. Some people, they like to see it while they're cooking or while they're using the restroom. It's some good material. Yes, I kind of like that, though, the idea of adding on to it throughout the year. That could keep you more involved with it and have more attention on it throughout the year or however often you do it. Yes. That's a good tip. [00:16:42] PF: Since self-love is so tough, how important is it that we're able to remind ourselves daily of this self-love journey that we're on? [00:16:50] BD: Oh, this is – I love to talk about the brain. Yes, repetition, repetition. It takes so many times. I think scientifically it's 300 to 400 times of repetition, right? If we stand in the mirror at day one and we say I love you to yourself in the mirror, it may seem kind of weird. It may seem uncomfortable. It doesn't stick. Day 20, I love you in the mirror. Maybe it lands a little bit more. Then by the end of this cycle, say you do this every day for a year, your brain – this is a new neural pathway, and it believes that is truth. So whether or not it feels silly to us and it feels maybe like, “I don't want to do that. That's not going to work,” it will work. It will work. Your brain will believe you. I think that's an important tool that I think we just have to do things until it becomes our truth. [00:17:52] SP: Yes. I think that's so important. It might feel silly at first. That's the cost is to feel little silly, but it will pay off. Like you said, I don't know the exact numbers, but we can think something so many more times than we could say those words out loud. If you're telling yourself in your brain, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” and you're just changing that narrative, it will create those new pathways. [00:18:16] PF: I had a guest on the show. It has been a couple years now, Shauna Shapiro. She wrote the book called Good Morning, I Love You. Her practice is one that I started doing, and that was she would put her hand on her heart every morning, before she gets out of bed, as soon as she wakes up. Now, I do it. It's good morning, Paula. I love you. It's like put your name in there and state that truth to yourself. When that's the first statement, the first thought of your day that your day is going to get better. It starts better. That is a real powerful way to do it as well. [00:18:49] BD: That is part of my morning practice, and it's non-negotiable for me because, otherwise, my intrusive thoughts are louder, and she's not going to win. [00:19:00] PF: That's awesome. What changes when we really start embracing self-love? How do we show up differently in the world? How does it change us? How does it change the way we interact with others? [00:19:12] SP: Not to get too woo-woo out there, but I mean I truly think it changes the vibration that you send out to the universe. That changes how you interact with yourself, with others. I mean, just the law of attraction and abundance. If you can imagine something for yourself, so much more is available to you. I think having some sort of reminder about that, it can totally change how you interact in the world, the vibration you set out. [00:19:41] BD: Fort me, I think when we cultivate a better relationship with self and we work on self-love, self-compassion, all the selves, we show up better in our relationships. We show up as a whole, happy, excited, joyful version of ourselves, right? We don't expect our partners and our friends and our families to be the ones that are always going to meet those needs. That is something that I think traditionally happens in especially romantic relationships, right? I mean, we're in the month of love, so we have to kind of talk about that. That societally and traditionally, we have been taught that once we find our partner, the happiness goal has been met. Really, it's being able to show up and create that from within. So then we can be in our relationships in a very easy lighter way that gets our needs met. [00:20:42] PF: What about the people out there this Valentine's Day, this season of love who are lonely, who don't have someone special in their lives, don't have a significant other? They feel very isolated, and they feel maybe unloved. What are some ways they can specifically embrace them themselves and show themselves love and feel that same kind of love that they're looking for? [00:21:04] SP: It's interesting you asked that question. We actually had a woman last night at our group. She was one with the big beautiful board. She was talking about how she used to hate this time of year. It would make her depressed, make her feel so bad, and how she had this shift where she's like, “I can buy my own flowers. I can buy flowers for my friends.” I think that that's a great place to start is, whether it is romantically or not, showing gratitude in the places that you can for yourself. Also, if you're not there, if you do have a good support group, showing gratitude and love towards those people and those things in your life will help cultivate that type of thing. [00:21:42] BD: What better way to celebrate love and to learn about self-love than to spend Valentine's Day with our best friends. [00:21:51] PF: That's a great talk, especially women tend to put a lot of pressure on the day. I love the idea of reframing that and saying this is about love and not just romantic love. It's about our love with our friends, with our pets, with our family. I really love that idea. [00:22:07] BD: There's nobody better to show up unconditionally for us than our pets and our best friends. [00:22:12] PF: Exactly. Your advice for everyone out there. They want to learn more about self-love, and we will. We'll put that affirmations, make that available as a download to them from you. Thank you for that. But what are some things they can do right now, some steps that they can take to just start practicing, baby steps toward greater self-love? [00:22:35] BD: I think we have to be open to spending more time with ourselves. I think – yes, and that involves releasing a little bit of fear around that. But just showing up and spending more time with ourselves, whether that's going out for a walk and not putting headphones in, really just spending some time with ourselves. [00:22:56] SP: Yes. I think a lot of times we are hard on ourselves because we focus a lot on how things may have gone wrong. But do we ever stop and think about when things go right or how we have supported ourselves so far into this life? I think we should pay more attention to those moments. [00:23:12] PF: Well, ladies, it's a lovely time to talk to you because it is all about love. I appreciate what you have to say to us. I really thank you for spending your time with me today. [00:23:21] BD: Thank you. [00:23:22] SP: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:27] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher and Sarah Pavey, talking about self-love. If you'd like to download a free printable poster of their self-love affirmations, learn how to create your own self-love vision board, or follow Brittany and Sarah on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every Tuesday, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Rethinking Your Relationship with Dr. Julia DiGangi [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 454 of Live Happy Now. It's February, which means a message of love and Valentine's Day is all around us. But did you know that this is a make-or-break time for many couples? I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Julia DiGangi, a neuropsychologist and author of the new book, Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power. She's here today to talk about some of the common mistakes we make in our relationships, and how we can improve those relationships by learning more about what our brains, not our hearts are doing to complicate things. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW]   [0:00:42] PF: Well, Dr. Julia, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:45] JD: I'm so happy to be here, Paula. Thanks for having me. [0:00:47] PF: It's February, love is in the air, but sometimes it's not. That's what we want to talk about, because we have Valentine's Day coming up. This is a whole month, I know it's Heart Month. We talk about our hearts and we talk about love. That puts a lot of pressure on people. One reason I wanted to talk to you is your team had sent me some pretty revealing stats about what this time of year does to couples. It said that a survey showed 19% of respondents say that Valentine's Day is when their relationships hit the breaking point. What's going on with that? [0:01:22] JD: I think that one of the hardest things. I'm a neuropsychologist, which means, I'm a clinical psychologist with specialized expertise in the brain. I'm always thinking about our relationships through the lens of neurobiology, which sounds not romantic, but I swear to God, it's very romantic. The brain hates nothing more than dissonance. The brain is a prediction machine. It's a pattern detector. So your brain is moving you through life going apple, apple, apple, fill in the blank. Should it be an apple? Well, on Valentine's Day, what this means when our brain is quite literally in the business of predicting things based on context, your brain is going, Valentine's Day, hearts, love, romantic love, super intimate connection, sexual satisfaction. All these expectations really start to get pretty intense. For those of us who don't feel like our relationship meets those expectations, that disconnect between what we think it should be, and what the brain is actually experiencing can be quite painful. [0:02:27] PF: Do men and women experience that differently. [0:02:30] JD: Let me approach the question this way, and then you can tell me if I've answered it. Is the brain a pattern detector on both men and women? Absolutely. But then, when we get into these questions of like, well, what are the patterns that are programmed in our brains as women, versus what are the patterns that are programmed into our brains as men? So I think what happens is the function, the structure, and the function of the brain, we've done a lot of research around this. And we do not today think there are meaningful differences between the women's brain and the male brain. What I do think happens is there's different predictions, which a lot of us call expectations, which a lot of us call culture, which a lot of us call roles. What those are at the neurobiological level, though, are these predictive codes. I as a woman should do X. You as a man should do Y. One of the things that I do a lot of is I work with a lot of men. A lot of men gravitate toward my work. What I have seen over and over again is, society has set up a pattern, where men, when they were boys, when they were tiny, tiny boys were told to sever themselves from their emotion. The brain undergoes spectacular – I mean, it gives me chills to think about. In the earliest years of life, in year zero through five, the brain is doing something like a million, a million neural connections every single second.   [0:03:51] PF: A second?   [0:03:53] JD: A second.   [0:03:54] PF: Wow.   [0:03:55] JD: I know, it's incomprehensible. Well, what happens is we say, "Well, I don't really remember when I was born, one, two, three, four, five. So maybe, it didn't get me. Well, no, your brain was encoding your most formative lessons, specifically around relationships, around what love feels like, around what we're supposed to do with difficult emotions, about how safe intimacy is or isn't. So we've gotten messages in our childhood, we all did about how safe people are, about how much access we have to them. We continue to play that out. One of the things I think is very healing for people to understand, I got a couple of things to say about this. The first is, there's no relationship on the planet, there's not a single relationship on the planet that is more complex than the adult long-term romantic relationship. [0:04:47] PF: I think many people agree with that. We're relieved to hear that, because sometimes, we're made to think it should be easy if the media makes it look easy and it's not.   [0:04:57] JD: It's not. It's not easy at all. I think for a lot of us, because we have either shame, or we're confused, we then – I call it a pain sandwich, our relationship doesn't feel good. Then, because we don't know how to get the relief we want, we're in even more pain. But the things that we ask from our long-term partners, the number of roles. They're supposed to be our lover, or confidant, our caretaker, our coparent, our house manager, our business partner, it's insanely complex. So when there's a lot of complexity, there's always confusion. The confusion is happening in real time, meaning it's happening in our households on a day-to-day basis. But also, and this is a piece I would love to talk to you about. We do not partner for life by mistake, we partner for life to finish our unfinished childhood business. [0:05:54] PF: Oh. Yes, let's talk about that. Because I see a lot of articles where people say, "Well, maybe we weren't meant to be with one person for the rest of our life." Is that true? Or is it that it actually gets so difficult or so intense, that it's like, "Hmm. I think I'm going to go start this with somebody else"? [0:06:13] JD: I do not think that there's an answer to it. In other words, I think some relationships are meant to go on forever. I think some relationships are meant to end. I don't actually think that's the most powerful mission, if you will, of the long-term relationship. I think the holy hope, believe it or not, of our long-term romantic partnerships is to show us precisely where we still hurt. Where we hurt has been where we have hurt since childhood. Why? But like, most fundamentally, the brain is moving us through our life. I mentioned patterns. But it's even more fundamentally than just any type of pattern. It's moving us through our life based on emotional patterns. What does an emotional pattern sound like? It sounds like some – I'll give you a couple examples. "I never get what I want. I never get what I want. I never get what I want" or "No one will help me. No one will help me. No one will help me" or "People don't listen to me. People don't listen to me." So then, what happens invariably, there's always two relationships that there are tremendous similarity. That of our parents, and that of our partner. In other words, how we were parented, that plays out always in the long-term romantic relationship. So if I feel from my childhood, I'm still carrying these wounds, I just feel like people don't hear me. When I try to communicate my distress to my parents, they're too busy, they work too much, they have their own mental health issues, there's too many kids in the house. I mean, there could be a million good reasons. But nonetheless, I, as a four-year-old have this feeling that I'm not heard. I promise that plays out in the long-term romantic relationship. I know how excruciating long-term romantic relationships can be. I'm not being funny; they really can be devastating. Well, I think a lot of us think, "Let me get out of this and let me try to partner again." But there's an interesting, you mentioned statistics at the beginning of our conversation, there's other really interesting statistics. Second marriages fail more than first marriages. And third marriages fail more than all of them. If this doesn't make logical sense, in other words, the more I try to do something, the better I should get at it. Ride a bike for two years instead of one year, and three years instead of one year. My bike riding skills should get better. They don't. Why? It's because until we address the underlying childhood injuries, they continue to play out. Now, of course, and I think this goes without saying, but you'll humor me. Plenty of us are in abusive relationships where there's violence and there's abuse. I think there are relationships that are meant to be left. But I think for part of the, both the curse, and the blessing of the romantic relationship, is that it brings to the surface injuries. The greatest power of the long-term romantic relationship is in its potential. Meaning, my old injuries are going to get activated, am I now going to exacerbate them or am I going to heal them? [0:09:13] PF: As people are in that state, where the injuries have surfaced, it presents as turmoil within the relationship, it can present as discontent with your partner. One thing I see a lot of times when I'm feeling very discontented with my partner, and I sit down with myself, it's actually things I'm mad about with myself. That has nothing to do with what she's got going on. Because her actions have not changed, it's what's going on with me. I think that's probably pretty common too. [0:09:40] JD: It's very common. I think we all relate to that, and I think it's incredible that you're giving yourself that pause and that reflection, because I think when we're around people, and we feel bad, it's very natural. Like there's no shame, there's no weakness. It just seems like you were in my environment when I was having this bad feeling, you must be the source of it. Now, this is complex because our partners do legitimately do like, in other words, if your partner had a bad day, and they're being gruff with you, that hurts. But I think the work is so much around, what are the kinds of the pattern conclusions that I'm drawing? One of the things I would love to talk to you about, because I think it's so healing in relationships is when we get upset with our partners, when our relationships start to fall into distress, we draw all these conclusions. Again, like these patterns, "You don't really love me, you don't really care about me, you don't really validate me, you don't really desire me." I mean, we could go on and on. What I'm saying is, what we have to understand that never gets talked about is the emotional state of confusion, the emotion of confusion might be singularly the most difficult emotion for the brain to process. Let me explain this. If the brain is a pattern detector, going Apple, fill in the blank, the only emotion that works against the fundamental design of the brain is confusion. In other words, if I'm angry, the brain knows what to do about anger. If I'm sad, the brain can predict what to do about sadness. If I'm afraid, the brain can predict what to do about fear. But when I'm confused, it literally stops the pattern detection abilities, because the brain goes, "Apple, apple, apple. Well, what's next?" What happens is, because your brain is always fundamentally invested in survival, meaning, keeping you out of pain. This is a great paradox. Your brain will predict conclusions that actually make you feel bad. In other words, the brain says, "It's better that you're vigilant and defensive, rather than soft and connected." When my partner walks in, after a long day of work, and he doesn't greet me, it violates my expectation. I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm going to see him, we're going to talk, da, da, da." He walks in, kind of nods me, and walks upstairs. I initially had that, "Huh?" But the brain can't huh for long, it has to very quickly move that. Instead of interpreting that violation to the pattern is like, maybe he's tired, or let me give him 15 minutes, I start to stew. I don't know why he treats me like this. Does he think I didn't have a hard day? Why can't we ever connect? Before I know it, my whole marriage is on the rocks. But can you see that all of that actually started if we really dismantle it, and talk about the emotional math. All of it really began based on the energy of confusion. I just wrote a Book Energy Rising, and I talk extensively about this energy of confusion, or sometimes we call it unclarity or uncertainty. It's this energy of who do I become when I don't know. [0:12:55] PF: I think that is so important that you brought that up, because anybody who's in a relationship has seen this exact thing play out for them. I've got a friend who talks about when she and her husband disagree, she's in the next room. They've been married for 30 years, and she's in there figuring out like, "Okay. Well, how are we going to divide up the house?" It goes from fine this morning to like, "I'm going to file for divorce." We have talked about how ridiculous it is, but that's just what happens to her. It just sets off this little domino effect, and she's got herself signing papers by the end of the night. [0:13:28] JD: It's great that we can all laugh about this, but I just want to normalize. It's so normal, and the reason it's so normal really has to do with our neurobiology. [BREAK] [0:13:36] PF: Today, we're talking about your heart and brain. So how about if we add lungs to the conversation. If you're spending a lot of time indoors this winter, chances are you're breathing in polluted air. In fact, indoor air is up to five times more polluted than outdoor air. That's why I'm loving my new air purifier from AirDoctor. It filters out 99.99% of harmful contaminants so your lungs don't have to. AirDoctor has a wide range of purifiers, so you can get the size it's right for your space, and you can breathe easy with its 30-day money back guarantee. So if you're looking to eliminate allergens, pollen, pet dander, and even bacteria, and viruses from your home or office space, check out AirDoctor at airdoctorpro.com. If you use the promo code LIVE HAPPY, you'll get up to $300 off and get a free three-year warranty. That's airdoctorpro.com, and use the promo code Live Happy. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Julia, as she tells us how our brains respond to conflict with our partners. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:14:46] JD: The reason it's so normal really has to do with our neurobiology. In other words, it sometimes tickles me and sometimes frustrates me, like we pay more attention to the intelligent operating of our cell phones, and ChatGPT than we pay attention how to intelligently operate the most exquisite machine on the planet, which is our own brain and nervous system. Well, in order to intelligently engage with the nervous system in the brain, we've got to understand what it does. The brain is telling us, when it comes to confusion, when it comes to uncertainty, I do not like it. So if we want to powerfully engage in our lives, with our emotions, with our partners, we got to have reverence and say, "When I'm confused, let me really take a beat, and try to not make any interpretations. Because if I do not slow my roll, my interpretation will be, I need to file for divorce by 7pm this evening." [0:15:47] PF: Then, what happens too is your reaction then sets off everything that's going on with them. I mean, so say your husband has come in, he's already had a bad day, didn't act the way you wanted. Now, you're like a house on fire and attacking him. That's not what he was expected. He probably just wanted some alone time, and like, "Let me get this day out of my head" and now it's escalated. How do you create a practice both individually, and as a couple that went to identify when you're in that state of confusion, your brain is confused, and to take that pause, and step back, instead of letting all of this escalate? [0:16:25] JD: I think the most important piece, and again, I think this is what I mean when I say, like really have reverence for the machine. Far, far too many of us want to do the work when we're activated. They're saying to me, because I do a lot of work, I do a lot of couples coaching, couples therapy. They'll say, like, "When we start to get in a fight, how do we solve it?" Well, you know how when a toddler is in the middle of a meltdown, really, the only thing you can do is wait for the storm to pass. And in fact, for those of us –I have little kids, they're not toddlers anymore, but they're still little. It's like, if you try to engage when they're activated, and you can try to be the most soothing, be like, "What can I get you honey? Do you want to cookie and a warm blanket?" It's like, when people are activated, what has to happen is we've got to restore emotion regulation. In the moment, a lot of times, the best we can do is go for a walk, take a deep breath, blah, blah, blah, we've heard it a million times. The powerful transformative healing work comes in the questions we ask ourselves, and the actions we take when we are not activated. I have a responsibility to own my childhood injuries as I bring them to my marriage. There's a classic pattern that plays out in most relationships. There's sort of three attachment styles. The first is, securely attached. This is the idea that our parents had a great intelligence of how to attend to our emotions. They really nailed it, and I can simplify this considerably. They really nailed this complex dance between connection and autonomy. In other words, they really knew when to soothe me, and they really knew when to trust me. They really knew when to be around me and they really knew when to give me my freedom. The second is something called anxious. So anxious attachment is when my parents sometimes shown the great, glorious golden light upon me. But then, sometimes, they went cold. I as a little child could not figure out the pattern. A lot of times, this happened in household with addiction, where there's a lot of emotional volatility, there's a lot of moodiness. Sometimes my parents were telling me how great I was, and then sometimes, I really needed mom, or I really needed dad, and even though I tried my little four-year-old heart out, I couldn't get them. The third category is what we call avoidant, and I'm oversimplifying for the purpose of it. But avoidant is basically, my parents chronically, totally miss my emotional needs. I learned as a very small child that I am an island unto myself. I learned that relying on other people for my needs is totally dangerous. Now, all of us have some aspects of these in all of us. In other words, these are not clean categories. They're continuums of behavior. But it's a very classic dynamic to have an anxious person, a person who's more anxious, pair with a person who has a more avoided pattern. So you get in this classic approach, avoidance dance, where the anxious person is saying, "Please come closer to me. Are you mad at me? Can we talk about this? Let's be more intimate. Let's talk about this. I love you. Do you love me?" They're more asking for this like chronic kind of anxious anxiety. The energy of anxiety is propelling this like, affirm your attachment to me. The avoidant is more like, I am so overwhelmed by emotion. I am so overwhelmed by, I know, because I'm now an adult in an adult relationship that your needs are on some level my responsibility. We're in a partnership here. No one ever taught me how to even get my own needs met. Now, it's kind of a double whammy. I don't know how to meet my own needs. I sure as hell don't know how to meet yours. I run from the room screaming on fire. Well, as I run from the room, screaming on fire, the anxious goes, "No, don't leave me," and then chases after them. You get in this classic, anxious avoidant standoff. [0:20:36] PF: That's so interesting, because, first of all, I could see that being a great little cartoon visual. But that is, it's really common. What then do people do? Do you just have to recognize this as my pattern to start healing this, or how do you start breaking it down so that you can make it work? Because obviously, people got together for a reason. They've been together this long, for a reason? What is it that made that happen, and how do you get past these patterns to get back to what is real and genuine, which is the love and affection that you have for each other? [0:21:08] JD: Such a great question. I'll sort of answer like this. First of all, I think these are the biggest questions of our life. They're enormous. I like to simplify them from people, which doesn't necessarily mean they're easily. Not necessarily, they're not easy. But I think we can do a lot of simplification. When couples come to me, they are very clear on the pain being caused by the other. They'll sit on my couch, either virtually, or in real life. They will say, "He doesn't respect me." "No, she doesn't respect me. She doesn't listen to me. No, she doesn't listen to me. She doesn't love me. No, she doesn't love me." So I say, "This is very valid. When we feel like our partners aren't seeing us, loving us respecting us, I got it. Totally going to get to this. Let's just put a pin in it for one second, and I have a different question. Give me all the evidence. In other words, tell me all the ways that you profoundly respect yourself, that you profoundly love yourself, that you profoundly see yourself." I got to be honest with you, Paula, I almost never get an answer to that question.   [0:22:15] PF: Really?   [0:22:16] JD: In other words, people kind of look at me like, "Well, I'm not sure how that works." Now, pay attention here, because I think this is a really important piece. We're saying, because in our marriages, in our long-term relationships, we die a death oftentimes by a million paper cuts. Even when there's catastrophic betrayal trauma, people aren't having a great marriage on Tuesday, and then cheating on Wednesday. You see what I'm saying? There's this growing disconnect. Both of us need to assume radical responsibility for our relationship. If I look at my partner, and I say, "You don't wash the dishes." The conclusion I draw about you now washing the dishes is catastrophic. In other words, if you don't love me, you don't respect me. You don't listen to me. How could I then not have an equally discrete – because washing the dishes on Wednesday is a very discrete thing. How could I not then be able to identify an equally discrete thing for myself, and put that same amount of emotional loading on it? In other words, when I do leave the house and get a massage, I feel the same degree of anger, I feel the same degree of self-love. When I tell myself, I'm going to walk away from this conversation, I am profoundly listening to myself, and now I'm in a state of joy. I'm in a state of exuberance, like how much I respected myself. People will say, "Well, that's silly to tell me to go get a massage or hold my boundary. You don't understand how miserable it is that they're not washing the dishes?" Well, you're taking a discrete behavior, and you're putting a ton of emotional loading on, it's fine. We all do it. This is how we make meaning out of life. There's no problem there. What I'm saying the problem is twofold. Do I have any examples in my own camp? And if I don't, and if I believe that this pattern has been with me since childhood, years, and years, and years before I even met my partner, what is my own responsibility? Not responsibility like [inaudible 0:24:07]. What is my own profound ability to my own injuries? When I really see people taking radical, self-loving responsibility for the ways I have heard for decades, and decades, and decades, and decades, far beyond the marriage, for example, this is when you start to see radical healing in the couple. [0:24:29] PF: I love this because you're giving responsibility to both parties, and you're breaking it down. Each one has their own way that they're going to have to set out to resolve this. It's not like if he starts doing the dishes, then, "Hey, everything's good." It goes so much deeper. How do people start doing that? How do couples start doing that, and start deciding where they need to focus on individually to come together as a couple? [0:24:57] JD: Great question. I'll say like, all of Energy Rising has a ton of these examples, case studies, exercises. I'll give you one brief one here, but I just want people to know, there's a lot of material. I would go to myself and say, "What is my primary emotional pattern around my pain in this relationship?" I gave a lot of examples, "I'm not seen, I'm not heard, I'm not loved, I'm not listened to, I can't get what I want." I would listen to myself and be like, "Okay." Say, mine is, "I can't trust you." I would say, that's valid. I'm not saying that our partners don't have work to do. Of course, they do. I'm saying, but just for a moment, let me ask the question to myself. What are the ways I don't trust myself, and I would write down 10 examples. I didn't trust myself to stop working today at five o'clock. I felt like I had to overwork, but I really wanted to stop and go play with my kids. I told myself that I was going to get out of bed this morning and go to the gym, and I didn't. When I make those kinds of commitments to myself, and I go back on my own word, I give myself a lot of good reason not to trust myself. You see. I start to say, I want a lot of evidence, 10 examples of how I don't trust myself, and I start to clean it up there. I start to become – because what we're really saying to our partners is, I can't rely on you. Well, can I rely on myself? I think what we start to see in a lot of cases is, no. Now, we partner precisely for reinforcement. I get that. In other words, if we're all perfectly islands unto ourselves, then why would anyone need – but a lot of us are coming, and when I say a lot of us. I mean, a lot of us. I'm a child of a psychologist, so I come from a lineage. I've been watching this conversation for 40 years. There's been profound evolution. I feel incredibly hopeful. But we know more than our parents knew, and our parents knew more than their parents knew. A lot of us are now taking, I think, radical responsibility for our injuries. We're doing this, yes, for our partners. Yes, for our children, but also for ourselves.   [0:26:58] PF: Absolutely.   [0:26:59] JD: We feel better in our own bodies, when we're not so on edge, when we're not so triggered. Here's the truth. If I feel like shit, my partner could be an angel. My partner is not an angel. Love him to death, but not an – let's imagine that we were married to a saint. I still got to go face the rest of the world. The people in traffic are still pissing me off. The people on social media are still making me angry. The people in my job – you see what I'm saying? [0:27:24] PF: Yes. You still have all these external factors that are going to trigger you, and then, you get to go home and take it out on your spouse. [0:27:31] JD: Yes. Yes. The holy hallucination, called the holy hallucination is that our partners are going to rescue us from our own nervous systems. There's no human being on the planet that can come into your nervous system, and ding, ding, ching, ching, ching, ching, chong, ching. It doesn't go like that. This is really a radical conversation. When I talk about power, Energy Rising is a lot about emotional pain and emotional power. I'm not talking about power, like lording over people, like my way or the highway. I'm talking about this beautiful life-giving wholeness, this profound courage, this profound resilience, this profound relationship with myself. Do you see when we give that to ourselves, we become the most magnetic thing on the planet? We change our frequency as a partner, as a spouse, as a lover, as a parent, and we feel great about it. A lot of us are out there being totally codependent, working ourselves to an absolute pope, "serving" other people and feeling like absolute shit about it. It doesn't have to be that way. [0:28:37] PF: I think there's so much that you can teach us. Obviously, it's not just our romantic relationships, this changes every relationship that we have. I think the work that you're doing is really incredible. As I said, we just have so much to learn from you. As I let you go, what is the one thing, the one thing that you want couples in particular, no matter where they're at in their relationship, what do you want them to keep in mind as we enter Valentine's season and go through this time? [0:29:05] JD: Like so many things going through my head. I think I'm going to say this. It's a big thing to metabolize, and it's really the reason. I've been asked to do kind of other public-facing projects, and I've always said no. I'm a Midwest academic, who likes to go to two parties a year and then spend the rest of the time alone in my office. The reason I agreed to write Energy Rising is, I feel like the work of my life, I was put on this planet to give this message. That all of those horrible feelings, it's so easy to feel. Anxiety, fear, frustration, rejection, humiliation, and all of them. They are not here to torment you. They are here to lead you home. Those feelings are telling you is they're calling you into your next level of power. The reality of our life is there is no way to have more connection with other until we come into a new relationship with the energy of rejection. If I can't hold the possibility of rejection in my nervous system, I will never have real intimacy. All of us want more self-confidence. The only way I negotiate more self-confidence is by coming into a more expansive relationship with doubt. Do you see, there are opposite sides of the same coin? The more I face my own doubt, the more confident I become. The more I say, "Am I really being rejected here?" As I contemplate it, it doesn't feel great. But then, I start to see very quickly, I get relief and say, "Oh, no. It's okay that he's not available for me tonight." I don't have to come up with this horrific thesis nightmare about how like, I'm alone in the world, and I'm going to destroy my family. It doesn't have to be that way, but we need a more intelligent relationship with the feelings we don't want to feel. [0:30:49] PF: Excellent. Fortunately, your book is a great primer for how we start feeling those feelings and get in touch with ourselves. Dr. Julia, the work you're doing, like I said, is just amazing. I so appreciate you taking this time out of your busy schedule, and sitting down, and talking with me about it. [0:31:05] JD: I so thank you for having me, Paula. Thank you again. [END OF EPISODE] [0:31:12] PF: That was Dr. Julia DiGangi, talking about how to make the most of our relationships. To learn more about Dr. Julia, find her book, follow her on social media, or watch her fabulous TED Talk. Visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Speaking of love, we would love to hear how we're doing. Please leave your comments and ratings wherever you download your podcast and let us know what you think. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Building Love with Maria Baltazzi [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 453 of Live Happy Now. As we approach February, our minds turn to love. For the next few weeks, we're going to talk about that many ways love shows up in our lives and how we can create more of it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm talking with Maria Baltazzi. In her book, Take a Shot at Happiness, Maria outlines eight happiness essentials and not surprisingly, one of them is love. Today, she's here to talk about some of the different types of love we may be overlooking and what practices we can use to build more love into our lives. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:42] PF: Maria, it is so wonderful to have you back on Live Happy Now. [0:00:46] MB: Thank you for having me back. I'm so excited to have another conversation with you. [0:00:52] PF: As we're getting ready to go into February, we have a lot of conversations around the topic of love around your heart, because February is also heart month and everything becomes heart centered and all about love. In your book, Take a Shot at Happiness, where you map out the happiness essentials, your number two happiness essential is love. That makes you the perfect person to sit down and set up the month that we're walking into and talk about love. My very first question, as we talk about love, what are we talking about? Being loved, loving others, in terms of it being a happiness essential? [0:01:30] MB: Yes. All of it. [0:01:32] PF: All the above. [0:01:32] MB: All of the above, because it all factors in. I think that you start with self-love. When I talk about self-love, I don't mean the selfies, narcissistic tendencies that we have taken on in the social media world. I mean, self-love in terms of respecting yourself and caring for yourself. There's so much research that supports the importance of self-care. When you think about the analogy, and you probably have heard this, but it's a good one, when you are on an airplane and the steward says, “In the invent of an emergency, an oxygen mask will drop down. Put it on yourself first before helping others.” That's what self-care is. It's putting on your oxygen mask first, so you can show up better for others. [0:02:39] PF: Do you think that self-love is the platform that we start building with to create strong other types of love? [0:02:48] MB: I think so. I think when you have a good relationship with yourself, when you have a good understanding of yourself, that enables you to then extend that out to others. There's that Jerry McGuire line that's so famous when he says to Renée Zellweger, “You complete me.” No. No. [0:03:15] PF: That's not how it works. [0:03:16] MB: No. You complete yourself. You complete yourself first, so then when you are in relationship, whether it's romantically, with your children, with your friends, they’re complements. They're not completing you. They're not defining you. You do that for yourself. You can enter into relationships in a way that is strong and healthy and not needy. We've all been in those icky relationships, where people just cling on to you so much. They need you for everything and well, it's, one, it’s exhausting on you as a human when you are in good relationship with yourself. You are better able to be in good relationship with someone else, whatever that relationship, because you have the know-how. You understand what it is to be in good relationship. You're not looking for somebody else to tell you how to be in a good relationship. You're not looking for somebody else to define you, because you are in a particular relationship. I think it's really important that you love yourself first, so you can show up stronger for the relationships that you're in, whatever kind of relationship they are. [0:04:49] PF: You really do talk about that. You have to explore, nurture, love in all forms. I mean, from yourself to your family, to friends, to co-workers, to pets, there's so many different forms of love that we need to be more attentive to. [0:05:07] MB: Well, and some of those love relationships aren't necessarily healthy ones. [0:05:13] PF: True. [0:05:15] MB: That's something else to identify. You may have a love relationship, but it is so unhealthy for you, and to recognize it and get out of it. That is across the board. It's not just unhealthy romantic relationships. They could be unhealthy friendships. Going back to that idea of being in those clingy relationships, or those toxic relationships, where people are telling you how you should be, or what you should be doing. They're imposing their limiting beliefs on you and you're buying into it. That's not good. [0:05:59] PF: Yeah. It's something a lot of people end up doing and we feel stuck in the, because they're a friend, because they're a family, because, because, because we cannot change that, or we can't get ourselves out of that. What are some practices that you found first for identifying whether a relationship is good for you or not? Then secondly, if you identify it, it's not healthy for you, then how do you start really, because you have to change yourself as well to get out of that relationship. [0:06:29] MB: Well, it always begins with awareness, followed by choice, followed by action. [0:06:36] PF: Like, awareness, choice, action. [0:06:38] MB: Right. [0:06:39] PF: All right. [0:06:40] MB: Right. That's your baseline. Some of these relationships are difficult to let go of. They’re family members. They’re longtime relationships. They’re work relationships. Then these are sticky, difficult relationships to navigate around. The first thing is you're recognizing when a relationship isn't good for you in that, how are you feeling? How do you feel when you are around this person? How do you feel when you think about this person? How do you anticipate seeing them, or their departure? Maybe it might be written in something that you left. Having that understanding of how do you feel towards a particular person? That should be your cue. Once you identify that there is a relationship that doesn't make you feel good, then you need to consider, how meaningful is that relationship to you? Do you really want them in your life? You have to look at why you want them in your life, because you might be attached to somebody out of habit. You are with somebody who's toxic, but you don't let go of them, because it's familiar and it's too scary to let go of what is familiar. You're afraid of being alone. You find this in abuse of relationships, where the person won't let go of the abuser, because of what I just said, they're afraid to be alone. They're afraid, “Well, I might not find somebody. I'm dependent on them financially.” I mean, all of those things, you really need to get a grip on. Is that worth the price tag that you're paying for an unhealthy relationship? Then, there are those relationships that it's just very easy to cut off and say, “See you later,” and you don't worry about it. Then, there are those other relationships and they tend to be work related, or family related, where the advice is to minimize time. How can you spend the least amount of time that is going to impact you? Also, identify what are the conversations to stay away from? What are the situations to stay away from? Learning the art of redirecting the conversation. If somebody is a big complainer, or they're talking about something politically that you don't agree with, or something in religion, those tend to be hot topics. Learn to just redirect the conversation. I do this all the time with complainers. I will do a non-sequitur to something completely different that's positive and their brain just switches. They don't even realize that I've just redirected the conversation. Just change the subject. [0:10:07] PF: Your book is so great, because it's very interactive. It has these exercises that you can do. One thing I wanted you to talk about is you have this great exercise for bringing more love into your life, and that's through journaling. Can you talk about how people can do that and then what it does for us? [0:10:24] MB: Well, journaling, throughout my book, I offer in each chapter prompts, and there's now an app that's available in the Apple App Store, and soon coming to Android, where all of my book activities are on a companion app. You can be working on your well-being wherever you are. The reason that I have both the photography, the camera phone prompts and the journaling prompts is you were reading about love. You're reading about different concepts about happiness. In particular, we're talking about love here. It takes these ideas that are more intellectual, more cerebral ideas. And by having you take photos and then journal about them, it takes these head ideas and makes them heard ideas. You take these photo images of things that you're prompted in my book to take images of what love means to you. You begin to understand beyond the concepts that you're reading about. How is this specific to you? How does love really factor into your happiness framework? When we think, we think in images. Our images create story loops. One of the things that taking photographs and especially taking photographs about love is you are retraining your brain to look for the good, the good things that make you feel good, that feel loving to you, that feel nurturing to you. You have the experience of actually taking the photograph, which I find is very meditative, because you're just focusing on one image and everything else falls away. Then you have the experience later of when you look at that image, remembering what that experience was, how good it felt to you. Then you may see something in that image that you didn't realize at the time of taking it. Now, you have another level of meaning. Then you're building a storehouse of love images that you can call upon at a later time. You're creating a positive neural pathway towards the good love, not the bad love. The love that makes you feel good. Then the journaling part of it is journaling helps you process. It takes that blob of ideas that you have. Some of it may be fear-based, or you feel anxious around and you start writing. It starts to clarify and organize your thoughts into a way that is constructive and meaningful to you. [0:13:39] PF: That's great. Your exercises are so clear. They're simple, but profound. They're easy to do, but they can also take you very deep. I love that. We've actually worked with you to create an email series, so that people can sign up and get one basic little assignment and story a day with an affirmation and will tell people how to do that at the end of the podcast. It's really a wonderful walk through these exercises of creating more love and really connecting with yourself on a deeper level. I love that you close out this particular chapter with the loving kindness meditation. That happens to be my favorite kind of meditation. Tell us what that is and what effect it has on us. [0:14:24] MB: Loving kindness is a meditation, if you are starting mindfulness, if you are in the Buddhist tradition, loving kindness is a well-known practice there. It is teaching you both self-love and for love outside of yourself, love for others. Ultimately, you are expanding that circle. You're going from self-love to love around you, to love maybe in your neighborhood, maybe in your city, maybe in your country, maybe in the world. You're expanding it. You are opening your heart beyond just yourself in a way that's intentional and conscious. There are different ways that you can do loving kindness. Some people have a hard time directing that loving kindness towards themselves. It's almost easier to first start with someone that they know loves them. Then you're sending out good wishes. It’s, may you be happy, may you be healthy. You're sending those kinds of messages out. As you are saying that out to the other person, then you turn it back into you. May I be happy? May I be healthy? Then you go on to something that's a little bit more difficult. Maybe there's somebody that is annoying you. I mean, you like them, you want them in your life, but they're just troubling you. You call that person to mind. May you be happy. May you be healthy. Then you turn it again back to you. Then you progress to also, more difficult people. It's a way to increase your love for yourself, those around you, and for difficult people. [0:16:38] PF: For me, that's been the biggest thing is being able to say that for people who are a challenge. [0:16:46] MB: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Because ultimately, what you're realizing in loving kindness, we all want the same things. Now, I might not like you. You may be annoying me, but you're a human being. You want to be happy. You want to be loved. You want to be healthy, just like me. That's what loving kindness, that's what that meditation is all about. [0:17:11] PF: What happens to us when we start inviting more love into our lives and consciously making practices to do that? [0:17:22] MB: I feel like, you become softer in a good way. I feel from, and I am saying this from my experience, when I started paying more attention to being loving, is that it physically in my body, I didn't feel so rigid. I didn't feel that contraction. As I brought in more and more love, I actually felt the lightness, an expanding of just how I felt inside of my body. No, I didn't feel that constriction. Then I feel that it also makes you more accepting. You're not as judgmental. You're more open. I think it also leads to being more grateful and it needs to be more loving, which are the subsequent – beyond love of the happiness essentials that I talk about in my book. After love, when you love yourself enough, you love yourself to take care of yourself. You're taking care of your health and mind, body, and spirit. Then that's giving way to be more grateful. Then that love also opens you up to being more forgiving. I think a lot of beautiful things come out of love. [0:18:46] PF: That is true. It's a very important thing. We treat it too lightly, I think, especially in February, I've become so commercialized. Yeah, this is a great time to delve into it. I appreciate you sitting down and talking with me. As I said, we're going to tell people how to sign up for your email course, so that they can learn about bringing more love into their lives. [0:19:05] MB: Well, thank you for having me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:19:11] PF: That was Maria Baltazzi talking about how to build more love into your life. Be sure and visit us at livehappy.com to sign up for building love, a free one-week email series with Maria's daily practices for increasing love in your life. I will also tell you how to find her book, follow her on social media, or sign up for the weekly Live Happy newsletter. Again, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Speaking of love, we would love to hear how we're doing. Please leave us your comments and ratings wherever you download your podcast and let us know what you think. That's all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Launch Your Awakening Adventure With Steve Taylor [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 452 of Live Happy Now. Throughout the month of January, we've been sharing practices that can help you create habits to increase your wellbeing. Now, it's time for an adventure. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Steve Taylor, a best-selling author and senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University in England. Steve has devoted his life to investigating spiritual awakenings, both for himself and for others. In his new book, The Adventure, Steve provides a roadmap to walk us all through the practices he's found most useful for helping us embark on our own awakening journey. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW]   [0:00:45] PF: Steve, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:47] ST: Hi, Paula. Great to be with you. [0:00:48] PF: I'm so excited to talk with you. All throughout the month of January, we've been talking about new practices, things that people can do to really start a new year off with change. We make resolutions, but those may or may not mean anything in February and after that. So what we're really talking about is practices that we can adopt and adapt into our lives. So your book, boy, when you talk about an awakening that is just so incredible. Tell us a little bit about what you mean when you talk about spiritual awakening. [0:01:22] ST: Awakening means really expansion, it's like an expansion of awareness, an expansion of potential, an expansion of our inner being. It's also about connection, it's about connecting to more deeply to ourselves, connecting more deeply to other people, and connecting more deeply to the world. Yes, the world in general. [0:01:42] PF: Yes. What kind of change does it make when we connect more deeply with ourselves? How does that connect us then with other people? [0:01:50] ST: It brings a sense of wellbeing, because most of the time, we live at the surface of our minds, we live at the level of thought, and our identity, our normal sense of identity is derived from our thoughts. Because our thoughts are so restless, because our thoughts often tend towards negativity, worrying about the future, feeling guilty, or angry about the past. If you leave at there before, it causes discord, it often leads to unhappiness. But when you expand your sense of identity, then you dive below the level of thoughts into your deeper being. It's like a diver, diving from the surface of the ocean, into the depths of the ocean. When you dive into the depths below the surface of your mind, you find that there is a natural harmony there, it just seems to be the nature of our deep being. It just seems to exist in a natural state of contentment and ease. Of course, when you do that, you also free yourself from the worries of the mind, the restlessness of the mind, you find a stillness. At that point too, you also find it easier to connect with other people. Because when our minds are filled with thought chatter, it creates a sense of separation. Thoughts, they enclose is within our own identity. So as soon as we go beyond thoughts, into our deeper beings, our being opens up, and we find it easier to empathize with others, we find that we are naturally more altruistic to others, because we feel more connected to them. [0:03:22] PF: That's incredible. I'll also point out, that what you talked about, like the story of diving into an ocean, that's also – you've got a great meditation that you start the book out with, that is exactly that. Like diving below the turmoil of the surface of the ocean and getting down underneath. I've got to say, I've been using that, and it's a really effective meditation.   [0:03:41] ST: So good.   [0:03:42] PF: Absolutely encourage anybody to check out the book, and learn that meditation, because it is really effective, and it's very peaceful. [0:03:49] ST: Oh, brilliant. Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad. [0:03:52] PF: So your book is called The Adventure. You say that awakening is the greatest adventure that we can undertake as human beings. Can you explain why that is? [0:04:02] ST: It's natural for us. I think we are meant to awaken in our lives. We're not meant to be enclosed. We're not meant to live within these restless minds, within this discord. That's not really a normal – well, it's a normal state, because it's the state we experience most of the time. But I don't think it's our natural state. I think it is our natural state to live in wellbeing, to live in a more expensive, and more connected way, and it feels right. One of the great things about awakening is, once you begin the journey, it has its own momentum, and you reap benefits almost straightaway. You feel an increasing sense of stillness, and ease, and harmony in your life. It's kind of self-perpetuating that wellbeing, that harmony propels you, gives you further motivation to continue. It seems so natural to grow. I think as human beings, we're meant to grow. We're meant to expand, just like all living beings grow in some form, physically, at least. But I think, human beings, we don't just grow physically, we grow psychologically, and spiritually as well. When we do that, it just feels so right and so natural. It feels like exactly what we're meant to do. [0:05:08] PF: This comes out at an interesting time, because there is a lot of turmoil. There's a lot of concern about what is going on. So it seems like if there was ever a time when we needed this awakening, it would be now. Can you talk about the need for a collective spiritual awakening? [0:05:26] ST: As you say, we are living through a time of great turmoil. I think in a way, that's always been the case. Human societies have always been full of conflict, and full of oppression. Human beings have, throughout recorded history, we've fought wars against each other. So there's always been conflict, and chaos, and discord. But now, because of the technology of the modern world, and the interconnectedness of the modern world, it seems to be more intense than ever. It's happening on a massive global scale. I think all of the problems we face in the world are the direct result of what I call our normal sleep state, they are the direct result of our normal, constricted, discordant minds. But when we open up, when we expand our awareness, once we begin to feel some sense of inner harmony, then everything changes, our own behavior changes, our relationship to others changes. We become much more altruistic rather than materialistic and selfish. We promote harmony in everything we do. Once you have a large number of people living in that way, the whole of society changes. If a large enough number of people did begin to live in that way, then the whole world would change, the world would shift from this state of discord into a mode of harmony, a mode of cooperation, rather than competition. We will treat nature as being sacred and spiritual, rather than exploiting nature. We will treat each other with respect rather than exploiting and mistrusting each other. The whole world would change. I do think that a collective awakening is the most urgent need of our time. [0:07:05] PF: The world that you've described sounds very appealing, very much where we want to live. How do we as individuals, if we're going on this individual, spiritual awakening, how do we help that create a collective spiritual awakening? [0:07:20] ST: It happens naturally to some degree, because as I say, once we undergo our own personal shift, it changes our behavior. But we also have a kind of – you've probably noticed it, if you've met people who are naturally content, who are naturally altruistic, those people probably are people who have had a spiritual awakening. Then, these people have a kind of radiance about them. They change the mood around them. You walk into a room with one of these people in it. You can sense the contentment around them. It just in the same way, as you walk into a room with a very aggressive or angry person, you can sense the mood around them. It changes in terms of how we behave, and it changes in terms of the aura or the atmosphere that we generate around us. It is kind of self-perpetuating. The more people who generate some degree of awakening within themselves, the greater the momentum of wakefulness will – ultimately, maybe it will reach a threshold where it becomes human beings normal state. [0:08:18] PF: I would love to see that happen. You really do walk us through how to reach this state of wakefulness. Eight of the things that you begin with, you talk about the qualities of wakefulness. Do you mind going over those a little bit, explain what wakefulness means, and why those qualities are so important? [0:08:34] ST: Great. Yes. Yes. I'd love to do that. Wakefulness is, you could define it very simply as an expansion of identity with a sense of connectedness on many different levels. I have a part time role as a psychologist. I've been a psychologist for many years, and I specialize in investigating cases of spiritual awakening in people. I've also been undergoing my own personal journey of awakening since I was a teenager. That's quite a long time now. Basically, in my own experience, and in my research, I've identified eight essential qualities, which all awakened people demonstrate and which naturally arise through the process of awakening. First one is disidentification. That means a bit like I described earlier. That's when we step outside the thought mind and realize that we are not our thoughts. Then, we have gratitude, which means developing an all-encompassing sense of appreciation for everything and everyone in our lives, including life itself. Then, third characteristic is presence, which basically means living in the moment, being aware of our experience, and our surroundings, rather than living in the future, or the past, or within our own thoughts. Then, altruism, giving to the world, which incorporates things like empathy, connectedness, being compassionate towards others, being generous, and kind to other human beings. Every spiritual tradition in the world, or every religious tradition emphasizes the importance of kindness and altruism. But altruism is also a spiritual quality in itself, it's a spiritual practice in itself. The fifth quality is acceptance, which means, simply not resisting the reality of our lives, not resisting the reality of our predicament in life or our situations in life. Then, we move on to integration with the body. That's important because there's a slight tendency in some spiritual traditions, certainly some religious traditions to denigrate the body, to see the body as an enemy, or even to suggest that the body is not really real. It's a kind of illusory thing. But it's very important to gain a sense of harmony with the body, and to realize that the body is sacred and spiritual in itself. Then, there is detachment. That simply means not being dependent on external things for your identity and wellbeing. Finally, the eighth quality is embracing mortality, which means being aware of our own mortality, accepting our own mortality, and living in harmony with the fact of our own mortality. [0:11:27] PF: Now, with those qualities, are those things that you need to learn and experience in the order that they're presented in the book and in the order that you just presented now? [0:11:37] ST: No, that's not really the case. There was one exception, which is disidentification from the ego. That is kind of the gateway to spiritual awakening. You can't undergo spiritual awakening unless you go through that stage of disidentifying with your thought mind. Once you've done that, then any of the other seven characteristics can be practiced in any order. They're not reliant, it may depend on your personality. Certain characteristics may be more important for you to develop. You may already have developed certain characteristics to some extent. So it will vary from person to person/ [0:12:13] PF: The ability to walk away from our thought mind for that disidentification is, it seems very difficult, because we are all wrapped up in our thoughts every minute of the day.   [0:12:26] ST: Yes, that's true.   [0:12:27] PF: Can you talk about that a little bit? That seems like an ambitious and very big first step talk, but you make it pretty simple in the book. Can you talk about that, like how people go about doing that, taking that first step on the journey? [0:12:41] ST: You're right, it is the first most important step. It may seem difficult, but if you think about it, there are lots of times in our lives when we step beyond the thought mind. They're usually the times when we are happiest. For example, when you get absorbed in an enjoyable activity, if you're playing music, or engaged in a creative activity, or even when you're socializing with friends, or even reading a really enthralling book, or watching a really enthralling film, you stop thinking. You step outside your thought mind. An hour or two may pass by, and then the activity, or the play, or the film is over, and you think, "Oh, here I am again. It's me. I can start thinking again." But you know that you've been in a state of wellbeing during those moments. Also, for example, if you walk in the countryside, you feel a sense of wellbeing, you feel a sense of inner calm, you feel connected to your beautiful surroundings. That's because your mind has become quiet, maybe your brain isn't completely empty, but you're thinking less. There are also certain moments when we don't like what we're thinking. We become aware of ourselves thinking silly thought, and we say to ourselves, "Don't be so ridiculous." You think about a job interview or something, and think, "Oh, no. I'm going to make a mess of it. It's going to be terrible." Then you think, "No, don't be ridiculous. It's going to be fine." We do it from time to time. That is an example of disidentifying with your thought mind. It is also the basic aim of meditation is to disidentify with your thought mind, or meditation practices teaches to do that. It's a question of, slowly developing an ability that we already have, and cultivating it over maybe a few weeks, maybe even a few months, so that it becomes stronger. [0:14:27] PF: It's not something that is going to happen overnight, that part. It's going to take some practice. [0:14:32] ST: Yes, you can certainly glimpse it. We all glimpse it from time to time, anyway. Maybe, once you glimpse it for the first time, then you realize, "Ah, I am not my thoughts. There is something else beyond or beneath my thoughts. That's a really important moment, that moment of realization encourages you to cultivate the state. It will usually take a few weeks or a few months for it to become stronger for it to pick up momentum. [0:14:57] PF: So as someone goes through this book, do you recommend that they read the entire book, or do they say like, "Do you have guidelines? So we know going into it." I love how you present that. If you're going to go on a journey, you need a map, because you need to know where you're going, and what to expect, how to dress for this trip. You do a great job of setting that up. Then, we get into that journey. Do we need to say, take that first chapter on disidentification, and just stay with that until we feel we've mastered that? Or do we read the entire book, and then come back, and do the practices? How do you see that working for people? [0:15:33] ST: I'd like people to be flexible. As I said before, there are certain characteristics which are maybe more important to some people. Some people will know that they need to work on one particular characteristic, so they can turn to that chapter straightaway. The chapters don't necessarily need to be read sequentially, although all of the eight qualities are important. A think they're all equally important. They do all need to be cultivated. But you know, people should be flexible. It never really works. When you're too prescriptive to people, when you say to them, do this, stick to the plan, you got to allow for some flexibility, and some variations in people's personalities. [0:16:09] PF: I love it. Here at Live Happy, we talk about gratitude a lot. That is one of the qualities, and the subtitle of that chapter is overcoming the taking for granted syndrome. Can you talk about what the taking for granted syndrome is, and then tell us how we overcome it? [0:16:25] ST: In my view, the taking for granted syndrome is probably the biggest single issue with human beings, the biggest single thing that stops us attaining happiness. It's basically the human tendency to take things for granted. It's so easy for us to take things for granted. Sometimes when some of that is taken away from us, we realize how valuable it is. For example, is your health. If your health becomes endangered, if you have a serious illness or an accident, you become aware of how valuable and how wonderful your body is, and how miraculous the body is. But then, your body heals again, and you start to forget it again. You fall under the sway of the taking for granted syndrome. It's the same with people. You may fall in love with a person, and they're the most wonderful person in the world for a few months, and your life is much better with them, you feel happy, you feel harmony in your life. But after a certain amount of time, you start to take them for granted, and they don't bring you as much happiness and your life is not so different the way it was before. That happens in all areas of our lives. It happens with life itself. One of the things that happens when people are close to death, in some way, if they have an accident or a life-threatening illness, they realize how miraculous, and how fragile, and how beautiful life itself is. They realize what an amazing gift it is to be alive, just to be alive. Doesn't matter what's happening in your life, just life itself. But again, we tend to switch off to that. One of the special characteristics of spiritually awakened people is that they're not affected by the taking for granted syndrome. They are always in a state of appreciation. They always, to some degree, they always appreciate the value of their health, the people in their lives, their freedom, and prosperity, and life itself. But yes, it's a process. It's a journey to transcend the taken for granted syndrome, but it can be done. I developed exercises over a number of years, all of the exercises in the book, we've been kind of road tested at workshops over a number of years. They all are effective, and that applies to the gratitude exercises too. [0:18:32] PF: Another thing that you talk about, it's near the end of the book, and I think this is so important. You talk about embracing our mortality. This is a two-part question, because first, I want to know how we do that, because it's difficult. We don't really want to think about that a lot. Then secondly, how does embracing our mortality help us become more awakened? [0:18:50] ST: It can be difficult. I mean, in psychology, there are three basic attitudes to death. This is sometimes called the three A's. One of them is avoidance, when we don't think about our death, or our mortality. The second one is anxiety, when we do think about it occasionally, but when we feel uneasy. The third one is acceptance, which is when we do contemplate our death, and we accept the fact that we're going to die, and we live life in the light of that. The only attitude which brings any well-being is acceptance. The other two, if you avoid thinking about mortality, or if you feel anxious about it, obviously, that leads to discomfort. Many human beings do live with those two attitudes to death with an avoidance or anxiety. But when we do contemplate death seriously, when we face it in a direct way, and we really acknowledged the fact that death is real, then we move beyond the anxiety. We actually begin to sense the value of life, and we begin to sense the preciousness of all of the things in our lives, and the preciousness of the world the precious beauty of the world. That's one way in which being aware of death brings wellbeing. It takes us beyond the taking for granted syndrome. It's a really good way of transcending the taking for granted syndrome. Another thing is that death gives us motivation, the fact that life is temporary. It gives us motivation to fulfill our ambitions, no longer to procrastinate. It makes us aware that we only have a limited amount of time. Life is fragile, and temporary. It also makes us more present, and it helps us to let go of attachments. Because being aware of mortality makes us aware that possessions are not important. The old saying, you can't take it with you. But possessions are meaningless, because sooner or later, they're going to be taken away from us. To some extent, even achievements, and even successes can be considered meaningless because it's going to be taken away. But what's really important, and what's real, is being here now in this present moment. So death helps us to be aware of that. [0:21:07] PF: You've given us so many ways to awaken. You've given us so many practices, and you also have an online course that that people can take. What is it that you really hope to accomplish with this book? It's not your first book, you've written several bestsellers. What is it about this one that you really hope every reader takes away from? [0:21:27] ST: This book is quite special to me, because it's my first really practical book. I've written a few books in the mode of psychologists, analyzing, and describing people's experiences, even described my own experiences. But this is the first book where I offer a guidebook, or a handbook of spiritual awakening. On the one hand, I hope that people realize that awakening or enlightenment is not something unattainable or inaccessible. Some people think that it's only monks or mystics, or people who've been meditating for decades who can become awakened. It's open to all of us. It's our most natural, authentic state, so it's in us already. It's really just a question of uncovering what's already in us. So I hope people realize that it's accessible. Although, you have to apply yourself, you have to stick to certain practices, you have to have a certain degree of discipline, and motivation. But it's not difficult, once you get started as I said before, it has its own momentum. It becomes self-perpetuating. In some ways, it becomes easier as you do it, that the path of awakening has its own momentum that carries you towards the goal. But ultimately, even beyond that, I want to promote harmony. Because as I mentioned earlier, I do believe that the world is in such a chaotic, such a state of suffering, because of our normal, limited sleep awareness. I think, really, the only way in which we can begin to live in harmony on this planet is for more people to move towards awakening. [0:22:59] PF: I would agree with you and you've given us a great roadmap to do that. I thank you for writing it, and I thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. [0:23:08] ST: Thank you, Paula. It's been really enjoyable. [END OF EPISODE] [0:23:14] PF: That was Steve Taylor talking about how to begin your own spiritual awakening. To learn more about Steve and his book, The Adventurer: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening, or follow him on social media or visit his website. Just go to livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: The 3-Minute Meditation with Richard Dixey [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 451 of Live Happy Now. As we venture a little farther into the new year, that's a good time to pause, take a breath, and if you have three minutes, maybe even learn to meditate. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Richard Dixey, a research scientist and lifelong student of Buddhism. Since 2007, he has devoted his life to teaching meditation, and his new book, Three Minutes a Day, is designed to teach readers how to change their lives with simple meditation practices that truly do take just three minutes a day. Be sure to stay tuned after my conversation with Richard to learn about a brand-new podcast called Built to Win, that's brought to you by Live Happy's sister company, Neora. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:50] PF: Richard, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [0:00:53] RD: I'm glad to be here. [0:00:54] PF: I wanted to talk to you right at the beginning of the year, because this is a time of year when people are adapting to new habits. They're saying, “Okay, I'm going to do it better than I did last year.” Meditation is something that people often want to do, and they're like, “Oh, it's just too hard. I don't have time.” Then you come along with this terrific book that says, we can do it in three minutes a day. First of all, what led you to discover this different way of meditating that we don't have to sit cross-legged for 30 minutes at a time? [0:01:28] RD: Actually, this is not so new. There are traditions amongst the Asian wisdom traditions in which this comes, which stress very short and often, they always say, because the whole trouble with meditation is making it fresh. If you say for half an hour, I suspect the 28 minutes, we'll be sleeping. You're only going to get two or three minutes before it's turned into a blank slate of one form or another. It's innovative to put it in a Western format. But the idea of short sessions that are very focused is not new. [0:02:02] PF: You just made it accessible to us. [0:02:04] RD: I'm the dean at Dharma College in Berkeley, which is a school that's dedicated to revisioning the wisdom traditions. You know, these wisdom traditions are really amazing. These meditation traditions are two and a half thousand years old, and they are unbroken. Ther have been master-student, master-student, master-student for two and a half thousand years. There's a lot of accumulated experience, and they have something really important to offer us today, which is why I was very motivated to teach meditation. Then in teaching meditation, I was really amazed how quickly you could actually get the core point over. That's what really inspired me to say, okay, let's make a 14-week course, three minutes a day, really short focused to give people a real taste of what meditation is. [0:02:50] PF: Yeah. With three minutes a day, we're all like, “Okay. I can do that. I don't care how busy my life is. I can do three minutes a day.” That makes it very appealing, because we live in a society that's instant gratification. We got to have it now and we're on the go. You created this. It's really a step-by-step guide. We need to clarify. It's not a book that you're going to sit down and read all the way through and then come back and try to implement these practices. Do you want to talk a about the setup of it and how – [0:03:16] RD: Yeah. I do. I do. Actually, there's a couple of very interesting points here. Meditation is about our own experience. It's not about anything else. It's not information, as we normally understand it. You're not going to learn about meditation. You're going to address your own experience. Now, this is really quite a challenging undertaking, because our entire educational system takes our experience for granted and talks about the world. Well, the world is actually constructed from our experience. Our experience is like, it's a window that you look out of, or all of these sorts of ideas. It's all completely nonsense. We construct our experience, but we never look at how we construct it. This means that you need to introduce various, simple techniques to give you a little taste of what this construction is. Looking at this construction is meditation. Now, of course, it's a bit like saying, I'm going to tell you about chocolate. You say, okay it's a bit sweet, a bit sticky, it melts in your mouth. You'd have no idea what chocolate was. Give you a piece of chocolate. Oh, I know what chocolate is. It's like that. What I'm trying to do is give these really short, little pieces of experience, not information. The idea is you read this book –we have chapters about four or five pages of introduction, a short meditation experience, and then some Q&A. What I want people to do is to read that first chapter, do three minutes of that particular exercise and read the second chapter. If you do that, you'll build up an experience of meditation. Once you do, it totally alters how you see the world. Everything is different. [0:05:01] PF: Do you find that readers have a certain meditation that they gravitate toward? Like, they say, “Oh, I really like the candle meditation. This is my favorite. This is what works for me.” [0:05:11] RD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. People have favorites. The trick to meditation is this. We're really riled up the whole time, because we're reacting to the construct we call the world. That reactivity is very stressful. Now, the truth is that a lot of what we react to is actually made by us and projected as real. This is what people Google, though, because they know, if you get a little buzzwords, you can make people click. You can force them into reacting. Of course, we carry around these mobile phones the whole time, which are literally doing this to us. The first thing to learn is how to become calm in the face of a rising experience. This is the first thing to learn. This is called Shamatha. Until we learn to become calm in the face of a rising experience, we really have no chance of seeing how the world is made. The first section of this book is all about looking at particular meditation objects, which are things you can concentrate on and learning to become calm. Now, becoming calm is not becoming all free. Becoming calm is engaging with that instantly, reacting with an opinion, or some like or dislike, or an aversion, or whatever it else it might be. Learning to engage without reactivity. If you can develop that foundation, which you can develop relatively quickly, they're on the basis of that foundation. You can start to look. You can look at thoughts, how the thoughts begin, how the thoughts end. What are thoughts exactly? How are my thoughts being manipulated by experiences outside me? Those sorts of questions become answerable once you see as being reactive. What meditation does is enable you to get control of your life at a very profound level. Actually, really, this control is the only genuine control that we have. Our attention is truly our possession. You can't be given it. You have it. The key is to learn how to use it. That's really what meditation is about. [0:07:15] PF: I think it's more important now than ever, because we are so distracted. As you said, our phones are there every 30 seconds, reminding us of what we need to do and what we didn't do and breaking news and all that. Just, we don't get a break. What changes do you see in people when they're able to sit down and learn this three-minute method? [0:07:36] RD: Well, this should be taught in primary school, honestly. Reading, writing, and meditation. Why is that? Well, it's for this reason. As I mentioned, we construct our experience. We actually have a word for it, which is in our language. We say, we recognize something. When you say you recognize, that word re. It means, you do it again. What happens is we have sense inputs, five senses, thoughts and imaginations. Then we recognize them as things, people, things I want, things I don't, good news, bad news, blah, blah, blah. Now that process of recognition is literally a process of world construction. The mechanism that recognizes takes memories and then looks at the cognitions that come in, compares them to memories, ascribes to their names and meanings and represents them as the world. It's that structure that really makes us human beings. What we have to do is make recognition part of our experience consciously. That process is meditation. [0:08:42] PF: Well, one thing that you talk about that I really don't think I've seen addressed much in meditation is the role that imagination plays. We don't really think about imagination and meditation going together. can You talk about that and how imagination helps us meditate? [0:08:58] RD: Yes. Well, imagination, as I mentioned, there are six gates of our experience, right? There are the five senses and then there are thoughts and imaginations. Now, thoughts and imaginations are as much an input into our experience as feeling, smelling, touching, tasting and hearing off. We normally don't really think about imaginations like that. Of course, we spend an awful lot of the day, I dread to think how much, but it's probably well north of 50% imagining, well, what about this? What about that? Well, I could do this. I could do that. These are all imaginations. One of the techniques that happens in this book is to actually say, okay, let's deliberately imagine something and make it a meditation object. Just like you might say, light a candle, look at a candle. You can imagine something and look at that. The moment you get that, you go, “Oh my God. Imaginations aren't actually part of me. They're constructed by me.” That again, releases all kinds of issues, because so many of the things that we think we want, or so many of the things that we think are bad for us are merely imagined. They're constructed by our imagination. The trouble is this mechanism that learns from the past is defensive. It was actually developed when we were on the savannas being prowled by saber-toothed tigers to immediately recognize a threat and run away from it. That's why we survived. Of course, now, this paranoid, defensive, backward-looking mechanism means that all we see is bad news, all we care about is bad news. We're not interested in good things, only bad things. Of course, the result is stress. If people just learn to see their experience as experience, oh, the stress starts coming back. It's like, okay, we can calm this down. [0:11:00] PF: As we're telling people, all right, this is something you're going to do for three minutes, can you give examples of some of the exercises so they can understand what they do for three minutes? [0:11:09] RD: Okay, the book starts with two key exercises, which I think are really, probably the fundamental thing of it. The wisdom traditions of Asia separate concentration into two phases. Now, we all know that concentration has something to do with meditation. Often, people think that you're meant to sit, not moving, thought-free, and just going to some blank, thought-free state, because that's what they think meditation is. Now actually, the trick is to get hold of our concentration and master it. Concentration, I said, has two phases. The first one is adverting. This is to be able to place your attention on a given object. That's what we’re all taught at school. Johnny, Johnny, concentrate. He does all the concentrate. Most contemporarily, educated people can concentrate. The problem is concentration like that is brittle. That's to say, you might be concentrating on one thing, then something else happens, “Oh, I concentrate on that, and then I concentrate on this. Then I can't.” That's exactly what happens to us. The first thing is to make the difference between adverting and another element of concentration, which is totally not stressed in our education system, which is savoring. Once you've adverted your concentration to an object, there's another element of concentration, which is to savor it. Now actually there are technical terms for these two things. One's called Vitaka, that's concentration adverting, and the other one's called Vicara, which is savoring. You can actually access these two things by developing simple meditation techniques. Once you've accessed savoring, then you can make your concentration stable. The trick is to first of all, experience Vitaka, adverting concentration, and I use a candle for that. The people watch a candle. What you'll find when you do this, even for three minutes is everything starts disturbing you. Thoughts disturbing. Car slams, you're disturbed by that. Someone talks in the next room, you're disturbed by that. You find yourself being disturbed. That's why most people say, “Oh, you've got to be in a totally silent room with the windows closed, your eyes closed, and no thought.” This is because they're only looking at Vitaka. Now, if you can then change your meditation object, and what I like to use is a bell, an object that fades, what happens is your Vitaka turns into savoring as you watch the fading sound. After a while, you can fade right into silence. You're still concentrated, but there's no object. You've entered something totally different. It's just like, pick up a cup of coffee, that’s Vitaka. Taste the coffee, that's Vicara. [0:13:53] PF: We're going to tell readers how they can find your book. But in the meantime, what's one thing they can start doing right now? Is there like, okay, this would work for me. I can give it three minutes a day. What's something they can do starting today? [0:14:06] RD: What they can do right now, you can go on to my website, richarddixey.com, and download a free app. What that app does is give you the meditation instructions. Then if you like the first one, get the book. What the app does, which always freaks people out a bit, is it requires you to do seven days of a three-minute thing, before it'll give you the next chapter. It's actually a trainer, it’s not really an – There’s a free trainer. The first exercise is candle-watching. Watching candles in itself is an amazing meditation. Just to watch a candle the three minutes. That itself, “Three minutes. There's nothing at all.” Three minutes is a long time if you do something deliberately. Just that alone, if you do that for a week, you will change. It's quite incredible how drip, drip, drip will fill the bathtub. It doesn't take a long time. It's just repetition that does it. Just do that. Within a week you'll go, “Well, I'm feeling a bit different. This is interesting. Something's changed.” That's because there's a wake-up call being given to your natural intelligence saying, “Hey, you don't have to be kidnapped by your recognitive map all the time. You could actually be free. You could be intelligent without having an object of intelligence. You could just be yourself.” That little wake-up call comes when you start taking that bit of control. Retaking of freedom of choice is a huge moment, where suddenly, we go, wow, so much of what is freaking me out turns out to be freaking out because I'm allowing it to. I'm giving permission for it to freak me out. What I've got to do is take a little step sideways. Oh, it doesn't freak me out anymore. That really is simple. [0:16:01] PF: That was Richard Dixey, talking about how you can transform your life in just three minutes a day. To learn more about his book, Three Minutes a Day, or download his free app and take your meditation on the go, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Speaking of things you'll find on our website, next I'm talking with Live Happy's Deborah Heisz, who is also CEO of our sister company, Neora, and has a great new podcast named Built to Win that she's here to tell us about. [DEBORAH HEISZ] [0:16:29] PF: Well, Deborah, happy new year. [0:16:31] DH:  Happy new year, Paula. [0:16:33] PF: This is such a great time of year, because everyone's starting new things and excited about the opportunities that are going on. All our shows this month are really tailored around new practices and new ways of looking at things. You have a lot of new things going on, a lot of things you're excited about. I wanted to take a few minutes and talk to you about that. [0:16:51] DH: I really do have a lot going on that I'm excited about. We have a lot going on that we're excited about. There's some great new stuff with Live Happy coming out. Happy Access coming up in March and we're talking about that right now, and we're talking about all the other things related to Live Happy that we like to put out in the world this year. I love the series that you guys are doing right now on new things, new practices. It's great. It's always good to put stuff in your head and new ideas on how you can improve. I love everything that's going on right now. I have something that's a little outside the Live Happy space that I've been working on that I wanted to share with everybody. I think, everybody knows the podcast. I am CEO of Live Happy. I also have a co-founder of Live Happy and his name is Jeff Olson. Jeff and I actually worked together on another company, a company called Neora. He's the founder of that along with his daughter, Amber Olson-Rourke and I'm co-CEO of that company. I'm really excited about what we've got going on, because we have just launched a new podcast called Built to Win. It's available on all your podcast places that you would find Live Happy Now. That podcast features Jeff. Jeff Olson, he's the author of the best-selling book, The Slight Edge, which is really a book that is a roadmap, how to accomplish anything. Then Amber Olson-Rourke, who is a very successful executive in her own right, and then also we have Dave Fleming, who is a seasoned international executive, who has been through a lot of challenges and done a lot of things in his life and then me. Basically, what we all are is we're personal development junkies and we've learned a lot. We spend a lot of time studying business practices, studying things that you can do to get better in life. Leadership. There's a lot of leadership lessons. What we really want to do is put out in the world a lot of our experience and to help those of you who are trying to build a business, who are thinking about managing a team, thinking about anything in your life. It doesn't have to be business. Thinking about challenges that you need to overcome. We're trying to put information out there that you can use in your everyday life to improve your life. It's not quite Live Happy, but it's in the same vein. Interesting, because the four of us just went through a really huge monumental challenge that most people will never see anything of that size in their business career. We navigated successfully and we won a very important battle in the business world. He first few episodes focus on math, but then most of the episodes focus and are going to focus on practices you can do in your everyday life, leadership lessons, how to make decisions in the trenches, how to get prepared for those problems when they come up, how to lead teams, all of those things that are critically important to basically, building leadership skills in your own life. That's what most of the podcasts are going to focus on. We just launched it, and so we wanted to share it with our Live Happy listeners. Because if you're someone who has a business, wants to be in business, is a manager of a team at a company, works in a business, most of us in the world do one of those things. [0:20:08] PF: Having listened to it, one thing that strikes me is even though you're talking about business principles, these are life principles, and they guided your business decisions, but even someone who isn't in a business environment can use those same principles and applications for making difficult decisions and taking on big challenges. That's really what struck me. It's like a movie that's set in a business world, but you could easily change the scene and make it a homework movie, where it's set in someone's house. That's really how it comes through. The lessons are applicable, whether you're trying to run a business, or run a household. [0:20:46] DH: You're exactly right, Paula. Because our intention is not to give people the nuts and bolts of how to do their accounting. You're not going to hear any of that. What you're going to hear is how to prepare to face challenges in life, how to face those challenges in life, how to get yourself prepared to have those challenges in life, and all of that is personal development. I mean, yes, a lot of the principles are grounded in some of our business experiences, but the reality is these are people who have been very successful in their lives. Jeff and Amber and Dave are great people. I get to work with them every day. I couldn't be more blessed. But they have applied personal development in their lives to be successful people. I actually hate the term personal development. I actually prefer success practices, or happiness practices. Personal development sounds like work. The reality is it's work. But really, what we're talking about is discovering and applying the tools that help you accomplish anything. That's why the name of the podcast is Built to Win. [0:21:54] PF: That’s right. [0:21:54] DH: Build yourself. Build yourself to win when those challenges come in. [0:21:59] PF: One thing that really struck me, I think it was in the very first episode, and I believe it was Amber who brought up the fact that you faced this big challenge, and she realized every little challenge that had frustrated her in her business career had also given her the resilience to face this big challenge. She could look back behind her and say, “Oh, all those little things that were bothersome actually strengthened me.” I think that's so great, because that's true in life as well. [0:22:27] DH: It is. There will be a lot less business talk on this podcast than there will be life talk. Amber and I are both parent – well, Amber, Dave and I are all parents with children still living in home. We have to balance our work life with our home life. I think everybody does. That’s where a lot of our challenges arise, too. We'll be talking a little bit about that. We'll be talking about a lot of Live Happy principles we talk about here; being present, being engaged, building trust, building relationships. All of that will flow into this podcast as well. I'm super excited about it. We're just getting started. As you know, Paula, Live Happy Now has been my favorite thing we've ever done at Live Happy. It still is. [0:23:20] PF: Mine too. [0:23:20] DH: I know. I think it always will be. Because just hearing from people who have been there and done that, who have researched happiness, who have their own life experiences to bring, I just love the conversations we're able to have, part of Live Happy Now. Now, we get to have those conversations twice, because I could have it on here and Built to Win as well. Once again, it's going to be people who've been there, people who face things that maybe you haven't faced. But we all have challenges, and we all have goals, and we all have dreams and ideas of where we want to be in life. You have to have the personal tool set in order to accomplish those things. That's really what I'm hoping Built to Win provides to its listeners, ideas and building their personal tool set to be able to face the challenges and accomplish the goals they want in life. [0:24:14] PF: We're going to tell them how they can subscribe. We'll include that on the landing page, so they can go to livehappy.com and click on the podcast page and find how to do that. What do you want them to do once they go discover Built to Win? [0:24:29] DH: First of all, I want them to go discover it. Download the first couple of episodes, take a listen. Know that just getting to hear Jeff is inspirational. [0:24:37] PF: It's a masterclass every time. [0:24:39] DH: It is. Every time somebody asks him a question, or he makes a comment, you’re just like, “I need to start taking notes,” and I'm on the podcast. [0:24:47] PF: That’s a good sign. [0:24:48] DH: Please, take the opportunity to listen to it. Because we've just launched, also, share with your friends, share with everybody, but mostly, please download and rate it. It's really important for new podcasts to get people to rate them and let us know how you think. It helps us be able to be found on the podcast apps and helps more people find us. [0:25:08] PF: Deb, I wish the best of success on Built to Win for so many different reasons. Thank you for coming on and talking about it. [0:25:16] DH: My pleasure. I want to come back and talk about happiness sometime soon. [END OF EPISODE] [0:25:23] PF: That was Deborah Heisz, talking about the new podcast, Built to Win. Learn more about it and subscribe when you visit livehappy.com and click on this episode. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]