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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Meet Happy Activist Will Thomas and Celebrate the International Day of Happiness [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 460 of Live Happy Now. On March 20th, we celebrate the International Day of Happiness, and that makes this the perfect time to talk to a happy activist. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Will Thomas, who founded Good News Magazine in the midst of the pandemic to give people a break from the steady stream of negative news. What was supposed to be a one-time publication has turned into a growing media brand, and he's here to tell us how that happened. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:36] PF: Will, thank you so much for joining me for Live Happy Now. [00:00:39] WT: Thank you. I'm excited to be able to talk to you about what we're doing. [00:00:42] PF: This is a big week for us at Live Happy because it's the week of International Day of Happiness that actually happens the day after this episode airs. We've been celebrating happiness all month with a campaign we called HappyActs, where we encourage people to go out and do things for other people and build happiness in their communities. From the moment I first heard your story, I knew that I had to get you on the air as a happy activist because you embody this. You saw a need. People complain about we need good news, and you actually went out and did something about it. Tell us your story. [00:01:17] WT: We were in the direct mail shop republication business until two years ago, 2022. It was a great business. We served small businesses in Southern Milling, Tennessee. It’s a family business. Then we loved helping all those companies and had customers for 40 years. It was rewarding. Then COVID happened for a lot of businesses. Our business was under pressure in some elements on the print side. COVID, I think, made those wounds and those risks, highlighted them more. While we were still performing in most of our markets, we knew it wasn't a business we're going to be doing for another 20 years. During COVID in 2021, we had sold ads for the Lincoln County Fair magazine here in Tennessee. The fair got canceled because of COVID, and so we were like, “What are we going to do?” I mean, I guess, selfishly, we didn't want to lose the revenue. It was like – because that was a tough time for revenue, and our team came up with the idea. Well, what if we did something positive? In general, media is pretty negative, [inaudible 00:02:23] news or the 24-hour news cycle. Then during COVID, it was even worse. Everybody seemed worried about things. It just felt all this negative pressure. So we came up with the idea in Lincoln County to feature 20 people in a magazine to tell their stories, how they're positively impacting the community. We did that, published that magazine that fall, and had great feedback from people about the quality of the content and the purpose of it. Six months later, we converted one of our direct mail shoppers to a monthly, and we call it Good News, Good News Magazine. Of course, we know Good News is a generic type term, and it's not – you can't trademark that name for a magazine or anything like that. But we went with that name because we felt like that 100% embodied what we wanted to do. From a reader perspective, I mean, the stories that our team has told and the feedback we've had has been great and definitely the fuel to keep us going. [00:03:21] PF: Because of that response, you ended up not just doing it in that single market. You have now expanded into other markets. I'm an old print person. I'm not that old, but I'm a print person. That's what my background was. We know that starting a print magazine right now, a lot of people would say, “What are you thinking?” But this is working for you. So can you talk about how it is now? It’s spilling over. You're doing other markets that you're entering into. [00:03:45] WT: Right. Yes. Early on when we first launched, so we have eight markets now. Five markets we had direct mail shoppers in, so we had some relationships to help in those markets. Then our three newest markets are Bowling Green, Kentucky; Lebanon, Tennessee, and then Lynch, Virginia. I'm excited about all three of those markets. They’re great communities. I'm proud of the content we put out, both editorial and photography. Then the layout is great. [00:04:10] PF: How do you go about finding the stories because it blows me away? Your magazines are how many pages? It's not like a little 32-page magazine, right? [00:04:18] WT: No, no, no. I think the minimum page count we're running right now would be 64. Around 60, 64 pages is the minimum. The stories, from day one, we've wanted them reader-generated. It's reader-generated, community-generated stories. We have publishing partners in all our markets who are the face of the magazine. It's really – they're in the community. It's their magazine for their community, and they look for stories. When they're talking to people in the community, they're always asking. We have this theme coming up. Do you know anybody that's really made a difference in the community we should tell a story on? Then each month, each magazine has six stories. Each year, we're telling 72 stories about people that have made a difference. It doesn't mean we can't tell a story about the flower shop across the street, but we wouldn't tell it about the business entity. We would tell it about the lady that works in the flower shop and the impact she's had on whatever her passion is to give back. It’s been real cool. We've created a pretty loyal readership audience of people that get the magazine because it is unique. Especially in the communities we're in, Bowling Green has a TV station. So they have a little bit bigger media presence in that market. But still, there's nobody in the market addressing the void that we're filling. Or there's very few people in any market doing it. I definitely don't think they're doing it at the quality we are because even – and you've seen the final piece. It's a magazine you put on your coffee table or nightstand, and you let it sit there. It's not something you're going to recycle as soon as you get done reading it. [00:05:50] PF: It's so interesting because you learn things about people in your community you didn't know they were doing. You learn things that are going on that – because in addition to the six profiles on people, you have other stories. Can you talk about your other sections that you have in there? You give other value to the readers as well. [00:06:10] WT: We have a theme each month. They change a little bit year after year, but it's one pretty straightforward to be like an education theme. We focus on educators or first responders. We have veterans. I think one of the ones that's been the most popular is in February, we have one about love. It’s about focus on couples and their life together. That's been cool. To your point, we're telling stories of people that they're the fabric of what makes the community great, but no one's ever told their stories. That's what's cool. I mean, it's a very micro thing, right? We're not – it's not macro and it's definitely hyper local type of content. But for the community, there is no better content because those people are the ones that have made the community great. [00:06:57] PF: Right. With newspapers these days, with them being so large, and they have a section that covers a certain area, a certain community. The way that community is going to get covered is usually not because something good happened. That's not where it comes out. So I would think it kind of changes how people see their community. If they can sit down every month and they're reading all these positive stories of great things people are doing, it takes away that sense of like, “Oh, my God. The world's going to hell in a handbasket.” [00:07:27] WT: Right, I agree. I think the whole newspaper mentality was if it bleeds, it relieves. It’s kind of – that might be back in the seventies and eighties. But that was kind of the mantra. That’s the opposite of what our mantra is. That kind of goes back to what you're saying about you hear these stories you never heard of before. It makes you feel good about the place because you didn't know Sally down the road was making that difference. Or I volunteered that long at the soup kitchen. And same for me, I grew up in the market I'm in today. God, I mean, most of the stories we tell, if I even kind of knew the person, I sure didn't know the story that we've told. [00:08:03] PF: How has it changed you as the publisher to be working in such a positive space? I know, for me, working with Live Happy, it has changed the lens through which I see the world. Now, you're getting to find. You are constantly discovering the good in people. What's that been like for you? [00:08:23] WT: I've always probably leaned toward being an optimist glass-half-full-type person. Before Good News, I guess it was more selfish. It was about our company and about my success and our company's success. What's cool about the Good News is, and you could call this selfish, but it's cool because now our success hinges on telling and making the community, telling positive stories and making the community better. It’s kind of cool that that's what we're putting our effort toward versus trying to make money. We love capitalism and business and trying to figure out how to make money, but the approach that we're able to do it now definitely makes it a little bit more peaceful, if you will, with the type of work we're doing. I mean, because it's gratitude. You're constantly looking at things that make you thankful, which is cool. [00:09:10] PF: It's more of a movement that you've created versus a machine that you're trying to feed. I think that really helps. I think people feel that, too. They receive that. When you look at your magazine, yes, we know it's a business venture but heartfelt. That's the only way I can describe the stories that are in it. They're very heartfelt. So kudos to your editorial team as well. They are very engaged in their storytelling. It feels like each one was written by somebody's son or daughter because it's like that's how much they care. That’s how much praise they have for that person that they're talking to. [00:09:42] WT: Right. One of our head photographers told a story at a company huddle a couple of months ago about one of the things we do in our company huddles is one teammate each month will tell what a typical day is like, just trying to help everybody in the company understand what that person does. She was just talking about the impact, and she didn't realize this when she first joined the team, the impact of the photography that she'd be doing and hearing these people's stories, how impactful it is on her and kind of emotional. Our writers are the same way. We've had a couple that have been with us from day one with the product, and they love what they do, which is great to lead that type of team that's so passionate. It makes my job a lot easier. I don't have to get them passionate. They're just passionate about the product. Yes. They've done a great job. You're right about the content side. I wish I could take more credit for that side, but I really have to give that all to the content team because they've really driven that. [00:10:33] PF: I remember years ago, a mentor told me a good story will always find its audience. That really seems to be what's happening with good news because I think it is. It's going to find its audience, and there is such a need. There's such a desire for positive news, to hear the good in the world. You're doing such a great job of just putting that right in their mailbox. [00:10:54] WT: Our magazines, all stories that are in there are about a person. I said that a little bit earlier, but it's not about a person that put on a gala and about all the people that attended that event. The stories about how people have made a difference and impact on some segment of their community, which is really completely different than anything even that newspapers used to have. The misnomer would be that we're telling good news, and maybe the city's putting in a new gym set for the community. Well, that story would not make it in good news. The story that would make it in good news would be the lady that has been trying to raise money for 20 years because when she grew up, this playground had an impact on her life. Now, she's trying to give back. That maybe would be a story we could tell. I do think we have a – or there is a niche there and definitely an itch we’re scratching in all communities that we're serving. [00:11:48] PF: I would say so. We are going to tell people how they can find you, how they can learn more about you. In the meantime, what do you really want people to take away from this? What do you want people to know about Good News? [00:11:59] WT: I think more for themselves is to find the good in their own communities. I think it's so easy to be negative and pessimistic. But when you live in this country, I think first that it gives you some appreciation when you see what goes on in other parts of the world. Then when you look locally, there's a lot of good and positive things. Just try to focus on the positive a little bit more versus the negative. [00:12:22] PF: That was Will Thomas talking about Good News Magazine. Now, we're bringing in Live Happy's own Laura Coppedge and Casey Johnson to talk about how you can celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Laura and Casey, thank you for joining me today. [00:12:37] LC: Thank you for having us, Paula. [00:12:39] CJ: Yes, thank you. [00:12:40] PF: Well, it's always a treat to get in the same room with you, even if we're not actually in the same room, but we're on the same screen. It's always fun to get together and talk about what we're doing. What we're doing right now is, of course, the International Day of Happiness tomorrow. I wanted to talk to you. Both of you are pros at this, your experience at celebrating. So I wanted to find out how each of you like to celebrate International Day of Happiness. Casey, we'll go alphabetically. We'll start with you. [00:13:08] CJ: All right, yes. Gosh, I can't believe we've been celebrating this for 10 years. That's amazing. I love it. Yes, I mean, the way that I celebrate, I mean, obviously, I have a happiness wall. I keep it simple over at my house. I just print the one that we have on our website. My partner and I will just fill it out. I also like to do just simple actions. I don't think it has to be like extravagant to make a difference. I'll start my day off just sitting outside, getting in the right mindset. Then I'll try to do something nice for someone else, whether it's a friend, family member, or stranger. [00:13:43] PF: I love that. How about you, Laura? [00:13:45] LC: We actually ended up kind of making it a tradition at our house. Just to give listeners a little background, Paula and I actually met on the International Day of Happiness the first time we did that at Live Happy 10 years ago. [00:13:56] PF: Ten years ago. It's our anniversary, Laura. [00:13:59] LC: It’s our friendiversary. [00:14:01] CJ: Now, that's a happy act. [00:14:02] PF: There it is. [00:14:03] LC: Which was an awesome thing. That is probably one of the best things that has come out of the International Day of Happiness for me is some of the friendships I formed, so love that. But I think it was the second year that we were at Live Happy, and we did an interaction at work where we made the happiness rocks, where we painted on the rocks, and we went and distributed them, which has positive messages on them. I don't think I did it that year with the kids. The third year with the kids, we did that at home and put them out in our neighborhood. The kids are teenagers now, but we've been doing that every year. It’s just always been – I think it probably means something a little different to them now. It was more like hide and seek when they were little kids. Now, they get that they're doing it kind of for younger kids or people. It was a really big thing for us, and it was fun to do right after the pandemic hit. It's a wonderful thing that we've kind of kept going. [00:15:07] PF: When I was still in Nashville, there was an organization that would do that. They'd collect rocks, and they'd paint them positive messages. Then you would just be – I'd be walking my dog and just find these rocks in various places around the neighborhood. I thought that's really cool. Love that. It just makes you smile. [00:15:22] LC: I think with HappyActs, it's just a positive thing. Not just a positive thing with an intention. It’s nice. [00:15:30] CJ: [inaudible 00:15:30] moments of joy. [00:15:32] PF: Exactly. It doesn't take much. [00:15:33] CJ: Little moments. [00:15:34] PF: It doesn't take a lot. Then it really changes the trajectory of somebody's day, including your own. [00:15:41] LC: It might change the trajectory of multiple people's days. [00:15:43] PF: That’s true. [00:15:44] LC: That whole like how it's supposed to expand and grow [inaudible 00:15:47]. [00:15:49] CJ: The ripple effect. [00:15:51] PF: 100%. We are rippling out with some new things going on this year. Laura, you mentioned the happiness walls that we've done for several years and have always had a great time with those, getting people to write on these walls how they're going to share happiness. This year, I know Deb touched on it when we had her on the show a couple weeks ago. But explain to us the digital wall and how people can jump on there and be part of this and use it as part of the celebration for the International Day of Happiness. [00:16:20] LC: I mean, first off, I know that sometimes I find that I go and I see news and I just realize that I'm getting down. I mean, the first thing that you can do is just if you need a pick me up, go and look at it. It's livehappy.com/wall. It's pulling in HappyActs from social media posts, not only things that we've posted about but things that are – anybody in the public that is aware of our thing can just hashtag HappyActs from their social media accounts, and that'll pull into the wall. Also, there's a QR code directly on the digital screen, where you can just scan the QR code and post right to the wall. What we're saying is it doesn't have to be something you've done because some people have a hard time being like, “I've done this thing.” It’s something that maybe had been done for you that day or a week before or maybe something that you've thought about for years and years, some of those little things that just changed your outlook or changed your day. [00:17:21] PF: I love this digital wall. It's so refreshing. You can just – every time you look at it, it's something new, and there's new acts on there and new things to do. Then, of course, if people run out of ideas, they can download our calendar. Casey, that's where you come in. You do such a fantastic job with this. Every year, you create our 31 Days of HappyActs and come up with some really innovative things that we can do to make our world a happier place. Talk to us about the downloadable calendar. [00:17:49] CJ: Well, first of all, thank you for that. It's definitely a team effort. Yes, this 31 Ideas for HappyActs, you can download it at livehappy.com/happyacts, first of all. It's free, and it's a great way to get inspired and follow along. We have a new happy act each day in March. It's just such a fun and easy way to focus on those positive acts and just get people engaged in an activity that is part of a global movement. [00:18:16] PF: You also have some cool stuff going on in the store. [00:18:19] CJ: Yes. All month long, people can save 20% off with code HappyActs 20 at checkout. We have the encouraging sticky notes, some Live Happy classic T-shirts. We have our Live Happy Now tie-dye T-shirt, which is one of my faves. Lots of fun stuff on the store right now. [00:18:38] PF: That's excellent. For both of you, what do you hope that people will do this International Day of Happiness? How do you hope it'll land with them, and what can they do to make it meaningful to them and to those around them? [00:18:53] LC: International Day of Happiness is just a really kind of cool thing. Not only do we look at what's going on in the world. But what's going on in our own little lives and the things that we can do to make the people that are closest to us just a little bit more positive throughout the day? If it's a hug, if it's a kind word, if it's holding the door, if it's a wave and a smile, I mean, it can change the way you feel day-to-day. [00:19:21] PF: Right, right. You never know what that person is going through, what it's going to do for somebody else, and how much they need that. I want to share a story real quick. A friend of mine, we've had him on the show. That's how he became a friend. His name is Greg Kettner. He has an initiative called WorkHappy. He's very good about posting on Facebook and Instagram just thoughtful messages like, “You matter to me.” Things like that. He's very intentional about it. He had shared with me that he had posted that exact sentiment. He had posted you matter to me. Someone reached out to him and said that they had actually been in the process of creating a plan to end their life because they thought nobody cared. They opened up their social media feed, and the first thing they saw was Greg's post, you matter to me. To Greg, it was just something that he does every day. I mean, he means it, but he had no idea what effect that was going to have. I love that story because we don't know. You don't know how your goodness is going to affect somebody and how it can change their day, their plan, their whole outlook on life. [00:20:28] LC: I love that. You're going to make me tear up. [00:20:30] CJ: Me, too. Where are the tissues? [00:20:33] PF: Casey, what about you? What do you hope that people take away from this? I think people need to know that both Laura and Casey are so invested in making this day happen and making this month really come to fruition and put a lot of effort into it. Casey, you especially really roll up your sleeves on this at this time of the year. What do you hope people get out of that? [00:20:53] CJ: My takeaway is bringing it back to the theme this year, bringing the world together. We see so much negativity, and I just hope that these simple actions, I mean, they really are so easy. I just hope that they can make a bigger impact, whether that's internal, external. I really think it all starts with making a difference in your community and your backyard. It’s that ripple effect. I think it just expands from there, so I just really hope that HappyActs can help bring the world together. We need it now more than ever it feels like. [00:21:26] PF: We do. Very well said. Again, we want everyone to check out the website, livehappy.com, because we have all kinds of resources there that they can download. They can learn about HappyActs. They can listen to other podcasts. There are so many things that they can do. We just look forward to seeing them online. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:47] PF: That was Laura Coppedge and Casey Johnson, talking about HappyActs and the International Day of Happiness. If you'd like to visit our digital wall or download your own HappyActs calendar, visit us at livehappy.com and click on HappyActs. If you want to learn more about Will Thomas and Good News Magazine, you can also find that at livehappy.com when you click on our 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: Move From Surviving to Thriving With Brandi Sellerz-Jackson [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 459 of Live Happy Now. If you feel like you're merely surviving instead of thriving, this week's episode could be just what the doctor or the doula ordered. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today I'm talking with Brandi Sellerz-Jackson, a life doula and author of the book, On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life's Greatest Labors. Brandi learned to thrive despite her own traumatic past, and now she walks others down the path of healing and self-nurturing to help them find true joy in life. In this episode, Brandi sits down with me to explain why it's so important for us to learn to practice self-care, and she offers tips that will improve both our physical and our mental health. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:48] PF: Brandi, thank you for coming on Live Happy Now. [0:00:51] BSJ: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. [0:00:55] PF: You are, unlike any guests that we've had. You are a life doula now. So, to set this up, explain to us what that is. [0:01:03] BSJ: So, I started my work initially in birth and birth, in postpartum doula work, which means, I was there to support families as they give birth. But during 2020, something happened. It was this little small little global pandemic thing that happened. [0:01:19] PF: Yes. There was a hiccup that happened. [0:01:21] BSJ: Yes. It was a little small hiccup. No big deal. No big deal. That happened and shook our world of course. So, long story short, what ended up happening is, I had a conversation with a friend many years ago, a dear friend named Aishat HaSati who's a healer, who I talked about in the book. She was saying how, “Man wouldn't be great if we had some doula through life?” And we're like, “Yes, like a life doula.” We kind of just were joking. But basically, what happened is I ended up finding myself in that work, and I was like, “Oh, that's what a life doula is. It's someone who supports you through various transitions and various moments of rediscovery in your life. So, yes. [0:02:04] PF: With this book, first of all, I feel like you have a lot of books in you. I wondered why On Thriving was the one that you wanted to do first? [0:02:15] BSJ: Oh, my goodness. I wanted to write the book that I needed. [0:02:19] PF: I love that. [0:02:21] BSJ: Yes. I wanted to write the book that I needed. In the book, I share various experiences that I've had. Very hard, hard, hard, hard experiences that I've had. And I really wish there was something that I could tangibly go to, almost like a guide, and how to navigate those really hard moments. I didn't want to read something that just tells me to go take a bubble bath, or go drink some water, just go and like – [0:02:57] PF: Breathe. Just breathe, Brandi. [0:02:58] BSJ: Just breathe through it. It’s things that are very vague, or opaque, or very just okay. I wanted something that would hold the hand of the reader, so whatever part of their journey that they're in, they didn't feel alone in it. Because I feel like that's a huge part of the journey is that feeling of aloneness during – [0:03:21] PF: What you do remarkably well is you share your own experiences, very honestly, very heartfelt. But you don't overpower the reader with those experiences. You still manage to make it about the reader, which is really a gift with your writing. Because a lot of times, the things that you've shared would come off more just like a memoir, and you managed to sidestep that and turn it into just, really, a teaching guidebook and saying, “I've shared this with you. You can do this too.” It's really like sitting down with someone who's saying, “Come on, I'm going to give you a little bit. You give me a little bit. Let's go do this together.” I have to commend you for that. It's just remarkably well done. [0:04:05] BSJ: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That was the goal. I really wanted that. I didn't want it to be a thing of people reading it and it feels like, I'm just unloading. Let me tell you about my life. [0:04:21] PF: Sometimes too, in a book like that, people can end up feeling, “Well, gosh, I haven't been through anything nearly as bad.” And you're very careful to avoid even – you have a lot of horrific experiences to drop on, but you never make the reader feel like you're playing on top of that. Whoa, it's beautiful. [0:04:39] BSJ: Because we all have our hard. We all have our version of it. [0:04:42] PF: Right. Now, in the book, you talk about the four labors of our lives. So, tell us what those four labors are. [0:04:52] BSJ: Yes. The first one is the labors of relationships. Our relationship with our self and others. I'll say this too, before I name them. I really tried to think of four things that we are all going to go through. I don't care how much money you have. I don't care your nationality, ethnicity, your color, your sexuality. Everyone's going to be touched by this. Everyone's going to be touched by these four laborers. So, the first one is relationship. Figuring out our relationship with ourselves and others and the humans within this world. Mental health, how do we hone in on our healing? Many of us have experienced a pretty traumatic past few years. And then you pair that with our own personal stuff. It's a lot. So, how do we cultivate our mental health and thrive during those hard moments? Grief. They say death is the great uniter. No one escapes it. None of us get out of it and none of us are not touched by it. I really wanted to share what that looks like, grief. Not even just grief, as in like the death of a person, like the physical death, but even just the death of a relationship. The death of a career, the end. More so, the end of things. How do we thrive when it is the end of things and begin to reframe our ideas from it being purely just the end, as opposed to also the beginning? Then lastly, thriving well-being othered. We all get a seat at the table. I don't care where you come from. We all get a seat where we look around, and we realize we are the only in that moment. How do we thrive and not shrink and feel like, “Oh, my gosh, I don't belong here.” How do we thrive in those moments? So, I really wanted to find four things where we, just being human, this is what's going to happen, it's going to happen. [0:06:46] PF: Yes. You do that really well. You walk us through that. That's another thing that's great about this book is someone can jump in. You don't have to sit down and I've got to start on page one and I've got to go through. You do build on stories from previous chapters, but you could jump in like say, it's grief. Say, grief is the thing that's frontmost. You can go and just start there and pick up and get that same help. [0:07:10] BSJ: Yes. I totally agree. I wanted that. I really wanted each section to offer the reach or something where it's like, “Oh, this part is for me. I need to start here.” [0:07:21] PF: Yes. You do acknowledge that all these labors just like birth, they have incredible pain, but they also have incredible reward. The key is staying present during this. Talk about how you teach us to stay present, during the pain, during this very difficult time, so that you can truly experience it and gain the best reward out of it. [0:07:46] BSJ: Yes. One of the things I say is, “Breathe.” I do connect it to our breath a lot of times, because it's the first thing that we hold when things are like – we hold our breath. But also, too, I try to walk the reader through practical steps. So, one, reminding you, yourself, of where you are, that although this may feel like it, whatever it is, is happening again, this is totally different and is more than likely is different. So, how do we stay present when we're triggered? How do we stay present when it's a hard moment? So, reminding ourselves of where we are. Another thing is reminding ourselves of our agency. That is the first thing that I write that goes when we have experienced trauma is our sense of agency. A lot of times when hard moments, difficult moments, stressful moments come up, it's the very thing that I feel like goes out the window again. It's like, “Freeze.” It's like that flight, fight, or freeze. You freeze because you're like, “Wait, I don't know what to do.” You go back to that seven-year-old, eight-year-old, nine-year-old child that's like frozen in that moment. So, reminding yourself that you have agency, you have a say. You may not like all the choices. You may not like all the options. But you do have a say in how you choose to move forward and grabbing back that sense of agency is, is one of the most powerful tools that we have. Another thing that's very practical. I say, hold your own hand. I do this exercise where I literally close my eyes and when I feel a little girl Brandi feeling triggered, feeling a lot, feeling the residue of what I've experienced, I hold my own hand, and I envision myself holding little girl Brandi’s hand and saying, “Okay, let's do this together. We're okay. Everything's okay. And if it's not, it's going to be okay.” So, those are things. I try to really be practical, because I really, really, really hate, I hate all the catchphrases that are out there nowadays with self-care, self-care, self-care, boundaries, blah, blah, blah, and none of us really know what that means when it comes into practice. So, I really wanted to write a book that showed us how to practice these things. [0:09:59] PF: You do that quite well. I think it's wonderful that someone can read this. They can take these tools and learn them when they don't need them. Because that's really when you want to refine this. Not when you’re in crisis and go, “Oh, crap. What did Brandi say I'm supposed to do?” [0:10:15] BSJ: “Well, I forgot.” [0:10:17] PF: “If I got to keep this up.” But yes, that's what's so wonderful, it really gives you tools and practices that you can just use daily and build on and make part of your being. So, when that crisis does hit, when that labor is there, you can walk through it. [0:10:32] BSJ: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen, these are all things that I've had to learn and implement. I'm not exempt. There are moments where I am just like, I feel the most, and I'm like, “Okay, what did I say? What did I write?” Go back to that. [0:10:53] PF: Yes. It's a journey. We're all learning. Of course, you're talking about thriving, and that is a word we hear a lot, and I think it probably means different things to different people. So, explain where you're coming from? What does thriving look like, feel like to you? [0:11:12] BSJ: Yes. I agree. I think it looks different for everyone. One of the things I do say, I say define what thriving means to you, because what I think is thriving, could be totally different. It can be different on any given day too. For me, today, thriving looked like getting all three of my kids out the door, wrestling with a five-year-old, who was determined on probably not wearing shoes. Then, I finally talked him into wearing shoes, because it's rainy here. That's thriving. It worked. Whatever happened, it worked. Every day is different. So, thriving, though, I think in a nutshell, I would say, it's showing up as is, being open to unlearning and learning, and not being this destination. This sad destination, but more so this ongoing work that you're doing. It's ongoing. It's ongoing. And being very keen to what it is that you need. So, what is it that I need in this moment to thrive? Not just survive. It's a response. I think of thriving as a response, as opposed to a reaction. It's a pause. It's an exhale. It's a deep breath. That's what it is, as opposed to this clenching. [MESSAGE] [0:12:39] PF: Today, we're talking about how to thrive and it's no secret that pausing to take a breath can change your state. But if you're spending a lot of time indoors, chances are you're breathing in things like allergens, pollen, pet dander, and more. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that indoor air is up to five times more polluted than outdoor air. That's why I'm obsessed with my new air purifier from AirDoctor. It filters out 99.99% of harmful contaminants, so your lungs don't have to. Talk about a breath of fresh air. No matter the size of your space, AirDoctor has a purifier that's right for you, and you can breathe easy with its 30-day money-back guarantee. So, if you want to clear the air in 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 hear more about what Brandi Sellerz-Jackson has to say about thriving. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:13:45] PF: You work with a lot of different people and have talked with a lot of different people. So, you've seen their struggles in their obstacles. Are there some common obstacles that you see to thriving? Are there things that we're just putting in our own path, or just can't get past that you see over and over with people? [0:14:04] BSJ: Yeah, I would say I don't think a lot of people believe that we're worthy of thriving. I think when you've been in a rut of survival, that's what you're used to. So, I think the first step is knowing that you're worthy of thriving. I opened in the book about taking psychedelics and doing psychedelic therapy, and I did it because I want it to live my life. I want it to cease looking at it as if I am this house sitter, just collecting packages for the actual person that lives here. Right? I wanted to actually live my life like I actually live here, like it's mine. So, I think a lot of people, when you've experienced trauma, after trauma, after trauma or just even small traumas, small t, big T trauma, whatever. I think that knowing that you are worthy of thriving is the very first step. It’s the first thing that you have to really just grab a hold of. [0:15:12] PF: If you're in survival mode, you're not even thinking thriving. So, how do you get someone, first of all, to recognize that they are in survival mode? And then to realize that there's a something called thriving? And then to get them to take that step out of survival into thriving? Because it's a short journey in some ways, but it's a huge step. [0:15:35] BSJ: It is a huge step. I think the way to get them to do that, I don't think anyone can do it for you. That's the hard part. There's no switch, I think, again, it's daily. Daily telling yourself, “I'm worthy of this life. I'm worthy of thriving.” If you're in a hard moment, this too shall pass. It's going to pass. I'm worthy of thriving.” It is that knowing. Now, I'm going to be honest, I don't think it's one of those things that you know immediately. I don't think it’s just like, “Oh, yes, I'm worthy of thought.” It's not, “Looks like, and go.” It takes time. If you've had years of trauma, it takes time. I mean, and that's just not like a sweet thing to say, because it's nice. But really, our brains, trauma changes the brain. [0:16:32] PF: Exactly. [0:16:34] BSJ: So, to work with that neuroplasticity of it, and to get into habits of changing it, and unlearning, it's going to take time. So, I think the biggest thing would be, give yourself grace, give yourself time. This is not an overnight work. This is a daily work. [0:16:58] PF: As you said before, it's a journey. It’s not a destination. You're not going to get to this ticket station. You get your passport stamped and – [0:17:05] BSJ: No. I wish it were that way. That would be great. [0:17:07] PF: Wouldn't it? [0:17:08] BSJ: It’d be so wonderful if we just decided something and it's like, “And boom.” That's not the way it works. It's not the way life works, unfortunately. [0:17:17] PF: It's not. What if we know someone who is stuck in survival mode, and they're doing the best they can, and they can't see their way out of that, and they can't see into how they could ever thrive. How do we gently nudge them? Because as you said, they have to do it. But what are some of the prompts that we can offer as friends, as family, to help them realize you don't have to stay here? [0:17:42] BSJ: Yes. I would really validate their worthiness. Every time I get a chance, you're worthy of it, you're worthy of thriving. I would also too – I mean, I love therapy. I think therapy is great. If they're into therapy, if you're someone that they trust, I think that's something good to kind of recommend, and not like a thing of, “You need a therapist.” But more so like, “Hey, if they see you even doing that work, I think that's another thing.” I think, example, example, thriving by example, I think that is the biggest thing you can show for friends and family. Because I think people remember what they see, and the work that we're doing versus of what we're saying. [0:18:32] PF: Absolutely. [0:18:34] BSJ: Right. If they see you, because I have friends that have seen me in hard moments, and they've seen me in moments where I was like, “Oh, I don’t know.” They see me doing this work. They've seen me do this work consistently, and I think my example of doing the work, doing the hard things is bigger than anything I can ever say out of my mouth. Actually, even anything I could write out in a book, because they're seeing me in real life. [0:19:05] PF: Absolutely. [0:19:07] BSJ: So, I think that would be the biggest thing is, think about your life. If you see a friend that's struggling, think about your life and how you're showing up for your life and what you're modeling to. Because people are watching. And if you really want them to get the support they need, then make sure you got the support you need. Because they'll notice it, they'll see it. [0:19:28] PF: Yes. That is tremendous advice. I love that. One approach that I really like is where you talk about taking care of yourself like a house plant. I have to admit, I once killed an air fern. So, I'm not sure if that is going to apply directly to me. But I love this. Explain what you mean by that and how we take care of ourselves like a house plant, because this is so relatable. I absolutely love this. [0:19:53] BSJ: Yes. I mean, well, it's the same thing. We're not that much different than plants. We have more complicated feelings. That's basically it. But water, they need water, they need nurturing, they even did a study where if you talk to your plants and watch how they grow, I don't think we're any different. We're not different. So, I think of it, for me, the biggest lesson was how I was pruning my plants and all this stuff started growing. Watering plants, things start growing. Paying attention to them, giving them the right soil, fertilizer, all that. It's the same thing with us. We're not this thing where it's like, “We don't need anything.” Every living thing needs something. We need things to keep us living and thriving. [0:20:39] PF: You explained it really well, in the book, too. I really enjoyed that part of it. You probably don't know that one of the things we talked about all the time, here at Live Happy Now, is gratitude. You talk a lot about how gratitude has a role in our happiness. But also, kindness can have the same effect. So, for everyone who's tired of hearing me talk about gratitude, let's switch it over to kindness. Talk about what that does for our physical and mental well-being when we start practicing kindness and live with kindness. [0:21:09] BSJ: It's everything. I mean, there are studies that show that people who practice kindness, it affects our health in positive ways. It affects the way we live, in some studies, how long we live. I mean, it's literally everything. I write about how even just going kindness watching. You've heard of people watching, but kindness watching. It will inspire you in so many ways and inspire your own demonstration of kindness. [0:21:36] PF: Tell us more about that. Tell us about kindness watching. That's so cool. [0:21:38] BSJ: Yes. I write how, one time I saw this farmer at the farmer’s market, he just gave these boys some honey sticks, and it just made me feel all the things. I was just was like, “How lucky am I that I got to witness this moment of kindness?” Everything that's happening in the world in this moment, and in the past, and everything that will happen in the future. I get to witness this one moment of kindness. It made me emotional and it made me grateful for my life. So, it's basically where you just you actively seek out moments where you are arrested by kindness, and you watch it and you witness it. You're like, now think about how that feels for you. Because it will inspire you. I mean, it did for me. It just made me be – it made my day. I mean, it’s sticks. You would have thought that this man gave them a million dollars. It was like, “No, it was just some honey sticks”, that probably had a plethora of. But it was like, “Oh, my gosh. That's so kind.” [0:22:41] PF: That's very cool. Did you have to originally remind yourself to do this and then it becomes a practice? Or how do you start doing this kindness watching? [0:22:51] BSJ: In that moment, it just hit me. The weight, the endorphins that it gave me. I was like, “Oh, this feeling is just” – it's like, looking at a cute baby. It’s watching Elf for the 20th time during the holidays. It's one of those feelings. It's grandma's favorite soup. It's all of those things that make you feel so warm. So, for me, I try my best to actually do it and just be aware of it. When I see it, I hold on to it, I don't let it go, and I just let it does wash over me and feel all the good things about it. [0:23:31] PF: That's terrific. So, I know we have to let you go. But before we do, you have three tips for cultivating joy that I wish you would share with our audience. [0:23:44] BSJ: Oh, my goodness. I'm trying to remember, but I feel like, well, one I would say, definitely go kindness watching. That's the first thing. That, right there, will just feel your joy cup in so many ways and it will make you feel so happy. You'll feel so happy. Another thing is make sure that you're watering yourself. Put the water in, make sure you're watering yourself, and yes, drink water. Sure. Yes. You should drink water. But make sure you're watering yourself, the people that are around you that they water you and they don't deplete you. They water you. Make sure that you are watering you. So, that means if you need to take a nap, go take a nap, please go take a nap. No one has gotten anything by working themselves to the bone that more tired. I would say lastly, know that you're worthy of joy. I say, know that you're worthy of thriving, but know that you're worthy of joy. I know that when it's hard moment some of us can feel like it's sacrilegious to feel joy in those hard moments, but that's the thing that is the wind in your sails. That's the thing that carry you and keep you breathing, is enjoying those joyful moments in the hard moments. [0:25:02] PF: I love it. Thank you so much. Brandi, thank you for coming on the show. We're going to tell the listeners where they can find you, where they can find your book, where they can discover more about you. You give us so much to think about and I appreciate you sharing it with us today. [0:25:15] BSJ: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:22] PF: That was Brandi Sellerz-Jackson talking about how to move from surviving to thriving. If you'd like to learn more about Brandi, read her book, follow her on social media, or read her blog. 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: Celebrate International Women’s Day With Amber Olson Rourke [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 458 of Live Happy Now. During March, we're not only celebrating our happiness month, but it's also Women's History Month, and March 8th is International Women's Day. That means it's a perfect time to talk about how women can help empower and support one another. I'm your host Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Amber Olson Rourke, an award-winning marketing executive, mom, and Co-Founder of the direct sales company, Neora. Amber, who is also co-host of the Built to Win Podcast, is passionate about empowering women to step into their full potential and reach for more than they think is possible. Today, she's here to talk about how we can look for opportunities to support one another and how that can change the world. Let’s have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:50] PF: Amber, welcome to Live Happy Now. I'm so happy that you're able to join us. [00:00:54] AOR: I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. [00:00:58] PF: Well, this is the perfect time to talk to you. It is Women's History Month. We've got International Women's Day in just a couple of days. What the listeners may not know is I do some work with you on your Built to Win Podcast. What shines through so much on that is your passion for supporting and empowering other women. This is the perfect time to get you on the show and talking about that. I wanted to find out, first of all, how you discovered that calling. [00:01:25] AOR: That's a great question. I think when you're trying to really fine-tune what it is that you feel called to do, I think that the experiences give you clues if you're really listening and paying attention to them. For me, it started all the way being on the receiving end of those situations. With growing up, my mom has always really liked going to women's workshops and whether they were women conferences or workshops. I would attend with her. Even though the majority of the people would be adults, I would be there kind of listening and in the experience. I just always felt very fulfilled. My cup was filled through those experiences. Then as I started getting older, I started being asked to be on the presenting side and helping teens with self-confidence, self-image issues, mentorship programs, even through Big Brothers Big Sisters. I did that right out of college and became a big to a little girl. At first, it wasn't really in my career. It was more just things in the community and things that I was doing. Then I just really found that when I was in a situation where I could be able to pour into another person, specifically another woman, I really felt so just full of excitement and light and that kind of those nudges led me to a path where that's a big part of my career now. [00:02:48] PF: It's interesting because you've been very successful in your business. You've built a business. A lot of times, when someone does that, you get away from your roots. You get away from being able to do that. Your time is so compressed. You're also a mother to three girls, and you got a lot going on. So what is it that's so important that makes you keep that as a pillar of what you do and who you are? [00:03:16] AOR: I think it's just, for me, it's where I feel like I can make the most impact and the thing that I am able to give as my gift. I really try to focus on delegating the other things that other people can help me do because you can't do it all. Everyone has a great support system around them, whether that's at home or at work or that you can build. People generally I found are always willing to help, but I think a lot of people kind of get in their own way of the pride of not asking for the help of like, “I can't be everywhere. I can't do everything.” I try and focus my time on where I'm going to make the most amount of impact. For me, this is a part of it is pouring into and developing other leaders, other women that can then go on and do bigger and better things. [00:04:06] PF: I love that because you found a way to work it into your business world and make it part of your business initiative. Can you kind of talk about that, like how that personal development is such a powerful component when you bring it into the workplace? [00:04:19] AOR: Yes. I think that for us, it has been one of our “secrets” to our success is really our investment in the people that we work with. That's our competitive advantage, both in our home office, which we have over 100 employees. Then we have over tens of thousands of independent contractors that are basically like micro entrepreneurs. Anytime you're doing something like entrepreneurial, something out on your own, you're going to go through an entire journey of ups and downs and self-discovery and everything in between. To be able to navigate that, you have to invest in yourself because that is going to be the common factor, right? That's going to be there in different economic times, all different kinds of things that are going to happen. The one thing that remains constant is that you are always going to be there. So if you don't develop yourself, it doesn't really matter what's happening externally. You can never really get past yourself. You're kind of your own limiting ceiling, if you will. We really believe if you can help people lift the lid of what they're capable of doing and what they believe they're capable of doing, you can get a lot accomplished. That's really why we make such an investment in our people in personal development and bringing that kind of information to everyone that we work with. [00:05:41] PF: How do you see women change when they're learning these principles and they are getting support? It’s not just that you support them. It's the other women on their teams, the other women around them. It becomes an entire culture of people supporting one another. How does that change their lives? [00:05:57] AOR: It's really powerful because I think women specifically, like I mentioned, I think have a harder time asking for help and working on those things that they might. They don't just know automatically. For people to be able to start gaining confidence in areas that they maybe have never tried learning that skill set and then seeing that they can do it and seeing that they can do much bigger things than they ever thought possible, it acts as kind of like – I think of it as like a candle. You light your flame, and then you're able to pass that candle on and light someone else's flame. For some people, I think women, especially, they can feel like selfish almost. I'm trying to become the best me, and that somehow feels selfish. If I become the best me, that doesn't mean I'm taking away from being a mother, being a wife, working. It actually makes me be able to show up more fully to all of those rules. It's not a selfish endeavor. I view it as completely the opposite. You're able to be more selfless. You're able to give more of yourself when you're pouring into yourself, right? We all heard that you can't pour from an empty cup, and I believe that's really true emotionally for women. When you see somebody put in the time, put in the effort, put in the work to light their own flame, so to speak, and now they're kind of burning brightly, it almost gives permission to everyone else around them that they can do the same. That it's okay to burn bright. That it's okay to take up space in the room. That it's okay to be incredibly gifted and proud of that. I think that that is something that women struggle with more is burning bright, taking up that space in the room, and being unapologetic about it. Not in an egotistical way but like I'm here to serve and give and help others do the same thing. Once you see that happen, you start seeing the ripple effect of the women around them start fully kind of taking their own light and making it brighter. [00:07:51] PF: You're correct that that is such a hard lesson for women to learn, whether it's the culture that has told us that, our parents that have told us that. There's just so many messages that I need to take care of everyone else first and not myself. How much work does it take within your company to really get people to understand and make that mind shift to embrace the idea of I'm going to support myself, I'm going to rise up, and I am going to burn brightly? [00:08:20] AOR: Personal development, personal growth, it's a never-ending journey. I don't think you arrive at this destination where you're like, “I –” [00:08:26] PF: It’s not like a board game where it’s like, “Yay.” [00:08:28] AOR: Yes. I've learned it all. I've won the game. I think it just evolves because what's interesting is that I see as you develop skill sets, it allows you to get to this next level where you're taking on bigger challenges. Then you get to this next level. That presents different challenges than the ones that you just solved for. As you rise up, you're just solving different more challenging problems, which is great because you can continue to learn. I think my experience, once people see the fruits of their labor, so to speak, in terms of they did the work, and they're showing up more confidently, and they see how that does positively impact their family and does positively impact the people around them, it starts gaining momentum into something that they don't want to stop. They're seeing how it can absolutely allow you to be a better friend, mother, employee, whatever it is that you want to become better at. [00:09:27]   FT: How do you think that helps when they're weathering things like the pandemic? We’ve got a lot of divisiveness going on in the world today. [00:09:34] AOR: A lot. [00:09:35] PF: A lot of turmoil. What difference do you see in how they handle that when there is this sense of unity and this sense of support? [00:09:44] AOR: That's a great question. I think when you come from a mindset that is based in the impact that you want to make, and it isn't fear-based because I believe that a lot of what we have lived through the last three years is all fear-based kind of environment of what possibly could go wrong and what – people get stuck in that, and then it becomes really hard to get unstuck out of that. When you can approach things not just with like a Pollyanna everything is fine outlook because there is and was significant challenges in today's environment, but you can view it from the lens of I see that, I understand those challenges, and what is the impact that I personally want to make, and what is one step that I can take towards that impact. I think people get overwhelmed by I personally can't solve all of these issues. Yes, no one can. But you can show up in a way where you're taking a step, and you're taking steps that are going to make a positive impact in the direction that you would want things to go. That's true in a microcosm of your marriage, your job. It's also true at a macrocosm of your city, your state, your country. It matters. It matters how we choose to show up and how we choose to view those situations. I do think being surrounded by like-minded people who see it that same way and are committed to making their positive contributions really helps you have a bigger kind of sense of hope and fortitude in humanity than you would see on the news. [00:11:23] PF: Absolutely. You talked, too, about having daughters. You got three little girls. What I love is they're being brought up believing this way. So many of us have a disadvantage because we become adults, and then we start figuring this out. When you're raising daughters to support one another, to believe in themselves, and to believe in their ability and the ability of the other women around them, how does that change what our future looks like if they can grow up believing that and knowing that? [00:11:56] AOR: I think it is so powerful, and I think everyone one has that ability to put their children in those circumstances. Or even if they're not physically there, there are so many powerful women today that are CEOs that are doing really important work in medical field and scientific field, all of these different things. You can just look up those stories and tell them to your kids because kids can only imagine to the degree of which what we show them. That doesn't necessarily have to be what you're specifically doing, but it's about creating that environment that teaches them that they can be anything that they want to be. I see it, for sure, in my girls. One of my repeating message to them is we can do hard things. When they tell me of a challenge, my response is to say, “I hear that. I appreciate that. That does sound hard.” But we can do hard things, and I want them to develop that resiliency. They see me speak from stages. They see me do a lot of things. Now, on their list of what they want to be, it's, “I want to be a CEO in charge. I want to do big things,” which I love. I love that that is in their mindset from a young age, that that's possible. Whether they end up wanting to do that or not doesn't really matter, but I want them to know it's possible for the taking. [00:13:16] PF: Absolutely. I love that. I love that. I do see that with a lot of young children that I know now that are in my circle that they're growing up, and they don't see the limitations because they're being raised by women like you who have already overcome the limitations. To the girls, those obstacles don't even really exist. [00:13:37] AOR: Right. [00:13:38] PF: I love that. [00:13:39] AOR: I think that's so important because I think if you operate as if the obstacles do exist, you can almost create them. You can almost walk into a room or walk into your first job thinking that there are doors that aren't open to you that maybe really are. But you've been taught that they aren't. Just assuming that they are is like half the battle, I believe. [00:14:03] PF: Yes. That's a fantastic way to look at it. One thing that reality TV would tell us, and I've had women tell me this, is women aren't there for each other. If you watch Real Housewives and whatever, you're going to believe that. What do you say about that? When you hear someone say like, “Women, you've got to watch their back because they're competing with you. They’re not your friend,” how do you manage that kind of a situation, and what do you say to that? [00:14:34] AOR: That has not been my experience in my career. Again, I would say that how is that belief serving you? That's always what I think about if it's a belief that I'm holding is like how does that help you to believe that. The irony is if you do believe that, in your gut, your soul, that's your belief, you will find that evidence, right? Kind of almost create that environment for yourself. I will say that in my journey, there's definitely been women who tried to tear me down. But there's been more men that have tried to tear me down. It's just people. There's just those types of people that exist in the world that don't support you. But you get to choose if you keep those people close to you. I assess really quickly if somebody is somebody that is going to not cheer. Cheers louder when you fail than when you succeed. Then they don't get my time and my energy. The community that I have around me now is just filled with women who cheer for each other and support each other and really rocks for each other to help each other grow and win together because there's plenty of light and space for every single one of us. It doesn't have to be a competition. [00:15:52] PF: Right. You've built that environment. For someone who's working in an environment that's not like that, how can they work through competitive environment and try to become more collaborative, try to get support going within their own little network? [00:16:09] AOR: It sounds cheesy, but I think that the change you want to see always starts with you. You can decide to be that kind of woman or supporter, and find somebody that you connect with in the office, and take them to lunch, and talk about how can I help be of support to you. How can I help you in your career goals and share where you're going with them? It can start just with that one relationship that develops, where you're both trying to help each other achieve and help each other grow. In my experience, it kind of grows organically from there. You'll find more of your own people, people that see things the same way as you. It's never going to be everybody because we're dealing with people. There's always going to be people who aren't that way, but you can definitely develop a large enough system of people to help you feel supported. [00:17:02] PF: Absolutely. What are some of the things we can do to support other women? [00:17:06] AOR: I would say verbalizing your support and your kudos. It's like if somebody at your church service stands up and does a great prayer, go and tell them. Speak that truth into them because I think women struggle a lot with confidence that whatever they just did isn't good enough. Just going and saying, “Thank you so much for sharing. You did a great job.” Or you see somebody give great service at a store. Telling them, “You were really made for this. You give such great service. You brought a smile to my face.” Offering that. I think sometimes people view like if they give out compliments, it somehow takes away from themselves. If you shine the light on someone else, it dims your light. I found the opposite. Give it out freely and your light shines even brighter. I think you can do that in just day-to-day interaction. Tell other women when you see them doing a great job. Also, you can do it online because I tell a story about where there was this amazing picture of Carrie Underwood on social media. I never stop and look at comments, but she look fabulous, perfect body, amazing talent. I went to check the comments, and most of them were negative and judgmental about her looks or her talent or what she should wear or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. It’s like I don't even know what these people do with their time, but it's like you can be the opposite voice. You can be like – to someone you just kind of barely even know that you're friends with on social media, and they share something that you think probably might have been scary for them to share. They share a new business venture. They share that they're going to do something out of their comfort zone. Be in their corner. Just verbalizing your support goes way, way further than you would probably think. You might think they don't care what you have to say. Your support, no matter how well you know them or not, absolutely bolsters their confidence. [00:19:07] PF: That is such a fantastic point to bring up because it's something we don't do enough and when you see how people respond to it. For me, that kind of is a dopamine hit, just to see people react. I think people aren't used to getting complimented that much. When you do, even as you said, it can be something small and the way that they light up. It’s like I just handed them money. It’s such a boost. You think about how good you feel when someone notices something you did. It's like, yes, we should all be walking around doing that all day every day. [00:19:42] AOR: Right, yes. Scanning for people that you can encourage just with your words, it's so easy. It's free. It's simple. [00:19:50] PF: Exactly. It changes because you change that person's day, how that's going to change their next interaction. [00:19:56] AOR: Right. The ripple effect is huge. It really is. [00:19:58] PF: Exactly. Exactly. That’s one great way to support. Another thing and I know you are big on this, I don't want to let you go without talking about that, and that's mentorship. Can you really dig into why it's so important for someone who has achieved things, who understands personal development? Why is it so important and almost a responsibility to become then a mentor to others? [00:20:24] AOR: Yes. I think that kind of twofold. I think there's a couple reasons why people – everybody needs a mentor, right? Some of it is just that you can't see the full picture yourself. No human can see kind of 360 degrees. We all have blind spots. We all have things that we bring our own kind of past experiences to. To be able to have someone who can see whatever you're walking through, whatever you're trying to grow through from a third-party lens is really powerful. I've had some of my biggest breakthroughs of what was actually holding me back that I would never have been able to got to by myself because I was kind of already so stuck in whatever I was on, the hamster will in your mind about. Having that mentor relationship, somebody that you trust enables you to get much further than you would go by yourself and remove roadblocks that you might not even know that were there, didn't know how to remove. I think it's also somebody that can help you think bigger and challenge you to think bigger. For those reasons, you kind of turn it back around of why it's so important. It’s that being a mentor to somebody. I think the word maybe sounds a little intimidating like, “I'm not a mentor. I'm not qualified to do that.” But it really just means that you're going to show up for that person, and be in their corner, and support them, and challenge them to think bigger, and to give them kind of the truth and love when you see that of what might be holding them back, and make connections for them, and make introductions for them, and be the first to comment on their posts about their business or whatever it is. You don't have to necessarily be uniquely qualified to do that. Anybody can do that. It's like somebody that's gone the way already that can turn around and help somebody else go that same way. It is really meaningful because when you're trying to do something big, you will get knocked down. I think one of the biggest predictors of if you get back up is if there's somebody there putting their hand out to say, “Come on. Let's go. You got this.” People need that. I think if you're to the point where you're on the right track or on the journey of success that it's a responsibility to turn around and help others do that same thing and help them get back up when they need you. [00:22:50] PF: It also provides you with reinforcement. It reminds you. Doesn't it also – it's like, “Oh, my gosh. I remember being in that state.” It gives you such a state of gratitude of like, “Oh, I remember overcoming that obstacle. I remember what that was like.” I think it does kind of serve just such a great teaching reminder for us when we're doing that, too. [00:23:10] AOR: Absolutely, absolutely. [00:23:12] PF: As we head into International Women's Day, what do you want women to know? How do you want them to approach this and maybe use this as a day to actually observe it and start taking on some sort of a practice to support someone else? [00:23:26] AOR: That’s a great question. I would say, kind of going back to what you're talking about, maybe think of some women in your life that deserve some kudos and some recognition. Give them a shout-out. Send them a message about how they are inspiring you and how they show up in their life. Or give their business a shout-out on your social media about how that they've inspired you with what they're accomplishing and what they're putting out into the world. I think that there's – it's a great day to kind of have that reflection point of the people that you can show up for in that moment and support. Then thinking about are there women that you work with or that are in your community or are in your clubs, churches, whatever that might be? Is there someone that just connects with you that you think about when you think of that that you could reach out to and lend a supporting hand to? Maybe that just drops into your mind a name of like, “Oh. When we were talking through this, that person's name –” I would say that's never an accident when those names pop into our head, that there's a reason that they did. Thinking of even just one person that you could reach out to and say, “I love what you're doing. How can I support you?” At the end of the day, we all rise together. I think it's a great kind of month and day to think of how you can be a part of helping other people rise. [00:24:55] PF: I love it. Amber, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're going to tell everybody how they can check out your podcast, how they can follow you on social media, how they can learn more about you. I really appreciate you sitting down and sharing your insight with us. [00:25:09] AOR: Well, thank you so much for having me on. It's been super fun. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:16] PF: That was Amber Olson Rourke, talking about how women can better support one another. If you'd like to learn more about Amber, follow her on social media, or listen to the Built to Win Podcast, just 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 happy one. [END]

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: Enduring the Loss of Love With Clare Mackintosh [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 456 of Live Happy Now. As we continue our month-long look at love, this week, we're talking about an inevitable but painful aspect of it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm sitting down with best-selling novelist, Clare Mackintosh, who has written her first nonfiction book, and it's very personal, I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This. Is part memoir and part roadmap through the tricky and heart wrenching journey of grief. As you're about to hear, Clare wrote these 18 assurances on grief years after the death of her son, and she has encouraging words for everyone who is mourning the loss of love. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW]   [0:00:44] PF: Clare, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now.   [0:00:48] CM: Thank you for having me. [0:00:49] PF: I am really, really excited to talk to you. Most people know you as a New York Times bestselling author, you write thrillers. What we're talking about today could not be farther removed from that. So what we're talking about today is your new book that's coming out in March, it's called, I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This. It is about grief and loss. All this month, we are talking about love on Live Happy Now. For many, it might seem odd to include loss as part of that conversation, but it really is. [0:01:19] CM: Well, that two sides of the same coin, aren't they? You don't grieve for someone unless you love them. [0:01:25] PF: Right. Right. Loss is inevitable. In some way. we're going to lose the ones we love. [0:01:32] CM: We are. I think that the more conversations we have about death, about grief, about how we're likely to prepare for that, and to feel when it happens, the better. As a writer, and a prolific reader, the best way I know to start conversations is books. [0:01:53] PF: Yes. Yes. You do it so well. What's interesting is, even prior to this book, with your fiction, grief has really informed your work. Can you talk a little bit about that, how it has appeared in your fiction work? [0:02:06] CM: It keeps cropping up in my fiction, even when I don't set out to write about grief. My first book is very obviously about grief, and that the central character has lost a child. The book starts, in fact, with a hit and run that kills a child. This is I Let You Go, which was my big debut. I guess I put a lot of my own emotions in that as someone who had lost a child herself. I imbued that character with a lot of the emotions that I was feeling. But then, what I found in subsequent novels is that it just kept ripping in, either I was exploring it directly and that the characters were experiencing grief, or it was a sort of a slightly more obtuse angle, perhaps. They were grieving a trauma. One of my characters in my more recent novel, The Last Party is grieving the sort of the loss of her adolescence, I suppose, as a result of something very big and dramatic that happened to her as a teenager. So yes, grief has sort of woven itself through everything that I've written, but I have never written directly about my own grief. [0:03:23] PF: What's interesting is that this book really began as a Twitter post. Can you give us that backstory? I found this so interesting. [0:03:31] CM: Yes. I mean, social media is, it can be a really difficult place of content in lots of ways. But it's also an amazing place for people to come together, and draw comfort in each other's stories. What happened was that, I felt a sudden need to share something, and it was because I'd woken up on the 14th anniversary of my son's death, and I hadn't realized it was his anniversary. That was significant for me, simply because, anniversaries have been really tough. I think a lot of people find these significant dates, that the anniversary of someone's death, their birthday, perhaps a wedding anniversary, or whatever it is. A significant date can be really, really difficult when you've lost someone. For years, I'd really struggled with the 10th of December as just this sort of specter of the year where I would feel my grief more acutely than any other time. On this particular day, I woke up and I just did what I normally did. I had breakfast, and I did some work, and you know, and then I suddenly realized it was December 10th. I felt, well, initially, I actually felt guilty. I had this sudden blood of, "Oh my goodness, how could I have forgotten this huge date?" But then, what I felt was a kind of right, I suppose, that I had survived. It made me think about the way those anniversaries had changed and consequently, the way my grief had changed over time. I went on what was then Twitter, and I shared some thoughts on the way grief evolves over time. What I wanted to do was promised people that it would get better, that it would get easier to carry. This was a promise that had been made to me in the immediate aftermath of my son's death. A woman had come to the door, and given me a bunch of daffodils from her garden. We'd never met before, but she had lost a child herself many years previously. She wants to reach out and promise me that it would get better, and I didn't believe her, but it had. I tweeted these promises, different aspects of grief and the way they changed, and the thread went viral. I was inundated with messages from people all over the world. They were kind of split into two camps. There were the people who, like me, were veterans in their grief, who were saying, "Yes, you're absolutely right. This is what happens to grief over time, it becomes easier to carry, it becomes softer, it's become something that we live with, but it doesn't define us." And then, there were the other stories, the people who were right at the start of their grief journey, who were saying, "I really needed to hear these promises. Thank you. I need to know that there's hope. I need to know that there's light at the end of the tunnel." I tried to reply to all these messages, but they came in so fast. I just couldn't. So I did what authors do, and I wrote a book. [0:06:42] PF: Because yes, that is what you do. I want to ask you, because as you said, when that woman told you, it would get better, you didn't believe her. I think that's true of every one of us who experiences a devastating loss. We feel like, okay, I understand your situation got better, but mine never will. I think that's very human and it needs to – it's okay to feel that way. [0:07:07] CM: It absolutely is. I distinctly remember what I was thinking when that woman was talking to me. I would never have said this to her face, and I'm still really quite ashamed of the fact that I thought it. But what I was thinking was, you can't have loved your child the way that I loved him, because if you did, it wouldn't get better. You wouldn't be standing, you wouldn't be – have makeup on, and be dressed nicely, and holding down a job, and you wouldn't be doing any of this because my life has fallen apart and it will never get better. You know, it's not an attractive thought, but grief isn't.   [0:07:49] PF: But it's human, yes.   [0:07:50] CM: Yes, it is. Grief isn't soft-focused, like tear-stained cheeks, and crisp-white handkerchiefs. Grief is ugly, and raw, and painful. Often, it's angry, it's losing your temper with people, or being aggressive even. It's so many different things. They are all totally normal, and totally valid. [0:08:16] PF: Absolutely. Absolutely. With your assurances, and that's what they are. I love that you call them the 18 assurances, and that truly is what they are. Can you mention a couple? Then, I also want to know how you develop these? Did you just sit down and write these thoughts down? Or were they just observations and realizations that came to you over time that you wrote down? [0:08:41] CM: The book is structured into 18 standalone promises or assurances. So each chapter in the book is effectively a different promise. That was something I wanted to do, because I want people to be able to pick up the book, and dip into it, to be able to read just one chapter. I remember how incredibly short my attention span was. when I was first bereaved. I couldn't concentrate properly, and I just didn't have that focus to be able to read a whole book. It was overwhelming. So, I think something that is bite-size, that's easily digestible is really important when you're going through something like that. But I also wanted to be able to offer hope at every stage of the book. So sometimes, we read memoirs, they're structured in a very narrative linear fashion. At the start of the book, this terrible thing, this event happens, whether it's a bereavement, and an abuse, whatever it is, poverty, alcoholism, a terrible thing has happened. Then, gradually, we move forward in time to a place of happiness, and hope, and that's where we leave the reader. That works brilliantly, and it's a great way of structuring an autobiography or a memoir. But the problem with it is that you have to travel through all those dark times before you get to the light. I felt that readers who are recently bereaved or who are living with loss, you shouldn't have to wait so long. I wanted to give them small pockets, I suppose, of hope. What the structure does is that it gives you these 18 promises, and they cover what I see as symptoms of grief. Because for me, grief is like a chronic illness you will live with forever, but the symptoms come and go over time. The symptoms can be managed in the way that symptoms of a chronic disorder can be managed. For example, I promise that you will be able to sleep easily again, and I promise that you will be able to take a breath without feeling as though someone's sitting on your chest crushing it. All these symptoms of grief that are so very acute in the beginning will ease over time. When I started writing it, it was a very different approach to my fiction. I'm a very methodical, very organized person, I have endless lists. When I write my novels, which are generally very sort of twisty, totally plotted thrillers, I have spreadsheets, I have word tables, I have all sorts. It's all very, very – I suppose, scientific on my computer. This was very different. I needed to write in pen, and I don't know why I needed to. It just felt – [0:11:41] PF: That makes sense. Yes, really connecting, because you were so connected emotionally with this topic. To be able to connect with a page in that same way, that makes perfect sense to me. [0:11:51] CM: Yes. I think I needed that sort of grounding. Anyway, I bought a new notebook, obviously, because writers take every opportunity to buy new stationery. I had a beautiful notebook with the title. In fact, the title was slightly different. The working title was just promises for grief. The notebook has promises for grief on the front, and I wrote things down as they occurred to me. I carried that notebook around with me for months. I just wrote down everything I thought of about grief, and how it had evolved, and how I'd navigated it. I thought of sort of snapshots, I suppose of my life over the last 18 years. Because grief can do funny things to your memory, and a lot of – when I think back, a lot of the early days come to me in very small pockets. It's a little bit like – I've been watching a film, but I've been walking in and out of the room. I'm just seeing broken scenes, and not quite sure what links them together. When I was very ill with my grief, that's how things were, that there would be perhaps a moment, a conversation, or a day that stands out in sharp relief. But I'm not quite sure what happened either side of it, because I was so unhappy, I was so desperate. I wrote all that down. Slowly, what emerged were themes so that I could group things together under particular topics that I wanted to explore. But it was a slow process, I couldn't write it as fast as I wrote my fiction. Normally, I will say to myself that I will write around 1500 words or 2000 words a day, and I will just keep going, unrelenting, seven days a week until that draft is finished, 100,000 words. Done. Well, I couldn't possibly write I Promise that fast. In fact, I needed to keep putting it down and leaving it for several days. There were parts of it that I didn't want to write at home. I didn't want to bring all that past grief into a life that is now very settled, very calm, very happy. I didn't want the two worlds to collide. So instead, I wrote in hotel rooms. When I travelled for work, I would write on airplanes, in trains, anywhere where I knew I could shut myself into my own world and nobody was going to intrude. It didn't matter if I emerged from a hotel room having cried for an hour, no one was going to ask me what had happened. And yes, so I wrote it in in a much more disjointed way and that order, which I never do with my fiction. [0:14:41] PF: This is so different from writing, as you've just told us. The process was different. What was happening to you healing-wise to be working on this book? Because I know how it lands to read this book, and it's powerful. So I can only imagine what it was like to be walking through those feelings as you're writing this book. How did it change you to write this book? [0:15:04] CM: Well, the irony of it is that, of course, I set out to write this book because I realized how much better I was in my grief. I wanted to show other people that they could get better too. And yet, in writing it, I realized how broken I still was, and how I needed to do more work. I would say that this book tore me apart emotionally, and then put me back together again. I think that's what it might do for a lot of readers. I wrote the first draft, and actually, I found the first draft really therapeutic, and relatively straightforward to write. When I handed it in to my editor, I thought, "Ah, that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be." She called me and she said, "I love this. This is going to be so important. I need you to dig deeper now. I'm going to send the manuscript, and I'm going to mark up where I want you to tell us more." So I got this manuscript back, and there were lots, and lots of areas where she was saying, "Yes, but give us more." That second draft, wow, that was like – it was like peeling off my skin, and exposing my wound dead flesh to the world. It was so, so hard, and yet, when I finished, I felt so much lighter. I guess I realized that I hadn't quite worked through everything that I thought I had. So it was a real journey, a real process of therapy, and catharsis for me, which feels like a very selfish project. It feels like this is surely something that I could have done by writing a journal. But I don't think it would have worked like that for me. I don't think I would have been as honest in my own journal as I am in I Promise. Because I think I felt a huge weight of responsibility to tell it like it is. I pull no punches in this book. In fiction, we talk a lot about likable characters, and how readers need to be able to like the characters. They really [inaudible 0:17:18] and root for them. I can tell you, there are times in this memoir, where I am not a likable character. I felt it was really important, just to be honest, write the way through to never, ever tell anything that isn't just the raw truth. [0:17:35] PF: It's interesting as you talk, because one thing we do mention a lot on the show is the power of journaling. Can you see someone using kind of your similar process? Only they're not writing it for the world, they're only writing it to explain it to themselves. Could you see how that would be helpful? [0:17:52] CM: I think it is immeasurably helpful. I wrote it – my entire writing career is because of journaling. I'd written all my life, I wrote as a child, and writing was always something that I loved to do. But after Alex died, I started writing much more intensively, I suppose. I wrote letters to my unborn children, first of all, when – so one of the reasons, he died from meningitis and a brain bleed, but he was very premature, which of course, made him extra vulnerable. When I knew that the babies were arriving early, I started writing to them, I wrote letters, which is – letters are another way of journaling. You don't ever have to show those letters to anyone, but it's incredibly healing to say what you want to say to somebody. I wrote letters, and then after he died, I carried on writing. I started a blog, and I wrote about grief. And later on, I wrote about the postnatal depression that I suffered with my subsequent children. That was my first foray into writing for other people. What happened is that I would get letters, or emails, messages, comments from people saying, "This spoke to me. I've heard myself in your words." It was the first time I think that I'd realized how powerful words were, and not just as a reader, I've always known the power that they have over me as a reader. But it was the first time I'd realized that my words as a writer could have that sort of power. So, I then began writing for an audience and you know that the rest is history. But those early blog posts and those early journal entries were just for me. I think everybody can benefit from putting their thoughts onto paper. [0:19:48] PF: That's excellent. Obviously, the book gives us 18 assurances on grief. Is there one that is your favorite or that resonates with you more than the other promises? [0:19:59] CM: Oh, I don't know. I think they're all so important, and they're all very heartfelt. I guess the one that stands out is the title and the promise that actually, it's a slight cheat, I suppose. Or it's slightly disingenuous to have 18, because it is 18 assurances, but I have intentionally repeated the first and the last. Also, used it as the title, I promise it won't always hurt like this, because it's the most important one. It's the one you need to hear over, and over and over, because you won't believe it. I didn't believe it, but it will become true. So if readers take nothing else away from the 18th assurances, I want them to hear that, and know that it won't always hurt the way it's hurting for them now. [0:20:49] PF: This is such a powerful book for anyone who was wading through their grief. But what really struck me too is it's an incredible tool for the friends and family of someone who's grieving. Because it provides such a clear lens to look through, to really examine grief. Again, we are all going to face grief throughout our lives, so it can help us with our own. But when we're dealing with someone who's trying to handle immeasurable grief, this is really helpful for your circle as well. [0:21:19] CM: It's hard to know what to say sometimes, isn't it? Even those of us who have been through grief can struggle to find the right words. Because we know only too well, our grief isn't your grief. We all experience this in different ways. Loss is universal, but grief is unique. The words that might seem right for one person might really upset or offend someone else. The great thing about giving a book is that the recipient can read that whenever they want, and they can react to it however they want in private. They can read passages over and over, they can highlight bits, they can throw the book across the room if that –   [0:22:01] PF: [Inaudible 0:22:01]   [0:22:03] CM: And a book is there for you at the precise moment you need it. Of course, you might have friends that you can call at three in the morning. But the reality is that, most of us aren't going to do that. Even if those friends have been insistent in the fact that they are there for you no matter what, no matter when, we're not going to do it. We wake up, and we sit in the dark, and we feel so desperately alone, and so incredibly grief stricken. So to be able to turn on the light, and pick up a book, or to turn on your audiobook, and to listen to some words of comfort that might make you feel less alone I think is a really important thing. So yes, I hope that this book finds its way to people who need it, either because they are drawn to it on a bookshelf or because a friend presses it into their hand. [0:22:57] PF: Absolutely. Again, it is remarkable, it is well written, it's so personal, and it feels like listening to a friend, and going through this journey with someone else. Clare, I really appreciate you sitting down and talking about this. We're going to tell our listeners where they can find your book, where they can find your other books, where they can learn more about you. Again, this is just a remarkable book. It's for anyone going through grief, anyone who is friends, relative of someone who's trying to manage their grief. It is just an incredible, incredible book, and I thank you for writing it. [0:23:33] CM: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about it. [END OF EPISODE] [0:23:40] PF: That was Clare Mackintosh talking about grief and love. If you'd like to learn more about Clare, follow her on social media or learn more about her book, I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This, 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 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]