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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Musicians on Call with Katy Epley [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What’s up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note. Music has the power to help us heal, and that's why one organization is delivering music where it might be needed most, the hospital. Musicians On Call is a volunteer organization that connects musicians with hospitals to provide live and recorded music to patients. Its volunteers have performed for more than one million people in health care facilities throughout the US. Today, I'm talking with Katy Epley, executive vice president at Musicians On Call to learn more about how this program started, and how it has changed the lives of both patients, and the musicians who perform for them. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW]   [0:00:47] PF: Well, Katie. Welcome to On a Positive Note.   [0:00:50] KE: Thank you, Paula. I'm so happy to be here. [0:00:52] PF: We're ecstatic to have you on the show. Musicians On Call is an organization that I've been aware of, following for quite some time. It just does such great things. To kick it off, for people who aren't aware of what you do, tell us about the organization.   [0:01:06] KE: Okay, great. Yes. Musicians On Call is a nonprofit organization. We started in 1999. So this is actually our 25th anniversary this year.   [0:01:15] PF: Congratulations.   [0:01:16] KE: Thank you. We are very excited, and have lots of things planned. But Musicians On Call is a nonprofit, and we bring live, and recorded music to the bedsides of patients, and families, and caregivers in healthcare environments. The primary way we do that is we have volunteer guides who escort volunteer musicians from room to room inside hospitals. The volunteer guide is trained to know which rooms to go into, which rooms not to go into. And they are going to the hospital room doors, knocking on the door, and going in, and saying, "Hey, I'm Katy. I'm here as Musicians On Call. We have a volunteer in the hallway that all come in and play for you if you feel like hearing music." So that way, the patient has the choice whether or not they want the musician to come in. Nine times out of 10, they say yes. And the guide brings the musician into the room, and we try to play something that the patient would like. So we sometimes ask, "Do you want something upbeat, something slow? What kind of music do you like?" Then, we perform a song right there at the bedside of the patient. I can tell you about it all day long, but until you're inside that hospital room, and can just feel the difference that music is making for the patient, their caregivers, or their family, it is just magical. We do that and we play a song. Usually, the patient says, "Oh, this is the best part of my day. I wasn't expecting this. This is amazing." Sometimes there's happy tears, sometimes there's just emotional tears, you just never know. Then, we go to the next room, and the next room, and the next room. We do that for about 90 minutes, and we try to see as many patients, families, and caregivers that we can play for within that 90 minutes. That's what we call MOC bedside. That's our MOC bedside program. Obviously, with the pandemic, we had to stop doing that in person, so we switched everything to virtual. I would say those are our primary two programs that we offer. [0:03:11] PF: Now, how did you get involved with it? [0:03:13] KE: I was so lucky. I was so lucky I had moved to Nashville, and Musicians On Call was in New York. Our founders started Musicians On Call in New York, and they were ready to expand to Nashville. I was working at the Songwriters Guild of America, and one of the attorneys for Musicians On Call in New York was also the attorney for the Songwriters Guild of America. He's like, "Ooh, you should come meet with Katy" because I was writing articles for musician, songwriters, the newsletters that they were receiving every month. So he was like, "She can write an article for the songwriters, and that will help you get volunteers." As soon as I saw the videos, if anybody's ever has been to Musicians On Call website, and been hooked via video, I was hooked. I was so lucky to meet with our executive director then, and she sent me the job description, and said, "If you know anybody, here's the position we're looking for." I actually sent it to so many people. I was like, "Oh, you'd be so good at this. This organization is fantastic." It took me like a minute before I was like, "Wait a minute, I want to do this job." [0:04:16] PF: It's like, can I unsend those emails. [0:04:19] KE: Yes. I was lucky. I was 24 years old, and they selected me to run the Nashville branch of Musicians On Call. I was our only employee, and that was 17 years ago. I'm still here and I'm still loving every minute of it. [0:04:32] PF: That's amazing. What made the founders choose hospitals. There's many different settings. You can do nursing home, there's so many different settings, where music can be beneficial. What is it that made them identify patients in a healthcare setting as where they wanted to focus? [0:04:49] KE: It's actually a really great question. Our two founders, Michael Solomon, and Vivek J. Tiwary. Michael, 25 years ago, his girlfriend was Kristen Ann Carr, and she had cancer. Her mother was actually Bruce Springsteen's manager. So as she was in the hospital receiving treatments, Bruce would actually come in and play music for her, and she'd be like, "Oh, go play for some of the other patients." When Michael, after, sadly, Kristen Ann Carr passed, his friend, Vivek also had a similar story where he lost someone that he loved. Together, they started bringing musicians into hospital lobbies to perform for patients, or patients in group settings. This was at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. One day, the nurses asked if they could come play music for some of the patients who were not able to come to the common area. When they did that, they just saw it was magical, and that they wanted to bring these experiences to more patients who can't leave their beds. That's when Musicians On Call was born. [0:05:51] PF: I cannot imagine the amount of emotion that is involved. For one thing, a lot of times, people in hospitals feel forgotten. We also, as we touched on music is such a healing force. Then, you bring those things together. What do patients do when this happens for them? When someone walks in and says, "May I play you a song?" [0:06:12] KE: Really great question. It is so emotional. We can go to the same floor every single week, and every single week, it's different, because it's different people in the hospital. I think – it really depends what unit it is too. If it's acute care where people are in and out of the hospital, for like a planned reason, it's maybe a little less emotional. But if there's someone, like the trauma unit, where something traumatic has happened, and you're in the hospital, and we've seen music, lower blood pressure, it improves your outlook, and your overall mood. I think, it's again, very emotional, but you can see – sometimes, I remember being in the hospital one time. It was at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. We went in and it was a small child. They said, yes, you can play some music. The dad was hunched over on his chair, with my hands folded, clasp tight. Just by the course of a song, you could just see him, like lean back in his chair and relax just a little bit. To see how music can really transform the environment is just amazing. I've been there 17 years, I could tell you a thousand stories.   [0:07:20] PF: I bet you have a few stories.   [0:07:22] KE: But I think the biggest thing is just helping improve the stress levels for patients, and the caregivers. We've seen caregivers tell us like, "Oh, I request to work on Thursday nights, because I know you'll be here."   [0:07:33] PF: Oh, that's great.   [0:07:34] KE: It does bring this uplifting experience for everybody involved. [0:07:39] PF: And is there ever reluctance on behalf of the hospital? Especially when you're trying to approach a hospital, and we're going to bring this program in, re they hesitant? Or are they, "Yes, we've heard about you guys, let's go"? [0:07:51] KE: Yes. I think in a little bit olden days, they were a little hesitant because it was just a little bit unknown. And music was this kind of like a nice thing to do. But I think now, all of the studies and the research shows that music really does have a direct effect on people, and it can improve patient's experience in the hospital. It can improve caregivers, their experience in the hospital. I think now, because there is such a scientific connection with the healing power of music, and how it can have such a positive effect on people. That now, people are welcoming us with open arms, and we're not able to expand fast enough to keep up with the demand for our programs. [0:08:30] PF: That's a really great problem to have.   [0:08:32] KE: It really is. [0:08:33] PF: How do you get the artists and what level do they have to be? Or let's talk about the criteria for an artist that wants to be part of Musicians On Call? [0:08:42] KE: Sure, absolutely. We have a volunteer musician application, where you can go to our website, musiciansoncall.org, and you can click on the volunteer button to then apply to become a volunteer musician. So a local musician, they would need to have a soothing sound. We're not going to bring in any like crazy, heavy metal artists, so yes. An acoustic soothing sound is what we're looking for. We have musicians of all different genres, and we provide the training. So as long as a musician has the talent, we can then tell them what songs are appropriate. We're not going to sing anything about loneliness, dying, all that kind of stuff. We provide all that training. [0:09:24] PF: We probably stay out of the country song book pretty heavily. [0:09:28] KE: Yes, there's quite a few that we probably shouldn't play. But we do have a song database that's like, these are the songs that work well in a hospital environment. So we have a suggested list to pull from. That's really like our local musicians. Those are the people who are tried and true, volunteering once a month, and giving back to their community. Then, occasionally, we'll have the artists such as like Darius Rucker, or Kelly Clarkson, or someone that just you hear about, that's a celebrity that comes in, and performs. That helps so many ways. Because one, if you're a patient and Darius Rucker walks into your room, it's like a once in a lifetime thing, and he's amazing. That is obviously fantastic. Then, also the buzz that that creates, then people hear about us. It really spread the message of Musicians On Call. But we also can't do that with just one or the other. We need these celebrities to spread the word, but we also need the local musicians. That way, we can keep our program running on a weekly basis. It takes both. [0:10:27] PF: Especially, Nashville, so many artists, so many people working to make it and great songwriters, and that's going to help them to. It's probably beneficial for the musicians because they're trying something new. They're honing their craft, but in a very different setting. [0:10:44] KE: Absolutely. I've had so many musicians who are like, "Oh, man. I can play in front of 5,000 people. But like, oh man, to be right in our hospital room is so intimidating." Which to me is just baffling, because I'm like, "You can get up there on stage and play for like so many people, but this is what you're doing." I mean, I think it's true, because you're being vulnerable. You're right in someone's hospital room at one of their scariest moments sometimes. But I think, the musicians get so much out of it. The volunteer guides, haven't really talked a lot about the guides, but the guide is the one that's escorting the musician. They know what to do, they know what to say, they're there to support the musician if there is a situation that they don't know what to do. So anybody can be a volunteer guide. I mean, you just have to have a love of music and a love of people, because you're the one knocking on the door of the hospital room, not knowing what's going on on the other side. So you know, as long as you can be comfortable in that environment and be the one communicating with the patient, anybody can be a volunteer guide. Then, I think for both the guide and the musician, you both just get so much out of it. Because when you leave that hospital, you're like, "Oh my gosh, we just made a difference." You remember each of those rooms that you went to, and you have those stories that you carry with you. [0:11:59] PF: That's fantastic. You've seen it affect patients. How do you see the artists who participate be touched, and change. I cannot even imagine, because as you said, it's so different than getting up on a stage and playing. They're sitting there, and they're watching this person really being moved and changed by the music. What does it do for the artist? [0:12:18] KE: I think it's so meaningful, because they're getting to use their gifts, and their talent in a way that's helping others. I think in the music industry, you can become so jaded by all of it, and the rollercoaster ride of the highs, and lows of success, and all that. For them to just be able to give back to people who want to hear – their captive audience, they're in there, and they're loving it. It's a way to connect, it's that point of connection between the artist and the musician. Then, we have folks like Charles Aston. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Charles Aston.   [0:12:48] PF: Oh, yes.   [0:12:49] KE: Deacon Clayborn from the show, Nashville, and now he's on the Outer Banks. But I mean, he is one of the most amazing human beings, he so giving. He started doing our program several years ago. Now, he's a board member and serves on our board of directors. I think that you can see someone like that where he could do anything he wants with his time and his talents, and he gives back so much to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, because he had a daughter that battle that when she was a child. To think that he has been so moved over the years to join our board, and to serve us in that way, I think is a real testimony to say how much it does for musicians. [0:13:30] PF: How many musicians would you say you've had through your program over the years? Do you have any calculation of that? [0:13:37] KE: I know before the pandemic hit, we had 800 current volunteers. Those were volunteers that were actively volunteering with us once a month. That was volunteer musicians and guides. But if I were to look back, like historically over 25 years, that's a really good question. I don't know how many people have volunteered as a total.   [0:13:55] PF: There's an infographic that needs to be made. [0:13:58] PF: Yes. Now, you have another program I'm really interested in. Wanted to talk to you about, and that's your songwriting program. I think this is incredible. We've done some things on songwriting with soldiers, and there's some other things. Tell us the Musicians On Call songwriting programs about. [0:14:13] KE: This one is really cool. I would love to tell a story about this if it's okay.   [0:14:17] PF: Please.   [0:14:18] KE: It would have been probably 12 years ago, and was my first time doing this program. There used to be a facility in Nashville called Bordeaux Long-Term Care. It was a place where people went to live basically probably for the rest of their life because they needed long-term care and they weren't going home. We wanted to go there, and we did this as – you can do it in different time. You can do it all in one day, or you can do it in different periods of time. But this one, because it was a long-term care facility, we wanted to do it over a course of six weeks. Once a week, or I think, once or twice a week we would come and meet with the same group. The hospital selected a group of residents to come and write songs with us. The first day we showed up, everybody was like – the people were just walking in, they are like, "What are we doing? What did we sign up for?" Then we explained. We said, "We're going to write songs." Harlan was our volunteer musician, and we were going to come together as a group and write a song. So, they were like, "Okay. Yeah, you know." Then the next time we came, everybody was on time. Then the next time we came, they were there waiting for us.   [0:15:25] PF: Oh, wow.   [0:15:26] KE: It was so cool to see just the change in attitude by the end of it. But basically, what happened is, we got together and said, like, "What do we want to write about? How are we feeling and all that?" The group decided they wanted to write about things that they were grateful for.   [0:15:42] PF: I love it.   [0:15:42] KE: One man had a long ponytail braid, and he was in a wheelchair, and he didn't have any legs. So he was grateful that he still had his hair, and he was grateful that he had a chance to dance before. Then, there was just a variety of things like that, that they said. There was one woman who was probably in her eighties. If you've ever been to Nashville, you've probably driven down Music Row, and you see the banners that are on Music Row, that's like number one song here, number one song. This woman had said that she moved to Nashville, and she – it was her dream to see her name on one of those banners on Music Row. That just kind of stuck with us. Anyway, they wrote this song called, I Am Grateful. By the end of the six weeks, we came in, and we brought in recording equipment. And some of the nurses came and joined us, and we recorded this song called, I Am Grateful. So then, back then, it was a CD release party. We had pressed it onto a CD, and we had pictures, and art, and all that, and then we have a CD release party. So we came back, and we had the group perform and sing at this long-term care facility, and we passed out CDs, they got to autograph it. We had a banner made with everybody's name on it, with the song on there. It was just the most incredible experience for everyone that participated for the musicians helping to write the song, for the patients. They got to have this experience that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to have. For that six weeks, they are different people, talking about like the power of music, what it can do. It was just really, really amazing. That's MOC songwriting, I would say in a nutshell, but that was probably a really long story to tell. [0:17:23] PF: No, that's a great story. I love that. How often do you do that now? Is it by special request or – because that's some intensive process? [0:17:34] KE: Yes. Yes, it is. That's not one of our ongoing programs. We do that one on a case-by-case basis. But we did that during the pandemic, with a VA hospital in Phoenix, actually, where an artist was on Zoom. The patients at the VA were in a group setting, and they actually wrote a song together through Zoom. It doesn't have to be a six-week period, and it usually isn't anymore. But we can go in with recording equipment and write a song in a hospital room with a with a patient nowadays, just record it right then and there. It's not a program that's on an ongoing basis, but it's one that we do when we have a special request, or a grant, or something like that, that makes sense. [0:18:13] PF: How cathartic is it for the patient to be able to work on this song, and get their emotions out through lyrics. [0:18:21] KE: I think it's magical, really. I think the one thing, though, I will say is that we don't do music therapy. There's a music therapy process by which their therapists are pulling out those emotions and helping people work through them. Where we're providing entertainment for the patients and providing like a therapeutic activity. If it does kind of get into the more emotional – we always have somebody like a recreational therapist, or child-life therapist or someone there that can kind of handle those, the raw emotions that might come up through it. But I think, regardless of the type of activity, I think that it is one that is helping people express their emotions. I was just telling a friend, I didn't grow up in a household where we talked about our emotions, and thought deeply about where do they come from, and what am I actually feeling. That's not normal. I think it's starting to be normalized, but I think, any working on like your emotions, and it's kind of digging deeper, and being curious about what you're thinking, and feeling is helpful for all of us. [0:19:24] PF: I love it. What's next for Musicians On Call? What else is going on? And then, also, what are ways that people can get involved, people who aren't musicians? Can we talk about that too? [0:19:35] KE: Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, it's our 25th anniversary of Musicians On Call. So we have a big 25th anniversary campaign coming up, where we're going to have different celebrity hospital visits, and new cities that come on board with Musicians On Call. We're expanding to Tampa this year. We're expanding to Orlando, which is really exciting. We're going to be having events in Nashville and New York to celebrate the 25th anniversary. Those are some upcoming things that we're looking forward to. Then, we are – what else is going on? We're looking for volunteers. That's the biggest thing. Yes, the volunteer guides and the volunteer musicians that want to go into the hospital, or they want to volunteer virtually. Like I said, anybody can be a volunteer guide, and the volunteer musicians just need to have a really soothing sound. They can go on our website to fill out a volunteer application. [0:20:27] PF: I think this is such an incredible program. So grateful for the work you're doing and thankful that you had time to sit down to talk with me about it, because I think it's something more people need to know about. [0:20:38] KE: Oh, thank you, Paula. Thank you for inviting us to come and share Musicians On Call with you and your listeners who are so grateful for this opportunity. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:20:49] PF: That was Katy Epley of Musicians On Call, talking about the healing power of music in the hospital setting. If you'd like to learn more about Musicians On Call, follow them on social media, or see how you can be a volunteer. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. 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: Embracing Self-Love with Brittany & Sarah [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 455 of Live Happy Now. This week, we celebrate Valentine's Day. Today, we want to talk about the greatest love of your life, yourself. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Brittany Derrenbacher and Sarah Pavey of The Healing Collective in Louisville, Kentucky. In their practices, Brittany and Sarah teach clients how to discover a deep lasting love for themselves. They also hold workshops on creating self-love vision boards. Today, they're sharing some insights on how self-love improves our lives and our relationships. They also give us some tips for starting your own self-love practice. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:44] PF: Brittany and Sarah, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] BD: Thanks. [00:00:48] SP: Thank you for having us. [00:00:50] BD: We're excited to be here together. [00:00:52] SP: We’re so excited. [00:00:53] PF: I know. I don't usually do tandem things, but this is absolutely too perfect, and I'm really excited to be able to do this. All of the month of February, we are talking about love, the different types of love. One thing that really struck me is all of our guests have mentioned – all of our guests. Both of the guests prior to you have mentioned just how important self-love is. Everything begins with self-love. No matter – whether you're trying to build another relationship with a person, it still goes back to self-love. Can you talk about that? Why does everything really start with self-love? [00:01:28] BD: I think our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship that we'll ever have in our entire lives. If we don't cultivate that relationship with ourselves, we always consistently show up in our other relationships with people with a glass half-full. I think when we lean into this idea of self-love, we're able to embrace all of the parts of ourselves and realize that I think we're the ones that we've been waiting for, right? We can love every part of ourselves and really sit in the ooey-gooeyness of our essence and our being and our greatness. [00:02:13] PF: To make sure we're talking about the same thing because self-love can seem kind of this concept, tell me what true self-love is. What are we actually talking about here? [00:02:23] BD: I think self-love is the unconditional acceptance of self. It's showing up for ourselves the way that we would a best friend. It's seeing and hearing and valuing and just loving every single part of ourselves and the way that we do our friends, our animals, our family. We’re projecting that back to self. I think that is one of the most beautiful relationships that we can cultivate. [00:02:56] PF: But that's a tough thing because we aren't really taught to love ourselves. Even it's difficult sometimes to be comfortable with the concept of trying to learn to love ourselves. We really do oftentimes try to get that love and validation from the outside, and we don't even know how to go inside. Where do we start even learning how to do that and how to discover self-love? [00:03:19] SP: I kind of like what you said, Brittany. That was a really beautiful approach to it. When we look at ourselves how we do our best friends or even loving ourselves how we would a child, when we’re tough on ourselves, almost visualizing yourself as a child and sitting down and how we take care of ourselves in that way or talk to ourselves. Sometimes, I mean, we can be really tough on ourselves. It's easier to show yourself self-love when you think about like, “Little me,” and making sure that every child gets what they need or just showing ourselves that same love that we would our friend or a child or even our pets sometimes. Yes, I think that that's a great place to start is how we take care of other people. [00:04:01] BD: I also think this is inner child work. We're getting back to the root of when we are born into this world, we have unconditional love for ourselves. We want to get our needs met. We think we are the best thing ever. [00:04:19] PF: Especially if we're only children. [00:04:21] BD: Yes, yes. Like there is no one greater than us. Then we start to grow up and life happens and society happens. That changes over time. So I think we have to lean back into that. We're almost reclaiming that love for ourselves that we are born innately with. [00:04:43] PF: That doesn't feel natural for a lot of people. It doesn't feel natural to go back and say, “I'm going to talk to this wounded child that I was.” How do you kind of start taking steps toward that? [00:04:54] BD: I think the first thing that we have to do is start understanding the parts of ourselves that maybe are uncomfortable to look at. That is usually what I do with my clients, right? It's like this road back home to self, embracing and holding all the parts of ourselves that maybe we wanted to push away or overlook. You may have heard the phrase shadow work. This can also teeter into shadow work. I think, ultimately, the first step that we have to take is to view that all of our parts are good. They are there for a reason, and they make up who we are as we sit here today. [00:05:37] PF: What happens when you run into someone who's like, “I hate this part of myself.” I hear that from people where it's like, “I hate this about myself.” They are so hard on themselves about this one thing. How do you get over something that was very strong feelings about what's wrong with you? [00:05:54] BD: I think this will be an interesting thing for Sarah and I to both answer because we do this both innately in our work but differently based on our professions, right? My step is to always work with the person to identify why this part of themself exists, how it used to show up for them in the past and protect them and help them survive. It's like a reclaiming of that part of you and coming to understand it so that you can love it and also tell it that it can take a break. Like, “It’s okay. I don't need you to jump in and protect me right now.” [00:06:34] SP: Like you said, seeing how those parts did serve us at one point and how it was a protection of armor. Also honoring the valuable purpose that that armor has but also being able to take a step back and set it down to find a way to love those pieces and see how they can flow into your life and, yes, just look through a different lens. [00:06:57] PF: One thing that you ladies did, and I am just so fascinated by this, you've done it last year. I don't know if that was your first year. I know you did it again this year. That was a self-love vision board workshop. First of all, tell us what that is. [00:07:12] BD: It is a fun, playful, imaginative, and creative way to reclaim a part of ourselves that oftentimes we lose from childhood into adulthood, right? Imagination, creativity, play. We lose that, and we become really serious adults. I think it's a really beautiful way and a tool to allow people to dip their toes into self-love because they're essentially sitting with themselves. We usually start with the meditation and have them call in their higher selves and really kind of do a heart activation to where they can drop into their bodies and into their hearts and sit with themselves. We ask that they essentially create a board that encompasses all of the things that they love about themselves and also the things that they want for themselves. It's really interesting to see how that plays out for each individual person. [00:08:14] SP: Yes. Also, it's hard when you have glitter glue and scissors and stickers. It's hard to take yourself so seriously. I think that that really allows people to get into that inner child. Also, by the time they're done, they look at it, and they're like, “Wow, this feels really good. This is something I would love to look at every day.” But they're like, “I had so much fun doing it. I didn't – I can't believe time went by so fast.” I think it's a really fun way for people to get in touch with that. [00:08:41] PF: What kind of things do they look at in terms of self-love? What kind of pictures and words do you see people gravitating toward to create these self-love vision boards? [00:08:50] BD: Well we ask that people bring in an inner child photo to also work off of, too. [00:08:55] PF: Oh, nice. [00:08:56] BD: But a lot of times, especially with women, there will be something that they're working through with their bodies, their relationship with their bodies. Learning to love their bodies and meet themselves where they're at. You'll see a lot of language and verbiage around their relationship with their bodies. Also, it's interesting to see a lot of people will reclaim parts of themselves that maybe they've lost. Maybe life got in the way, and they haven't been able to travel in a while. Maybe they've had complicated romantic relationships in the past. So they're calling in a partner that is exactly what they want for themselves and knowing that it's not asking too much. [00:09:38] SP: It's also incredible to see how everyone will relate to each other. But when everyone holds up their boards at the end how different they are. Also, everyone's like, “Oh, that is so amazing. That feels so good to look at.” Then you look around, and everyone's so different and so unique to them. It's just such a beautiful feeling. [00:09:57] BD: I'll share a story of this woman's board that was really moving for everyone. Everyone gets one board, but really there's no limit. You can do what you want, and she did. She got several more, and she attached them all, and it became this expansive board of – she used different imagery of women and a lot of bright colors, very vibrant inner child colors, and created this board for herself to remind herself how beautiful she is. That not only is she beautiful but she's surrounded by beautiful amazing women all day. It was almost like this love letter to herself and to all of the feminine energies around her. It was incredible. [00:10:44] SP: It really was. That same woman, she asked everybody to sign her board, which has never happened before. It was just so beautiful for her to make those connections with herself and everyone else. [00:10:55] PF: What happens when people do this? Can you talk a little bit about how that changes what's going on in their brain? You're focusing specifically on this self-love topic, and you're getting into the magazines. What does it change with them, and how do you see that just over the course of this workshop which takes how long? How long are you there? [00:11:17] BD: About two and a half hours. [00:11:19] PF: Okay. How do you see people change, just during this two and a half hours that they're working on this? What's it doing to their brains and to their hearts? [00:11:28] BD: I'm glad asked this question because we did something a little differently this year. I use a lot of essential oils and breath work in my therapeutic practice. I used a specific oil that's good for heart activation, and I had them do what's called a manifestation breath. Really what that helps them do is drop out of their brain and into their bodies, and begin really focusing on the wisdom of their body and focusing on their heart. I think when we drop out of our minds that tend to worry and overthink and criticize and intrusive thoughts, we drop into the natural wisdom and rhythm of our bodies that's like, “I love you. This feels good. This is fun. I want to do more of this. I like this.” You start to get more of the I am affirmations, which is powerful. [00:12:23] SP: Yes. What's been so exciting to see the last couple years is by the end of it, everyone's like, “Wow, I didn't think I would have so much fun doing this.” When they first walk in, they're kind of – you can tell everyone's like, “Okay, what is this going to be about?” Then by the end of – [00:12:38] PF: What have I signed up for? [00:12:40] SP: Yes. They're like, “Wait, it's been two hours already?” It’s like show and tell. When they hold it up at the end, they're all excited to share. I mean, it's a really vulnerable thing to share, but they're so happy and excited to do it. It's really beautiful. [00:12:55] BD: Sarah and I, we’re super excited this year. We had a surprise come to our workshop. We had a man come. It’s not that – self-love is not just for women. In fact, I think it is incredibly healing modality for men. I think it helps just as a collective healing to bring men into this work. Yes. Do you want to tell the story? [00:13:21] SP: You could tell when he came in, he was nervous a little bit like, “I don't know what I'm getting into.” But it was so beautiful to see him come in and just see him feel supported by that feminine energy and really settle into kind of the womb space we created and to have that that nurturing healing energy around him. [00:13:38] PF: Is there a home version? How does someone do this if they're not in a group, and they're like, “Maybe that would help me.”? How do you sit down and create your own self-love vision board when we don't have you guys to walk us through? [00:13:53] SP: There's no right or wrong way to do it. What I love to do at home is sometimes I’ll even use a bulletin board and pack it and change it throughout the year. But really on construction paper, on anything, and cutouts from magazines. Or you're walking and you see something that resonates with you, just putting little images or anything that calls you. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. For me, at least, the whole purpose of a vision board is something that you can look at and see. It’s a little cliché, right? Every day, we get to reset and get to start. But that's true and having something to see and set your intentions towards, it gives you a direction to go in every day when you want to start new. Really, there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's not. [00:14:42] BD: I think whatever your creativity level is, whatever your capacity is, wherever your imagination takes you, go with it and have fun and don't limit yourself. Collect weird things. I dare you. Collect cool stickers. I dare you. Cut out pictures of yourself as a kid and create a masterpiece. You will be so proud of yourself. One thing I will say about the vision boards that we've created together is I look at them with so much pride. I love her. I love that version of me from a year ago. I love her, and I'm a different woman today. So I got to create something new in this workshop, and I love her. [00:15:29] PF: That's so great. How do you use it properly? As we all know, you can put the affirmations up on your mirror. But after a while, you don't see them. How do you make sure that this stays fresh every day? You kind of make a ceremony out of making sure you look at it and remind yourself and kind of reinstill that self-love every day? Or how – what's the best practice? [00:15:52] BD: I think probably Sarah and I do this two different ways because I tend to leave space on my board and add to it throughout the year. It does always kind of lead me back to it. [00:16:06] SP: Yes. For me and a lot of people in our groups, they like to put them in the bathroom or in the kitchen. But kind of like you said, we put it up there. Then we kind of get too used to seeing it. For me, I just fill my board up. When I meditate, I like to look at it but I mean really what aligns to that person. Some people, they like to see it while they're cooking or while they're using the restroom. It's some good material. Yes, I kind of like that, though, the idea of adding on to it throughout the year. That could keep you more involved with it and have more attention on it throughout the year or however often you do it. Yes. That's a good tip. [00:16:42] PF: Since self-love is so tough, how important is it that we're able to remind ourselves daily of this self-love journey that we're on? [00:16:50] BD: Oh, this is – I love to talk about the brain. Yes, repetition, repetition. It takes so many times. I think scientifically it's 300 to 400 times of repetition, right? If we stand in the mirror at day one and we say I love you to yourself in the mirror, it may seem kind of weird. It may seem uncomfortable. It doesn't stick. Day 20, I love you in the mirror. Maybe it lands a little bit more. Then by the end of this cycle, say you do this every day for a year, your brain – this is a new neural pathway, and it believes that is truth. So whether or not it feels silly to us and it feels maybe like, “I don't want to do that. That's not going to work,” it will work. It will work. Your brain will believe you. I think that's an important tool that I think we just have to do things until it becomes our truth. [00:17:52] SP: Yes. I think that's so important. It might feel silly at first. That's the cost is to feel little silly, but it will pay off. Like you said, I don't know the exact numbers, but we can think something so many more times than we could say those words out loud. If you're telling yourself in your brain, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” and you're just changing that narrative, it will create those new pathways. [00:18:16] PF: I had a guest on the show. It has been a couple years now, Shauna Shapiro. She wrote the book called Good Morning, I Love You. Her practice is one that I started doing, and that was she would put her hand on her heart every morning, before she gets out of bed, as soon as she wakes up. Now, I do it. It's good morning, Paula. I love you. It's like put your name in there and state that truth to yourself. When that's the first statement, the first thought of your day that your day is going to get better. It starts better. That is a real powerful way to do it as well. [00:18:49] BD: That is part of my morning practice, and it's non-negotiable for me because, otherwise, my intrusive thoughts are louder, and she's not going to win. [00:19:00] PF: That's awesome. What changes when we really start embracing self-love? How do we show up differently in the world? How does it change us? How does it change the way we interact with others? [00:19:12] SP: Not to get too woo-woo out there, but I mean I truly think it changes the vibration that you send out to the universe. That changes how you interact with yourself, with others. I mean, just the law of attraction and abundance. If you can imagine something for yourself, so much more is available to you. I think having some sort of reminder about that, it can totally change how you interact in the world, the vibration you set out. [00:19:41] BD: Fort me, I think when we cultivate a better relationship with self and we work on self-love, self-compassion, all the selves, we show up better in our relationships. We show up as a whole, happy, excited, joyful version of ourselves, right? We don't expect our partners and our friends and our families to be the ones that are always going to meet those needs. That is something that I think traditionally happens in especially romantic relationships, right? I mean, we're in the month of love, so we have to kind of talk about that. That societally and traditionally, we have been taught that once we find our partner, the happiness goal has been met. Really, it's being able to show up and create that from within. So then we can be in our relationships in a very easy lighter way that gets our needs met. [00:20:42] PF: What about the people out there this Valentine's Day, this season of love who are lonely, who don't have someone special in their lives, don't have a significant other? They feel very isolated, and they feel maybe unloved. What are some ways they can specifically embrace them themselves and show themselves love and feel that same kind of love that they're looking for? [00:21:04] SP: It's interesting you asked that question. We actually had a woman last night at our group. She was one with the big beautiful board. She was talking about how she used to hate this time of year. It would make her depressed, make her feel so bad, and how she had this shift where she's like, “I can buy my own flowers. I can buy flowers for my friends.” I think that that's a great place to start is, whether it is romantically or not, showing gratitude in the places that you can for yourself. Also, if you're not there, if you do have a good support group, showing gratitude and love towards those people and those things in your life will help cultivate that type of thing. [00:21:42] BD: What better way to celebrate love and to learn about self-love than to spend Valentine's Day with our best friends. [00:21:51] PF: That's a great talk, especially women tend to put a lot of pressure on the day. I love the idea of reframing that and saying this is about love and not just romantic love. It's about our love with our friends, with our pets, with our family. I really love that idea. [00:22:07] BD: There's nobody better to show up unconditionally for us than our pets and our best friends. [00:22:12] PF: Exactly. Your advice for everyone out there. They want to learn more about self-love, and we will. We'll put that affirmations, make that available as a download to them from you. Thank you for that. But what are some things they can do right now, some steps that they can take to just start practicing, baby steps toward greater self-love? [00:22:35] BD: I think we have to be open to spending more time with ourselves. I think – yes, and that involves releasing a little bit of fear around that. But just showing up and spending more time with ourselves, whether that's going out for a walk and not putting headphones in, really just spending some time with ourselves. [00:22:56] SP: Yes. I think a lot of times we are hard on ourselves because we focus a lot on how things may have gone wrong. But do we ever stop and think about when things go right or how we have supported ourselves so far into this life? I think we should pay more attention to those moments. [00:23:12] PF: Well, ladies, it's a lovely time to talk to you because it is all about love. I appreciate what you have to say to us. I really thank you for spending your time with me today. [00:23:21] BD: Thank you. [00:23:22] SP: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:27] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher and Sarah Pavey, talking about self-love. If you'd like to download a free printable poster of their self-love affirmations, learn how to create your own self-love vision board, or follow Brittany and Sarah on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every Tuesday, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

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

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