The Secret to Happiness
I’ve figured it out!
(Please trust that I’ve been through some stuff and come out the other side. It’s made me learn ways to be better and feel better.)
And when I try to really distill happiness, it comes down to 2 things:
Knowing tools to handle stress. (Our stress response is there to help us - like how we physically respond if we nearly get in an accident - which is good because the cortisol released heightens our ability to respond in ways that will save us. The problem is if we chronically feel stress. It messes up our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our sleep, our career, and so on.)
Purposely adding in joy to our life and knowing that we deserve it. (The hustle culture of “I can rest when I achieve x” or “we are good mothers/partners etc. when we put others first” is toxic and destructive. It’s a set up, and so we feel guilty if we feel some joy. We think there is no time, or it’s not a priority. We actively deny ourselves good things and then become bitter, tired, resentful because we aren’t ‘happy’.) It’s imperative that every day, we add in joy, we stop blocking joy, working on things that are meaningful to us and make things easy when possible
I am here to impress upon you that both of these things are critical and I am happy to help support you, teach you techniques to make it easier and hold you accountable. The result is a magical difference.
Two examples that made a world of difference:
I was struggling with a toxic workplace and feeling like I didn’t have the energy to cook a healthy dinner for my daughter once I survived the day and was home for work.
Tip for Stress:
I would feel triggered during the day with a snide comment someone would make, (did they have a problem with me? Did I mess up?) or a thought or news clip about school shootings (would our school be next?). My anxiety would soar and my mood would plummet. I would try to look calm, but felt panicked. Formerly I would seek a break/distraction and would scroll social media. More information sometimes would actually make me worse. Maybe I’d see something else stressful or I’d see a friend living their best life and I would compare it against mine and feel despair.
The solution here: dip into the bathroom or a quiet spot and place a hand over my heart and repeat inside my mind that ‘I am ok, all is well, all will be ok, I am safe.’ Slowly breathe from my belly and say it again. Repeat. It’s the thing that would calm me so I could move onward. When do you need to pause, breathe and comfort yourself?
The other thing here is that I continually work on changing my thinking. Some times, good things would be happening and I would block joy and think about possible bad things. It was an anxious habit trying to control the future. Redirecting my thinking or asking myself if that bad thing was true in this moment would be strategies that would help with the stress that I sometimes brought on myself.
Tip for Joy:
I couldn’t fathom cooking dinner each night after a long day. The only way that I could make it work would be ‘batch’ cooking on Sunday. But I felt that that was not fair and that I was cutting my weekend short. Cue adding in joy. I talked to my friend Jen about it and we got together Sunday afternoons and batch cooked together. And laughed. And giggled. And made tons of delicious roasted veggies and meals that I could use all week. It felt like I had my weekend back because it was so fun with her, I was ready for the week and it saved me angst during the week. We made eating healthier easier, I was working on something that was meaningful to me (helping my family to be healthy and I chose to spend this time with her which brought me so much more joy than if I worked on batch-cooking alone.
So how can you add in joy to the things that need to be done? How can you make it easy? (I excel in helping my clients do this!)
Stress management and joy; its the winning combination.
I used to radiate negativity - so grateful to have changed that!