It can be tempting to say, "I'll be happy when..." However, that translates to excusing unhappy tendencies now. Rather, choose to be happy in the present. Learn how in this episode! 

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and what we know is that gratitude hard wires you to be happy now.

So, I’m asking you: 

Are you depending on something else for your happiness? 

When you get that job? 

When you have more money in the bank account? 

When, when, when …..

If you place your happiness on something else, someone else, it’s hard to find happiness.

I invite you to ask yourself, how are you in control of your happiness? It comes from within.

it’s not these things that you think make you happy, it’s your choice to be grateful for them that is what makes you happy.

When you choose to focus on gratitude, you have less space and room for negativity in your brain.

When you are happy, you attract healthier happier people in your life.

So today, ask yourself, what are you grateful for, what are you happy with right now?  Pick anything, perhaps the sun is shining, or you enjoyed a cup of coffee, just start somewhere. 

And if you are enjoying this micro-podcast, please share it with 5 friends and perhaps, together, we can create more happiness.  Know that wherever you are, I’m thanking you for helping spread the word. Tag me on social @everydayhappinesswithkatie.

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

If you were to walk through every step of your life and think of what you are grateful for at each level, what would it look like? Tune in to hear my flurry of gratitude!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and in the morning, I try to practice a gratitude frenzy. It's a flurry of gratitude that I try to fill myself with when I first open my eyes.   

It goes like this: 

• Open eyes 

Then I get out of bed and let the frenzy begin. 

• I am thankful for these legs that carry me through my day

I walk downstairs and 

• I am thankful I prepped my coffee for this morning 

It is really simple and really basic.  It’s literally just starting with a frenzy of good vibes.  And, it kinda feels good.  It’s not taking things for granted.  

I’m curious what you would have in your gratitude frenzy.  

And, if you’ve enjoyed listening to Everyday Happiness, please share it with 5 friends, I would be so grateful.  This little ditty only grows and spreads more joy through the kindness of listeners like you sharing it. 

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

In this comical episode, I debate the semantics of gratitude or appreciation. Would you agree with my thought process? Tune in to find out!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and sometimes when I get caught up in semantics, I like to refer to “gratitude” as “appreciation”.  Sometimes gratitude feels big and really I just appreciate a lot of little things, of which I am of course grateful for.  But if you are sitting down to a blank piece of paper to write your gratitude and nothing comes to mind, ask yourself if you appreciate anything?  Maybe that will help.  

I often write that I am grateful for this cup of coffee I am drinking and that I woke up with two legs that carried me to my kitchen to make the coffee.  I am grateful for the lights that turn on in the morning hours.  Starting off super basic.   

I think it’s semantics.  I don’t have any research on this quite yet, but whatever you call it, gratitude or appreciation - we can all agree, including the research, that when you take a step back and feel that gratitude, it boosts happiness.  And isn’t that what we’re after - especially if you are listening to this, right. 

So, whatever you call it.  I hope you take a moment and remind yourself what you appreciate today.  

I love this so much, I’d love to hear from you.  Send me a message on social @everydayhappinesswithkatie and tell me what you are grateful for today. 

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

It is easy to fall out of one's gratitude practice by getting caught up in the whirlwind of life. If you need a pep talk to get back on track, this episode is for you!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and if I’m being really honest, I know the science and yet, I’ve fallen out of the habit in the unstructured summer months, of my daily gratitude practice.  And during some reflection, I think it was having an effect on my own mental state.  I had been feeling more, well - blah.  So it got me thinking, could we all use a boost, like a pep talk to be more mindful of our own gratitude. 

If I was going to give myself a pep talk - which I needed, I might as well share this with you too.  I mean, we’re in this together - right?  

So gratitude is thankful appreciation for what we have, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, we are intentionally acknowledging the good.  We’re telling our brain, focus on this.  We’re telling the Universe, thank you and I like this and bring me more of this, please.  

It’s so easy to get caught up in the drama of the day, the news, the social media, all the things… so I found that gratitude has really been a centering force for me and the research agrees.  Gratitude is not only strongly associated with greater happiness - 10 weeks of a consistent gratitude practice can boost your optimism. It helps you deal with adversity and let’s face it, there is a lot of that right now.   

Gratitude is a way for us to slow down, be intentional and appreciate what we have instead of always reaching for something new in the hopes it will make us happier.   As entrepreneurs, we can often get caught up in the feeling of not being satisfied until we achieve the next thing, check the next box, crush the next goal, and gratitude helps us refocus on what we have instead of looking to something in the future.  And, although it may feel contrived and insignificant at first, a consistent gratitude practice changes the neurons in the brain and boosts happiness and satisfaction (a key component of happiness).  

So, what are you waiting for?  Take a few minutes and think about what you are grateful for, right now. 

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Inspiration for this episode and the research mentioned comes from a 2011 article from Harvard Health.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

To create a fulfilling, happy life, it is critical to use INTENTIONAL MARGINS® to find harmony and space to appreciate the special moments within our busy lives. Learn more about it in this episode! 

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and today we are talking about my concept INTENTIONAL MARGINS®.  

Yesterday, you looked at your calendar and wrote down all the have-tos.  The commute, the meetings, the kids activities, the dentist, all the things you have to do. 

The rest is your margin.  And the big question is how do we make the absolute most of our time so that we create a fulfilling life in our Intentional Margins®.  What I’ve found, is that when we aren’t intentional, we look back, over the day and wonder, what did I do that was in MY priorities. I felt so busy all day.   

Days become weeks, weeks to months, months to years and pretty soon we’re checking the todo list, but we’re on auto-pilot. 

INTENTIONAL MARGINS® is a filter to identify what matters most, your priorities, and figure out how to make time for them.  So that, you can look back at the week, and have a win, recognizing that you did live in your priorities and you are in fact creating a fulfilling life.   

For a lot of us, it’s just about awareness.  When we, for a split second, turn off auto-pilot. 

Now, if you think that’s not you - you don’t actually have a moment for your priorities, I invite you to think about how much margin you might have.  Those pockets of time. And what are some priorities that you would like to focus on during that time?  It could be 15 minutes here and there or an hour or two in the evening.   

Join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram 

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

In this podcast, we focus on INTENTIONAL MARGINS® and how to incorporate them into our lives. Today, we are revisiting these concepts as a reminder! 

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and today we are talking about my concept INTENTIONAL MARGINS®.  

INTENTIONAL MARGINS® is finding the buffer of space and time to create harmony between our todos and our priorities.  

Do you ever feel like you are running on that hamster wheel of todos and afraid to jump off for fear that everything will crumble?  You’re overwhelmed and can’t see the vision and all you want is some clarity.  Yeah, me too!  Or at least that was me, before I started getting super consistent with my Margins.  The space and time in the day, that wasn’t a crisis or a “have to”. 

Now, you might be thinking, I don’t have any margin, I go non-stop all day.

But let’s unpack this.  If you look at your calendar you might have some commute time to work or running kids to and from.  You might have an appointment or an important conference call or meeting.  Perhaps, you have a job, like my sister, who is a nurse, and she’s working all day with basically no break.  

Whatever that looks like for you.  I encourage you to take a traditional week and put all of that in your calendar.  All of the time that is already accounted for.  Then, put your sleep times into the calendar.  If you're an overachiever, put in the calendar the dinner making and cleaning up time too. 

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what’s left on that calendar.  In the meantime, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

Do you have a lengthy to-do list? Or maybe you have dozens of "ideas" on sticky notes with no clear purpose? Learn more about scheduling your life to avoid the overwhelm in this episode!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and today, my happiness was found in the not todo list.  Ever feel like you are on the hamster wheel of todos?  Yeah, me too.  As much as I am super intentional about living in my Intentional Margins®, putting my priorities first, and saying no to the things that don’t directly align with my North Star.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the churn.  

This is what I did to try to regain some control, maybe it will help you too.  

I made a list -- of everything on my mind. 

I made a list of all the things I thought I had to do.  What I found on my todo list was that it was also a list of thoughts and ideas.  

I asked myself, what was really a task that I needed to do?   

Was there anything I could delegate? 

And, finally, what could I delete or postpone for another time?  

This exercise allowed me to prioritize my todos and separate it from my thoughts and ideas and then decide what needed my attention now.  

Next, I added those todos to my calendar for the week, so some tasks I started on today and others I had on my calendar for 3 days from now.  It really did make things so much more manageable.  And, I’ve got to say, I’m happier.  I’m calmer.  I feel more in control of creating my fulfilling day, which makes me so happy.  

So, maybe this todo list hack will help you too.  Let me know.  @everydayhappinesswithkatie  

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

When you look at your week, how does your calendar feel? Overwhelming? Excessive? Focused too much on "to-do" boxes? Learn more about setting an intentional calendar in this episode!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and I’ve been pondering this idea lately, wondering if we can be truly productive, live in harmony, create fulfilling lives where we live in our priorities and not feel guilty about the time we spend doing what we want instead of checking the box on someone else's priority list.   

What I found is that if we try to make every day harmonious, those 24 glorious hours.  We’re missing the point.  It’s too hard.  When we look at a week, we can see more harmony.  Some days are just busier than others.  And that’s ok.   

If we try to squeeze our priorities and our Intentional Margins® into a day, it might feel forced on certain days.  I’ve decided to zoom out of the day and take a bigger look at the week.  I do this by literally looking at my calendar and identifying time for my Intentional Margins® - the time when I live in my true priorities.  You’ve heard the saying, what gets calendared gets done.

I wonder if we are trying so hard to check the boxes that we are forgetting about living in our priorities, which create our fulfilling lives.  That is why I created the concept Intentional Margins®  - as a filter, a reminder, that we get to be intentional and prioritize what matters most. 

I’ve also created a one-page free printable planner, called My Intentional Day that helps me focus the day on my top priorities, you can get the link to the planner in the show notes. 

So what is your intentional margin this week?  

And remember, kindness is contagious.  

Grab your free MY INTENTIONAL DAY printable here. 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

Shopping is enticing, but as I am learning more and more about minimalism, I am wondering if it increases happiness. Tune into these musings to see if you agree!

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and there is this concept that gets so much attention: minimalism.  Even the book, The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo has gotten so much attention they made a TV show about it.  It got me thinking.  Will less stuff bring me more happiness?  We first talked about this in episode 50 and I said I’d ponder this idea.  

At the time, in July 2021 my gut reaction was telling me is YES!  Less stuff will make me happier.  Less to clean, less to tidy, less to keep up with, less decisions to make -- for example, what to wear? 

And I’m happy to report that I’ve spent more time purging and streamlining and it feels great.  Not just purging the stuff, but the mental clutter.  Where am I focusing my attention?  That has been a question I’ve been asking myself and letting go of FOMO and other people’s priorities does feel like a sort of minimalism.  

Do you think less stuff or a more clear focus would make you happier?  Do you have any tips on decluttering that space or your mind? I’m obsessed with this idea of efficiency so we have the space and time to live in our priorities and do what matters most.  I’d love to continue this discussion with you.  Just send me a DM on Instagram @everydayhappinesswithkatie 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And remember, kindness is contagious.  Go out into the world and spread some kindness today.  Smash that subscribe button.  Share this podcast with three friends.  Check out our kindness cards in our shop at www.katiejefcoat.com 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

As the world continues to even out and "return to normal," I challenge you to think about how you apply the lessons you learned during the pandemic to create a happier life. See what I mean in this new episode.  

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and I’ve been deep in my own thoughts about what this next year holds for me and I was thinking, I can’t be alone, so I thought I’d bring this discussion up here, with you.  

People are talking about the things they miss and the things they don’t like now, during the third year of the pandemic. It seems a bit ho-hum. I hear a lot of comments that this is now normal.  People are always getting sick and travel plans are constantly being uprooted.    

We phrase the pre-pandemic times as: things you miss 

We phrase the pandemic times. the now times, as: things you dislike.  

Instead, during this 3rd year of the pandemic, what I hope is a post-pandemic recovery year, I invite you to think about 2 questions: 

1. What are we not going to return to? 

I.e. Toxic relationship; busy running kids, overscheduled. 

This pandemic jolt has taught us a lot about what we value and what we can live without.  Some of my friends and I were talking and we felt like society was a runaway train, we were way too busy.  When we had to collectively stop, we noticed families coming together for dinner and game night.  We enjoyed meeting neighbors on the driveway, even when it was cold.  So the first question is:  What are we not going to return to? 

I find myself running toward a busy lifestyle and I am trying to actively take a pause for reflection.

The second question is:  

1. What are we going to keep? 

I.e. Weekly game night; reading more books; earlier bedtime; 

This is where I think there was some magic in the forced slow down.  Do you ever remember the slowdown of 2020?  I had a friend that said she didn’t like being alone and she started reaching out to people who brought her joy and she will continue to surround herself with the right people.  

DM me on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie and let me know what you are going to keep from 2020, it seems like it’s so far in the rearview mirror, but does it have to be?  

And remember, kindness is contagious.  Go out into the world and spread some kindness today.  Smash that subscribe button.  Share this podcast with three friends.  Check out our kindness cards in our shop at www.katiejefcoat.com 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/