More Happy Life with Andy Proctor

There is a strong correlation between our gut health and our mental health. From personal experience with my wife and myself, we have seen the direct correlation between our gut microbiome and our happiness and health. I have been curious about this for a while so I have been testing my fecal samples with multiple companies. I reached out to one that I thought was very interesting called Biohm (https://biohmhealth.com/) They agreed to send me a kit to do a test and sequence a sample of my feces. In this episode I actually go over the results of my test! (don't get grossed out - it's not too bad). Aubrey Phelps, the director of wellness at Biohm was kind enough to jump on a call with me and answer all my questions about the gut-brain connection as well as tell me more about my own gut health. I really hope this inspires you to start thinking about your own happiness from the standpoint of your gut health and digestion!

Have you ever wondered about what the science is behind the secret or the law of attraction? Well, I ran into Taylor Proctor who trains people on how to create a vision board. When I first saw this, I was a little skeptical, but when she started explaining the neuroscience behind vision boards, I was genuinely intrigued. So I decided to have her on the show. We talk about how to create a vision board, and why the brain needs something like this if we want to make our dreams a reality with the heavy cognitive filters we have.

Here are the links to her social accounts:

https://www.facebook.com/HappinessAboundBlog/

https://www.instagram.com/happiness_abound/

The link to the Spotify Playlist mentioned:

https://open.spotify.com/user/taylorpro/playlist/393zJB6uAIu5cEajWKghWv

Also here is her website and the Vision Board Training Class:

https://www.happinessabound.com/

https://www.happinessabound.com/courses-products/visonboardtrainingclass

Use code MOREHAPPYLIFE for a discount at checkout.

In this episode I talk about the five ways I have tackled my anxiety. All of these were things that I read about in research. Most based on Kelly McGonigal's (from Stanford) research in her book The Upside of Stress. They are:

1. Embrace it

2. Tell Your Story

3. Values

4. Challenge VS Threat

5. Ashwagandha root

I hope you take something in this that can help you with your anxious moments and that you share these with others who struggle with anxiety. This has changed my life. I hope it makes your life a little more happy. Also I mentioned that I have some courses that I'm offering. If you haven't seen them already, please go check out www.morehappylife.teachable.com and follow me over on instagram at www.instagram.com/morehappylife.

This episode features Jessie Gardner from Hey Soul (www.heysoul.com). She was kind enough to send me one of her gift boxes (The Calm Box). As someone who has struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, it helped to create multiple beautiful experiences that I have highlighted on my instagram account. In this episode we talked about some really powerful principles that I think are so important to our happiness. Things like the power of rituals for happiness, how to create a positive disruption and how important it is to be open. I also loved her openness about the fact that even happiness advocates like herself have unhappy days and it's the unhappy days that can lead to even deeper happiness and shared connection with those who are close to us. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you check out Jessie's free stuff on her website as well as the giveaway that is happening right now! She is giving away some awesome positive disruption boxes you can find here: http://bit.ly/heysoulgiveaway

I had an amazing interview with Kyla Mitsunaga who is a happiness coach in Korea. She is a ball of powerful positive energy! We became instant friends and I really loved our conversation! I wanted to share this interview with you. We originally did this on Kyla's YouTube channel and you can find that here if you want to see our amazing facial expressions as well: https://youtu.be/2G7bZrn4MpI

Things we covered in this podcast:

1. Taking a break from social media

2. How to deal with negative people

3. Why happiness is so important

4. The magic moment that led to Kyla's passion for happiness

5. Can I be unhappy as a happiness expert?

Go have a listen! It was an amazing conversation that I hope you enjoy as much as we did!

Today I chatted with Suze from The Authenticity Challenge. We had a discussion about authenticity. This is really a hot topic for me. Social media almost forces anyone who uses it to have two different selves to live up to and if we aren't careful we can lose track of who we really are. Suze is pretty audacious in her adventures of authenticity and she is passionate about sharing this audacity with others. We were able to talk through some of these things and other questions like: How do you deal with people who don't like you when you are authentic to who you really are? I love what came from this one and genuinely enjoyed our conversation. I believe strongly that to be truly happy, we need to find our unique life mission. And to find our mission, it is crucial to be true to who we are. Find Suze on social media here:

https://www.instagram.com/adventuresofsuze

https://twitter.com/_susannahwilson

I haven't posted to social media or the podcast for almost two weeks now. In this episode I briefly tell why and talk about what I experienced during my social media fast. Have you ever taken a break from your smartphone and social media? How did you feel? What did you learn?

In this episode I recap the appreciative inquiry summit where over 800 delegates from all over the world gathered to be inspired and to decide how move forward in changing their part of the world with positive education and positive psychology. I had the amazing opportunity to interview Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and ask him what needs to happen for positive psychology to reach more people in the world. I also got to interview the founder of Appreciative Inquiry, Dr. David Cooperrider who sets a beautiful vision for what the future will look like with a more positive foundation of young people world wide. I also was able to interview Jonny Liu from Tsinghua University (one of China's top universities) who is working to bring positive psychology to light in China. I spoke with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, the founder of The Flourishing Center and the increasingly popular CAPP certification. Angela Reiner also honored me with her take on the future of happiness.

Studies show that chronic loneliness can be worse for your health than smoking 15 cigarettes per day. So why aren't we focusing on beating it?

Today's episode is close to home for me. Andy Proctor, the one who is all about social media and connecting thousands of people and helping them to be happier, has suffered from loneliness for years. Yes, that's me. I have wrestled with this ever since I was divorced and then I really struggled with it when a mental health event created a major faith crisis for me. I didn't feel like I could reach out and I didn't know how to be when I did reach out. These 7 strategies are things that I have either practiced or I am trying to figure out how to practice, but that I believe are ways to exit the land of the lonely. I hope they help you, especially if you are a man who feels there is no way to express himself to anyone without being seen as weak or socially unacceptable.

How many decisions do you have to make every single day? The less decisions you have to make, the more space you’ll have to do things that are meaningful to you and that have to do with you ultimate purpose in life.