The Happier You: Empowering Your Journey to a Joyful and Fulfilling Life

My whole quest is to find the Happier me.  I think one of the key things is self-awareness and self-acceptance.  One of the ways to be self-aware is knowing how to ask for what you need.

How do you know what you need?

One of the ways you can know what you need is by knowing your love language.  I’m no expert in this, but my husband and I read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman around 20 years ago.  I have been a self-improvement person for many, many years.  We read this back before we really had a major argument in our relationship.  I think that reading this book together and being able to talk about what is important to us helped shaped our relationship.

For many years I gave the Five Love Languages book to friends and family as wedding gifts.  I think the gift of communication is the best thing you can give any relationship, especially marriage.

Why am I talking about it on the Happier You podcast?

If you don’t’ know what you need to communicate and feel loved in your closest relationships, then how can you set boundaries and ask for what you need outside those relationships?  The five love languages concept isn’t limited to couples.   For instance, once we had our son we continued on and delved into the 5 love languages of children.  Likewise, Dr. Chapman has also written books specifically for teens, singles, men…and I even saw one for military families. 

This is particularly important right now during COVID 19.

As we are currently all mostly stuck at home with our closest family, or conversely, alone if you are single or circumstances have you living apart from your family, we need communication more than ever.

Once you are able to communicate what you need to feel loved and valued to the people closest to you, you will then be able to do that in all relationships.

Its not just a one-way road though.  If you can look at the people closest to you and communicate your love in their language, your most precious relationships become stronger.  I am a total believer in this!

How do you figure out your love language?

You can go online to www.5lovelanguages.com and take the quiz.  There isn’t just a quiz for couples.  You can take the quiz for singles, teens and children.  I actually retook it because I suspected mine might have changed and it did.  My number one and two switched.  It could be just the phase I’m in right now…I’m not sure, but either way, my top two were still my top two.

How full is your Love Tank?

One way you can check in with your loved ones is to ask them “how full is your love tank?”  If you think of your love tank like a bank account or gas tank of a car, you need to continually make deposits because the money/gas constantly gets used up as you go through life.  Checking in and asking how their love tank is doing will give you an indicator of whether you are making enough “deposits” in your loved ones account or if you need to make more and maybe even change how you are doing things.  It gives you any easy check-in of how well you are communicating your love.

Knowing how to effectively show love to the people you care about and how to ask for what you need is a great communication too.  I don’t think the power of communication can be under valued in any relationship!

What is your Love Languange?

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

 Are you feeling overwhelmed with everything in your life? Do you need help to find your focus?  It feels like the world is throwing a lot more at us these days despite the social distancing!  This episode I encourage you to step back from all the busyness and "to do" lists and take a breath and figure out what you want to focus on right now. It's hard picking just one thing. However, when you stop to breathe and really think about your own priorities, it helps.
No Judging!  You are here and it is what it is, now you need to figure out the best way to move forward.  This is not the time to pick apart your faults. It’s a time to say, "okay, that’s done, now, how am I going to step into this next phase keeping my priorities top of mind?"   

If you don't know your own focus then others can pull you into their priorities.

In the episode I suggest you go to the My Intent website and go through the "What's your word?" exercise. If you do the exercise and you still can't come up with a Focus Word, scroll down on that page and there are some suggestions that may help inspire you. Another option if you want a pre-fab inspirational focus word, there are talented people on Etsy who sell inspirational words painted on rocks. I don't know the seller for the link I've included, I just offered it as a way to start your search if you are interested. However you go about it, finding your focus and setting your intent will help bring you peace in this crazy world, as well as helping you say "no" when it is required!

Finding Your Focus is NOT a "one and done" exercise!! 

As life changes, as you grow, as new opportunities arise, you will find that you need a different focus. I hate sitting in overwhelm and dealing with feelings of inadequacy. Regrettably, I took too long to redo this exercise this time.  If nothing else, it instigated me starting this conversation and encouraging you to Find Your Focus!

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

What can you do right now to help relieve stress in your life?  Play!  How is play defined and how can we add more of it in our lives?  Do we have to be creative to successfully play and reap the benefits?  

Continuing on with the Transformative Power of Creativity and Play we look at how important it is to our happiness right now.  The health benefits are huge!  From our ability to relieve stress to helping us improve our day to day executive functioning.  Can you remember the last time you got so caught up in something that you lost your sense of time and self consciousness?  Its a beautiful thing.  

Let's start a conversation about adding play and creativity into our lives so we can live better now!

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

Are you feeling stuck in a rut and uninspired?
Is your current situation weighing you down?
This week we are talking about creativity and play, and why we all need more of it in our lives.  It all started when I listened to Brene Brown's book The Power of Vulnerability and she talked about art scars.  Alot of us have them and have never gotten over them.  Once you realize that art is a form of creativity and not a pass or fail endeavour, you are free to add more of it to your life.  Stop comparing yourself to other people and just enjoy the process of creating.

Being creative makes connections in your brain and helps you process things.  It also gives you confidence to problem solve other challenges down the road.  The act of being creative is problem solving.  Once I started looking for ways to add creativity into my day to day life I found I got excited that me, the girl who always claimed to have failed art in grade 8, could just spur of the moment be creative and have fun with it.  Creating something just for the fun of creating it instead of looking for or worrying about someone else's approval is actually fun and freeing.

We also talk about how you can make art and creativity a habit.  After listening to NPR's Life Kit episode titled Making Art Is Good For Your Health. Here's How To Start A Habit I learned that you just need to figure out how to fit it into your life.  Maybe its once a week, maybe its 10 minutes a day.  The more you make art a habit, the greater the reward!

Here is the link to SGN 

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

Are you sick of starting new projects and then stopping because you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere?  

Do you feel like you are stuck and you can’t change anything?

This week I talk about the surefire way to ensure success on this journey!  Happiness is an inside job and the only person who can do the work is you.   That’s good and bad right? 

·       BAD - because you can’t blame anyone else for your happiness.

·       GOOD – because you are in charge of your happiness!  Everything you do either gets you closer or further away.

Sometimes along the journey called life we give up on things because we feel they aren’t working, they take too much effort, or we are just downright discouraged.

Well not anymore.  Today you are going to learn how to keep your motivation up even when you feel like you haven’t made any progress and you forget why you even started in the first place!  

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

This week we talk about trying something new.  When you try something new you have to be fully present.  It takes courage to try something new.  You might be bad at it, but who cares, just do it!

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

Are you living a life true to yourself or trying to keep up with the Joneses?  If you don't make decisions in your own life, then others will do it for you!  This week we are talking about showing up and being present in your own life!  Every morning you get a new opportunity to wake up and choose how you approach your day!  So, who are you choosing to be?  And how are you showing up?

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

Have you stopped setting goals because you never achieve them?  This week I talk about the importance of celebrating small wins!  I share my embarrassingly small personal wins so that you know that no win is too small.  Celebrate you, celebrate your wins and have more fun getting to where you are going!!!  Life is way better when you celebrate success (however small) rather than focus on failure.  Learn how two of my favourite books tell us how to make it easier.  

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

In this episode I admit that COVID-19 made me question what I was doing.  I didn't feel worthy of this project, of inspiring people and motivating others to find their happy.  Luckily a good friend basically said "get over it!  Acknowledge COVID-19 and then keep going."   That is what this episode is.  Me admitting that fear of not being good enough almost shut me down before I even really got started.  Admitting that I've been sulking and eating my way through this "unprecedented time" and used that as my excuse not to start this podcast.  That's done.  I'm done sulking and I'm ready to get back to finding more happy in my life and helping you find more happy in yours!

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook

This is the intro episode to The Happier You Podcast.  In this episode I explain how I ended up on this journey and starting the podcast as my passion project.  I think discovering our own personal happiness is a journey about accepting who we are right now, but realizing that we can strive to be better and happier.  

Wish you journaled more, but struggle to make the time or never know what to write?

Join me on Oct 8th at 8 pm Eastern, for a free guided Journal Club experience.

Come as you are. I’ll provide the prompts and the space to slow down, reflect, reconnect with yourself, and spend an hour with an incredible community of women who are learning to live more intentionally.

✓ No journaling experience required

✓ No pressure to share

✓ Just bring yourself and a notebook