This week's episode is an interview with Lori Mitchell.  Lori is a friend of mine who I have been talking to about starting a journal practice with for the past few months.  In today's interview she shares how she got to the point that she feels she is ready to start her practice and some of the realizations she's had in getting to this point.
Lori invites you to start your journaling practice with her this summer in our Summer Journal Challenge 2023.

I hope today's interview inspires you to take the leap and start your personal journal journey.  Whether it is with us in the challenge or on your own.  The important thing is to just start.

Here is a link to The Happier You Summer Journal Challenge 2023.

Today's podcast is about why self-awareness is important to our happiness journey. Many people tell me that they don't know where to start on their happiness journey, because they don't know what their happiness actually looks like. If you feel like this, you are not alone.

What I have learned on my happiness journey, is that you don't actually have to know what your ultimate happiness looks like, you just start your journey, and as you learn and grow you will increase your self-awareness and be able to build more happy into your everyday life. 

Ultimately, it doesn't matter where you are starting from, it just matters that you start. In today's episode I talk about how while I was creating the Building Your Happiness Foundation Course, I realized that by just working on building the habits and mindset shifts into our lives we are not only increasing happiness, but we are increasing our self-awareness. Not only is self-awareness important to our happiness journey, it also helps us get better at taking care of ourselves. We not only find more happiness but we are in a better position to meet life's stressors head on.

This week I referenced 4 happiness tools.  Here are the links to the podcasts I did on those tools:
Recharge
Who Are You Choosing To Be
Journaling

Today's episode is an interview with Organizational Coach, Janene Russick.  Janene approaches organizing through helping us organize our thoughts and clarify who we are and what we really want.   She shares one of her tricks to start moving toward what we want in a "less scary" way.  She also shares the trick to her 8 minute sweep and how she discovered it!
I loved learning from Janene and I know you'll love her too!  I finished the interview and just wanted to get started clarifying what I do and do not want in my life so I can get to work letting go of all the "stuff" I don't need! 

Resources I referenced this week:
If you want to learn more about Janene's 8 minute Sweep, you can get it here:
The Guide to The 8 Minute Sweep

In today's episode I share how grateful I was when a coach unknowingly gave me my own advice.  After being stunned and more than a little uncomfortable, I realized the blessing and the lesson there.
Happiness is not a one and done.  It is not something that you achieve and then it just comes to you.  We have to keep working on it and adapting as things change around us.
Today's episode is about not being lazy about our happiness and remaining open to having our ideas and strategies challenged.   When we are challenged we either realize we need to change something, or we are happy with our course of action.
Today's episode also has a spoiler about what is coming up in The Happier You Community. 

Things I referenced this week:
Amanda Walker: Here is her website if you want to find out more about her and see what other cool challenges she might have coming up.  

In today's episode my friend Kara Braun walks me through up leveling my mindfulness game.  It has been bugging me for a while that I don't really "get" mindfulness, and so when she offered to chat with me about it, I said YES PLEASE and hit record so I didn't miss a thing.  As I said on the podcast, I wanted to take my mindfulness knowledge up from a .5.  Kara shared three things with me that I didn't know before.  And as you will hear, one of them just floored me.  I know I have a lot to work on.  I hope you enjoy today's podcast and it gives you what you need to grow your mindfulness practice too.

References:
If you want to know more about Kara and what she does you can check out her website here: Kara Braun

This week I am talking about why I chose to embrace possible failure instead of taking the known path. 
 We are so worried about being shamed, judged and made fun of that we often hold ourselves back from trying new things.  What if we took back our power and tried new things that weren't a guaranteed success...how many new things would we try and find out we love?  Or try and find out it isn't for us, but that's okay...because we at least tried it?
Waiting to do something because we hope for perfection holds us back from so many experiences in life.  A couple of years ago I decided that if something scared me and had a chance of failure or a less than perfect result, I was going to go for it and see what I learned.  From it I have discovered that I am resourceful, resilient and I love the feeling of accomplishing something that wasn't a foregone conclusion of success.

Things I referenced This Week:
A couple of the James Clear articles about Failure :
Why Aiming for Perfection Won’t Help You Achieve Your Goals (jamesclear.com)
Treat Failure Like a Scientist (jamesclear.com)

In today's episode I am talking about how we can speed up the process of change by lighting that fire inside that inspires us to finally make the change we really want.  If you are like me, I know I want to make change but I have trouble finding the motivation to go through the steps to get there.  It's usually just easier to complain and go with the flow instead of instigating change.  Except, once we finally make the change we wonder what took us so long!!!

Today I'm giving you a 4 (and a half) step process to help you speed this process along.   The steps aren't difficult, its just that we know that making change takes work...and that work isn't always fun, or easy.  The half step might be a really "out there" concept for you...so if you want to know more you can listen to the episodes I did on Positive Affirmations to learn more.   Here are the links to episodes 37 & 13, both about the power of positive affirmations.

As I talked about in today's episode, here is the link to thehappieryou.net if you want to sign up for My Happy Notes to keep you up-to-date on what's new, what's coming up and any happy thoughts I want to share with you between episodes.  Remember Building Your Happiness Foundation is launching in mid April, you don't' want to miss out on that!

Today's episode is  about how to STOP limiting your ability to experience happiness.  I was  inspired by a great book I have been re-listening to called The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks.  A friend recommended this book when I told her something that I was stuck on and worried about.  She immediately said, "READ THIS BOOK."  I love books and I hate getting stuck on things...so I did.  Well, today's episode is only one of many great things I learned from this book.  

I think all of us have "upper limit" challenges in many areas of our lives.  Today, I am talking about how I have seen it play out for me as well as many other members of The Happier You community.  Hopefully I articulate the concept well enough that you can stop yourself from limiting your ability to experience happiness as well as carry this concept into other parts of your life where you are imposing limits on yourself.

This week I'm talking about How Connecting To Your Future Self Helps Increase Focus and Happiness.  What do focus and happiness have in common?  Today I talk about this book I read about connecting to our future self.  As I was reading the book I realized that when we connect to our future self, it puts life in a different focus.  That focus can help us find more happiness today AND in the future.

If you are interested to know more about the book I reference today, its called Be Your Future Self Now by Benjamin Hardy.  I only shared a couple of the great things that jumped out at me in the book.  There really is a lot more to what he shares.

In today’s episode I’m going to show you how to use re-framing and anticipation to make February great even if you are like me and you aren’t a fan of Valentine’s Day.  Don’t give control of your happiness to anyone else, especially marketers, social media and retailers!  Figure out what is great about YOUR February and focus on that.
Today I'm sharing 5 things I'm going to focus on this month to keep it positive.  You are welcome to share mine or come up with your own.  February is all about working the anticipation and re-framing muscle and creating things you can get excited about, instead of dwelling on things you can't control.

Links to references I made in the Podcast:
The Episode on The 5 Love Languages
The Happier You Newsletter - so you don't miss out on the course launch of Building Your Happiness Foundation coming soon!
If you want to hear more about using anticipation as a happiness tools you check out the previous episode where I talked about it here:   Bring Back Anticipation