Mastering the Art of Happiness: 7 Keys to Being Happy Daily with Helena Weideman

Helena Weideman guides us through the landscape of happiness and well-being on this week's episode. 

Discover how to elevate your happiness set point, and it's not just about fleeting moments of joy, but a deep-rooted state of contentment that weathers all of life's storms. 

Our conversation with Helena reveals the intricate dance of emotions and how mastering your inner thermostat of happiness can lead to a life of sustained bliss.

We talk about the pivotal role personal responsibility plays in our own happiness narrative. 

We venture through the four core pillars—mind, heart, body, and soul—that are the keystones of our well-being, each demanding our attention and care. 

The 'roof' of purpose crowns our efforts, underscoring the notion that our contributions to the world, no matter how small, enrich our lives significantly. 

This episode is a reminder that the art of happiness is a practice, one that calls for deliberate and ongoing actions.

About Helena:

Helena Weideman is the founder of Heartfelt Happiness. With over two decades of experience in Organisational Development, Helena discovered her true calling after overcoming career-mom-of-neurodiverse-kid burnout, international relocation, and job loss through the transformative Happy For No Reason® program. 

Today, she's dedicated to empowering individuals to lead happier lives, inviting you to join her in the pursuit of a more joyful life.
B.con(Hons)OrgPsyc, MBTI® certified, ICC Coach, and Happy For No Reason® Trainer.

www.heartfelt-happiness.com

Your host:

Tarisha Tourok is the founder of the Sexually Empowered Radiant Woman movement where women learn how to become radiant, confident and own the power and beauty of their sexuality no matter their size, shape, age or race.

FREE WEBINAR: Women Over 40: Discover 5 Keys to Unlock Your Desire So You Enjoy Heart-Melting Intimacy

This is perfect for women who are in a relationship and feel frustrated with their love life, are single and don't want to repeat past hurtful patterns where they lose themselves and their voice, and women who want to feel confident expressing their longings and desires

Join Free Online where you'll learn 5 obstacles to your desire and 5 actionable strategies to activate your desire so you stop feeling frustrated with your love life www.shedesires.live

Visit our website at www.radiantwoman.co.nz to join the Radiant Woman movement.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

the happiness. Set points like a thermostat. Right, We've got set points for all sorts of things. You can turn it up and down like a thermostat. That's why, when people have really awesome experiences, even when people win the lottery, about a year later they return back to their general state of happiness.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Hello and welcome to this Brilliant Woman podcast episode with Helena Vendermeyer, and I'm really happy to have Helena here. Welcome.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Helena, thank you very much and thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:30

I'll just introduce you and then we just go right into it. So Helena is the founder of the heartfelt happiness I really like it. Everything to do with the heart. I talk about how heart melt and intimacy, so this is in tune with what I do. And so she actually came from corporate environment. I used to be a chartered accountant and you you worked in organizational development and then she discovered her true calling after really sounds like being a bit of a struggler with your new neurodiverse kid and you relocated to new New Zealand and you lost your job and now doing the Happy for no Reason program, and so now Helena is dedicated to empowering individuals to live happier lives, and that's what we're going to talk about. How can we actually have a happier life and what does it actually mean, I wonder Helena, what does it mean to actually be happy?

Speaker 1: 1:26

Oh. So what does it mean to be happy? So, happy for no reason doesn't mean that you don't have all of your feelings, like very often, people think happiness and they think of like positivity, and you must always only be happy and think happy thoughts, and that's not what it is about. Happy people have all the feelings the sadness, the anger, all of those and it's quite important that you still feel all of your feelings. But when we're happy and happy for no reason, it means that we have an overall like a state of wellbeing that we return to as we face life's ups and downs. We don't walk around with Pollyanna smiles all the time, but we have an overall state of well-being that we return to at any point in time. So one of the really important things that was discovered in the last two, three decades is that we also have a happiness set point.

Speaker 2: 2:18

so the happiness set point is kind of like a thermostat right, like as I talk about a weight weight set point, and there's a happiness set point, there's a money set point yeah, yeah, we've got set points for all sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 2:30

We've apparently also got a financial set point, but we we have a happiness set point. You can turn it up and down like a thermostat. That's why when people have really awesome experiences, even when people win the lottery about a year later they return back to their general state of happiness. And when we go through really hard experiences like loss, it's also about a year and then we settle back in the same kind of space. But now that's not the end of the story, because we can actually change it.

Speaker 2: 2:58

We kind of talk about it today, how actually can we raise our set points? And you know what I love you, helena you talk about and I kind of I was teaching yesterday my women and we talked about sex and kind of having sex, how we assume that we need to be happy all the time. But actually it's not about being happy and joyful all the time, it's feeling all of your feelings and having it in your life and your sexual life. But it's that sense of and I wonder, because you talk about the sense of well-being, I talk about a sense of being open and bringing more love into the body. So I wonder what's your definition of this overall well-being? Like what does it actually mean in your own experience?

Speaker 1: 3:38

so it means that you take responsibility yourself for your well-being and your happiness. You're not expecting somebody out there to your happiness. You're not expecting somebody out there to make you happy. You're not expecting your partner to make you happy. You are not expecting your job to make you happy. You're not expecting that when you get a better job you're going to be happy. You're not expecting that when you get a better house, then you're going to be happy. Because very often, when people are not happy in themselves in the first place and they haven't worked on their own happiness, even when they get those things the new car, the new job, the new house, the new whatever they're still not happy because they haven't breathed their own happiness and they haven't taken responsibility for their own happiness. So true happiness is not. You're not waiting for the external to bring you happy for you. It's something that you've got to work on yourself. It's internal.

Speaker 2: 4:27

You're bringing it in from yourself well, and if you feel into that sense of well-being, like right now in yourself, like how would you describe it? What does it actually mean?

Speaker 1: 4:36

to actually how to? How does it feel and how does it, how does it feel for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it means there's an overall state where I'm just, I'm okay, I'm feeling all right, I am taking care of myself, I'm taking time for myself. If I face life's ups and downs, I'm not scared of feeling my feelings. I feel them, it's all right. I know they're going to pass and I know that after that I'm going to be okay and I know I can do something about it. I don't have to wait for somebody else to do it for me. I know I can realize oh, I'm actually maybe today I'm not feeling so great, so maybe let me listen to myself and understand what's going on. What? Where do I need to fill my cup a little bit?

Speaker 2: 5:24

so it's like that connection to yourself and it's a state of flow, a state of where I'm actually flowing with my emotions. I'm feeling everything, but then I'm feeling empowered to shift my state and kind of checking in with myself what I need. And that sense of empowerment I can do that for myself. I can ask for a hug, I can go for a walk or whatever else I need yeah, absolutely 1000%.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Like happy for no reason means I'm responsible for my own happiness. Nobody else is responsible I, and it happens in the little things in life, right. So happy for no reason, which is what I talk about and what I teach from, is based on a book which is called Happy for no Reason, which is written by Marcy Shinoff, and so part of the work she did is she went and she looked at what she calls the happy 100. So the 100 people who are really happy, living these awesome lives, and she identified what are those things that they bring into their life, what are the habits that they bring into their life that help them to feel happier. Because now let me go back a little bit. So why does she talk about the habits?

Speaker 1: 6:32

So this happiness thermostat that I spoke about. So we've got this happiness thermostat. So the happiness thermostat is made up of a few things 50 percent is genetics, so you've inherited it, it's in your genes. 10 only 10 is your external circumstances, so the stuff that society very often tells us. We've got to get that in order to be happy, like you've got to get. You know, when you get finish your qualification, when you get a better job, all of those things, it's only 10 percent of our happiness. It's quite small.

Speaker 2: 7:03

Huh, it's like it's really small. It's almost irrelevant 40 percent.

Speaker 1: 7:09

40 percent is actually your habits, your thoughts, your beliefs, and so that's why it's in those little habits.

Speaker 2: 7:16

So is the relationships. That's 10 percent as well. What about the relationships?

Speaker 1: 7:21

relationships is part of your habits, your thoughts and your beliefs that you can affect, because your thoughts and beliefs you can change and there's even this research around. When you change your habits, your thoughts and your beliefs, you can start to change how your genes are expressed and you get that like in the field of epigenetics, so that that is the other thing. That's there also. But when we change our habits, our thoughts and beliefs, part of that is working our relationships, and that means first of all in your not just your romantic partner but your overall relationship, those sometimes let's talk about about romantic like.

Speaker 2: 7:57

If we talk about romantic partners like, what is it so tell us?

Speaker 1: 8:02

you've got to manage that. So you first of all have got to make good decisions about where, which kind of relationship you're in and if you're already in it, yeah, but if you're already in it. If you're already in it, then you do the stuff that relationships take you communicate, you set boundaries, you take care of marriage yourself so that you can show up into this relationship with a full cup. So all of the things that you normally do for a relationship. Relationships is a really big part of it. Communication is a really big part of it as well. Communication and boundaries.

Speaker 2: 8:38

And I say right, if it still doesn't work and it doesn't make you happy, then it's not your party, that's actually. I sometimes think people need to break up more often, because quite often people stay in the relationships that are not satisfying. But we have this thing that we have to work through it and we have to stay together and make it work. And I can understand when kids are involved, but still, like, when it's highly unsatisfying and we put out and put out and we try and try and it doesn't work, then well, we need to shift something yeah, yeah, sometimes you just gotta make a decision about so, like we talk about an happiness, it's whether it's a thorn or a rose.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Is it a weed in your life or is it is it your roses and your gardenias that you have in your life? And sometimes you gotta pull the weeds. Yeah, yeah, some weeds you can't pull, but you can set boundaries around how you interact with those people, how often you see them and yeah, I wonder if you can talk to us actually, how can we raise our happiness set point, because that's an important piece, right?

Speaker 1: 9:41

yeah, that's important about. So how do we raise our happiness? Set point we've got these habits. So there's seven main areas of habits, or seven main areas, kind of like a house and you've got a foundation. You've got these habits, so there's seven main areas of habits, seven main areas, kind of like a house. You've got a foundation. You've got four main pillars or corners of a house. There's a roof and there's a garden, so seven main areas. The foundation is responsibility, as in I'm responsible for my happiness. So that's the basis. Huh, that's the basis. That's your foundation. When we are thinking of ourselves as a victim, we can't be happy.

Speaker 2: 10:15

You've got to take ownership of your own happiness in your own life we're so good with blaming and yesterday I was working with my women I've got this group and it's like we think we're not blaming but actually it happens constantly and it's so hard to get out of it.

Speaker 2: 10:30

I was talking about? We were talking about the sexual terms, right, but it's actually kind of like oh, my partner is responsible for my pleasure, Like it's up to them to initiate sexual interaction, and it's like really giving that power away and losing that foundation and then nothing works. Huh.

Speaker 1: 10:46

No, that asks for anything in life Intimacy, your happiness, anything. Ultimately, you're responsible. We're all responsible for ourselves. So responsibility is the one. Blaming and complaining is a big one. It's not going to take you anywhere. Um, what are the walls? So the walls? Right? We've got four main pillars. It's the pillar of the mind, and that's where you think, thoughts that induce happiness or, if it's happiness-robbing thoughts. And the mind is one that people are very often quite aware of and they struggle with a lot because we live in society, we live in our minds so much Like talking heads.

Speaker 1: 11:28

That's what I mean. Yeah, like this talking head thing, and there's just this constant most people have quite a constant amount of quite negative talk and our self-talk forms the basis of our, our self-esteem. Also. We actually have a negative bias in terms of our mental talk and we we have that for survival purposes. We were built for survival more than being happy. But there's things that we can do to change that. But I'll give a bit of an overview and then we can jump into the actual things that we can do around that. Then you've got the pillar of the heart, which is one of my favorites.

Speaker 2: 12:05

So happy people are forgiving, they're generous, they're grateful, they are not resentful, tight-fisted and closed off, so they have open hearts and maybe just for listeners who are listening to the, not seeing the video, I would just put in our hand and our heart and maybe we can just give just a moment to breathe into our heart, feel the generosity of our heart. Yeah, and maybe who do I need to forgive and maybe don't need to forgive myself for my choices? Yeah, oh, that feels so good. I love putting my hand on my heart. It like shifts that a bit. It's like it's such a simple action it's such a simple action.

Speaker 1: 12:48

You, it's such a simple action. You know that you actually release oxytocin when you put your hand on your heart. Yeah, we're going to do that. Yeah, we're going to do that. Yeah, come back. I think we'll do an exercise around the hand on the heart and then you've got the pillar of the body, and then you've got the pillar of the body. When we nourish and move our body to increase our dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin, we're going to be happier, as opposed to when we are constantly stressed and running on cortisol and adrenaline.

Speaker 2: 13:23

So movement it's kind of food is important, but movement is hugely important. We have less and less movement and then we're wondering why we're not happy.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Yes, yes, both of those things, I think. In the modern world people are often not nourished. They're eating a lot but they're not nourished. It's good, nutritious food. And then there's the movement also, and then there's the pillar of the soul, and the pillar of the soul is being connected to higher power, higher guidance, some sort of a spiritual connection. It doesn't have to be religious, different for different people, different things for different folks and power bigger than us.

Speaker 2: 14:02

I feel like go upwards, but it's here. I feel like it's being plugged in into the universe, into the world yeah, totally being plugged into the universe and in the world.

Speaker 1: 14:12

And having practices around that also, like meditation and all of those.

Speaker 2: 14:17

That's such an important piece because yesterday again we were talking about soulful connections and women were like, well, I can't have this soulful connection with my partner. And what I said is that soulful connection is a practice. We can't expect it to just be there. It's actually a practice. We need to keep connecting to ourselves and then share with our partners, and if we stop the practice, it's it can't happen no, it cannot happen if you don't practice it.

Speaker 1: 14:45

you've got to be. You've got to be specifically you. You would want to do it. You've got to make something happen. The roof is about the roof of the house is about purpose, so living in purpose, so feeling that you're contributing to something in this world in some way, and this is one that I think also in the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about living into your purpose, but it's almost almost like it's great, it's wonderful, I'm happy that's happened. But there's also this expectation that it's got to be this awesome thing and you must also monetize it so that you don't have to do your job, you just do your purpose work for your income and it's got to be something really grand and big. We're not all here to end world hunger.

Speaker 2: 15:32

Some of us are here to be good teachers or being a good mom is such an important, it's a huge thing to do just for even just for one human being yeah for sure.

Speaker 2: 15:42

Yeah, absolutely 1000, and those things could change throughout our life also, so you could have a phase where you're more focused on motherhood and another phase where maybe you're doing something else giving back to community or more with your partner or whatever else it is I love you bringing it up, because I get this feeling like we're like this so much into this purpose thing and big visioning, and we have these big visions and then when we don't achieve it, we kind of constantly fall short, so it's almost like goes counterproductive, yeah, kind of how we feel about ourselves. It's kind of gets into this I have to achieve and achieve and achieve, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Yeah, and kind of sometimes you just have, like the way that you earn your income. Like, for some of us it might not be this grand, wonderful thing. It's what we're doing because we've got to just make ends meet and that's how this world operates. That's life. But if we have this idea that it should be this grand purpose, that's like creating a lot of resentment and happiness for ourselves when, really, how we decide to show up to work every day, whether we see it as this kind of like a grind, or if we choose to do our best we can and serve people as best we can in the job that we have. That's also a mindset thing. That's something that we can decide to do.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Yeah, and the last one is the garden, and the garden is your relationships. So are you surrounded by the roses and the gardenias or the thorns, and how we manage those relationships. So that's kind of like a big picture around this whole. Yeah, I find it's useful because it gives, gives us a home building so its foundation is responsibility, right, and everything is built on it.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Because when I'm thinking about relationships, the garden right quite often again we start blaming, but it's actually unique to the foundation. First that it's my responsibility, so blame this has nothing to do with it. And then mind, body, spirit, heart, heart and purpose, and the garden is the relationships. Relationships yeah a nice visual.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Huh, it's a really nice visual. I love it, yeah, and I mean you, I mean for anybody listening at this point you can probably just sit and think. Well, if I think of this house with the seven areas, so responsibility, mind, heart, body, soul, purpose and the garden, if you're thinking of yourself and your life at this stage, where do you think you're the weakest at this stage? Where do you need to bring more habits into your life and which one is your strongest one? And mind is not part of it?

Speaker 2: 18:36

huh, it's like where there's this piece about right. It's not even part of it, of the structure, it's the external, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Yeah, I think very often people will say it's the mind or the body. So we know, we know responsibility is probably a hard one to take ownership of, because you know blaming is so fun well, it gives us a sense of some kind of power.

Speaker 2: 19:01

It's kind of that. It feels a bit, but it gives us a bit of power when we blame yeah, it gives us kind of a fake power, but then we kind of lose power in that, yeah, so I wonder maybe, if you can give us a bit of an experience, like with whatever one you choose, what, yeah, do to bring your happiness let's do the heart.

Speaker 1: 19:25

So I just I love the heart, it's one of my favorites. So heart practices that bring happiness are a lot of these things I've been spoken a lot more about in recent years. So gratitude having a gratitude practice for us in our family we do at the dinner table, we go around the table and everybody sees what they're grateful for. So children who are exposed to a gratitude practice grow up to be happier adults. There's some actual statistics and research around that. Forgiveness so you spoke about forgiveness. That's a really, really big one. If there's a shortcut to happiness, it's forgiveness. So who can you forgive in your life? Then this thing about the heart. So the heart and I'll take us to a practice now. So the heart has an electromagnetic field. So the heart and I'll take us to a practice now. So the heart has an electromagnetic field.

Speaker 2: 20:15

It's much bigger, like at least 10 times bigger than the electromagnetic field of the brain.

Speaker 1: 20:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the heart is stronger than that and that's the reason why, you know, sometimes you can feel the vibe of people right, even when you've been away. You can come into the house, you see your partner, you haven't even spoken a word, but you can feel the vibe right. So it's because we have these electromagnetic fields, that kind of bump, into each other. At the HeartMath Institute they do research around the heart and we can go into something called heart rate coherence or heart rate incoherence, called heart rate coherence or heart rate incoherence. Heart rate coherence means that when they measure it, if it's on a graph, it's a nice smooth, even line. And we experience heart rate coherence when we are in gratitude, when we are forgiving, when we are just open-hearted and feeling loving.

Speaker 1: 21:09

So if we go into heart rate coherence for like five minutes, it's up to six hours of make strengthening your immune system. Well, the opposite. Yeah, so it's pretty powerful. But so the opposite is if we frustrated, angry, even fear, it makes it incoherent. It's like a jaggedy line and that does the flip side. So five minutes of incoherence I'll try to incoherence puts us into about six hours of suppressed immune system.

Speaker 2: 21:41

That's quite a lot.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Huh, that's quite a lot. Right, it's quite a lot, it's not?

Speaker 2: 21:46

just but and it's kind of what you're talking about, right, because there's this kind of a new age you would just all imagine it, right, but actually there's science now that actually shows how it affects us on a physical level. It's not just a woo-woo like thing that we make up.

Speaker 1: 22:02

It's not just woo-woo, it's actually measured with something called an M-wave, so it's like a measurable electromagnetic field. So let's do an exercise to bring us into heart rate coherence. So it's kind of what you got into earlier with the hand on the heart. So we're just going to close our eyes and put your hand on your heart you can put one or both hands on your heart and, as I said, the moment we put our hands on our heart, we start to release oxytocin, which is the love and the bonding hormone, and you're going to take some nice deep, slow breaths and while you're breathing, you're going to breathe directly into your heart and out of your heart. So, breathing into your heart and breathing out of your heart, breathing into your heart and breathing out of your heart, and I want you to start thinking of love.

Speaker 1: 23:11

So you can think of the word love, or you can think of somebody or some people that you love. It could even be a furry friend, be a furry friend. And then you continue to breathe in and out of your heart and you're going to think of compassion. So think maybe of when you've needed to show somebody compassion. And then we're going to think of ease, and so ease. May be walking on the beach, maybe it's walking in a forest, maybe it's lying in a nice warm ball. Just a few more breaths in and out and then, when you're ready, you can start to slowly, slowly, open your eyes it's so good you're looking pretty dreamy.

Speaker 1: 24:35

How are you feeling? So that's what it feels like to be in heart rate coherence. That's what it feels like, and and it doesn't take long.

Speaker 2: 24:51

That's the beauty of it, huh it doesn't take long.

Speaker 1: 24:55

That's the beauty of it. It doesn't take long. Yeah, but as with many of these things, the power comes in repetition. So if you do like in the morning and in the evening every day, consistency is key. That's when you're going to see a difference. I do it when I just come into the kitchen and I switch on the kettle in the morning and I wait. So I'll just do this, so it's a way to remember yeah, yeah, the consistency, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:24

And I kind of have my practice in the morning, which is so important, to come back to myself and yeah, yeah, and then feel plugged in. So then we go into the world in our full capacity, not just as a talking head.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Not just as a talking head. Yes, yeah, we want to move from the head to the heart. A lot more Beautiful. And even the head to the body.

Speaker 2: 25:48

So I wonder Helena yeah, kind of what else do you feel like our listeners need to know?

Speaker 1: 25:56

Let's talk about the mind, because I think a lot of people struggle with this mind and the talking head and just all this negative talk and talk and talk and talk. That goes on. So how many thoughts do we have in a day? We have around 60,000 thoughts in a day. We have a negativity bias around that, so we have about 85 to 90% of our thoughts have a negative thought bias 90?.

Speaker 1: 26:26

It's been 90, 9-0. Yeah, we have a very high negative thought bias. Yeah, yeah, we have a very high negative thought bias. Yeah, so if you're there thinking oh, it's only me and all my negative thoughts, no, you're not alone. We have that for survival purposes, to scope out the environment so that we can we can spot the negative things and survive. But the good news is we can also start to focus our brain on the more positive and build the neural pathways for positivity and for happiness.

Speaker 2: 26:58

I wonder helena, before we go there, how it actually affects people when we focus on the negative, like what are the effects on us?

Speaker 1: 27:06

oh you feel awful. I mean, we just we don't. We don't feel happy, we, we just don't feel good and it's not good for relationships, because then you're picking out all the negative stuff about the relationship instead of focusing on the positive. It's exhausting, it's not happiness-inducing, it's the opposite of happiness-inducing.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Yeah, but and not going to be stressed out as well.

Speaker 1: 27:32

It's kind of quite stressful for the physical body, for the heart yeah, it's exhausting, but another thing is that there's also been this industry where it's been oh think happy thoughts, don't think the negative thoughts, and so on and so on. And so what then happens is we start to catch ourselves having a negative thought and kind of go, oh, I mustn't have a negative thought, or freaking out about it what I call judging the judge yeah, yeah, you judge the judge which is like that's just adding another layer of time into this whole mix.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Yeah, it's not helping at all. So that's not the approach to kind of solve yourself when you are.

Speaker 1: 28:10

What can people do? You just notice it. So just pay attention to your thoughts and just kind of notice and kind of go, okay, there goes that negative thought and just let it pass by and just go, okay, well, what's next, and start to order some other positive thoughts to come up. Next we can also start to focus on positive things around our life, everyday life, a lot more. So notice the things. When you're out for your walk and you notice a really cute flappy dog, you like notice it and you you soak it up a little bit more. If you absorb it and you soak it up for at least 20 seconds, that helps to build the neural pathways for happiness so just that's kind of that appreciation for even little things and really eating and almost like celebrating kind of what you do what actually?

Speaker 2: 29:01

works what actually feels good, putting more attention on that yeah, yeah, and it's little things.

Speaker 1: 29:09

It doesn't have to be this like wonderful grand thing that happens in our life. It could just be you know, you go for a walk and you see a really nice tree, whatever. You come home and you know, instead of noticing all the mess that everybody's made, somebody's made you a nice cup of tea and choose to focus on that and appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 29:32

It's kind of a place of choice. A place of choice where we put our attention, knowing that, as human, animal, right, we kind of focus on the negative piece but actually noticing it and, rather than judging ourselves for noticing that right, doing that actually. What's good here?

Speaker 1: 29:49

What's good here? Because when we put our attention on it, it grows stronger. It grows stronger. That's just how our life works.

Speaker 2: 29:58

Yeah, and I think it's so good for the relationships because if we start focusing, as you say, right on what's not working, what's not right with other people, what's not working with me, it kind of grows bigger and then we start acting in a way that creates more negativity there. But actually when I'm focusing on what's good about this person, what's good about me, what's good about this relationship, it kind of feels better and better and then we act in a way that brings more goodness into the relationship absolutely 1000.

Speaker 1: 30:30

It's from relationships and it's also I mean, there's actual signs around it, like your mural pathways. It's kind of like you know, when you walk in a forest path where people have walked, very often it opens up the path and the ones that people haven't walked. It's a narrow path, so you're just walking that path a lot more and it opens it up and it widens that pathway.

Speaker 2: 30:52

So it's more likely, yeah, that you're gonna have more, you're gonna notice more positive things once kind of I did once with my ex when I started to feel very negative towards him. I drew a stick figure and then I put all the good qualities on that and every morning I would just look at it and start repeating it and it was amazing how much it shifted our relationship.

Speaker 1: 31:14

I just started to really pay attention, but I had to kind of really look at it and speak it, and speak it, and speak it and with time I started to see more goodness and it became much better yeah, yeah, that's so true with with a lot of things in our lives, for relationships and for everything else in our life we just start to notice the positive things and people notice when we notice the positive things, so they respond positive and then you get a virtuous cycle. Yeah, yeah, it becomes a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious cycle. Yeah, beautiful, thank you. Resentment is a happiness killer. Eh, resentment blame. Yeah, the forgiveness, yeah, the forgiveness, and forgiveness for ourselves. And appreciation. So appreciation for me is also a big one. Often we are somebody appreciating somebody else's one thing, and that's a really good thing. So appreciate the people in our lives a lot more and let them know that we appreciate them and specifically what we get out loud.

Speaker 1: 32:16

That's an important piece. Say it out loud, yeah, like when it's somebody's birthday and I sort of an appreciation piece. When it's somebody's birthday, everybody in the family is tells. Tells that person what you appreciate about them, but also what we appreciate about I think we're very often so hard on ourselves and probably if we ask, especially women but I mean I can only speak as a woman 95% research shows 95% were kind of really judgmental.

Speaker 1: 32:47

Yeah, we're very judgmental If we ask everybody to make a list of 10 things you judge yourself, for you'd probably like whip that list out in no time and then, yeah, you'd write it out like no problem. But if it's write 10 things that you appreciate about yourself, how much harder is that? That's maybe something that everybody can do.

Speaker 2: 33:12

It's a good year, maybe for the listeners. Do this exercise first, write a list of things that you judge yourself for, 10 things, and then what do you appreciate yourself for.

Speaker 1: 33:22

And if you want to take further, do 20, 20 the things you appreciate about yourself yeah, yeah, we could do it as like a little bit of an exercise you and and me, this sentence completion. So it's a sentence completion. I want to give you three sentences. So something I have forgiven myself for, something I need to have more compassion for myself for, and something I appreciate about. You can have it about myself or about the person that you're talking to. So we're going to do this back and forth. So I would say, tricia, so something that I need to have more compassion for myself about is that I can't be a perfect mom all the time.

Speaker 2: 34:05

And then you have something the only thing I need to have more compassion for myself for is that, I mean, the perfect mom is a big, big one, but for that other one is that sometimes things take longer for me and I don't achieve as much as I thought I would that's such a big one for me also, like even right now.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Something I have forgiven myself for is some of the ways I've been towards my husband in the past, where I was blaming him for things, that the wheel then turned and I was in the same situation something I have forgiven myself for is forgiven myself for is not being in Canada.

Speaker 2: 35:02

it was my dream to be in Canada and I chose to come to New Zealand to for the children, to have children here to be with my family, because my mom and dad are here and my sister and it's been a tough one, but actually now I'm more at peace with that. That's okay.

Speaker 1: 35:15

Awesome. So, tricia, something I appreciate about you is your very calm, grounded way of being and inviting, being like a calm welcoming presence grounded- Thank you, something I appreciate about you, helena.

Speaker 2: 35:39

I actually see your playfulness, warmth and playfulness, and I like the playfulness a bit. I want to play with you a bit more.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Oh, thank you. Oh, that's awesome, thank you. Yeah, so appreciation is one of the things you can do, like back and forth appreciation. I've had couples in my workshops that happen to just be couples who show up because they were it's not like for women, it it's just open to anybody and they just happen to be like couples who come in and we do this exercise and it's just. I've had some couples where, oh, my goodness, it's just been such a lovely bonding experience for them.

Speaker 2: 36:26

I think I'll start doing it with my couples, because I do. I work with couples, I'm a couple therapist, so actually it's nice, yeah, to do it, so we can shift the energy and start appreciating each other more. Okay, I'll do that, okay. So I wonder, helene, if right now you're kind of feeling to what I would would be the last words, what do you feel like? Our listeners need to know what is the last you want to leave them with.

Speaker 1: 36:51

You know what it's doable to be happier from whichever place that you're in, because I got into this work because I'd actually been in the opposite of happy and actually got to a place of being quite depressed. Depressed is a serious state and I would suggest get some external help as well, in whatever form that may be for you. Like a therapist, I used a lot of holistic approaches, but that's what I prefer to do. Do your research around that, but don't underestimate the power of small things every day when I find myself feeling just unhappy and not in a good space.

Speaker 1: 37:32

Very often I will then open my gratitude journal and I realize, oh, it's been like five days, I haven't written in yet. So those small little things, just like. You don't like exercise? You don't have to run a marathon, just do some stretches in the morning. Just do some stretches in the morning.

Speaker 2: 37:51

Don't underestimate the power of small things. I love. Thank you so much, thank you so much for being here with us and listeners. Please comment, please share what resonates with you. Thank you so much. See you next time.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Thanks for having me.