Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)
[0:13] Cultivating happiness through mental health tools.
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Aloha, everybody. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. And today we have a mental health toolbox episode and we are talking about the topic, nurturing happiness, I had to laugh, I sat down to do this episode. And out of nowhere, all three of the animals kind of matriculated into the room, the cat was already in here. A
nd then both the dogs came in. So I've got one on one side and the other on the other, like these little sentinels. And I felt like they knew that today's podcast was about cultivating the good things in our life. And we're like, Well, we are obviously needed for that. I will absolutely say for those who own and love animals, that they are definitely a doorway to happiness and joy and being able to cultivate those positive feelings in our life.
And I wanted to talk today about the idea of happiness, because it is a goal that so many reach for or an aspiration that many want to have in their life, I just want to be happy. Or, you know, I want my children to be happy, or I hope I'm happy Sunday, we wish each other happy birthday or happy anniversary or Happy Monday, happy day, whatever it is. And it is something that's a concept and a construct that I actually think is hard to understand at times.
And it's something that we often can have an interesting relationship with. If life is going well. We might think well, yes, I am happy. But if life isn't going well, and we find ourselves unhappy, or we struggle to even know what that is, what do we do with that? And is it this elusive concept that's only meant for some people if all their circumstances are going just right, and they feel fully supported? Or is happiness something that we can find? In many circumstances, regardless of where we find ourselves.
So we're going to explore some ideas and perspectives today, and a few tools that you can use to encourage the quality of happiness in your life. First, I think it is helpful to understand happiness as something that is fluid. It's not a destination point where if you like have enough, good juju, all the sudden you crossed this threshold, like a finish line, and now you're happy. And you get to stay in the happy zone. unless something comes along and it knocks you back and then you got to work really hard for it again, I feel exhausted thinking about trying to achieve it. And that way that feels really tiring to me.
[3:29] Cultivating happiness through inner work.
It feels unobtainable. And so I like to think of it as a construct that has a lot more to do with being fluid and trying to cultivate the qualities of contentment, and peace and joy in our life. Whether that is a very euphoric joy, or whether that's a very quiet, gritty joy, where we're just able to find pleasure and a moment find delight in something small, find gratitude and appreciation.
I think if we're hitting the mark on many of those things, and we're able to have a inner sense of well being and we can feel some form of pleasure, enjoyment, appreciation, then that's probably a nice way to think about reaching for happiness and trying to cultivate that energy in our life.
So I think one of the things that often gets in the way of people finding happiness is perhaps they have a idea of it that is almost unrealistic or unobtainable. And there are some huge shifts that can happen if we just start redefining our relationship with it. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that can be a block to happiness before we jump into. So how do we cultivate it? Because I like to think of block To happiness, I'm seeing the image of a garden in my mind, as I'm sharing this with all of you. And in that garden, there's weeds, and there is the potential for something beautiful to grow.
But sometimes if we're not tending to our garden, then there are weeds or maybe there's past or something is running rampant, and it's choking out some of the flowers or plants or something like that. And so just like we would take the time to clean up space, and clear out anything that is blocking plants and flora from growing, I think we can use that as a metaphor for clearing weeds in our inner world and looking at the things that might block us from being able to experience happiness.
[5:50] Emotional triggers and attachments help us identify where we need growth.
And one of the biggest ones that I think many people struggle with this expectations, great expectations, small expectations, expectations that we don't even realize we have until we are struggling with a sense of chronic discontent. And we are really challenged to say, Well, why am I so discontent right now? What am I so upset about? And we really started unpacking that and breaking that down. And sometimes we might realize that we thought life would go a certain way.
And it's not going that way. And so we're not happy about our lot in life. And we don't like our circumstances, there's a lot of work that we can do with looking at our expectations and asking ourselves, Is this reasonable? Where can I shift or adjust my perspective? Is there a change that I can make in my life to try and be more aligned so that I cultivate a possibility that I feel more on track? And I like my circumstances better? Sometimes the answer to that's yes, sometimes it's no, but there's always ways that we can find space to intervene and begin to make some sort of shift or change in our life.
So if we're able to do something about it, then we do something. And if all we can do is work with our values, and our attitudes and our beliefs about how we think life is gonna go, what we might feel like, oh, Sam is where our wounded stuff is, and our attachments are to how things should look, there's a lot that we can do to weed out things that might be blocking opportunity for happiness.
And if you don't know where your weeds are looking at what you get upset about, this is always a good rule of advice. I think for almost anything in life, when we're thinking about, well, what do you mean inner work? How do I do my inner work? It's like, well, what triggers you what activates you? Where do you just get like, so upset, or something really bothers you, and you can't shake it off? And
you think, why am I so upset by this, like, I shouldn't be taking it so hard. Those are our doorways, those are our clues. Those emotions are very intelligent messengers who are letting us know, hey, there's something here, that you have a sticky attachment to something that is probably connected to experiences in the past or something you were taught, or something you've internalized a belief about life or yourself.
[8:26] Cultivating happiness through self-reflection and mindfulness.
And this is a great space to do a little bit of self examination with compassion. So we want to look at expectations that might be blocking happiness. Something else that I think also we want to be aware of is just knowing that there are certain experiences in life that are kind of these like natural blocks to happiness, I think if we're feeling very stressed, if we're feeling really anxious, or we are struggling with some sort of anxiety, or depression.
I also think when someone is having an experience, where there's maybe a imbalance in the body, something with hormones, maybe they have quite a bit of pain in the body, there can be physical things that happen that make it more challenging. And none of these things make it impossible. They just can be more of a barrier sometimes and a little bit of a block.
And it might be something that we have to be sensitive to. If we deal with any of those things specifically, and think about how do I hold space for this so I can manage my stress or try and get support for the depression I'm feeling or work with my pain or get medical support if I need How can I make space for this? And at the same time seek to find moments of goodness in my life moments of happiness, how can I cultivate an attitude of that?
So wherever this podcast finds you today, just To meet yourself where you're at, remember, we're taking the expectation away for not only what happiness is, but how it should feel, it doesn't have to be a glitter cannon with confetti going off everywhere and a marching band and a kick line, kind of like huge happiness, it can be quiet moments of peace and ease and feeling pleasure and satisfaction in life.
So we always want to hold space for experience and take away the expectation that we have to experience a quality in a certain way and work within our matrix of self. So looking at some things that we can do to build happiness in our life.
[10:43] Self-reflection tool: where is happiness happening?
The first one is a self reflection tool, and it can be done in your journal, it can be done in your time at the end of the day, or maybe the beginning of the day. And it is just asking yourself the question, How did happiness happen today? If you're doing this, at the start of the day, you might ask, what opportunities do I see for happiness today? Or how did happiness happen yesterday, and I want you to think about either one, the things that helped you feel good, that made you feel positive, that gave you a sense of well being, or to the opportunities you might have missed, where happiness was happening.
And maybe we were on autopilot, or we were so stressed out that we just didn't have the bandwidth to appreciate. Now, this exercise is not about judgment, it's not about beating ourselves up and saying, Wow, like I missed all these moments. And you know, now I'm doing a really bad job at finding happiness. And now I feel even worse than I did before. That is not what this is about. If you've listened to the your heart magic podcast, you know, that is not how we roll on here.
We always want to bring a gaze of compassionate attention into our life and compassionate evaluation. We always want to bring in a warmth and a kindness when we're doing our self work and our inner evaluation. And instead of judging ourselves for it, just be curious and say we all miss moments where happiness is happening. It's kind of a given, we can't always go around in a space of being absolutely mindful and present. Maybe there's a few people who've managed to achieve that. But I think many people that are juggling busy schedules, juggling stress, who have a lot of some of the pressures of the modern day world, oftentimes will say, I wish I could be more present. And I feel like I missed the moment.
So we want to just look at our lives and where happiness already is. And whether we were able to engage with it or not just do a inventory of how his happiness already happened. I'll give you a good example. It's kind of an interesting one. So I walk the dogs in the morning, every day. And it's not unusual, especially if I'm running behind, or I'm rushed for time to have these moments where I'm on the dog walk.
And we've got Rosie who is going in one direction, and then Frodo will be going in an entirely different direction. And I've often thought that walking both of them at the same time both myself and my husband, we are very adept at it. It's definitely nice when we can do it together. But if you have ever walked both of them at the same time then you are very good at dancing with the leashes and criss crossing the leashes I will sometimes be walking along and you'll see me do some like fancy turn or lift my arms over my head like I'm partner dancing and doing a kind of behind the back Archie turn and I'm just entangling the leashes.
And it can really be an exercise in frustration. And if I'm stressed, it feels like a chore that I just want to get out of the way. And I try and hang on to my patients. And so doing it is something that can be frustrating, I can feel impatient. Sometimes I feel stressed out. Sometimes I just want to rush through it and finish as quickly as possible. And yet I know that they need a certain amount of like mileage and they need stimulation and sniffing and all of that. Every now and then I will have more of a transcendental moment where it's like I'm able to rise above the situation.
[14:41] Finding happiness through mindfulness and self-reflection.
And I'll think you know what, BethAnne you're gonna miss this someday. This won't always be here. They won't always be here. They won't always be here in this form with these kinds of energy levels, and your life might not always be in this space and you will look back on the amount of dogwalk I swear you were doing the leash dance, occasionally having many meltdowns in your mind, and you will miss it, you will miss that this was a moment of life that was happening.
And that is so beautiful that these two beings are part of my world. And I get to experience the love that is Frodo, and Rosie and everything that comes along with that. In that moment, there's happiness to be found. It might not be like, Yay, that was the best walk ever. They always think it was they're always in a really good mood afterwards. But I can look back and appreciate and say, there were good things to be found in that moment. And I miss them, I
miss them because of stress or because I was in a rush or because I was an autopilot. Now I don't have to beat myself up. Because of that I can just be appreciative and take more of a mindful approach. And try and move forward. being more mindful and remembering that experience that I had, you're going to miss this Sunday. So try and take a deep breath, try and slow down, try and find the gift in the moment, even if it's just something really little be appreciative that you're outside and the sky is beautiful. And maybe there's some flowers growing, see what good you can find.
So when we do this reflection of Where's happiness happening, that is what we want to look for, either something that we were able to engage with, or something that we can have a shift and how we're looking at it, because we see that there are good things there that we could tap into if we continue to build that muscle and build perspectives and thoughts and self talk around that.
So the idea of building that muscle segues perfectly into the next tool that I wanted to share today. And that is the idea that we have to learn and teach our body how to tune into we'll call it the frequency of happiness. We need to teach our body this is what happiness feels like. This is what joy feels like. This is what enjoyment feels like. Some people know that. And they don't have to work as hard at it. But I think many of us have a automatic setpoint and emotional setpoint that is really geared around whether it's stress or feeling like we are always rushed or not doing enough.
Or maybe we just kind of have a gray sky set point where a lot of times we don't feel very good, or we feel kind of blah. But there's many things that we can have based on our experience itself, our upbringing, the various emotions that we've experienced. And I think oftentimes teaching ourselves this is what happiness feels like. This is what joy feels like this is what pleasure feels like, is something that we have to build inside of ourselves.
So a really good tool for this is to think of something that makes you happy in it could be something small, it could be the idea of a field of wildflowers or something that's like a child playing or a moment of peace. I had a surge of happiness when I started this podcast because of this surrounded nurse of for animals all around me. And I just thought it was so fun, the timing that they both came in and parked themselves on either side of me. Right as I sat down to start this, that brought me a sense of expansion and opening in my body. It made me feel warm, it made me smile.
So we want to think about what is something that brings that kind of feeling for you. And then where do you feel it in your body? When you think about whatever it is that represents happiness to you? Do you feel like you want a smile? Do you feel maybe warm in your heart or have a sense of peace or ease? Where am I you have a sensation or an emotion or a feeling in your body. And if we can tune into that we can use that as an exercise a really simple happiness exercise that we began to teach ourselves. This is what it feels like to feel happy.
And sometimes when I am on will go with the morning dog walk when I'm on the morning dog walk and I'm working on fostering joy. I will have these moments where I will be like BethAnne this is what joy feels like right now don't miss this moment. And I believe in giving myself that message because I think for many of us, it's not our setpoint and we have forgotten how it feels or you feel like we have to have something extraordinary happen in order to feel it.
[20:02] Redefining happiness and finding joy in everyday life.
And I don't buy into that. I think that extraordinary things happen in life that make us feel very, very happy or joyful, or at least hold the potential to. But I also think there's a lot of day to day nitty gritty and ordinary things that happen and that I'm just a believer that we have to increase our opportunities in the everyday ordinary, to make our own happiness and find joy, and look for those things that are everyday miracles and magic that we can tap into.
And say, like, life is extraordinary right now, right? In this moment, there's extraordinary things happen if I can see. And if I teach my body, how to feel it, and how to build a new relationship around happiness. The last thing that I want to offer as a tool today, is to sit down and write out a redefinition of what happiness is to you. Earlier, I said that I think we need to be more fluid with this construct. And if we think about it, happiness is a word and our attitudes, values and beliefs around it are based on what consensus reality understands happiness to mean.
And many times if we start to examine our relationship with happiness, we might see that again, it feels like some destination to arrive at or something that we should always be feeling, and this like, really big way. And I challenge that, I think it's holistic, I think it's fluid. I think if a construct of a word doesn't work for us, then we have to rework that word in that construct, and make it work for us and make it more fluid, make it more expansive, make it something that we can not only aspire to, but start to achieve right now and have the steps towards in these little wins with.
So we don't feel that it's some unobtainable thing. And when we check these things off our list, then we'll get there then we can feel that thing. I think we have to find ways to bring it into our existence and our circumstances right now, even if it's something small. So I'm a believer in rewriting, redefining making things work for us. And I wanted to share a very quick little blurb that I wrote on happiness.
This is back in the year 2019. I believe. I chosen that as my theme word for the year and I wrote a blog post on happiness. And I was really exploring how am I like, what am I learning about happiness this year? And how is that changing? And I wrote happiness as wholeness.
[22:52] Redefining happiness to make it work for you.
As I write these words, I'm feeling inspired to see happiness from a more holistic perspective, not as an elusive singular force whose ultimate destination signifies an arrival or achievement. But as a living, breathing entity who emboldened and empowers our hearts every time we dare to strive for joy, beauty, truth and light, especially in the face of difficulty. True happiness isn't something you feel true happiness is the act of being whole. True happiness is the continued work of freeing yourself from all the things you are not.
So you can become who you really are, the path to true happiness will not always make you feel happy. But it will free your heart to become your highest expression. And there is immense joy to be found there. That was a reflection from 2019. Me, I've not taken the time to sit down and write out how 20 For me, feels about happiness, there are some things that I think really resonate with what I wrote back then.
And there's more ideas that I've learned over the last few years where I would probably evolve my relationship with what that word means to me now, and you have your own relationship with it. You have your own idea surrounded, you have your own themes and key words and phrases that might help you expand and round out your sense of what is the construct of happiness in your life.
What would you like it to look like? How can you keep moving in that direction? How can you see happiness right now? And so I encourage you whether or not you are a journaler or a writer to do it anyways, and just sit down and take some notes, write something out, do some bullet points or make a list if that's all that you want to do.
You just do you but really sit down and think about how could you redefine this construct in a way that support you and allows you to feel that you too are a participant and an enjoyer of happiness right now. Thank you so much for joining me today for this podcast. We will be back next week with a Energy Update for the month ahead. So until then have an amazing week. And as always, be well, be love, be magic.
You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life.