119. One Hack For More Happiness

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Friday Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 119. Today, I am going to share a happiness hack with you. Yep, I'm giving you the silver bullet. I'm giving you a secret sauce so that every day you can wake up in the best mood ever.

Come on, let's face it. Today more than ever.

It is so easy to get caught up in the negativity. It's so easy to let those negative vibes fill your body. Why? Because it's being applied to us every single day. Just look at social media, look at the news. We live in a cancel culture. We have people who spit it who are spitting venom left and right, and they're out to find the wrong in people. It is so easy today to feel negative. I know I have caught myself multiple times. I wish I could tell you I'm somebody that wakes up every single day with 100% gratitude in my heart, feeling 100% blessed for what I have, and waking up just with the happy, joyful feeling that I want to have every day. But it just isn't reality.

And I'll be honest. Lately I've experienced, you know, that feeling of what makes me happy, what brings me joy. My coach has asked me that multiple times over the last three or four months. And I can remember certain coaching calls where I didn't have an answer. I'm so caught up in the work I do, the building, the business, and I love doing that, that am I giving myself the space, the time to pause in my efforts of continuously growing and striving, Am I pausing.

To just enjoy the little things in life, the things that bring happiness, the things that seem small today but are so huge when it comes to knowing the gratitude, the blessings you have in your life. And again, I admit that personally, I get caught up in overlooking those small things. And so today, I want to share with you a hack that I tried one morning about a month, two months ago, and I haven't stopped ever since. And it has really allowed me to, in the hustle and bustle of building my coaching business, to get grounded, to be paused, to remember to enjoy the little things in life, remember to take breaks, take space to go out and play, go out and enjoy nature, go out and just enjoy life. Because again, in the environment we live in right now, I'm recording this at the end of May, 2021, it is so easy to wake up with that negative twinge in your body because we have so much negative pressure being applied to Us right now. And so today I'm just going to walk you through something I started doing every single morning that really has changed a lot for me. Again, as small as the activity seems.

Bringing the consistency to it, every morning has really allowed me to realize that, you know what? My business is not the end all, be all, it's not all business all the time. You have to enjoy life. But if you can wrap your business inside of enjoying this great life you have, that's when things really get good. Hell, they get great. So let me talk to you about what I'm doing every morning and what I've been doing for the past two months. Because I think it can really help you if you're out there feeling like the way I've been feeling, where again, you have those moments of you, you love what you do for a living, you have a great family, you have a roof over your head, you have money, everything's great, but you still feel like you're waking up once in a while with why do I feel negative? Why do I feel irritated? Why do you know? And just the way I've been feeling once in a while here over the past 12 to 14 months. So here's what I tried doing every morning. As you know, I have a morning routine. And so my morning routine, again, for those who don't know what it is, goes something like this. I wake up and Amy and I are very, very early risers. We get up anywhere between 4:15 and 4:45 in the morning and the first thing I do is make my cup of coffee. Once that cup of coffee is made, I have a glass of warm water with a lemon, good for the body. I head over to that ice cold shower in our master bathroom that wakes my ass up. That's the one thing that most people still won't do when I challenge them to do it. But that morning routine of jumping in that ice cold shower is really good for the immune system. It gets my body going, it wakes me up. And then I go into my instructional work. I watch some video on YouTube of people I follow. I read a self development book and. And then I go into my breath work and my meditation. Now at that point, the last step I include in my morning routine before I hit exercise. And then the workday is journaling. And I'll admit journaling is something I've struggled with for quite a while because I want to do it. I know I should be doing it. It's a great way to get thoughts on paper. But there are mornings I felt Like, I was sitting down just checking the box of journaling because you're supposed to journal in the morning. And so I said, okay, I need to try something new. And again, this was a couple months ago. This also came on the heels of struggling with understanding of what does make me happy right now, what brings me joy. And this is a question my coach, Christina Liqueur has challenged me with several times over the past few months. Andy.

What really makes you happy? And I'll admit, when I get head deep into building the business, sometimes it's very easy to forget to pause and bring happiness and joy to your life. Because often, and if there's any entrepreneurs listening in here, I guarantee you'll feel this way. Sometimes. It is the business, it is the growing the business that brings you the happiness and joy, right? You love doing it. And all of a sudden, before you know it, you're dating your business and you're forgetting to date your husband, your w. Your girlfriend, your boyfriend. Right? And I'm guilty. I've done that myself. But I've also lost track of what really brings me happiness and joy in my life. So what I've done with my journaling, to really try to flip the script on, one, no longer feeling like I'm checking the box with journaling, but two, really use journaling to set the tone for my day is I started making a list every morning of the things that are going to make me happy. Things are going to make me fulfilled in that day. And this is the simple question I've asked myself for the past two months. That has really changed for me. And I'll give you an example or two of where it really has changed. The happiness, the joy I have throughout each and every day. The question I ask myself every morning is the first question I write down in my journal. Is this what will make me feel happy and fulfilled today? That's it. What will make me feel happy and fulfilled today?

And then what I do is I make a list.

I make a list of things that day, no matter how small they are, that are going to bring happiness and joy to me. Because these are moments, often moments that we overlook as just another part of the day. But really, if you stop and pause, these are moments, fragments of time in your 24 hours that actually bring you happiness. Let me give you a couple examples. For me, something that brings me joy every morning about 9, 9:30 is sitting down to a healthy breakfast. That's it. I know that sounds simple. Wait, Andy, you have to eat breakfast every day. I get it. But I love sitting down, taking that 15 minute pause in the middle of my morning to sit down and enjoy a healthy breakfast.

Here's another one. Sitting down at Starry Night to get my work done without the pressure to get it done while enjoying a great cup of coffee. Starry Night is an awesome little coffee shop here in Fort Collins. I often like to get away from the house. I work from home, get away from the house, do some work at a coffee shop. But again, you just may think, well, that's what I do every day. But are you taking the time to pause and be present, realize just how good that cup of coffee is, whether that you are having while you are working at your local coffee shop or is it just, yeah, every Tuesday afternoon, that's what I do. I go to a coffee shop and work. It's bringing the presence to that moment and realizing what brings you happiness and joy. Yeah, I'm working while I'm at the coffee shop, but I have to pause and realize, huh, this is exactly what I want to be doing. I love doing this. Let me give you a real life case study where this is completely kind of changed my perspective.

In my journal about two weeks ago on a Saturday morning, I had planned to do a little work in the morning. That's kind of when I use. Saturday mornings are kind of my CEO time to get caught up on my business, finances, get caught up on, you know, inventory, clients, prospecting, whatever it is to get myself kind of rewind from the week, wrap up the week appropriately and look at the numbers I have to look at as a CEO. And I wrote in my journal that morning asking myself the question, what will make me happy and fulfilled today? Here's what I wrote randomly. I said, you know what? Today what's going to make me happy is having lunch at a totally random spot.

At that point, I had no clue where I was going to have lunch in Fort Collins today. But I said, you know what? I am just going to have lunch at a totally random spot today. This happened to be a Saturday where Amy had some stuff she had to do, I had some stuff I had to do. So we were gonna reconvene at about 4 o' clock that afternoon for some quality time. But the day was really mine. And so I went to my Starry Night coffee shop in downtown Fort Collins and did some work. But after it was done, I went and had lunch at a place called the Rainbow Cafe.

Now here's the significance of this. Remember I wrote in the journal today, what's gonna make Me happy is how having lunch at a totally random place. When I was done with my work at Starry Night, I honestly didn't know where I was going to go have lunch. I'm like, dang, now the pressure's on right now. Now I've got to go find a random place to have lunch because I put that in my journal. This is my little to do list. And I found and realized, yes, just off of campus, off of Colorado State's campus, there's this awesome cafe that in seven years of living in Fort Collins, we have never eaten at. And I decided to go eat there. And it was a beautiful lunch. It was great food. And here I was realizing the joy of sitting, having a good, healthy lunch at a cafe in Fort Collins that I have never been to since we moved here. Now, here's where I took it to the next step. After having lunch, realizing the cafe is right across the street from the Colorado State campus, I said, you know what? There's something else I've never done since we moved here. I've never actually just walked the campus. And so I took about 45 minutes and just walked around the campus. It's a beautiful campus. And here we are, residents of Fort Collins since 2014, and I have never taken the time to walk the campus of Colorado State. So in a moment, in a matter of a couple hours, I had done two things that really brought me a ton of joy and happiness and relaxation in my life. Two things that I had never done since we moved here seven freaking years ago. And the list just goes on and on and on. But here's what I've learned when I now make this list up every single day. What is going to make me feel happy and fulfilled today again? It could be something as small as just enjoying that cup of coffee that I often overlook because it only takes me 10 minutes to drink, or that healthy breakfast that I love sitting down to that often do as quickly I can because I got to get back to work. It has forced me to slow down a little bit. It has forced me to enjoy those little moments in life that we often overlook. And it has forced me to do things that I wouldn't have done otherwise. This little to do list of happiness and fulfillment has become my judge and jury every single day. Now. There are moments where I look at the list at the end of the day and there's certain things I haven't done. Absolutely. But I will tell you, since starting this list of happiness and fulfillment every single day in my journal, I have realized I have given myself the space to do more things, more fun things. I have given myself the space to really pause throughout the day, to enjoy my breakfast, to enjoy a cup of coffee, to really be present when I'm working at a coffee shop and enjoying the moment. And I wanted to pass that on to you because, again, it's so easy today, especially with all the negativity that we have being applied to us right now in the hustle and bustle of you trying to get where you're going, it's easy to overlook those small moments. But let's not forget. Let's not forget to pause and really remember what brings us happiness and joy. So that's the hack I wanted to share with you today, is if you're out there just like I was, somebody who's like, man, it's hard for me to define what brings me joy and happiness right now. I want you to try this exercise every morning. I want you to ask yourself the question, what will make me happy and fulfilled today? And I just want you to make a list in detail. What small things throughout your day are going to bring you happiness and joy. And then use that list as again your to do list, your judge and jury, and just go out and make them happen. And you'll be blown away by the end of the day how productive you still were in business, but also how happy you were. And so, I don't know, give it a try. It's worked for me over the last two months. It's brought a lot more happiness and joy to my life, and it's actually had a butterfly effect in so many different areas of my life. So give it a try. Go out, start your mornings, ask yourself that simple question. What will make me happy and fulfilled today? Make the list, and then go about checking the box off that list. You do that, you're going to have a hell of a lot more fun doing what you're doing, and you're going to get a hell of a lot more done. And you know what happens when you. When clarity and confidence collide? Massive action happens. Go make it happen today.