Overcoming Self-Bullying to Embrace Holistic Health with Anna Marie Frank
20 Aug 2024 · 41 min
This content was created by Ashish Kothari. This content was uploaded by Ashish Kothari. This is a podcast episode titled "Overcoming Self-Bullying to Embrace Holistic Health with Anna Marie Frank" (Happiness Squad Podcast) published/created on 2024-08-20. It features host Ashish Kothari (founder & CEO of Happiness Squad, author of Hardwired for Happiness) interviewing Dr. Anna Marie Frank (PhD in natural medicine, author of Stop Bullying Yourself, founder of Happy Whole U Integrated Wellness Center). The conversation covers Anna Marie's personal journey overcoming depression, her holistic approach to mental health (mindset shifts, movement, nutrition, sunlight, sauna, herbs, plant stem cells, biofeedback, iridology, kinesiology, energy medicine and technology-based therapies), practical micro‑practices to boost brain chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins), and key themes from her book about stopping self‑bullying and cultivating agency, gratitude, and healthy habits. The episode also references the Happiness Squad Rewire program and offers actionable tips for listeners.
Chapters
Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the bestselling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness, wisdom, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode we will share powerful insight, tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for Happiness together. Welcome to today's episode of the Happiness Squad Podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce our special guest Dr. Dr. Anna Marie, who has a PhD in natural medicine, is the author of the bestseller Stop Bullying Yourself and the driving force behind Happy hold you an Integrated Wellness Center. Her mission is to end mental health stigmas and help individuals upgrade their brains and biology through lifestyle choices, rewiring their neural pathways with holistic modalities. In today's episode, Anna Marie shares her inspiring journey of overcoming depression and embracing a more holistic approach to health. She emphasizes the importance of mindset shifts, movement and nourishing our bodies. We dove into her book Stop Bullying Yourself and discuss the profound impact of our thoughts and beliefs on our well being and the necessity of questioning them versus accepting them at face value. Now friends, this episode is filled with simple yet transformational actions and mindset shifts you can take right away, including harnessing the power of gratitude to rewire your brain and uplift your mood. Simple yet effective actions to boost your brain reward chemicals like dopamine and serotonin and shifting from victim mindset to an agency mindset. Viewing hardship as opportunities for growth. I really enjoyed this conversation and took a lot away from it and I hope you do as well. Hi dear Anna Marie, it is so lovely to have you with us today.
Thank you. I'm very excited and honored to be here.
So my friend, I wanted to start you and I had a chance to engage on your podcast and that's when I really started to get to know your beautiful mission around Happy Whole U and the work that you're doing. Share with our listeners and me a little bit around, you know your origin story. Right. How did you actually get into this work and started to really focus on the holistic well being.
Yeah. So thank you. I honestly, I struggled with depression starting in high school. Back then though, I didn't know that it would be called depression. I had good grades, I was an athlete, I had both parents, I had a roof over my head. You could check all the boxes. After graduating high school, I went on to university and I continued to struggle with my mental health. And once I, you know, I kept chasing the carrot. I thought, okay, once I graduate from college, then I'll get a job. And I moved from Michigan all the way to California because I thought, oh, I'll go to California and I'll reinvent myself and then I'll be happy. You know, we do this thing where it's like, I'll be happy when. But I came to California in my early 20s, I went to a doctor because I was still not happy struggling with my mental health. And they put me on medications and that made me go on a further downward spiral. And luckily I had this little light inside of me that really shook me and said, wake up. When I hit my rock bottom, it was like, you are the only person that can make yourself happy and choose happiness and, and you need to do that. And so then I set forth on a journey to find ways to increase my happiness, increase my joy. I started to shift the way I thought and spoke about my life. And I started to do a lot of little things over time that started to change my brain chemistry. I thought of it as rewiring my brain. I thought if we could rewire a computer, we could rewire our brains. Right?
Yep.
And so that is what set me forth on the journey. And I started to discover holistic health modalities and different natural things that the earth gives to us that can help improve our mood and help bring us more happiness. But it really started with a mindset shift inside of me to choose happiness versus going out and thinking someone had to fix me and I had to seek it out somewhere else.
Yeah. So it's so beautiful. Right. And that's why I wanted to have you actually. Because I think we all recognize and you know, you early enough recognize that this if then else game is a never ending game. And you know, it's happiness is a choice and it requires us to fundamentally rewire way because that is where we fall. Some of us struggle with it more, others struggle with it less. But the reality is we all struggle. And the struggle is an internal struggle because of how we are experiencing the world and the stories we are telling ourselves about ourselves and about the world. Right. And so we'll get into that in the second half around this beautiful book that Anna Marie wrote called Stop Bullying Yourself. So we'll get into that. But let's spend a little bit of time in the first part, which is, you know, what you said is I started looking for different health modalities. And what I loved about, you know, as I started to get to know you and started to see the services, I really love the range of modalities that you are actually curating and bringing in the service of individuals. So talk a little bit about, you know, how you think about holistic health, how you think about all the different ways in which you're integrating these modalities to support and customize what an individual needs.
Yeah. Thank you. So what was interesting through my research is I started to learn about how the body gives off what we call physical observations and natural health that can indicate certain things going on within the body. So, for example, your tongue, if you have a line down the middle of your tongue or have a light coating on your tongue, or have what we call scalloping on the sides of the tongue, this can be indications that you have some digestion disruption, maybe some candida, some fungus going on. The scallops could mean, like, needing liver support. So again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. So with that, okay, so if I have some digestion disruption, then I learned that, guess what? 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut. Interesting. And then I learned for the body to even make serotonin, which is our mood stabilizing hormone, we need to have the amino acid tryptophan. We need to have vitamin B6. So if we don't even have these raw materials, our body is our is challenged to even produce these certain hormones. And then I learned about how different foods, such as pineapple and citrus food, turkey and salmon, can uplift serotonin levels in the body and lift your mood. Then I learned about massage therapy, about acupuncture, about just putting my bare feet in the grass, getting the sunlight to hit my skin to produce vitamin D, producing more serotonin in the body. And then I learned about light therapy. So it was like I started to just open myself up because I used to think that to get better, you go to a doctor and. Or you take a pill or you get counseling, Right? And again, this isn't a one Size fits all. And sometimes that going to a counselor is in talking to someone is really what helps someone move the needle, right? And so, but what I learned very quickly is most people need more than just one modality to work on themselves. And, and so that's what I started to create after doing things with myself through herbs, through mother Nature, through technology, and learning about these different, you know, medical grade saunas, theta therapy, biocharger therapy. Some of these things may sound foreign to some of you that are listening, but there's some technology out there that can ultimately hack your biology and start to shift things going on within you. Now, the ultimate hack, though, is our thoughts and our words, right? Our brain is the strongest pharmacy on planet Earth. So the moment we choose to speak of love, or even say the word love, that feels very different in the body than saying the word hate. It changes how our body is functioning. So when we look at different modalities when it comes to healing for ourselves, number one, thinking how we think about our life, how we speak about our life, that is everything, because you get to choose your brain chemistry, and you can shift that at any point through a single thought alone. And it only takes about 40 milliseconds to change and shift a thought. Now, on top of that, we have mother Nature that we can spend time in. And we also have herbs and vitamins and nutrients that we get to put in the body so we can utilize those raw materials to help with our physical body. And then again, we have the technology and different things that we can do that we have at our wellness center here. And there's so many wonderful places that are offering these services now.
So I love that. And you know, friends, if you're listening, there is so much wisdom in our ancient wisdom traditions, right? There's so much, so much insight, so much. We always, when we, you know, lived and they still are alive, right? So if you look in the east, right, from India, the science of Ayurveda is all about living in harmony and recognizing that for almost every illness that we have, there is something in nature that can cure it. And with Ayurveda, for example, the heart of the diagnosis and the heart of the treatment is not of the symptom, but of the underlying cause or what's causing it, right? And there's so many ways in which we can shift it, right? And herbs. And I love the fact that, you know, when you go to an Ayurvedic doctor, they will actually take your pulse. In fact, they'll take three pulses, three different types of pulses. They train to be able to really sense in to what's going on. Right. Is your liver imbalanced? Is there something going on with your stomach and in your digestion? Our bodies, they really examine the body, right. And it's really a long visit versus think about when we go to the doctor, they're like, oh, have acidity, no problem. Here, let me prescribe you, you know, Pepto Bismol. And if it's too much, let me give you a pill which is even more stronger medication. So we are treating symptoms versus we are going to the underlying root causes. Right. Which is kind of Anna Marie, you highlighted. And there is so much power to it now. It takes longer. Right. So it's not. So of course there is a. There's always a beautiful meld that we can create between east and the West.
Oh, yeah.
But what I also love about, you know, what you are bringing in is Annemarie, oftentimes Ayurveda, doctors only look at Ayurveda, right. Or if you have acupuncture or acupressure, they're only focused to some extent on that and they specialize. So if you go to a massage, you only go to a massage therapist and that's what they do. Maybe they'll do a little bit of stretching. But, you know, I. In your story, what I loved was that you became really a student to learn about with an open mind as much of what was out there and then really start to curate that so that you could really give somebody, you know, what they need. Starting with, including not just technology and food, but thoughts. Right. Which became the. Which became the source of your book. So I love, I love that. So talk to us a little bit about, let's say if somebody comes to you, how do you go about actually diagnosing and really figuring out if somebody wants to be heal themselves, what do they need? What's going on here?
Yeah, so my process with everyone is I kind of go with where the session takes us, but there are some staples that I use. So I do use biofeedback when I'm evaluating clients. I also use Iridology. I actually look at their eyes and I see different markers in the eyes that can indicate some different things within the body. I look at their tongue, I'll look at their fingernails, I'll look at their ears, I'll look at their face. I also listen for the words that they're using, how they're speaking. I listen to their voice. It gives a lot of indications of different things that could be going on. I also physically, if they're in person. I work with people remotely and in person. I'll use energy medicine techniques to test the body, different meridian points, chakras. I'll also use what's called kinesiology testing where there's different points in the body. Actually, you can see my little guy back here that the sodium marker. You know, there's mineral markers like these points on the body where we can test. So I. I'm just really looking to see is this person deficient in anything going on? Is the body indicating it needs more support? Are they telling me that they're experiencing anxiousness On a day to day basis, which almost 20% of adults experience anxiousness. And when they stick their tongue out, is their tongue quivering? That can also be another sign of that nervous system response. So I use a lot of different ways, you know, different things I've learned along the way to figure out, okay, what's going on with their foundations of health. Are there any potholes in their foundations of health? And how can we smooth those over over the next 30, 60, 90 days? And that may look like they use. We use a lot of plant stem cells here. What are fighter embryo therapies and general therapies? It's a mouthful. And they sound. They can sound expensive, and they're actually very inexpensive therapies to use, which blew my mind. When I did my master herbalist certification. I was like, why do not more people know about these? And also with those plant stem cells, they carry different vibrational frequencies that can impact the body emotionally too. I look at different organ systems that I call, quote, unquote, acting out. And usually that's tied to a different emotion that the person is storing in their body. And that could be an emotion that's their own or something they inherited through lineage. So I'm really trying to figure out, like, a broad scope of what this person may be experiencing. And, you know, we figure out, like, the way they wound up being, like, what. What's going on physically and mentally with them. And then from there we make a game plan. It may be going and seeing another practitioner. I know it may be things to do at home, Food sensitivities, maybe foods to limit or take out for a little bit, and then different foods that will enhance. I have this wonderful chart that I made. I'm a very visual learner. But this chart indicates, you know, four major brain chemicals is dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. And so on this sheet, I List the different foods that can help activate those different brain chemicals, different nutraceuticals that can activate, you know, those chemicals and then also actions. What can you do to activate those brain chemicals? And so I go over these things with them. I give them different points. Like if we tapped right here on our chest, people that get tired around 2 to 3 o' clock in the afternoon, if you tap right here, this K27 meridian, think of King Kong beating his chest. This gives the body energy. It gets the meridians flowing forward. So I teach them different ways to hack the body, to get the body to respond in a way that is calming the nervous system, that is getting their body to be in homeostasis. And again, these are ancient things that have been around some of them for centuries. And we're just not taught that in the United States anymore. And to go and find this information you have to really dig. And there's a whole story around why that is in this country, but we don't need to get into that. But I think the most important thing is to recognize that there is hope and there are other things, especially because I find a lot of people are very, very sensitive to pharmaceutical drugs and there's a reason for that. Our bodies don't recognize pharmaceutical drugs. They have a hard time. And you know the one thing when it comes to happiness and when it comes to mental health, I found this very fascinating when I was studying the brain and having some training from the Dr. Amen clinics is the brain is the only organ in the body that doctors are prescribing mind altering medications and altering medications to that organ system. And they don't even have a way to scan or test brain chemistry. So this is a shot in the dark. So I just encourage people to ask questions and try to find a way to adjust things before you go on medications. I think medication should be the very, very last thing that we put in our bodies to shift our mental health foreign.
We hope you're enjoying this episode and would love your help in spreading awareness and furthering our mission to help a billion people rewire for happiness. Please consider leaving us a review and sharing this podcast with others in your personal and professional life who you feel could benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend and spread positivity. Also check out Rewire, our proprietary offering to move you from knowing to doing on the Happiness Squad website, www.happinesssquad.com Rewire uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to help you build Happier habits in five minutes or less daily. Now back to the episode. Now. It's beautiful. You know, I was, when I was around 43 or 44, I was struggling with anx and you know, so many people said, yeah, just go see a doctor and they'll give you a pill. This is very common. You're in a high pressure role. Or as they people said, go talk to a therapist. And I didn't do either. I decided to do my own research, which became, you know, the core part of the Hardwired for happiness practices. Which is where I also realized, right, I was studying neuroscience, psychology and all the work around the ancient wisdom traditions. So I'm with you. I think, because every drug has a side effect that people don't talk about, right? So if we numb ourselves, we are numbing ourselves also to love and to other emotions. I mean, everything has an opposite effect. So you mentioned, right, in your chart that you have like, foods and you have actions that people can do. Can we dig into that a little bit? And let's choose one action that somebody can do. I love deer tapping, right? What is one action that people can do for each one of those four chemicals that you mentioned?
So dopamine. We'll start with that one. That's our reward chemical in the body completing a task. So just the simple thing of, okay, I wanted to straighten out, you know, my bathroom. Taking five or 10 minutes and doing that will increase your dopamine, which is, which is wonderful. Also listening to like a good song, you know, we can all shift our mood by turning on a song that, you know, lifts our mood. So those are a couple of really good ones for serotonin, sunlight and exercise. I mean, getting sunlight on our skin, not being covered up all the time. The sun is so healing for us.
Five minutes or less. Yes, Five minutes or less. You can start to actually harvest the benefits of it.
Yeah, it's really good. And then like, we use sauna therapy here. So people will go in that sauna and they're sweating and the moment they step out and it's nice and cool, they get that rush of serotonin, like, ah, you know, and they just feel good. Endorphins, you know, this is, this is exercising. This can be as simple. You can actually create endorphins by pushing your hands together like this and rubbing your hands and smiling really, really big and laughing. And you will start to create endorphins and get excited, which is absolutely amazing. And oxytocin, which is our, our love chemical. This is going to bring us together. This can be as simple as giving somebody a hug 20 seconds or longer. Having. Giving a kiss to someone, holding someone's hand, simply going up to someone and putting your hand on their shoulder and thinking positive thoughts, looking at someone and smiling. I mean, so these are just, again, these are ways that we get to choose to hack our brain chemicals. And then all the time, you can go back to shifting your thoughts. You know, when you're. When you're laying in bed and, you know you're not getting outside and you're. You're feeling down, I've been there where I don't want to get out of bed. It can be as simple as just thinking positive thoughts, thinking of the future you want to create for yourself, thinking of something you are grateful for, just bringing yourself into gratitude. One of the things that I've done that really helps bring me to gratitude. I go through my body and I'll think of my eyes. My eyes give me the gift to see my children. My eyes give me the gift to see my family, to see trees, to see the sunlight. I can go to my ears and listen to music and how blessed I am to have ears and what they do for me. I can go to my mouth and the taste of wonderful chocolate, you know, and just go. You go through all your senses. You can go through your body, you know, your legs. They walked you into your first day of kindergarten. They walked you down the aisle one day, or maybe they will someday, you know. And so it's just getting in gratitude of how amazing our body is, because I find that a lot of people struggle with appreciating and loving the body that they have because it's so incredibly amazing and beautiful.
Yes.
And so just, you know, you can lay in bed and just start to go through those thoughts, and that can help start to lift you up. And that starts with the mind, and it's very powerful.
So it's beautiful. You know, the other way you can generate oxytocin, friends, is if you're sitting and this is one of the micro practices in rebuyer, is you can take your arms and you can literally hold yourself, or you can gently rub yourself, rub your arms, especially in those moments when you are beating yourself up, right? You might have messed up and you're feeling like, oh, my God, how could I do this? It is something that I learned from Dr. Kristin Neff and experienced it first time. And it is just amazing, right? We can feel the warmth of oxytocin. We can give ourself a Hug, even if you don't have another. And we've talked about, you know, in terms of thoughts and shifting thoughts, there are those moments when we find ourselves really down or we can't. Right. Notice and know that our thoughts, our mind, our emotions and moods that we experience and our body are all related. They're all interconnected into us having that experience that we are having now, right? And so, frankly, we can access any of those doors as a way to shift ourselves out of an experience that we are having that might not be serving us or serving the world, right? So let's say, as Anna mentioned, if you are lying in bed and you're feeling hopeless, you can literally start to get out or move your body or listen to something, a music that's uplifting, or bring an image to our mind of a loved one or things, as Anna said, that we can be grateful for or a win that we've had over the years, the impact we've had. We can remind ourselves consciously from you're not good enough to all that you have actually done as a way to start to shift out of that funk, out of that mood. It's okay to go into that, right? We all have hardships. We all fall into that. The important thing is not to be in it. But know that before you reach for a drug or before you either a pharmaceutical or you reach for a substance, right? Marijuana, alcohol, something else, there are lots of ways in which you can actually create the chemicals in your brain. You can actually create a shift in your experience through the actions that you take from within.
And I think it's important also, I want to jump in and share that we have hardships on purpose. And this was something that really helped me shift my way of thinking and viewing the world is once I started to get in gratitude for all the good, the bad and the ugly that happened in my life. And I started to realize that, you know, these hardships were wonderful lessons. They were wonderful things that allowed me to extract something of value and a way of being that would enhance the way I showed up in the world. And there's no way I could be doing what I'm doing now if I hadn't gone through a lot of those hardships. And I know my hardships are over, but now when I have hardships, I go into, okay, okay, God, okay, universe, I see what you're doing now doesn't always feel great, but I'm like, wow, there's something here for me. What am I learning? What am I supposed to get out of this And I get curious about why things are happening in my life versus the old me would've said, oh gosh, this is so and so's fault. This is so. And you know, this is my boss's fault, the government's fault, you know, my parents fault, whatever, the economy's fault. I would always find a way to blame something outside of me for the circumstances of my life versus saying oh, I get to choose whether I'm responding or reacting right now. I get to choose how I come out of this. So I think it's important for all of us to remember it doesn't matter the person in front of you, they have hardships and it's not, oh my hardships are more than yours. Like this isn't a competition. But not a single human I've ever come across in my life has had an easy life, that's for sure.
And the point you're making is, look, we can fall into the victim mindset or we can actively choose to adopt an agency mindset to say, what can I learn from this? What can I make? There's a beautiful quote. I think it's Katie Byron said this, right? Life doesn't happen to us. Life happens for us. And it's for us to find meaning and create meaning to what we are going through and extract the learning and keep moving forward. Or we can wallow. What's happening is happening, right? Nothing changes out there, but one might make us more resourced than the other to take actions. So let's dive into that a little bit. We've talked a little bit about holistic health. We've talked about all the different modalities and how we quickly jump to symptoms through western medicine rather than the underlying cause and how our body shows it. And I think there are so many alternate ways. By the way, friends, a beautiful movie I saw that was a documentary. It's called Heal. If you want to really think about real life, transformative, alternate medicine, alternate modalities. Beautiful, beautiful one. You also talked about Nutraceuticals. We talked a little bit about how our brain chemicals, we can either take supplements if we are low on them, but more importantly, we can create the brain chemicals that we want more of through actions we take. Right. I want to shift into a bit around the biggest shift that we can make that make us sick. Our own thoughts, our own beliefs. And I want to dig into that with you, especially insights from your book. Stop bullying yourself. I can count. I think I'll need hundreds of hands to count the number of people who bully Themselves all day long. So talk to us a little bit around what, you know, Anna Marie inspired you to write the book personally, and then, you know, what are some key highlights from it?
Yeah. So honestly, I started writing the book for my children. So I had a son and then I had a daughter. I had postpartum depression, really bad with my son, worked through some holistic things. Then I got pregnant with my daughter, and I'm like, I am not going to go through this again. What do I need to do? And after having my daughter, I went on a major journey to start shifting my mindset, and I started to become happy, like, waking up. I never knew what it was like to, like, wake up and be excited day in and day out, to just show up in my life and live my life. I would wait till, oh, it's a vacation that I'm happy.
Right.
Or, oh, there's this one thing happening, then I'm happy. Like, I was literally, like, waking up and just being happy to just live my day, you know. And so as I worked through a lot of different things, I was like, you know, I don't know if this depressive state that I was experiencing over many years was something that I was born with or if it was something that happened to me based on the different trauma in my life. But what I did know was I was able to work through it. And I wanted to document that because if my children ever experienced what I went through in terms of not loving themselves, not wanting to get out of bed, any of this, I wanted them to have a resource of a familiar voice that said, not only can you do it, but here are some specific things that I did that may work for you. So it started off as a Google document that I started writing for my kids. And then my sister is a counselor. I sent it to her and she's like, you have to make this into a book. And I'm like, I don't know how to write a book. But then it kind of snowballed from there, and then it just became a beautiful, wonderful, personal growth book. Giving different mindset shifts. Because I think when we can shift our perspective or begin to think about our life in a different way, that helps to start rewiring and firing new, you know, neurotransmitters and get out of those, you know, the cemented in way of thinking. Right. Our brain is plastic. Neuroplasticity. Yes. So we get. We can start to mold a new brain. And so how do we do that? Well, first, I think it begins by asking Ourselves questions. And it's really great when you have a good coach or a somebody who can ask you questions to start to help you shift and change your perspective. But some questions would be, what if nothing was wrong with me? So that's one question. Another one is, who am I without all these problems and challenges? Like, who am I at my core? Who's deciding my goals? How did I wind up this way? Like, what was it that got me to the point where I'm viewing the world, how I'm viewing it? And again, we're asking these questions out of curiosity, not out of judging or out of blaming. And so when I started to shift the questions I was asking myself, I also started to shift the thoughts I was having and, you know, started to become in a more collaborative mindset over competitive mindset. So I was an athlete. I was a D1 athlete. And so my. My whole life, I'm the fourth of five children to be seen and be heard. You have to, like, step up, step out, speak up, be the best, do these things. Right. Like, I thought this in my mind. So I thought for to find love and to get happiness, I had to be the best. I had to do certain things. And for me to be the best, that means somebody else had to lose. That was my mindset.
Yeah.
And so I started to shift in this more collaborative mindset to find win, win relationships. I started to think about the compound effect of one little thought of gratitude. One walk around the block, one apple a day, like just one, and then build from there. And I started to build on top of the good habits I was starting to create. And in this book, I talk about, you know, building on top of other habits, shifting our mindset, certain things we can do to get out of that funk when we're feeling depressed. And so really, it's just a book that anyone could. You could turn to any page and you'll get something out of it.
So what would be your top three, you know, pieces of advice from that book on ways in which, one, we observe and recognize that we are bullying ourselves, but second, more importantly, be able to shift away from that?
Well, I think the first thing is, is not to believe every thought you have.
So it's a very powerful. Don't believe every thought you have.
Yes. So there's a certain push that I recognize that my way of thinking that has allowed me to have the amount of success that I've had. However, when that certain push pushes you overboard, where no matter what you do, it's not good enough. No Matter how many accolades you get, it's not good enough. No matter what you're doing, you still feel like you're not doing enough and you're not good enough. That's when we step over to the bullying side. So yes, there's a certain push to say, hey, you could do better. You got this. Keep trying, keep pushing. But again, when it pushes you to start reflecting back that you know all these things, that you're coming up short. None of us are coming up short. We are exactly where we are supposed to be. Our lives couldn't have happened any other way than how they've happened this far. And we are truly in the moment that we need to be in. So that would be probably the first one is to not believe all the thoughts and recognize when it pushes you over. Right? You have a wonderful success of something and you just don't get to. You're not celebrating it. You know, you're not like, that's a really big warning. The other thing is that we have to move our body and be outside. So we all are inside 80 to 90% of the time now, the average person, whereas 80 to 90% of the time we used to be outside and moving. So our body is meant to be outside and our body is meant to move. And one of the things is I used to run and I used to run as punishment. I used to be like, oh, well, I ate this, so I need to go exercise because I have to burn these calories. So it's going into being outside and moving your body in a loving, kind way, in a way that's like, wow, I get to do this. This is so great. I can walk up this hill today versus I have to walk up this hill because I ate ice cream last night. So that was a. That was another big shift that I think that a lot of us can make is to use movement as a gift versus as a punishment. And then I would say probably the food, what we eat, how we nourish our body, you know, we create these neuro associations with things. And so, you know, a lot of people have a neuro association with salad. That means that if they're eating green leafy vegetables, it means they're on a diet. And I'm here to suggest that, you know, adding in fruits and vegetables to any meal is you. The association should be healing. The association should be. This is nourishing my body. It's giving me all the raw materials I need for my body to function well. It's like the gasoline to the car. You Know we need this to function properly and more efficiently. So shifting our mindset around food and to eating foods that are going to be generous to our overall well being is really, really important.
I loved all those three provocations for our listeners. Number one, you're more than your thoughts. Don't believe your thoughts. Especially friends, when you know that most of the brain, most of our thoughts are, you know, our brain has a negativity bias. So just do your own inventory. How many of your thoughts are positive versus negative? Don't believe them or at least observe them at a distance and know which one you choose. Right? Mo Gadot, who's done a lot of this work as well, you know he has. He's given a name to his inner voice and he says what the winner voice is telling me. Is it helping me or is it hurting me? Right? Is it helpful and is it true? Is it helpful or is it true? If it is not helpful and if it is not true, you can't perfectly say it is true, then don't listen to it. Right? Don't listen to it. I loved your provocation on movement and being outside and really treating it as a gift for ourselves rather than a punishment. And I especially love the one on food. We are what we eat, we become what we eat. And food has such a power on our emotions, such a power on our body, of course, and such a power on our thoughts. So learning more about what we are eating, getting professional help to really decide on what's the best way to eat, incorporating more fruits and vegetables into our diets. Such, such powerful ways. This has been such a joy. Anna Marie and I'm really excited about the collaborations that we together create in the world going forward. To heal, to help people build healthier habits and yeah, heal themselves, stop bullying themselves and heal themselves from within versus keep filling the coffers of the pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare systems. Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Such a joy. Take care. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple, simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.
