Three things to Increase Daily Happiness

Being in business for yourself isn't a big win if you aren't feeling happy on the regular. In fact, it's hard to feel like you're winning at all in life if you aren't experiencing daily happiness. This episode is about three simple and profound techniques that you can implement to increase daily happiness. Tap into more positive vibes and rendezvous with more of the nice things you use to define your happy business and your life. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. Hey, hey, hey everybody who is ready to get happy? All right, let's have this conversation about happiness, why it matters, and especially three simple things that you can do to increase daily happiness in your own business, and especially just in life in general. If we're not feeling happy, what are we here for? And I know that there's so many different variations on the purpose of life is to blank. The purpose of life is to, you know, you can fill in a religious answer to return to God. The purpose of life is to experience love. The purpose of life is to. My favorite is the the purpose of life is to create meaning. Think on that for a bit. But I would also say we are here to be happy. So many entrepreneurs come into business for themselves because they think, ooh, if I could be a successful entrepreneur and I could make a little more money, maybe make some passive income, maybe change more lives, then I'll be happier. And what frequently happens, you know, the drill is an entrepreneur hops into bed with themselves in business and they start the grind and they start experiencing challenges and they realize that old adage is true, that entrepreneurs are the only people willing to work 80 hours a week so that they don't have to work a 40 hour full time job. And many entrepreneurs find themselves not very happy. In fact, I've networked and collaborated with many very successful entrepreneurs. On paper, they've got it all. They've got the millions of dollars or the hundreds of millions of dollars, or they've got the hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. They've got the lives they've impacted, they've got the testimonials. But day to day happiness looks more like day to day managing stress and trying to keep the sharks at bay. And for me, that's not the life that I'm aspiring to. And I bet it's not what you're aspiring to either. And you may have heard me talk in past episodes about this idea that really the key is to not try, try to succeed in business so that you can then have the results that make you happy. The key is to get happy. And then ironically, you'll find yourself rendezvousing with those things that you wanted to create in your business and in your life to make you happy. You'll find those things much easier. And so then you might ask the question, well, okay, that sounds a little bit backward. You're saying, don't aspire to success, to money, to time, freedom, to changing lives, to impact. Don't aspire to those things because I think they'll make me happy. Get happy first. How does that work? Well, let's talk about it all right now. There are of course many ways to tap into more just regular day to day happiness. I'm not talking about the elation and the thrill that comes when you achieve a big landmark in your life or in your business. Those are incredible too. But they happen the most easily, the most serendipitously. If you spend more time in your day to day life just feeling happy in general. And really, what a funny price to pay, right? The thing that you have to sacrifice in order to most easily rendezvous with those big things that you think will make you happy is just spending a little more time being happy day to day, right? Well, let's talk about three things in particular that I have found to be very helpful in increasing daily happiness. Number one, listing positive aspects. You may have heard this called gratitude journaling, maybe positive aspect listing. Whatever you call it, I love spending time in my mornings journaling about positive aspects of just various things. Now there's a trick to this because in past years I spent many, many days gratitude journaling, many hours gratitude journaling. But it wasn't very effective because here's what it would look like. Maybe I have something in my life that's not going great, work's not going great, my sales quotas aren't happening, whatever it is. And so I think, okay, I need to gratitude journal because if I'm in gratitude, then I'll attract, I'll manifest more awesome things. Well, if you sit down with your list of positive aspects or your gratitude journal and the energy that you are feeling and being during the process is one of lack or disappointment or scarcity and you think that the act of you writing gratitude list is going to fix that or compensate for it, you're totally wrong. Because what you create in your life is really a result of what you are being the Energy that you are being, the vibes you're feeling, what you're broadcasting, what you're radiating. So you could write down gratitude lists all day, every day for years on end. But if you're feeling and being a lackful energy, a disappointed energy, a scarcity energy, the gratitude lists don't matter. They only are helpful if you're feeling appreciation or if you're feeling gratitude during the process. Now, there is one other trick that comes with these gratitude lists or these positive aspect lists, and that is that if you're in a very low energetic space, like let's say that you're in extreme anger or rage, frustration, despair, depression, hopelessness, if you're in a low energetic state, well, gratitude is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Gratitude is an extremely high vibrational state of being. Correct. And so if you say, wow, I am having a shitty day, a shitty week, I am feeling so crappy, so I better sit down and write down gratitude lists to get into gratitude. Well, that is what I like to call an energetic quantum leap. And usually it doesn't work because if you're in a very low vibrational space and you say, I'm going to sit down and write positive aspects and gratitude list in order to get into a gratitude energy instead of my crappy energy, that the chasm between where you are and where you're trying to go, it's so large that you usually just fall in a hole and don't get out. Okay, so the reason why I really like the term positive aspects versus gratitude journaling is because you can be in a pretty low energetic space and you can still write a positive aspect list about something. Maybe you're not feeling the energy of gratitude, because think for a moment about what gratitude really feels like. True gratitude, like where you just have this profound sense of humility for how beautiful and incredible life is. You have this profound sense of what an honor it is to be you, to exist, to be part of this world, to be loved by God, by source, by the universe, by loving human beings. And that's gratitude. Right? And so if you're in a negative or a low energetic space, it's not very practical to go from really negative to really grateful. Okay? But you can tap into generally positive aspects about something that feels slightly better than where you are. Does that make sense? So maybe you're having a week where business just freaking sucks, everything is going to shit, and you're really frustrated with it. Well, you might not be able to reach gratitude in an instant, but you can write down positive aspect lists about something that feels slightly better than what you have been observing. So what that looks like is the maybe you've been thinking a lot about a really rough work week or really rough month, year, whatever, okay. And you say, I'm going to start to gently shift my energy, gently shift into slightly happier feelings. Okay. So you get out a pad of paper, I get out my iPad, and I start making lists of something that is just generally positive. Okay. At least more positive than what I've been harping on lately. And so for me, I've got a few topics that are really easy for me to go to. Like, like my nieces and nephews. They're just these darling little children that are so full of love and joy. I don't have to try very hard at all to feel better when I'm thinking about them. And so I'll write down lists and I've got tons of them on my iPad in my notes app, where I've just written down all these positive aspects about my nieces and nephews and then I always start to feel better. I also have other topics are nature, mountains, canyon cycling, hiking, being in the fresh air, the pine trees, hearing the river going down the mountainside or waterfalls, all of that. And I'll write positive aspects about that because that's a pretty easy place for me to go and tap into more positive vibes than maybe where I was before. And if you find yourself one morning just feeling great about life, sure. Start writing gratitude lists about future things you want to manifest. Start writing down gratitude lists or positive aspect lists about things that have been maybe a little more negative in the past, where you're now feeling a lot of hopefulness about their potential to improve in the future. If you're in a positive space, go there, keep riding that wave. It's awesome. But don't get down on yourself if you're in a bad a negative space and you're like, I should be feeling more grateful. In fact, isn't that something that parents do? The parent looks at the unhappy and says, why can't you feel more grateful? As if that would incite actual feelings of gratitude. So funny what we do to each other. Okay, that was item number one. My friends list positive aspects. This is an exercise that I do often. I like to wake up in the morning, do 15 minutes of a simple stillness meditation, and then I'll whip out my positive aspects journal and I will just write lists of positive aspects. And pretty soon I've drummed up enough positive energy to spin My day forward in a really wonderful way. And you do that every day for a week. And you'll have a great week. And you do it every week for a month. And you'll have a great month. And you do it month after month for the rest of your life. And you will have a very lovely life with more happy days. Okay, item number two is creative visualization. Now, who here has created a vision board? Or if you're like me, maybe you've created an audio vision board. I actually have a. A cool program that I've made for that. So whether you have a tool like a vision board, or whether you just like to close your eyes and think about your future, creative visualization is a really powerful way to increase your daily happiness. However, you'll notice I have a pattern in this episode with the content I prepared for you. There's a trick to it. You can spend all day, every day visualizing, looking at your vision board, at these things that you don't have. And if your awareness is observing their absence in your life, you will only create more feelings of lack and more absence of those things. Does that make sense to you? Vision boarding only is helpful if you feel positive feelings, if you're in a positive vibrational space while you're looking at the vision board. And so really, creative visualization works when you can spend time envisioning things that matter to you, envisioning things that you are looking forward to, envisioning things that you want to create or manifest. If you can smell the smells of those things, maybe smell the flowers in the garden of your new house. Or if you can hear the sounds, the engine revving of your new car, or the applause of the audience in front of you while you're speaking at a major event, or even just feeling the feelings that come with that thing. Well, that's really where creative visualization is the most powerful. And you probably heard different experts talk about combining those sensations. Can you see it, can you hear it, can you smell it, can you taste it? And can you touch it all in your mind? Because when you start combining those sensations, that's when it becomes more and more real to your brain. And your subconscious mind starts eagerly searching for answers and solutions. But you know what's funny about visualization and where it goes backward for most people is most human beings don't do what I just described. Most people get out all the magazines, they cut out the pictures of the hotel, they want to stay in the body, they want the spouse, they want to manifest the number in their bank Account that they want the pile of cash, whatever, and they post it all on the vision board. And then when they look at their vision board, the feeling in their heart is the feeling of the absence of all that shit that they put on the vision board. And so what vibe are they broadcasting right now? Lack scarcity, not enough. And so what are they creating manifesting more of? Lack scarcity and not enough. So it's a little bit of a risky game, in my opinion, to even create a vision board unless you've developed the discipline, and to not look at the vision board unless you're looking at it from a space of positive presence of mind. And so if you can look at your vision board and genuinely feel feelings of hopefulness, optimism, genuinely looking forward to those children coming into your life or that business unfolding or that book endorsement that you want, whatever things you've put on your vision board. I just named all the things on my vision board. Now, you know, it's important to me, if you can look at the vision board and genuinely think, feel the positive anticipation of what's on that vision board, then it's serving you. And what you'll learn after doing this is that the practice of creative visualization, you don't do it because then you manifest the stuff and get to congratulate yourself on visualizing in order to manifest the stuff. What you discover is that when you get really good at creative visualization and you would do it just for the sake of feeling happy, well, now all the stuff coincidentally manifests as the positive byproduct of your already being happy. Isn't that interesting? And again, what a horrible price to pay. Oh, no. You're gonna have to creatively visualize just to be happy and feel happy versus manifesting the stuff. But then you'll get the stuff anyway, while you were happy. Okay, so that was item number two. Creative visualization number three is thought replacement. And you hear me talk all the time about pivoting your focus, which is essentially the same thing. You want to trade any time you spend thinking about negative or unpleasant things with literally anything that feels better. Oftentimes, very, very often I'll talk to an entrepreneur that I'm coaching, someone who's in one of my workshops or a course or group coaching, whatever it is, whatever the environment is. And if I say, how's business? The first things out of their mouth are what's hard, what's in their way, why they're disadvantaged, or why they're disappointed with themselves for not going as fast as they want. To or not meeting their goals or whatever. And you'll notice this is kind of life in general, right? When you ask someone, how are you? How many people start to list the things that aren't working in their favor. And so that's just what we say out loud. And. And do you remember hearing the pest control guy tell you that when you see a spider on the wall, that means there's 10 more spiders inside the wall? I think that our words are the same thing. If a negative sentence, if a sentence about the lack, the absence of what you want comes out of your mouth in communication with another person, there's 10 more thoughts or a hundred more thoughts inside you that you haven't articulated about the same stuff. The spirit spiders are on the inside. And so if you can get into the practice of replacing that mental chatter about what's not working or what you're not happy with, and replace that mental chatter with thinking about anything that feels better, you will start to notice some incredible shifts in your life. This has been one of the biggest challenges for me because when I learned this concept, I felt like I was being irresponsible. Because as a strategist, as an activator, as an achiever, I like to problem solve. I love problem solving. I'll find myself in the shower or weeding my garden or cleaning the kitchen, whatever, or driving down the highway. And my brain will be thinking about things that aren't working the way that I want them to. And sometimes thinking about why it's unfortunate or unjust things are the way they are, why someone's in the wrong and I'm not in the wrong and why I'm right. Or, you know, I might be thinking about justifications and I might be thinking about, about all the things that I think would fix it, all the things that we should do or I should do or somebody should do in order to fix what's not working. And none of that's wrong. But if I'm feeling negative emotion while I have those thoughts, it's not very productive thought time. Does that make sense to you? The most productive thoughts are the thoughts that feel good. Good. And the reason, again, why this was hard for me to palate is because I been so used to problem solving in this way for most of my life. I thought that it was caring to worry about people and conditions. I thought that it was showing love. But love feels like love. Love does not feel like worry. Worry and love are in completely different vibrational spaces. Correct. When you feel the energy of love, I mean, it feels wonderful when you feel the energy of worry or of judgment or of criticism or of condemnation that doesn't feel anywhere close to love. So how can you live a happy life? How can you love your life if you're spending a lot of your day in mental worry, in mental criticism, in mental judging of other people, of conditions, of things, of behavior, of whatever, of political parties, it doesn't matter. Or of yourself. If you're thinking about your business and how you should have launched that new course by now, or you should have hit this revenue goal, or you should have achieved a new level of followers on your social platforms, whatever it is, if you're spending a lot of your daily time in mental chatter that feels like any kind of negative energy, it's not very productive. And we sometimes get under this delusion where we think, well, my goal, though, is to think my way through the negativity until I find the positive. But you remember what law of attraction says, right? Like attracts like. So how on earth can you think a negative thought in order to get to a positive thought? That doesn't make much sense, does it? But for some reason, we spend a lot of our time trying to make it work. It's never going to work, my friends. The way that you get into positive thoughts is you find a new thought that is in the direction of positivity. So if you can start to become aware of where you're spending most of your mental chatter, that's the beginning of a great pivot. And don't get down on yourself if you notice that you've got some patterns. Maybe you think a lot about a certain family member in a way that is oriented around worry or blame or criticism, something like that. And you realize, oh, I spend a lot of my time having these little mental conversations with this person. And it does. It doesn't feel good. Now you're aware and you can start to make the pivot. And maybe you can't think about that person or that subject in a positive light, so find a different thing to think about. Do you understand this? Sometimes you might think, well, you've got an urgent situation. Maybe your kid got caught with drugs and you're like, we've got to fix this now or else she's going to go to prison because she's going to get in with the wrong crowd and she's going to get arrested and blah, blah, blah, she's going to ruin her life. Or maybe you've got an urgent matter that looks like you had a revenue goal of $2,000 for your business this month, and you only have made $1,000, and it's the last week of the month, and you all of a sudden feel this panic as you look at your sales report and you think, I've got to take action right now. And so you hop in the shower to get ready for the day, and. And your brain is just spinning around how well the Instagram followers just aren't as engaged as normal. And you launched your new course and people didn't respond like you thought they would. And these people who said that they leave you a review didn't leave you a review, so you're frustrated with them. And do you see the energy behind my example here? It is so far from living a happy life. It is so far from the energy that you and I both know could attract the positive results. But this is the kind of mental banter that so many of us experience all the time. So technique number three in this episode is replacing thought patterns, shifting your focus to anything that feels better to think about, even if you think there's tremendous legitimate urgency for you to make up for lost time or make up for lost revenue or to get your child off drugs so that they don't go to prison. Whatever it is you, even if you think it is totally urgent, you help nobody by thinking thoughts that keep you in a negative, energetic space. Did that sink deep for you? You don't help your child, you don't help your business. You don't help your bank account. You don't help the followers, the audience that you're meant to serve when you spend your day thinking thoughts that feel bad. Because those bad feelings just tell you you're not in alignment with where you're supposed to be going with where you really want to go. So, as I spent the last number of years practicing this idea of replacing thoughts that feel bad, the point is, care about how you feel enough to not think a thought that feels bad, even if it's the one that makes the most sense. Should I repeat that? Because that was a profound lesson for me. Care about how you feel enough to not think a thought that feels bad, even if it's the thought that makes the most sense. Because if you can take that situation where you were in that negative mental chatter and think about something else that feels better, like your nephew or your dog or the pretty flower that just popped up sporadically in your sidewalk crack, whatever it is, if that feels better, your energy starts to shift. And then Law of Attraction is always in action. And so you attract another thought that feels better than and another impulse that feels better and the positive momentum starts to replace the negative momentum and things start to work themselves out for you. Maybe you get an idea to an impulse to take action that you hadn't taken before. But most importantly, you are now being different. You are now showing up different. You're in a different energy. And that is one of the most profound recipes for a happier life. And I'll tell you right now, learning that, learning the art, practicing the art of not thinking thoughts that feel bad even if they make the most sense, that has contributed to my daily happiness probably more than anything else. And boy, it's a lifelong journey. And you can't beat yourself up for when you don't get it perfect because nobody does. And that's not the point to get it perfect. But if I catch myself in a thought pattern that doesn't feel great, that is such a cool opportunity for me to say, oh, I just noticed how this feels. I'm going to think about something else. I'm going to think about how nice my protein shake this morning tasted or whatever, it doesn't matter. And I practice that until I spun up some new positive momentum. And you know what's really funny about all of this? Sometimes in that new positive momentum, you go back to the original subject that was troubling you. Your drug, your teenager that got caught with drugs, or your bad sales month with your business, whatever. Sometimes you take that new positive energy, you go back to the original subject matter and you can handle it completely differently. But a lot of times you don't even have to go back to it because it just addresses itself and it does that to match your new energetic space that you're showing up as. Isn't that incredible? And so if you do go back to the original subject matter with your new positive energy, you. You feel differently about it, you're smarter about it, you're more efficient about it, you're more loving about it. But if it just starts to resolve itself, I mean, that's really great too. And then you think, aha, I guess being happy really is a cool place to be. So, my friends, I hope that you have found some new hope, some new exciting ideas that you can implement in your day. To review the three techniques to increase daily happiness are 1. Listing positive aspects. 2. Creative visualization. 3. Thought replacement. And remember that the whole point of all three of those things is really to practice being in better feeling vibes, to practice thoughts that are happier, to practice feelings that are in the direction that you want to go. And you don't have to be the conqueror of all of your demons. You don't have to be the solver of all your problems or the world's problems. If you can spend more time every day just getting a little bit happier for the sake of being happy, only all those things that were important to you will start to mind themselves. They'll start to tend, work themselves out, learn to be happy daily just for the sake of being happy. And your life and your business will unfold incredibly. And with that, if you found something in this episode that was helpful or valuable to you, if you please do me a favor, drop us a review on Apple podcasts or just 30 seconds to type out what you learned, what aha moment, what little nugget you took away. We love reviews. Also, if you have someone that you know would benefit from this episode, hit that share button and please either DM it or text it. Whatever method you like to use, send this to your friends, your loved ones who would benefit from this. You can even share it to your Insta story wherever. Thank you for supporting supporting us and I will see you on the next episode.