BONUS Podcast Takeover With Dr. Angela Williamson

Katie: Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness in about two minutes a day through my signature method of Intentional Margins®,  (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness, science and musings about life.

I'm your host, Katie Jefcoat and today we get to do a longer bonus episode with my dear friend,  Dr. Angela Williamson. I'm kind of pinching myself that I actually got time with this person because she's going to knock your socks off.

She is so inspirational and has done so many cool things. She's an Emmy nominated producer and director. She hosts a weekly interview show on TV on KLCS PBS in Los Angeles and she's doing the most amazing things and I can't wait for you to meet her. 

Angela, welcome to the show.

Angela: Hi Katie. I'm so honored by that introduction and humbled.

Katie: Well, I am just so excited for everyone that I know to know you. As most of us, if you've been listening to podcasts for a little bit, you know, I'm a connector. I love when people can connect. It is my most favorite thing.

And so I can't wait for people to get to know you. So it's hard to know where to start. But I'm just curious, how did you get into this space, all the passion that you do right now, what led you to what you're working on and all of the magic that you're bringing to so many people right now?

Angela: Well, I think this is why I'm so excited to be on your podcast, because you focus so much on happiness and we see happiness as something that's tangible and sometimes we have to charge our thinking and see happiness as a mindset.

And I am going to be completely transparent with you and have this authentic conversation with you and tell you that how I became the doctor, Angela Williamson that's on your podcast today is that I was really unhappy in 2014 to 2015.

I felt completely lost and because I felt lost, I had pretty much given up on any kind of happiness and having things going on for me. I didn't understand that happiness is a journey. And in your happiness journey, there are going to be times that you need to rear off that path a little bit and come back to it.

And when you come back to it, you have to be determined to go on that path. A lot of times we look at happiness and just think it's something that drops right into our laps.

But we have to realize it's part of our journey and we have to set our intention. And so that is how it all started, was in an effort to gain back happiness in my life, I decided to pick up a mantle that I had put on the shelf for years to move into education, get my doctorate, go back to my other love, video production and tell a story about my husband's cousin, who I always admired  growing up but didn't really understand the true story until I started telling it about Rosa Parks. 

In telling that story, not just about Rosa Parks, but about all of the women who worked hard to celebrate her life and her legacy, I started to transform from within and find my happiness setting. And in doing all of that and in telling that story, I didn't realize that I was making other people happy as well.

And that's when things started to grow, even to the point where I had to start to mature. And I think when we think about happiness, we have to realize that there's maturity behind it. And when you can start to mature in your happiness and find it, when your path gets a little bit on a detour, is when you start to find your greatest happiness, your greatest hope, but then you start to encourage others as well.

And that started happening with me when I started doing that in 2015. And you even mentioned that I'm on this amazing show on a PBS station, which, as a documentary film producer, as an educator, I mean, you love PBS. I never would have even been able to get into that door if I hadn't looked at a situation that happened to all of us in 2020 with the pandemic and everything shutting down and finding my happiness there.

And that includes doing Facebook live with people like yourself. You are like my first guest on my Facebook Live. I reached out to you, and it's funny. I want to tell your audience. We know each other, but we were never in a book together.

We just met each other and connected. But I didn't realize by just doing those first early days of Facebook live, trying to bring happiness to myself and to my students and to educators, that what we were doing is we were setting the platform for me to have this show, because a producer that was creating that show just happened to catch some of those early Facebook lives.

And so I just think that is really what changed my life to where we're at in 2022, because when I started out and I had to choose my happiness, I can tell everybody I just wanted to be a full time senior professor. That's what I was trying to do. But that didn't happen.

But everything else that has happened has allowed me to fulfill my heart's desire of educating the masses in a form of media that I love, television and film.

Katie: I find that so fascinating because you had this moment in time in 2014, 2015, where you're like, this doesn't feel right. I don't feel authentic. It feels hard. This should not be so hard. And then shortly thereafter you dove into the story of Rosa Parks through your family and how to tell a story from a different perspective, which I think is fascinating.

The documentary is amazing. There's also a book now that you've done on Rosa Parks for children, which is really amazing.

And so through that storytelling you really found, I mean you probably had done things before that I don't know all the details, but you had found this confidence or this voice or this aura about you that's so attractive.

People that are go-getters are attracted to other go-getters. And so you did this and you were like, this feels good. And then you continue down education, helping college students in education. Just one of the ways that we started connecting even more and then Facebook live, you just never know.

There was another person that did these episodes a couple of weeks ago, C.Lee Cawley, and she met a man at a doctor's office. I think they exchanged phone numbers. The man's wife and she became friends, started a mom's group that now has  2500+ paid members because she met a guy at a doctor's office that she said hello to.

So it was like this Facebook live, somebody is seeing something, you just never know. And that's such an important message I really want to zone in on because if you're doing something that lights your hair on fire, if you're doing something you're passionate about, you can't help but attract the right people.

And I think that is just so inspirational and I can't wait for the audience to just get to hear so much goodness and so much juiciness from all of the things that you are about to share over the next five days because it's going to be magic, it's going to be so much fun.
 
I always, always admire all of your thoughtfulness and so I can't wait to hear what you have to say from some of the questions that I've asked you. And I don't know the answers either.

So I'm going to be tuning in like the rest of us. So thank you.

Angela: You're welcome. And thank you for having me host over the next five days. This is so exciting for me.

Katie: I am just so excited. I can't even tell you. It is a feather in my cap. I'm so excited and I cannot wait. So tomorrow, tune in to hear what Dr. Angela Williamson has to say. She's talking first about one piece of advice that she wished she knew on her happiness journey. And I am sitting at the edge of my chair, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. So until next time, remember, kindness is contagious.