Everyday Happiness - Finding Harmony and Bliss

163-Not All Time Is Created Equal

Managing your time and energy for optimal performance.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 in the Intentional Margins membership community we talk about priorities and also about when we’re most at our peak energy to do certain tasks and not others.  For example, since I am an early bird and I have the most creativity in the morning as soon as I wake up, it’s best for me to do thinking and creative tasks then and not check email.  A light was shined onto this exact theory just this week when I sent out messages about a meet-up where I put in the wrong time, an hour earlier, because details were missed before the morning coffee had a chance to work.  Why are we fighting ourselves if we have an opportunity to tweak a few things.  

 

This is the same for the afternoon.  I love meetings and conversations in the afternoon because they give me energy and the afternoon is when I can fall into an energy slump. 

 

I invite you to ask yourself, what is the best time for the general activities you have throughout the day?  If you work a 9-5 job, ask yourself, how can I structure my day to use my energy efficiently.  It may even be a situation where you ask your boss if you can have a few mornings a week where you are not interrupted so that you can focus on deep work at your peak creative times.   I don’t know, but I think it might work. We all want the best deliverables and we all want it with ease and flow.  No one wants to be efforting through mundane tasks, not even our bosses.  Not every job works like this, but if it can, I invite you to think about it?   

 

Maybe this concept isn’t applied to work, but to your personal life.  Do you like to work out?  When can you work out at your best?  Morning or evening?  Maybe that’s a shift you can make.  Or even if it’s running errands or meeting a friend.  Would you be your best self at a Saturday morning breakfast or a late-night dinner?  You see, it’s all about managing our energy for peak performance with ease.  

 

If you’ve ever tried to match your energy with your todos, let me know.  We’re over @everydayhappinesswithkatie on social. 

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

162-Are You Languishing Part 2 of 2?

This feeling between depressed and flourishing lies a feeling of just, blah. The global pandemic heightened this feeling for a lot of people and in this 2-part series we’re using science to describe this feeling and why we’re feeling it. Then, we’ll look at an antidote to moving past this feeling and into what scientists call flow.   

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 are talking about the antidote for languishing.

 

What I love about this work by Adam Grant is that he believes the antidote to languishing is flow.  So, it may be hard to find flow in your work if you can’t focus because you are languishing, but he says, you could start, like him, with an early morning crossword puzzle or he mentions a Netflix binge where you are totally immersed with the characters. 

 

He describes flow as where you become immersed in a project, where you are singularly focused instead of being pulled away or checking email 782 times a day. 

 

Finding flow might be setting boundaries so that you can have uninterrupted time for a priority that matters to you.  The research indicates that protecting time where there are no interruptions will enhance our ability to find flow because it clears out distractions.  I do this every morning from about 6:30-8:00am, where I try so hard to not check email or social media and instead, be open to inspiration, to curate topics for this podcast.      

 

Sometimes flow can seem overwhelming and too big, so I invite you to focus on something small. What is one thing that makes you happy that you can focus on today without distraction, for as long or as little time you have.    

 

At the end of the day, as Grant points out, “We still live in a world that normalizes physical health challenges but stigmatizes mental health challenges. As we head into a new post-pandemic reality, it’s time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being.  Perhaps we start with languishing, where we’re just in the middle of feeling blah. 

 

I hope this was insightful and helpful for you.  If you enjoyed this episode, please smash that subscribe button, sign up to get this audio and transcript delivered to your inbox over at www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness 

Inspired by this article in the New York Times, There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

161-Are You Languishing Part 1 of 2?

This feeling between depressed and flourishing lies a feeling of just, blah. The global pandemic heightened this feeling for a lot of people and in this 2-part series we’re using science to describe this feeling and why we’re feeling it. Then, we’ll look at an antidote to moving past this feeling and into what scientists call flow.   

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 I read this article by Adam Grant on Languishing. It went viral in the height of the pandemic, I think because so many people could relate.  And it got me thinking again about this idea of languishing.

 

Adam Grant says languishing is the middle between depression and flourishing.  He says “Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.”  

 

Well this seems like there is no doubt a correlation between languishing and happiness.  Sometimes we just feel ho-hum, blah, just blah.  And now we have a word for that, it’s called languishing.  

 

Have you felt over the past 18 months that you’ve been or had times when you were languishing?  I certainly have.  

 

Look, we can’t be happy every moment of every day, our other emotions would be neglected.  There is a reason we have so many emotions - we are well-rounded and complex humans.  

 

Grant points out that “Part of the danger [with languishing] is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive.”  

So tomorrow we are going to get into what the antidote for languishing might be. 

 

Until next time. 

 

Inspired by this article in the New York Times, There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

160-Creating Happiness

We can’t wait for happiness to always fall in our lap like that perfect parking spot - although, that does create a happy feeling.  So how can we manufacture a little happiness on our own?  Today’s episode breaks it down.    

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 I’ve been thinking about happiness and still being happy when we don’t get what we want.  When we want something and we get it - for a minute, we get that boost and that’s called natural happiness.  It’s the mood, the feeling of happiness.  We’re searching for a parking spot and we find one, we feel happy.  

 

But how can we feel happiness even if we don’t get what we want?  That’s where Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert’s research on synthetic happiness comes in.   It’s this idea that we can manufacture some of our own happiness, we don’t have to wait for it to come to us, like that perfect parking spot.  Because, let’s face it, that perfect parking spot may never show up for us today.  

 

As Dr. Daniel Gilbert puts it, “...we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience” over materiality.

 

That commodity is happiness and with practice, he says, we can find more happiness through choice than we ever will through selfish pursuits and material acquisition.

 

This is where our frontal lobe part of our brain comes into play. This is the part in our brain that allows us humans to have reasoning, executive function skills and even more mind blowing is that this part of our brain allows us to experience things even before going through them - or maybe never experiencing it.  Thanks to the frontal lobe you can be happy even though you didn’t get that pay raise.  

 

If happiness is not a thing, but a state of mind, then we can create synthetic happiness.  Now, I am not talking about toxic positivity, which is a whole different thing and one we don’t have time for today.  What I am saying is that the science indicates, we humans have the ability to synthesize happiness - we don’t have to wait for happiness to happen to us.   And that I think is incredible.  

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  Do you have any experience with creating a glass is half full scenario when it otherwise might have felt completely empty?  Send me a message or tag me in your stories post.  We’re over at everydayhappiensswithkatie. 

 

Inspired by thisTED Talk, The Surprising Science of Happiness and the follow-up blog fixing some mistakes, over at Ten years later: Dan Gilbert on life after “The surprising science of happiness”.

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

159-Happy Life Take Aways

 

Today we discuss insights from our 3-part series on the how of happiness.   

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 so, what did you think?  Did the three equations for happiness give you something to think about? 

 

I took away that I can control my happiness, or at least be an active participant in my well-being, after my genetics and circumstances, I still have an active part to play, by first looking at my relationships and the way I go through life, from friendships, family and purposeful work.  We know connection is key to happiness.  

 

I also took away that focusing on what we want instead of what we have is a disaster in so many ways.  I think this is something we all know, but it’s a good reminder.  I look at this section as gratitude and appreciation for all the things.  Both tangible and intangible.  The people, the experiences and all the things.  

 

The Dalai Lama said, “We need to learn how to want what we have, not to have what we want in order to get steady and stable happiness.” 

 

This is powerful and something I am really focusing on right now.  

 

I’m curious, what did you take from these episodes?  What ah-ha moment did you have.  Send me a message on social over at @everydayhappinesswithkatie.  

 

And, if you are enjoying this podcast, smash the subscribe button and leave a 5-star review.  It helps us spread more kindness into the world and we invite you to be a part of that.  If you want the audio and transcript delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe at www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness. 

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

158-The Three Equations for a Happy Life According to Arthur Brooks and the Science of Happiness (part-3-of-3)

This 3-part series on the how of happiness inspired by Arthur Brooks gives us insights into what we can do to boost our happiness, even when we don’t always feel like being happy.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 Arthur Brooks is an accomplished scientist and professor at the Harvard Business School and also writes a column for The Atlantic.  He says there are 3 equations for well-being to manage your own happiness.  The third equation is how we feel satisfied.  SATISFACTION = WHAT YOU HAVE ÷ WHAT YOU WANT.

 

This is so true.  It’s what we tell our kids all the time.  Be happy with what you have.  Brooks opines that so many of us desperately go about life trying to gather up more “wants” trying to achieve higher levels of satisfaction by increasing our wants (the numerator in this division equation).  He says the cycle of work-spend-work-spend is like being on a treadmill.  It’s never enough.  

 

What he says the secret is, is to focus on what you have (the denominator in this division equation).  We talked about this in Episode 23 about the reverse bucket list. So, decreasing the wants in our lives and focusing on the haves, gives our brain a chance to see happiness and satisfaction because there are fewer wants taking our attention away from what we already have.  Start by making a list of what you have, if that seems too daunting, perhaps start with a simple gratitude list.  We know that gratitude is a great boost for happiness and then work your way into a haves list.  I think you’ll be surprised what shows up for you. 

 

And, if you are enjoying this podcast, smash the subscribe button and leave a 5-star review.  It helps us spread more kindness into the world and we invite you to be a part of that.  If you want the audio and transcript delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe at www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness. 

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

157-The Three Equations for a Happy Life According to Arthur Brooks and the Science of Happiness (part-2-of-3)

This 3-part series on the how of happiness inspired by Arthur Brooks gives us insights into what we can do to boost our happiness, even when we don’t always feel like being happy.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 Arthur Brooks is an accomplished scientist and professor at the Harvard Business School and also writes a column for The Atlantic.  He says there are 3 equations for well-being to manage your own happiness.  Yesterday I said that we were going to dig into habits.  The second equation that Arthur Brooks identifies that help us get to the how of happiness is this:  HABITS = FAITH + FAMILY + FRIENDS + WORK.

 

He’s convinced and I agree, long lasting happiness comes from human connection, and he adds productive work.   Faith, he says, is anything you want where you can ponder life's deeper questions - it’s not religious, although it can be.  We all know family comes in all shapes and sizes from blood relation to our chosen family - we’re talking about deep meaningful relationships with others.   A study was done years ago where psychologist George Vaillant, summarized the findings as “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

 

Now, I know a lot of people that don’t love their jobs, so why put work into the happiness equation.  Well, Arthur Brooks said, after reviewing so much scientific research, that it was overwhelmingly clear that a “productive human endeavour creates a sense of purpose in life”.   So, what the research indicates is that being unemployed is bad for happiness and there is a sliding scale to good jobs and bad jobs.  When we talk about work, this also includes stay-at-home parenting and I’m adding in hobby creation if you are retired.   Arthur Brooks says “What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning your success and serving others.”

 

Now, work doesn’t mean money.  And really, work might be more useful in the context of satisfaction.  Does this work, how you are spending your time, satisfy you?  Satisfaction is a big question and that’s what we are going to unpack tomorrow.  What’s the key to feeling satisfied and how do we do it.  

 

And, if you are enjoying this podcast, smash the subscribe button and leave a 5-star review.  It helps us spread more kindness into the world and we invite you to be a part of that.  If you want the audio and transcript delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe at www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness. 

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

156-The Three Equations for a Happy Life According to Arthur Brooks and the Science of Happiness (Part 1 of 3)

 

This 3-part series on the how of happiness inspired by Arthur Brooks gives us insights into what we can do to boost our happiness, even when we don’t always feel like being happy.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 Arthur Brooks is an accomplished scientist and professor at the Harvard Business School and also writes a column for The Atlantic.  He says there are 3 equations for well-being to manage your own happiness.  The first is EQUATION 1: SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING = GENES + CIRCUMSTANCES + HABITS.

 

The scientists have purposefully not called “subjective well-being” happiness because they all think happiness is too vague.  But if we were to interchange it for a moment it would be the equation for what you might define as happiness.  Genes + circumstances + habits.   

 

But this is where it gets interesting. If the equation is a cup and we’re asking ourselves, how do we fill our cup with happiness well, the science says that our genetics make up about half of our happiness cup.  

 

But then, the research is all over the place.  It says that 10-40% of our happiness is based on circumstances, the good, the bad, everything that comes into our lives.  That could be a lot.  But, here’s the kicker, it doesn’t matter as much as we think, because there is this scientific principle called the hedonic treadmill that says, whatever the circumstance, we humans return to our baseline anyway.   

 

So, as we dig into the how of this happiness equation, genes and circumstances aren’t a productive focus because we can’t change our genetics and circumstances don’t last - we know we return to baseline.  So we’re left with our habits.  And this is where equation number two comes into play - tomorrow.  But this is not what you think. It’s not about how to make good habits.  Turn in tomorrow and we’ll unpack this. 

 

And, if you are enjoying this podcast, smash the subscribe button and leave a 5-star review.  It helps us spread more kindness into the world and we invite you to be a part of that.  If you want the audio and transcript delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe at www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness. 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

155-Kicking The Soccer Balls Down Field

When I heard this analogy, it all clicked.  I’m sharing it with you today. 

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 I heard this analogy years ago, and it’s stuck.  

 

It’s this idea that we can’t do it all - all at the same time.  

 

Happiness and balance and harmony is less about the calendar and more about enjoying the life the calendar represents.  What’s on your calendar is how you spend your time.  That’s a given.  But are we spending our precious time doing the right things in this season? 

 

We can’t do it all at once.  We were never created to do-it-all, that’s called burn-out, no one wins that game.   

 

So, imagine there are 10 soccer balls all lined up on the goal line of a soccer field.  You get 10 kicks.  You can kick every ball one time or you can choose your priorities - your goals -  in this season and kick 2 balls.  One 7 times and the other 3 times.  See how much more progress you make on those two balls when you focus on what matters most in this season.   

 

So the question is, what soccer balls are you going to kick?  

 

Let me know in a 5-star-review, in a DM or a social media story, tag us at @everydayhappinesswithkatie.   

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

 

154-Is Our Ego Getting In The Way Of Our Happiness?

That’s a loaded question, right?  Is our ego getting in the way of our happiness?  What if it is?  What can we do about it?  Well, that’s exactly what we talk about today.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 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 I was wondering, is our ego getting in the way of our happiness because of our human desire to be “right”?  I watched this TED Talk about this concept and I’ll link to it in the show notes.  

 

The question is, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?  This TED talk hypothesized that the key is to not take things personally.  Well, if you are anything like me, that’s easier said than done.  

 

The first strategy to push your ego aside and choose happiness is to realize: it’s not about me.  In fact, it’s rarely about us when we are actually taking things personally.  To counteract this natural tendency, we can put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.  If we are taking it personally that the car behinding us is driving too close, or honking their horn when we are just trying to find our turn.  Maybe the person is having an emergency or something where he needs to get somewhere quick and it’s not about us at all.  

 

Now here’s the kicker.  If that doesn’t work - and it won’t always.  The flip side is:  It’s about me. 

Yup, you see, when someone says something to you, that you deep down know or have an insecurity about, it hurts.  And in those moments, it is about me.  You see, you can only take things personally if someone touches a raw nerve.  When I am being criticized for being bossy or cold, it hurts, because deep down, I wonder if I come across as bossy or not compassionate.  But you see, when someone hits that raw nerve, and it hurts, that’s the moment when you give yourself some empathy.  

 

At the end of the day.  People will be mean, they will say things that hurt your feelings, you will say things to yourself that you would never say to anyone else, and yet, we need to remember, no matter what people say to us, we always keep our value.   We may be bruised, beaten and be in our feelings, but our personal value does not change based on other people’s opinions. 

 

 

Inspired by this TED Talk.  

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/