Podcasts about hacking happiness

Send us a textWhat if self-doubt could be your greatest ally in pursuing a life of meaningful impact? That's a hint of insight you'll gain from my conversation with Penny Locaso, a groundbreaking behavioral scientist and impact expert. On episode #118 of the 2B Bolder Podcast, Penny shares her inspiring journey from a successful career in the oil and gas industry to founding HackingHappyco, which is a testament to the power of bold decisions and authenticity. She shares how leaving a long-term relationship and corporate job led her to redefine success through personal fulfillment and impact, all while single-handedly raising her son.Penny opens up about the pesky persistence of self-doubt and how it often masquerades as fear in moments that don't actually pose any threat. Drawing from her experiences, like delivering a TED Talk and securing a book deal, Penny illustrates the importance of taking bold steps and forging relationships outside one's comfort zone. The shift from a corporate giant like Shell to entrepreneurship required her to unlearn certain habits and embrace adaptability, shedding light on how corporate skills can hinder and propel a successful business journey and emphasizing the importance of self-awareness.Penny provides invaluable strategies for building a personal brand with resilience and micro bravery. We explore the realities of entrepreneurship as a numbers game, where facing rejection is par for the course, but persistence and alignment with one's goals lead to true impact. Penny's candid reflection on setbacks is a powerful reminder that perseverance is the cornerstone of meaningful change. Join us to uncover how embracing risk and resilience can lead to greater impact and personal fulfillment.Alongside her entrepreneurial endeavors, Penny is the published author of Hacking Happiness, a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, a passionate yoga teacher, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student completing her Graduate Diploma in Psychology.Tune in to be inspired and gain valuable insights from one woman to another.Support the showWhen you subscribe to the podcast, you are supporting our work's mission, allowing us to continue highlighting successful women in a variety of careers to inspire others helping pay our wonderful editor, Chris, and helping me in paying our hosting expenses.

What if everything you've been chasing—success, wealth, recognition—turned out to be the very thing standing in the way of your true happiness? What if the relentless pursuit of ‘more' is keeping you from discovering that the joy you seek has been within you all along?Today, on Superhumanize, we dive deep into these questions with a guest who has not only asked them but found answers—Ashish Kothari. Ashish is the founder of Happiness Squad and the author of Hardwired for Happiness. After spending 25 years in consulting, including nearly two decades as a partner at McKinsey & Company, Ashish made a radical pivot toward what really matters: teaching individuals and organizations how to rewire for happiness from the inside out. His goal? To touch over a billion lives and democratize happiness for all.In this conversation, we'll explore the art and science of thriving in a world designed for survival. We'll talk about emotional mastery, how purpose-driven leadership transforms businesses, and why true happiness isn't about accumulating but about aligning—with yourself, your values, and your community. Whether you're an individual looking for deeper fulfillment or a leader aiming to build a happier organization, this episode offers insights that can change the way you live, work, and lead.Episode highlights:01:11 The Science and Practice of Happiness03:09 Integrating Mindfulness into Daily Life13:28 The Power of Gratitude22:59 Organizational Happiness: A New Metric for Success31:43 Exploring Human Compassion Beyond Humanity32:49 The Need to Evolve Beyond Human34:23 The Role of Technology in Human Evolution35:16 Balancing Technology and Mental Health37:06 The Impact of Technology on Social Connections39:15 Practical Tips for Managing Technology Use53:26 Redefining Success and Personal Metrics01:00:25 Finding Stillness and Inner Peace01:02:36 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsResources mentioned:The Happiness Squad websiteHardwired for Happiness bookGuest's social handles:LinkedInInstagramYouTubeP.S. If you enjoy this episode and feel it helps to elevate your life, please give us a rating or review. And if you feel others may benefit from this podcast as well, spread the word, share and help grow our tribe of Superhumans. When we help heal One, we help heal All. Much gratitude and love.Yours,Ariane

Hello, and welcome to Entangled! The podcast where we explore the science of consciousness, the true nature of reality, and what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience.Today I'm joined by filmmaker and documentarian Jeff Hays. Jeff's films include Farenhype 9/11, Rigged, Vaccines Revealed, Bought, Money Revealed, Hacking Happiness, Chasing the Scream, and most recently, the The Real Anthony Fauci and The Real RFK Jr.In this conversation, Jeff describes his journey from stockbroker to filmmaker. Jeff explains that while he's done a number of films involving politics, his interests have always been more focused on health and wealth. We dive into Jeff's latest film, The Real RFK Jr., the history of his and Bobby's relationship, and the making of Jeff's prior film - the documentary version of Bobby's book The Real Anthony Fauci. We discuss how RFK Jr. has been portrayed by the corporate media, and whether it reflects an accurate representation of the man.Next, we discuss the presidential debates, their importance for the electorate, and how the DNC/RNC has been able to maintain their duopoly by controlling these debates. We discuss Bobby's decades-long career protecting the environment and preserving clean water. We consider the quality of moral courage and the challenges in speaking truth to power.We then consider the archetype of humanity seeking a benevolent king. We consider the tragedies faced by Bobby and the Kennedy family over the decades, and how those experience shaped the man RFK Jr. is today. We consider ideas of miracles, destiny, and fate.From there, I ask Jeff which presidential candidate is more representative of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Joseph R. Biden, Jr.? I then ask Jeff – who is the real Anthony Fauci? We discuss a small sample of the heroes that emerged during the pandemic. We end the conversation speculating on the six months left until the election, and how voters will adjust as they recognize Bobby has a legitimate of winning.This Outro is titled “The Real Robert F. Kennedy”. Outros are available for this and all episodes at entangledpodcast.substack.com. Music from the show is available on the Spotify playlist “Entangled – The Vibes”. If you like the show, please drop a 5-star review and subscribe on Substack, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.To quote presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “You've got to stay in the battle. And once you know what's happening, you're in the battle, essentially, for life. So, you have to do that sustainably. Which means you have to find some place of spiritual peace to proceed from inside of yourself. You have to live life in a way where you don't get attached to the outcomes. And you understand that the only thing that you can control is your own conduct… Keep getting up every day, and don't get discouraged. Don't get crushed by the failures, or the defeats, or the tragedies of it all. But find peace inside of yourself by knowing that you're doing the right thing every day. And that getting up and fighting for this is what you were put on this planet to do, at this point in history.”Please enjoy the episode!Music: Intro/Outro: Ben Fox - "The Vibe". End Credits: Jake Soffer – “From Sea to Sky”.Recorded: 05/15/24. Published: 06/27/24.Outro: “The Real Robert F. Kennedy” preview at 1:25:30, starts at episode 67.Check out the resources discussed:* Jeff Hays Films: https://www.jeffhaysfilms.com/* The Real RFK Jr. (film by Jeff Hays): https://therealrfkjrmovie.com/trailer1/?sub4=0a2c1323318b4d71bfcb145d31661f1f&afid=23* The Real Anthony Fauci (film by Jeff Hays): https://therealanthonyfaucimovie.com/trailer/* The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior (book by Dick Russel): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/120807494-the-real-rfk-jr* American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family (book by RFK Jr.): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39074272-american-values* The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (book by RFK Jr.): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58063409-the-real-anthony-fauci* The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race (book by RFK Jr.): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60686739-the-wuhan-cover-up* Children's Health Defense – Interview of Jeff Hays & RFK Jr.: https://rumble.com/v1ocp50-robert-f.-kennedy-jr.-and-filmmaker-jeff-hays-discuss-new-documentary-the-r.html This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit entangledpodcast.substack.com

In this episode with Stephanie Harrison, founder of "The New Happy" and expert in positive psychology, we get into the essence of happiness and dispel the common misconceptions surrounding it. Drawing from her own journey through personal unhappiness, Stephanie uncovers societal beliefs that often lead us astray and offers a fresh perspective on finding genuine happiness. With a blend of academic expertise and personal insights, she shares her revolutionary philosophy, emphasizing the transformative power of creativity, connection, and serving others. Some highlights we explore: The journey from "Old Happy" to "New Happy" and the damaging beliefs it entails. Strategies for hacking happiness and implementing actionable steps for joy. Revolutionizing our understanding of happiness, especially for entrepreneurs. The role of creativity, connection, and service in cultivating lasting happiness and success. And more Enjoy!

Nicole is an accomplished leadership and empowerment strategist and educator with a diverse background in Biology, Chemistry, Metaphysics, and Finance.  She awakens your true potential by permanently erasing limiting beliefs and showing you how to live a life you deserve without compromising who you are or what you love. She is also a Contactee / Experiencer and has had contact since she was an infant. Her and her Dad would see UFOs at night near their home. This carried on until adulthood and has also had two Near Death Experiences with her last one being a shared NDE. Her expertise has been showcased through various media platforms, including radio shows, local TV appearances, international conference keynotes, and even the Travel Channel's Greatest Mysteries: Smithsonian. Nicole's was recently featured in Jeff Hays Film's upcoming release, Hacking Happiness, slated for early 2024. Website: https://majikllc.com/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nicolemajik Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.majikllc:  Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolemajik/

Nicole is an accomplished leadership and empowerment strategist and educator with a diverse background in Biology, Chemistry, Metaphysics, and Finance.  She awakens your true potential by permanently erasing limiting beliefs and showing you how to live a life you deserve without compromising who you are or what you love. She is also a Contactee / Experiencer and has had contact since she was an infant. Her and her Dad would see UFOs at night near their home. This carried on until adulthood and has also had two Near Death Experiences with her last one being a shared NDE. Her expertise has been showcased through various media platforms, including radio shows, local TV appearances, international conference keynotes, and even the Travel Channel's Greatest Mysteries: Smithsonian. Nicole's was recently featured in Jeff Hays Film's upcoming release, Hacking Happiness, slated for early 2024. Website: https://majikllc.com/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nicolemajik Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.majikllc:  Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolemajik/

This week I have another super exciting guest on the show, Penny Locaso. Penny and I discuss: What brought Penny on this journey The definition of happiness Finding your purpose or meaning Making happiness a priority The Conservation of Resources Theory The layers of “should” Stress and breath work Being connected to ourselves Feeling like you don't have a choice Just showing up…just doing the thing Advice from Penny that listeners can take away and use right now   And so much more! More about Penny: Penny Locaso is the world's first Happiness Hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans, by 2025 how to flourish in life. Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is her own ongoing experiment. A little while back she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness. She left a sixteen-year career as an executive, relocated her family from Perth back to Melbourne, left an 18-year relationship, and started her own purpose-driven company HackingHappy.co  With over 20 years' experience in enabling adaptability Penny's calling is to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty, find their flow, and flourish. Penny works with governments, corporations, and educators to build a more intentionally adaptable society. She has partnered with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Booking.com, SalesForce, Deloitte, and LuluLemon, to name a few. Penny's work creating the world-first Intentional Adaptability Quotient® (IAQ®) psychometric tool and education program was recently published in the American Consulting Journal of Psychology. IAQ® decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change.  Alongside Penny's entrepreneurial endeavors, she is the published author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a passionate yoga teacher, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student of Psychology and Trauma informed therapy with world renowned teacher Gabor Mate. Imagine what could be possible for you, your team, or your community if you had a Penny in your pocket!   Connect with Penny: Website: https://hackinghappy.co/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hackinghappyco/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pennylocaso/?kuid=b36a6af4-5652-45cf-9fee-465ba42b4d05&kref=wdQlIzc7H3rK     Want to do Pilates with me? Join me for my quick 15 minute Daily Pilates Workout. It will help you build strength and flexibility and it's totally FREE. Click here and I'll send the workout directly to your inbox! I can't wait to see you on your mat J Haven't subscribed to the podcast yet? Subscribe HERE and never miss an episode.   Connect with Kate: Website: www.MindMovementHealth.com.au Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MindMovementHealth Instagram: http://instagram.com/MindMovementHealth      

Nicole Majik, The Empowerment Alchemist, merges a unique blend of biology, chemistry, metaphysics, and financial acumen to guide individuals toward success. Creator of The Alchemy of Transformation, she's recognized for helping others eliminate limiting beliefs and align with their soul's purpose. Featured in media and the upcoming film "Hacking Happiness," Nicole believes in empowering lives through spiritual enlightenment and wealth manifestation. Learn more at https://majikllc.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hacking Happiness through Divorce with Penny LacasoIn this episode of we welcome Penny Lacaso from Melbourne, Australia, to discuss how individuals facing or going through divorce can find happiness and empowerment. Penny, a happiness hacker and author of 'Hacking Happiness,' shares her personal journey, including her childhood experience with her parents' divorce and her own divorce after a long-term marriage. She emphasizes the significance of defining happiness on one's own terms and provides techniques for cultivating joy and self-compassion during challenging times like divorce. The conversation covers the importance of allowing oneself to feel a range of emotions, the power of small acts of kindness, and practical exercises to foster happiness, including the 'Three Good Things' practice recommended by positive psychology. Penny and Lesa also discuss the value of self-compassion and using challenging life events as opportunities for growth and self-discovery.00:00 Introduction to the Show and Guest01:45 Getting to Know Penny Lacaso03:29 Penny's Personal Journey and the Concept of Happiness06:55 Understanding Self and Discovering Personal Happiness08:51 The Power of Self-Compassion and Overcoming Judgement11:49 The Role of Choice in Happiness and Dealing with Negative Emotions15:51 Practical Tips for Finding Joy and Happiness31:14 Final Thoughts and Contact Information32:18 Show ClosingBio: Penny Lacaso is the first hapiness hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans by 2025, how to flourish in life! Find Penny here! FacebookInstagramLinkedinResources!Lesa Koski WebsiteLesa's Online CoursesLesa's Masterclass

I am honoured to welcome Penny Locaso to The Debra Shepherd Podcast.  Penny is the world's first Happiness Hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans, by 2025 how to flourish in life. Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is her own ongoing experiment. With over 20 years' experience in enabling adaptability Penny's calling is to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty, find their flow, and flourish. Penny works with governments, corporations, and educators to build a more intentionally adaptable society. She has partnered with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Booking.com, SalesForce, Deloitte, and LuluLemon, to name a few. Penny's work creating the world-first Intentional Adaptability Quotient® (IAQ®) psychometric tool and education program was recently published in the American Consulting Journal of Psychology. IAQ® decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change.  Alongside Penny's entrepreneurial endeavours, she is the published author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a passionate yoga teacher, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student of Psychology and Trauma informed therapy with world renowned teacher Gabor Mate.  HIGHLIGHTS How Penny turned her life upside down in the pursuit of happiness. How to discover what brings you happiness and joy. Being Wonder Woman versus being the Present Woman. Why presence is a practice and how to uncover what presence means to you. What a fulfilled and meaningful life means to Penny. Why Penny doesn't use the word success and chooses to focus on flourishing instead. Harmony and how the stage of life you are in determines where to prioritise your energy. Penny's approach to time blocking your daily self-care practice. One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself every day. LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS If you enjoy the podcast, leave a 5 star review. Let me know your favourite episode, interview, biggest takeaway or most inspiring moment. Don't miss the latest episodes. Follow or subscribe to the show to be notified when new episodes are released.    SHOW NOTES   Get all episode show notes here:   www.debrashepherd.com.au/debra-shepherd-podcast   CONNECT WITH PENNY HackingHappy.Co Instagram @HackingHappyCo CONNECT WITH DEBRA  www.debrashepherd.com.au Instagram @_DebraShepherd   Get your FREE Communications Diagnostic here

In today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Gad Saad, a professor of marketing at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business. More significantly, Dr. Saad has spent a decade as the research chair in evolutionary behavioral sciences and Darwinian consumption. He's a prominent voice challenging political correctness and its associated oppressions. Beyond his extensive research and academic accolades, Dr. Saad reaches out to a broader audience, sharing his insights through his popular blog, YouTube channel, and podcast. As someone deeply interested in challenging harmful ideologies, I've taken note of his impactful book, The Parasitic Mind. Today, I'm particularly eager to delve into the findings of his latest release, The Saad Truth About Happiness.In our discussion centered around his newest book, we delve into the evolutionary aspects of happiness. As someone who's written extensively on longevity and aims to live to at least 180, I believe in the importance of happiness as a skill. With Dr. Saad, we explore living the life you truly desire, the role of anti-fragility in happiness, and the inherent biological differences in male and female behaviors. It's crucial, especially in today's climate, to understand the triggers that may be rooted in our biology or false belief systems. Drawing from personal experiences, I can vouch for the invaluable insights in Dr. Saad's book. Listeners, it's a must-read for those keen on understanding and cultivating happiness.(03:50) Decision-Making in Relationships & Academia• Must-have ingredients for happiness• The impact of your relationship on happiness• When do you make the decision to decouple from a relationship?• How statistical decision theory applies to academia• Read: The Parasitic Mind by Dr. Gad Saad • The garage band effect that occurs in academia that prevents action-taking• Why academics who go on the Joe Rogan Experience are ridiculed by peers• Read: The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene• Behind the scenes of our interviews on Joe Rogan's podcast• Joe Rogan Experience #275 - Dave Asprey• Joe Rogan Experience # 2012 - Dr. Gad Saad• Happiness in moderation vs. living high on life(19:40) Perfectionism, Criticism & The Genetics of Happiness• Navigating the inverted U curve for perfectionism• Handling the two groups of critics• The Science Behind Just One Mold Toxin in your Coffee by Dave Asprey• The genetics of happiness • Applying the psychometric scale of internal vs. external locus of control to happiness• How our evolutionary behaviors can become maladaptive in modern society• Exploring how having children impacts happiness • What the research shows about how to choose a long term partner (47:10) Evolutionary Insights on Mating, Cheating & Play• The evolutionary roots of sexual variety seeking • Why certain cultures tolerate women on the side more than other cultures • The impact of birth control and hormonal changes on fertility and attraction• Read: The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller• The link between the ovulatory cycle and women's beautification• What increases men's testosterone: a study providing context for the mid-life crisis• Why play is essential for happiness • The re-education of Jordan Peterson• Read: The Saad Truth About Happiness by Dr. Gad SaadResourcesDave Asprey's NEW Book ‘Smarter Not Harder' is out now: https://daveasprey.com/books Website: gadsaad.comRead: The Parasitic Mind by Dr. Gad SaadRead: The Saad Truth About Happiness by Dr. Gad SaadX: @GadSaadPodcast: The Saad TruthYouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCLH7qUqM0PLieCVaHA7RegAInstagram: @doctorgadsaadFacebook: acebook.com/Dr.Gad.SaadLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/gad-saadThe Human Upgrade is produced by Crate Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Penny Locaso is the world's first Happiness Hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans by 2025 how to flourish in life.Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny works with governments, educators and the likes of Google, Microsoft, Deloitte, and LuluLemon, to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty, and build a more intentionally adaptable society.Penny created the world-first Intentional Adaptability Quotient® (IAQ®) psychometric tool, which decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change. She's the author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a passionate yoga teacher, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student of psychology and trauma-informed therapy with world-renowned teacher Gabor Mate.In this episode we chat about: Penny's definition of happiness, embracing emotional diversity and learning how to navigate a range of emotions effectively. that women often suppress negative emotions due to societal expectations, which can lead to issues like anger being misplaced. the concept of "Angry Mum Syndrome," a term she's exploring to understand how women deal with suppressed anger challenges faced by women who often take on excessive responsibilities, delving into the "Martyr Mother Syndrome" and the need for better communication within families. the relationship between productivity and happiness and that the traditional concept of productivity, often associated with constantly doing more, has become problematic. the importance of self-care, taking micro-breaks, and recharging mental resources to maintain well-being. that while humans are naturally good at adapting, much of this adaptation happens unconsciously. the Intentional Adaptability Quotient, a psychometric tool she developed with the goal of empowering people to adapt intentionally, which measures a person's level of intentional adaptability and allows individuals to assess their adaptability skills and identify areas for improvement. removing the word "should" from your vocabulary and replacing it with "I want” to shift the focus from external pressures to personal desires, allowing individuals to prioritize tasks that align with their values and needs. the key skills that constitute intentional adaptability - these include: focus - essential for dealing with distractions courage - using fear constructively curiosity - maintaining a sense of wonder and exploration two practical strategies for promoting happiness and well-being device-free family dinners, providing a platform for open communication and connection a practice called "Rose Rose Thorn Stem Bud," where family members share positive and negative experiences of their day, fostering emotional expression and understanding. the relevance of intentional adaptability in the context of neurodiverse individuals, and Penny emphasizes the potential for growth and development in everyone.RESOURCESHacking HappyFollow Penny on LinkedInSHAREPlease head to our Facebook, Insta or Linked In pages to connect with us and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.

Did you see the release from this week? Hacking happiness - join me for 5 days to hack a little happiness for yourself! AND enjoy this episode for a super quick tip for you! It's something I learned from my own life coach decades ago - and I STILL use it! It's that good! Be sure to join the hacking happiness adventure, starting 8/28/23. Don't worry if you are listening after that - it will live on as a digital experience so enjoy! You can find all of the links in the show notes or you can find all podcasts here: https://www.LauraErdmanLuntz.com/podcast. ************ SPONSOR: hacking happiness Get on the waiting list for my next MANIFESTING :: jumpstart, virtual, 3-day training. ************ WELLNESS TIP: In each show, I share a wellness tip or trick you can add into your life to help you feel better and more energized. This week: I skip the wellness tip in Quick Tip episodes. Young Living products I have mentioned: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/LELWishlist⁠ Other Wellness tip products: ⁠tinyurl.com/LELWellnessTools⁠. *NOTE: I participate in Amazon's and Young Living's affiliate programs and earn commissions off of both Amazon and Young Living at no extra cost to you. Thank you for purchasing through my links to support this podcast. ************ INFO ABOUT MY WELLNESS COMMUNITY: SIMPLY :: the wellness place: Find out more about the benefits of our community and how to join: ⁠Benefits⁠ WELLNESS RESOURCES: Wellness Podcast: SIMPLY :: the wellness podcast:  Grab the free workbook: SIMPLY :: the wellness blueprint. SIMPLY :: clean: Check out info about this powerful Lifestyle Reboot and join our next one!  ************ LEAVE A QUESTION FOR ME: https://anchor.fm/muselaura/message ************ Coach with me: Learn More Yoga with me: Beginner Yoga Series, 12-video download. Live, online, classes via Zoom: Study with Laura ************ FOLLOW ME ONLINE: - Facebook - Ignite FB community: ⁠Ignite Your Life with Laura - Blog - IG: @MuseLaura - YouTube ************ Please help me share the word about my podcast by: Sharing it with friends, taking a screenshot of the episode and posting it and/or Reviewing it on whatever platform you use! Thanks for listening! XO, Laura --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/muselaura/message

“Happiness is an inside job.” Yep, thanks, but HOW DO I DO IT? We all deserve more happiness AND, for students of the Law of Attraction, we learn it's one of the first steps we need to take. Ready to start feeling better TODAY! Let's tap into some tangible steps on how to hack some of that happiness for ourselves!  AND join me for my NEW FREE RELEASE: hacking happiness Resources for you to tap into: Podcast #21: It's OK to Desire - In fact, It's Necessary! Podcast #62: Finding Joy Within Stand Tall: Empower Your Mind and Body: Yoga for Changing FEAR to EXCITEMENT You can find all of the links in the show notes or you can find all podcasts here: Podcast Show Notes. ************ SPONSOR: My NEW course:  hacking happiness Get on the waiting list for my next MANIFESTING :: jumpstart, virtual, 3-day training. ************ WELLNESS TIP: In each show, I share a wellness tip or trick you can add into your life to help you feel better and more energized. This week: Tongue scraping Young Living products I have mentioned: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/LELWishlist⁠ Other Wellness tip products: ⁠tinyurl.com/LELWellnessTools⁠. *NOTE: I participate in Amazon's and Young Living's affiliate programs and earn commissions off of both Amazon and Young Living at no extra cost to you. Thank you for purchasing through my links to support this podcast. ************ INFO ABOUT MY WELLNESS COMMUNITY: SIMPLY :: the wellness place: Find out more about the benefits of our community and how to join: ⁠Benefits⁠ WELLNESS RESOURCES: Wellness Podcast: SIMPLY :: the wellness podcast:  Grab the free workbook: SIMPLY :: the wellness blueprint. SIMPLY :: clean: Check out info about this powerful Lifestyle Reboot and join our next one!  ************ LEAVE A QUESTION FOR ME: https://anchor.fm/muselaura/message ************ Coach with me: Learn More Yoga with me: Beginner Yoga Series, 12-video download. Live, online, classes via Zoom: Study with Laura ************ FOLLOW ME ONLINE: - Facebook - Ignite FB community: ⁠Ignite Your Life with Laura - Blog - IG: @MuseLaura - YouTube ************ Please help me share the word about my podcast by: Sharing it with friends, taking a screenshot of the episode and posting it and/or Reviewing it on whatever platform you use! Thanks for listening! XO, Laura --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/muselaura/message

Future Fit Leadership with Future Leadership is back for Season 3. We kick off with Penny Locaso, on the topic of happiness. How often do we use or hear people justifying a decision based on how happy they were.... I left the job because I just wasn't happy". How many of you feel you are that hamster wheel, exhausted and just don't have the energy to get off? Are you prepared to make significant, intentional decisions in your life, to find happiness or flourish? How often do we let fear guide our decisions and - what changes would you make tomorrow if fear simply did not exist. Ignoring unhappiness or not taking action to change things in your life that are making your unhappy is not really living your best life. Penny shares with us how she has "Hacked Happiness"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happiness Hacks: In this episode, host Anshu Bahanda talks to Aditi Surana, founder of India's first mental gym—APT about why happiness eludes so many, and what it really takes to be happy.Aditi shares her observations on what brings people joy and what the research shows about happiness; and she also explains why so many people reported higher levels of happiness despite the stress and uncertainty of lockdowns. Through her expertise, she sheds light on the power of resilience, adaptability, and the ability to find joy in simple pleasures. Aditi's unique perspective will inspire you to look for silver linings and discover happiness even in the face of adversity.Throughout this engaging conversation, Aditi also unveils practical strategies to cultivate happiness in everyday life. From fostering meaningful connections to engaging in self-care, she provides actionable steps to enhance your well-being and embrace a happier mindset.So, get ready to embark on a transformative journey towards a happier and more fulfilled life. Tune in to "Wellness Curated" as Aditi Surana reveals her secrets to Happiness Hacks, including her reflections on the pandemic and how people found happiness in unexpected places.For a transcript of this show, go to https://new.wellnesscurated.life/hacking-happiness/If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Please leave us a review on Apple iTunes and help others discover this podcast. You can visit wellnesscurated.life and follow us on Twitter @WellnessCurated, On Instagram @wellnesscuratedbyanshubahanda,On Facebook @Wellness Curated by Anshu Bahanda,On LinkedIn @Wellness Curated by Anshu Bahanda, And on YouTube @wellnesscuratedbyanshubahanda. for more wellness tips to help you live your best life.

Are you feeling tired and overwhelmed with your business and life right now? Juggling work, family, fitness, friends - feeling like you're trying to handle all of it but you can't really focus properly on any of them? Are you planning, scheduling, writing to do lists - but finding you just don't have the energy to action them? “When this thing is done, I'll have more time to do that” - except that never really happens. 3 things pop up to replace that one and everything feels urgent and important.  You spend all day putting out little fires and then look back and wonder what you actually got done. You just keep going and going and going, then you burn out. And even then, it doesn't stop, you still have a business to run and people to look after. So what do you do? It's time to change your beliefs on what success looks like, and I have the perfect person to help you with that! Penny Locaso is the world's first Happiness Hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans, by 2025 how to flourish in life.  Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is her own ongoing experiment. A little while back she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness. She left a sixteen-year career as an executive, relocated her family from Perth back to Melbourne, left an 18-year relationship, and started her own purpose-driven company HackingHappy.co  With over 20 years' experience in enabling adaptability Penny's calling is to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty, find their flow, and flourish.  Penny has partnered with the likes of Google, Microsoft, LuluLemon, and more, is the published author of the book Hacking Happiness, and has so many other amazing things going on I'm going to link them in the show notes so you can check them out! Imagine what could be possible for you if you had a Penny in your pocket! Listen in as Penny shares why she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness, the first step she took to gain clarity on the path forward, the most powerful action she took to progress her dreams, and how to step out of robot mode and into your spark! Find out more and connect with Penny at her website, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn --- Ready to simplify your business? Start with these resources: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.marissaroberts.com/resources/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Enjoyed this episode? Please subscribe, rate, and review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or your favourite podcast platform! --- Come chat with me on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

This week in light of the ongoing debates and discussion over the impact of Generative AI on work, society, and humanity I am publishing a re-edit of an interview from 2019 with John C Havens, the Executive Director of The IEEE Global Initiative on AI Ethics and their Sustainability Practice Lead John is a highly respected thought leader on artificial intelligence and ethics and the author of Heartificial Intelligence and Hacking Happiness. Long before AI entered our mainstream discourse John was working on the big ethical questions around AI. Although recorded in 2019 the issues we discuss are more pertinent today than they were then, including the negative externalities of technology; what we define as metrics of success for AI; the limits of exponential growth and innovation; finding a more human alternative to GDP; prioritizing human and ecological wellbeing; personal data monetization, control, and privacy; changing economic paradigm in the purpose-driven world; and John's vision for a more sustainable future society.Now over to JohnWhat We Discuss00:00 Intro 01:14 John's serendipitous journey becoming an expert in AI Ethics06:00 John's perspective on AI and Robots and metrics of success 08:30 Challenge of exponential growth11:10 Moore's Law impact on society 16:00 Value of our personal data 18:40 Creating our personal terms and conditions for data exchange 25:00 Ethics and user-centric design for AI 28:00 Ethically Aligned Design 31:40 Discussing societal progress 34:40 Evolving economic priorities and general progress indicators 40:50 John's principles and quick fire questionsSocial Links Linkedin TwitterLinks in Show Heartificial IntelligenceMartin SeligmanRise of the robots Moore's LawFabrice Grinda IEEE Standards Working GroupDoc SearlsEthically Aligned Design Council on Extended Intelligence Joi ItoTechnology and the virtues Twain LiuTheory of You Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's episode of the stronger marriage connection, Dr. Dave and Dr. Liz have a great conversation with Dr. Alex Korb talking about the little things we can do to create a stronger marriage connection. Happiness hacks start with us which then can translate into strengthening our relationships through understanding our own and other's perceptions. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction: Who is Alex Korb?2:25 – What makes the Upward Spiral unique?7:45 – The healthy “we” starts with the healthy “me”9:10 – Our brains are wired to notice the negative and ignore consistency12:48 – Practicing gratitude; direct your attention to what you can acknowledge is good14:47 – Understanding depression and anxiety15:57 – Acknowledge that you have a perspective18:09 – Depression and anxiety are common; there is nothing broken or wrong with your brain20:53 – Why do we get stuck in bad habits so easily?24:29 – Focus on the little small tweaks for your body that create an upward spiral30:28 – Gratitude is something you can do on your own to improve your relationships34:16 – Breaking negative patterns activates reward circuits37:12 – Expressing gratitude does not have an expiration date39:22 – When to reach out to a medical professional42:09 – Any step is better than being stuck43:21 – Everyone's perspectives are different46:20 – Alex's takeaway: when things are feeling really bad, realize that things aren't as bad as they seem48:33 – Liz's takeaway: why the why48:53 – Dave's takeaway: Doing small things breaks up relationship ruts About Alex Korb Dr. Alex Korb is a neuroscientist, coach, and bestselling author of The Upward Spiral. He is the founder of The Upward Spiral Method where he helps smart, passionate professionals conquer unnecessary overthinking, stress, and self-doubt to unleash the brain's potential for passion, productivity, and purpose. Dr. Korb has a wealth of experience in yoga and mindfulness, physical fitness, and even stand-up comedy. Insights Alex: All we need to do is one small step. It doesn't have to fix everything, it just has to be better than the default of the downward spiral your brain wants to go in. Dave: A little small win can help create an upward spiral for our relationships. Liz: Understanding why something is good for me rather than being told what to do gets my attention Invites:    •    To get out of a mental rut, take a little step to break out of your brain's default of negative habits. Try going for a walk, stepping outside in the sun, or even standing up for a few seconds.   •    Expressing gratitude and kindness is something in your control. Write down a few things you may take for granted but are grateful for nonetheless. Doing so tells your brain to focus more on the good rather on the negative.   •    You can't always control your feelings, but you can control your actions. Take action by saying thank you to someone that influenced you in some way, even if it was a few days, weeks, or years ago. Gratitude does not have an expiration date. In fact, it tends to have even greater weight and mean more to the receiver over time. Alex Korb Links https://www.facebook.com/alexkorb https://www.instagram.com/alexkorbphd/ https://alexkorbphd.com/ https://alexkorbphd.click/guide   Visit our site for FREE relationship resources and regular giveaways: Strongermarriage.org podcast.strongermarriage.org Facebook: StrongerMarriage.orgInstagram: @strongermarriagelifeTikTok: @strongermarriagelife Dr. Dave Schramm: https://drdaveschramm.com https://drdavespeaks.com Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/DrDaveUSU Facebook Marriage Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/770019130329579 Facebook Parenting Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/542067440314642   Dr. Liz Hale: http://www.drlizhale.com/ See our website for privacy information.

Nicole Majik has an interesting and extensive background with a bachelor's degree in Biology/Chemistry, a Masters in Metaphysics and experience as a Financial Advisor. She is an accomplished leadership and empowerment strategist and educator, and has created a highly effective, life-transforming empowerment program: The Alchemy of Transformation®.  She awakens your true potential by erasing limiting beliefs and showing you how to live a life you deserve without compromising who you are or what you love. Nicole has appeared on various radio shows, local TV, as a keynote speaker for international conferences and has even appeared on the Travel Channel for Greatest Mysteries:  Smithsonian as well as Beyond the Unknown.  She recently filmed with Jeff Hays Film for Hacking Happiness, a documentary scheduled to release in early 2023 "I believe everyone can live a fulfilled life with profound spiritual shifts that heal and enlighten, creating miraculous manifestations of wealth.  No one should feel abandoned, alone, unsafe, unloved, disempowered and controlled by anyone or anything including your own thoughts!” Check out her website here https://majikllc.com  Buy My Art - Unique Sigil Magic and Energy Activation Through Flow Art and Voyages Through Space and Imagination. https://www.newearth.art/ The New Earth Activation trainings - Immerse yourself in 12 hours of content focused on the new earth with channeling, meditations, advanced training and access to the new earth https://realityrevolutioncon.com/newearth Alternate Universe Reality Activation  get full access to new meditations, new lectures, recordings from the reality con and the 90 day AURA meditation schedulehttps://realityrevolutionlive.com/aura45338118 BUY MY BOOK! https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Revolution-Mind-Blowing-Movement-Hack/dp/154450618X/ Listen to my book on audible https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Reality-Revolution-Audiobook/B087LV1R5V Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-Reality-Revolution-Podcast-Hosted-By-Brian-Scott-102555575116999 Join our Facebook group The Reality Revolution https://www.facebook.com/groups/523814491927119 Contact us at media@advancedsuccessinstitute.com For all episodes of the Reality Revolution – https://www.therealityrevolution.com Follow Us on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRealityRevolution/ Follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/the_reality_revolution/ Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/mediaprime Follow me on MeWe https://mewe.com/i/brianscott71 All My Interviews -- https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKv1KCSKwOo_Y78_zt_zv9TI1AGx-WimT All my Audiobooks - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKv1KCSKwOo-ArT_9WQ-SrKaEP7VgIPb5 #money #transformation #consciousness

Do you get hung up on your flaws? Perhaps causing you to overthink or judge more than necessary? If so, join the club, you're human! No one knows this better than returning podcast guest Kristina mand-lakhiani. Back in January she joined us to talk about Hacking Happiness which was a hugely popular episode and today she's discussing The Art of Being Flawsome. For those who didn't catch our first show with Kristina, Kristina is an entrepreneur, international speaker, artist, philanthropist, mother and co-founder of Mindvalley, a global educational organisation offering training for peak human performance at every level. In todays episode we discuss: ● How to approach our flaws and the flaws of others. ● What stops us from being authentic ● How to be honest with yourself ● The role kindness and shame plays in authenticity and vulnerability. ● Why healing the relationship with ourselves, helps to heal the world around us. ● How to find strength in your personal dragons ● Why life is too important to be taken seriously ● Why letting go is the difference between high performance and overachievement. ● How to truly let go, trust and surrender control. You'll leave this episode with huge insight and practical ways to be flawesome! Enjoy! To continue the conversation you can find Kristinas work here: Website: https://kristinamand.com/book/ Much love and wellness, Charlotte and Jonathan www.thewellnesstheory.com

Today Kristina Mand Lakhiani joins us on the podcast she is a speaker and author & the co-founder of Mindvalley, the School of Transformation – and one of my all time personal development platforms.. I REALLY loved this conversation with Kristina – it was one of those conversations where time escaped us and we went way over our allocated recording time. You know those people that can talk endlessly and openly on their thoughts on life, our human experience and perceptions. We discussed all things relating to happiness – and how it should be viewed as a state of mind, rather than an emotion. We discussed how important self-care is to our lives, and not as a buzz word, but true and on-going self-care and self-love and acceptance of who we are. Plus so much more. Follow Kristina on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinamand Kristina's website: https://kristinamand.com/  ---  To find out more about launching a purpose-led podcast for yourself or your business visit www.guideyourlightnetwork.com or email: info@guideyourlightnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this livestream I share "The Milk Rule" a true life story about life, family and justice paving the way to my journey to hacking happiness and self empowerment. Enjoy! :)XO, OlgaFollow Olga S. Pérez on all social platforms: https://linktr.ee/olga_s_perezFind out more information at: https://www.olgasperez.com/Support the show

In this livestream I share "The Milk Rule" a true story about family and justice. One of the experinces that helped pave the way to hacking happiness. Enjoy! :)XO, OlgaFollow Olga S. Pérez on all social platforms: https://linktr.ee/olga_s_perezFind out more information at: https://www.olgasperez.com/Support the show

With a bachelor's degree in Biology/Chemistry, a master's in Metaphysics, and experience as a Financial Advisor, it is safe to say that Nicole has an exciting and extensive background.  She has appeared on various radio shows and local TV as a keynote speaker for international conferences. She has even appeared on the Travel Channel for Greatest Mysteries: Smithsonian,  Beyond the Unknown and recently filmed with Jeff Hays Film for Hacking Happiness, a documentary scheduled to release this month. But things have not always been glamorous for Nicole. Overcoming many adversities in her life, including severe mercury poisoning, while being the sole provider for her family, Nicole faced some scary truths and obstacles to get where she is today. Now, as an accomplished leadership and empowerment strategist and educator, Nicole created and runs a highly effective, life-transforming empowerment program: The Alchemy of Transformation®. Using the strategic formulas of her empowerment program and CBT and NLP techniques, Nicole helps you permanently erase self-sabotaging beliefs and transforms your obstacles into opportunities to achieve the success you desire! Listen in as Nicole and I discuss the adversities in her life, how she overcame them, and the joy she gets with her empowerment program and being a mother of 4 to find her path to FEARLESS HAPPYNESS!

In the year 2020, people searched Google for the word “happiness” more than ever before. It's not surprising that in the middle of a pandemic, financial hardship, political strife, and social unrest people were searching for the elusive. But the search for happiness is nothing new. People look to find happiness in all sorts of places–their jobs, their relationships, their successes. But what people often don't realize is that happiness doesn't reside anywhere. It isn't a destination or an end state. It's a process, a state of being. In this episode, we reveal some of the ways that we can harness happiness in our everyday lives. Conversation Kindling: One of the greatest contributing factors to overall happiness in your life is how much gratitude you show. Check out this seven-minute video to see how gratitude is linked to feeling happier! Visit our linktree to follow us on social media and find us on your preferred podcast delivery platform: https://linktr.ee/thinksigpod --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thinksigpod/message

Published author of the Hacking Happiness, academic, yoga teacher and the world's very first happiness hacker, Penny Locaso, joins us on the podcast today. Penny's goal is teach 10 million humans by 2025 how to take control of their lives again and flourish. We look at what it means to be ‘busy', how to make fear your friend, the long time effects of stress and how to be more effective in all aspects of our life, by starting with our physical and mental health. Penny also discusses the aftermatgh of covid on our day-to-day mental health and how to deal with being burnt out. You can find Penny on IG or LinkedIn, otherwise you can check out her website for some more information. Be sure to share this episode with someone who you think will love it too! Until next time, Stay Balanced Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thebalancetheory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#54: Minimalist expert and award-winning author, Joshua Becker, joins Chris to talk about the many ways that “things'' get in the way of living a purpose-filled life. They discuss Joshua's top decluttering strategies, the 8 distractions that prevent people from living more meaningfully, and hacks to help guide you toward achieving the benefits of a more satisfying life through owning less.Joshua Becker (@joshua_becker) is an expert minimalist, an award-winning author, and the founder of Becoming Minimalist, a website dedicated to inspiring others to find more life by owning less. He recently released his latest book Things That Matter: Overcoming Distraction to Pursue a More Meaningful Life.Full show notes at: https://allthehacks.com/minimalism-joshua-becker Selected Links From The EpisodeAll the Hacks Newsletter: Sign UpConnect with Joshua Becker: Website | Instagram | TwitterJoshua's Books: Things That Matter: Overcoming Distraction to Pursue a More Meaningful LifeThe Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused LifeThe More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You OwnSimplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and LifeClutterfree with Kids: Change your thinking. Discover new habits. Free your homePodcasts mentioned:All the Hacks Podcast #25 Nir EyalAll the Hacks Podcast #50 Adam NashResources Mentioned:Harvard Study: Exchanging cents for seconds : the happiness benefits of choosing time over moneyHappy Money: The Science of Happier SpendingIndistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your LifeCourtney Carver's Website: Be More With LessLogan and Tammy Strobel's Website: Our Tiny HouseJoshua's Phoenix Recommendations: Barrio Cafe | Camelback MountainPartner DealsFree Vitamin D + Travel Packs with Athletic Greens10% off your first month with BetterHelp$25 free in your Daffy Account Full Show NotesWhat most people get wrong when they think about minimalism [01:39]The importance of having fewer physical distractions and unnecessary possessions in your life [02:32]The first question Joshua asks those who are beginning the process of removing  distractions from their lives [03:47]Joshua's top decluttering strategy [07:01]Staging your home for living: how to make small changes to promote a calm space and the importance of finding the purpose of your home [08:54]How one conversation inspired Joshua's transition to minimalism and the positive outcome of his decision [13:12]Alternatives to keeping seldom-used items, the cost of holding on to them, and the benefits of letting them go [15:59]How decluttering during a move afforded Chris the ability to use his space differently [21:31]Donate or sell? Joshua provides insight about getting rid of valuable items [22:49]Chris discusses the 5 core principles of smart spending as described in Elizabeth Dunn's book Happy Money [25:40]Spending money on things to buy time versus having fewer items, practical advice on learning what's right for you [27:30]As the trend grows in popularity, is there a ‘right' way to apply the minimalist approach to your space? [29:38]10 questions Joshua suggests you ask during the process of minimalizing [31:09]The realization Joshua came to once he adopted the minimalist lifestyle and what inspired him to write: Things That Matter [34:07]8 distractions that prevent people from feeling the most satisfied and fulfilled [35:53]Acknowledging that money is not the end-all and the shocking results of a Harvard study of 100,000 people on time versus happiness [40:04]Focusing on things that matter through generosity and acts of service [42:30]Ways in which distraction of the ‘trivial' prevents us from finding our purpose and the importance of taking a ‘digital detox' [45:26]Joshua's top recommendations for ‘dine, drink, and do' in the Phoenix area [50:21]Where to find more information about Joshua Becker [51:58] SponsorsAthletic GreensAthletic Greens is a foundational nutrition drink designed to remove the friction from covering the daily nutritional needs of a modern diet. It combines more than 9 essential nutrition products into one convenient and great-tasting drink, giving you an easy and efficient way to get you daily multivitamin, multimineral, probiotic, prebiotic, functional greens blend, immune support complex and more. It contains no GMOs, no harmful ingredients and no artificial colors or sweeteners.Right now, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D and 5  free travel packs with your first purchase. So to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional  insurance visit allthehacks.com/athleticgreens BetterHelpLife is full of twists and turns and we all need help at some point, whether it's because of stress at home, or work or loneliness or maybe you just want to improve yourself but I don't know where to start. No matter the reason, it's invaluable to know that there's someone professionally trained, who can help you through whatever you're facing. And that's exactly what BetterHelp can do. They can assess your needs and match you with a licensed professional therapist in less than 48 hours. And because it's all online, it's way more affordable than traditional in-person therapy (not to mention it is so much easier to have a video, phone or chat session from the comfort of your own home). To get 10% off your first month visit allthehacks.com/betterhelp DaffyDaffy is a not-for-profit community built around a new modern way to give, with a mission to help people be more generous, more often. Daffy makes it so much easier to put money aside for charity. You can make your tax deductible contributions all at once. Or you can set aside a little each week or month. Then anytime in the future, you can give to more than one and a half million charities, schools, and faith-based organizations in a matter of seconds. So you can separate the decision to give (and get your tax deduction) from deciding exactly which organization you want to support and when. My favorite part is that you can invest your contributions to your Daffy account so they can grow tax-free to let you have even more impact in the future. To start giving today and get your free $25 to give to the charity of your choice, go to https://allthehacks.com/daffy  Connect with All the HacksAll the Hacks: Newsletter | Website | Facebook | EmailChris Hutchins: Twitter | Instagram | Website | LinkedIn

Happiness is a feeling on everyone's bucket list yet it's such a vague topic. How do we catch this ever elusive feeling? To shed light on that very question we're joined on today's podcast by Co-founder of Mindvalley, Kristina Mand-Lakhiani, who is an entrepreneur, international speaker, and artist. Not only was she one of the masterminds behind the world's leading self-development platform offering top training for peak human performance to hundreds of thousands of students. Kristina believes life's too important to be taken seriously and makes sure to bring fun into every one of her roles: as a teacher, mother, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and world traveler. Today, Kristina helps her students to ‘Hack Happiness' by taking them through her unique framework of balancing life, taking in every moment, and paying close attention to the small daily choices. In this episode you'll hear valuable insights and philosophical ways of thinking about happiness, as well as practical tips you can use right away to hack your own happiness. Sound good? Be sure to follow Kristina's work at: https://kristinamand.com/7-days-to-happiness/ Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinamand/ Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristinamand Much love and wellness, Charlotte and Jonathan P.S. Stress is standing in the way of your happiness? If yes you're invited to our free workshop ‘An introduction to achieving what you want - without the stress. This workshop is made for you if you've been struggling with one or more of the following: Overthinking, negative thinking or intrusive thoughts Feeling easily agitated, frustrated, and moody Feeling overwhelmed, like you're losing control or need to take control Struggling to communicate with others Having trouble sleeping Anxiety or nervousness (Eg, unable to focus, forgetful, nail biting, crying, fidgeting…) Physical symptoms (E.g Low energy, gut issues, headaches, tension, chronic pain…) Lack of focus, forgetfulness, being disorganised or poor judgement Avoiding others, procrastinating, avoiding responsibilities, or withdrawing Abusing food, alcohol or other substances Feeling lonely, low self-esteem, worthless, and depressed Throughout this 2-hour live training session, we will run you through the core blueprint needed for lasting change with the proven strategy and required tools to piece it all together. To Join – Here's the link.

Join me in conversation with Kristina Mand-Lakhiani – Mindvalley co-founder, entrepreneur, speaker, author, and all-round incredible human being. As an advocate of happiness from within, Kristina and I talk about what happiness truly is (or, perhaps more aptly, what it is not) and why despite it being the number one pursuit for all of us, very few treat it as a serious enough goal. Kristina shares with us some of the key principles we ought to understand when it comes to building the muscle of happiness and how we can benefit from holding space for unpleasant and difficult emotions.   CONNECT WITH KRISTINA   Kristina Mand-Lakhiani is an entrepreneur, international speaker, and artist. As a co-founder of Mindvalley, she brings her female perspective into the company leadership. As an advocate for happiness within, she takes her kids on trips to the Amazon Jungle to recharge or joins groups of entrepreneurs, such as Maverick1000 on Richard Branson's Necker Island. Kristina is also the author of a transformational quest, "7 Days To Happiness" - https://kristinamand.com/7-days-to-happiness/ and "Live By Your Own Rules" - https://kristinamand.com/#programs.   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristinamand Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinamand/   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-mand-lakhiani-73168414/     CONNECT WITH NAT   Instagram: www.instagram.com/iameverwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nat-lipecka/   Download your FREE ‘YES! – Year End Success!' workbook, designed to help high achievers double down on their goals, refocus their attention and sprint across to the finish line: https://mailchi.mp/34f9089faea6/yes-2021   For your FREE 30-min. 1:1 laser-coaching Performance Power Up, e-mail info@everwellcoach.com with the word “Power Up” in the subject line. The intention behind these calls is for you to bring one problem to our session and walk away with clarity, focus and confidence to take empowered action.   ABOUT OUR SPONSOR HEALF   This episode is sponsored by Healf – online curator of everyday healthy living and wellbeing products across the four key categories of Eat, Move, Mind and Sleep. With the amount of noise out there about what healthy living is, Healf is on a mission to cut through the noise and make healthy living simple and achievable, by stripping it back to basics and meeting you where you are. From supplements and superfoods to aromatherapy and yoga mats, Healf has got all your needs covered at a Healfy 15% percent off with our special listener's code EVERWELL15, which you can redeem over a Healf.com (www.healf.com).

On today's episode is the lovely Olivia Jones, or Liv. Liv has set out to be present and feel happy in every part of her life. We discuss the feeling, "happiness", and how you can boost your mood with external factors, as well as internal factors, in order to change your outlook. We also describe and give examples of the very pervasive terms: "toxic environment" and "toxic positivity". We hate on "good vibes only" and emphasize the importance of sometimes having to stare out the window when it's raining outside to bask in difficult moments. Liv gives great advice for incorporating joy into your every day life, especially when things don't go as planned or you feel like you're settling. The concept of settling (whether at a job, in a relationship, or lifestyle) is a hot one on this episode! Listen in for a better day in just 58 minutes :)  instagram: ingloriousrbgpodcast twitter: ingloriousrbg

What does it mean to be 'strong'? If you asked Kellee Cameron this a few years ago the answer may have focused mainly on physical strength, perseverance, and moving forward at all costs - often to the point of burnout. This approach to life has led to many successes for Kellee. She is a successful small business owner, as well as a highly decorated and awarded athlete in the field of competitive bodybuilding. However, sometimes achievement and happiness don't go hand in hand. Reaching a point of burnout, alongside mental health struggles within her family, led Kellee to connect with us at BU and to begin learning more about her mind and emotions. Now, Kellee is on a journey of changing her definition of what it means to be strong. She's learning to embrace vulnerability, she's developing the skills to manage her mind and emotions more effectively, and she's stepping up as a leader to spread this positive ripple effect to the people she leads as a PT and fitness industry professional. If you're a bit of a high achiever who feels the pressure to always 'have your shit together' then this is a fantastic episode to listen to. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ We also encourage you to connect with this week's guest, Kellee, via the following: - Instagram: @kelleecameron_kelscrew - Website: https://kelscrewfitness.com.au/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

The human body is a pretty dope machine. By far the dopest feature is the built-in chemical factory, which - amongst others - produces a whole array of happiness drugs ;-) #selfimprovement #motivation #selflove #selfcare #selfdevelopment #inspiration #success #personaldevelopment #mindset #love #selfhelp #loveyourself #awareness #personalgrowth #mentalhealth #happiness #positivevibes #life #goals #selfconfidence #selfawareness #mindfulness #positivity #growth #growthmindset #selfworth #photooftheday #podcast #happy #followme Web: www.theverybestpodcastintheworld.com / Email theverybestpodcastintheworld@gmail.com / Instagram http://instagram.com/bestpodcastintheworld/ / Twitter http://twitter.com/BestPodcastInT1 / Minds https://www.minds.com/theverybestpodcastintheworld/ / Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRDtwAguIAQ_g5TQOMtnpkA

GET OFF THAT TREADMILL! No not the one at the gym, the one your mind has been stuck on for way too long. The Hedonic Treadmill, aka the "I'll be happy when" trap, is one of the most common causes of dissatisfaction in life. In today's episode I'm sharing exactly what the hedonic treadmill is; and how you begin freeing yourself from it. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

"We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with" This saying, and others like it, have become somewhat of a cliche in the world of personal development. However, there's a lot of truth to them. Have you ever hung around someone for long enough that you began talking like them? Ever found yourself enjoying a new hobby when you're dating someone new? Say hello to the proximity effect. In this episode I'm sharing what the proximity effect is and how you can leverage it to accelerate your personal development. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

Smile, Grow & Give. These are the 3 core stepping stones that members take when they enrol in their journey at our Happiness College. In today's episode of the show I'm sharing what each stepping stone means, why it's important, and how you can begin to achieve it. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

"People want to be kind, caring, and helpful, but you have to create the environment to allow for that to happen." - Dr. James Doty How do you override your fight or flight response and train your brain to make better decisions? Why are negative thoughts stickier than positive ones? Why did Dr. James turn down $30 million when he was dead broke? What is the proven path to lasting happiness and life satisfaction? Practical Magic You may know Dr. James Doty as a clinical professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine. Or maybe as Director and Founder of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. You might know him from his New York Times best-selling book “Into the Magic Shop.” But before anyone knew James Doty, he was a poor kid from a broken family. At age 13, faced with regular eviction, tiptoeing around an alcoholic father and a severely depressed and ill mother, James was only ever in survival mode. That is, until he met Ruth, an older woman at a local magic shop. She set him on a path that he still walks today — one that explores the connection between our brains, our bodies, our environments, and our society. Survey Says... Ruth gave young James the tools to stay present — to understand and take control of his physiology. When something overwhelmed him, he would conduct a "body survey." Later, in his research, Dr. Doty discovered the science behind this approach: that these steps actually shifted the brain from the sympathetic nervous response (the "fight or flight" response) to the parasympathetic nervous response, which has incredible health benefits. He also observed that in our modern world, we are constantly faced with stress and threats that throw our bodies into that sympathetic nervous response — essentially, we're all constantly living life in 5th gear. Dr. James calls what Ruth taught him "mindfulness plus." She gave him the tools to slow down physiologically and stay present emotionally. She also showed him how to be kind to himself and undo a lifetime of self-hate, which had unexpected benefits. He says, "When you can be kind, when you can change the narrative, it actually changes not only your own physiology, but also how you see the world." A Call to Serve Dr. James's research led him to the study of compassion and what happens when people extend that compassion to others. He found that overwhelmingly, the people who are the happiest and most at peace with themselves are the ones who work in service of others. He worries because he sees our society and values oriented away from service. Everyone is working towards climbing the corporate ladder, accumulating wealth, and buying status symbols, all in the name of chasing happiness. But if they would just turn around, the answer is there, behind them on the trail. He explains: "They will climb this mountain. They will get all of this money, Ferraris, all this stuff. But for a large percentage of them, they're not going to be happy unless they are oriented towards being selfless and being of service." Key takeaways: Breathe in, breathe out. When you're under stress, regulate your body's autonomic response. You'll make better decisions and won't compound a bad situation. Be present. Most people are stuck in the past or worried about the future. But you can't connect with others unless you're with them in the present moment. Live a life of service. Whether it's money, time, or effort, giving brings joy that getting simply can't match. Links and Resources The Game Changing Attorney Podcast Michael Mogill Facebook Michael Mogill Twitter Michael Mogill Instagram Michael Mogill LinkedIn Crisp Website Crisp Facebook Crisp Twitter Crisp Instagram Crisp LinkedIn James Doty LinkedIn Stanford University - Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) Website Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

When we first connected with Kaitlin Pell it was during the Port Macquarie stop of our Finding Emotional Freedom Tour. In that chapter of her life, Kaitlin was struggling to manage her mind and her emotions and she was blaming the world for it. In an on-the-spot decision that would end up shaping her development for years to come Kaitlin decided to trust her gut instinct, take action on the green light decision that equally scared and excited her, and enrol into the Happiness College at BU. Now, years later, Kaitlin is absolutely thriving. She continues to grow, develop, learn and expand with every passing month and she is a fantastic example of just how much your happiness can change when you choose to prioritise it. If you've listened to the show for a while and wondered whether or not the Happiness College is right for you then this is a fantastic episode to listen to. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

Thinkology is your advantage. If I asked you "What would be most helpful to you right now in making the change you seek?" what would your response be?One of the number one responses to this question, when it's posed at the end of the Hacking Happiness Assessment, is "the time to think, the time to reflect."Creating the space to be alone with one's thoughts in a way that is constructive rather than destructive in the current environment provides the basis for us to step forward with intention and greater clarity.That's why in this week's podcast I'm sharing a couple of really simple practices like Thinkology to help you kick start creating the space to think and reflect on the things that matter to you.Subscribe & Review The Hacking Happy PodcastThanks for listening to this week's episode! If this podcast helped you in your journey to injecting more of what makes you feel good into each day please head over to iTunes, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review.It's your reviews that enable me to impact more lives for the happier!ResourcesRead the research paper on Cognitive adaption and mental health: A motivational analysisGrab a copy of my book Hacking Happiness for more simple ways to make changes in bite-sized pieces and create the space for more of what matters.Check out Ruby Wax's book How To Be HumanWhere To Find PennyEmailInstagramLinkedInFacebook

Get ready listeners because this is one of the most popular tools that our members learn about at our Happiness College! That's right; out of every technique and skill we empower people with during their journey with us, this is one of the most impactful. If you want to live a more fulfilling life and be happier then this is a must listen episode. Without further ado, we are proud to be sharing; the 6 Psychological Needs for Happiness. As always if you enjoyed this episode you can help us work towards our vision of "growing global wellbeing, one mind at a time" by simply REVIEWING, SHARING & SUBSCRIBING to this podcast. Find out more about YOUR happiness by completing your FREE Happiness Scorecard at www.happinessscorecard.com.au Begin growing your happiness by attending our FREE online masterclass; Hacking Happiness: https://www.bucoaching.org/hacking-happiness/ You can also find out more about our award-winning Happiness College by visiting: https://www.bucoaching.org/personal-happiness-coaching/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bu-with-declan/message

Deliver a NO with confidence. When was the last time you said "yes" to something you didn't want to do? For many people, I meet this is a daily practice that affects our productivity, our impact, our happiness, and our wellbeing.In this week's episode of the Hacking Happy podcast, I'm going to share with you 5 simple steps to help you start practicing your NO with intention and impact.Why? Because every unconscious "yes" you give to someone else could very well be a "NO" to creating the space for what matters to you.Subscribe & Review The Hacking Happy PodcastThanks for listening to this week's episode! If this podcast helped you in your journey to injecting more of what makes you feel good into each day please head over to iTunes, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review.It's your reviews that enable me to impact more lives for the happier!ResourcesCheck out my blog on The Art Of Using Your NoGrab a copy of my book Hacking Happiness for more simple ways to make changes in bite-size pieces and create the space for more of what matters.Where To Find PennyEmailInstagramLinkedInFacebook

Sarah Turner, THE Rebel Scientist, shares alternative but yet practical ways to HACK HAPPINESS and bring a little light into your life when stress has you against the wall.DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is solely intended as a self-help tool for your own use.

Shawn Johal is a scale up expert, entrepreneur, business growth coach, author, and leadership speaker. Hack into the key leadership and personal success habits with Shawn on this show including: Scaling up mentality is a mindset The four laws for “The Happy Leader” Habits at the start and the end of the day Unlocking the value of “community” Plus load more habits to hack! Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Shawn Johal below: Shawn Johal Website – https://www.shawnjohal.com Elevation Website - https://elevationcoach.ca Shawn on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnjohal/ Shawn on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Shawnjohal Shawn on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/shawnjohalcoach/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you. Shawn Johal is a special guest on today's show. He's an entrepreneur, business growth coach, author, and leadership speaker on a mission to help you find the keys to a happy and successful life. But before we get a chance to speak with Sean, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore the theory of gratitude. Now the pandemic has made us wary, and while it might be cathartic to make a list of all that we've lost, all that we've tried and all that we want to leave behind. Expressing gratitude is actually a better idea. And it's a powerful, positive force. Far from a fluffy or frivolous concept. It has real impact on physical health, emotional wellbeing, motivation, engagement, and performance. So, here's why gratitude is good and how to bring more of it into your day.   Most of us are impatient with the pandemic and 2021 has arrived and the pandemic is still here. We're thrilled to usher in a new year, but we're going to need to wait a little bit longer to get life back to something closer to what it was before. The good news is that gratitude itself can actually reduce impatience and a study published in the Psychological Science found that when people focused on being thankful, they were more likely to able to demonstrate patients. In addition, the study published in The Review of Communication found that gratitude has a positive impact on our mental health and emotional state. Optimism, as an example, as well as physical health, it also predicts behaviours such as helping others and exercising. All of this means that gratitude may just be what we need at the moment while we're either hanging on to what comes next or we're attracting towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Regular listeners who have listened to episode 18 with Nic Marks, Hacking Happiness. We've also found that gratitude is the root of all happiness. It tends to focus on what you have and replace a sense of what you might be lacking. According to some philosophers, you can't feel both grateful and unhappy. So, when your mind focuses on all, you're thankful for, you're more likely to feel joy. In addition, when you're more grateful, you tend to focus on being more present, appreciating them now, and this of course can reduce to a sense of yearning and anxiety about the future.   Philosophers have also suggested that it's a gateway emotion and it's suggested as the greatest virtue because it tends to lead to so many others. For example, an appreciation of someone can grow into love, gratitude for what you have can lead to greater satisfaction over you, loving your work and can lead to improve performance. So, here's my five top tips and how you can build and cultivate gratitude.   Number one, begin and end with intention. Start each day by thinking about all you appreciate and expect from the day. And as you go to bed at night, think and consider all you're grateful for.   Number two, give continuous attention. Throughout each day, find those small things that you can be thankful and grateful for. Perhaps you've made yourself a great cup of coffee, or you've had a really nice conversation and avoid taking those things for granted, make everything count.   Number three, be expensive. Ensure you're focusing on being grateful and not just grateful for things, but for people and the environment and conditions around you. Perhaps you particularly appreciate the headphones that you might be wearing to listen to this or the ability to walk, see, the senses that we take for granted around you.   Number 4, write it down. Research at Kent State University found that when you write down the elements that you're grateful for, that simple act can foster the happiness and wellbeing in itself. And this is probably true, because it causes us to pause, focus, reflect, and reinforce our positive experiences.   And number five, express yourself. Gratitude is both an individual and a team sport. So, when you share what you're grateful for in a team environment, it holds even more power. Thanking a co-worker in a team meeting or providing positive feedback to colleagues during the project as an example. So, when gratitude is expressed and shared, it helps both you and the group.   And let's just remember gratitude is good, it has plenty of positive effects. It could be what you, your family and your team need just to stay present, be attentive through the next stretch of this pandemic marathon that we're all experiencing, so here's a challenge. Head over to our social media and let us know what you're grateful for today. So that has been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any insights, stories, or information, please get in touch.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Shawn Johal. Shawn an entrepreneur, a business growth coach, a leadership speaker and author of The Happy Leader Guide. Shawn, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Shawn Johal: Thank you so much Steve. Very excited to be here today.   Steve Rush: Me too. We've had an opportunity to get to know each other over a couple of conversations, and I'm incredibly excited about sharing some of those conversations with our wider listeners, but before we do that, perhaps you'd give them a little bit of a backstory as to how you arrived to doing what you are doing?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Excited to talk about it. Basically, on my end, I immigrated from England over to Canada when I was a much, much younger. I bring it up because I think it's important to put it into context. And I grew up with a family who was very much believing in loyalty, staying at the same company for many, many years. My father worked for Rolls-Royce, England, and he transferred to Rolls-Royce Canada. My mother worked for Nortel before the big crash. And I remember my parents always telling me when I was growing up, that it would be very important for me to find the very stable job, something that I can stay at for, you know, 25, 30, 35 years. And I even remember my dad showing me his gold watch when he had done 30 years of service at Rolls-Royce. Saying that, you know, one day son, you may have the opportunity to have, you know, get the same type of watch as I have if you stay at the same company forever. And so, I kind of grew up with the mentality that I needed to find a stable job and work in the corporate world and not necessarily adventure in through entrepreneurship. So that was my mentality growing up, you know, trying to find something a little more stable. And then I met my wife, my future wife, we're married to now and her family were very, very entrepreneurial. And they started teaching me a lot about business. You know, being a business owner, understanding how to launch a business, how to own a business. And that was really where things took off for me. And I started realizing there was this whole other world out there. And so basically, after leaving the corporate world, I was working at Rubbermaid. I'm sure that a lot of listeners know about Rubbermaid, pretty large global company, $8 billion dollars. I was a district manager there.   I was invited to join the family business and it was and led lighting business. My father-in-law had taken it public and it was fast growing, very fast growing, mergers and acquisitions. And so, I came in there as a sales manager and not part of ownership, but really having more of an entrepreneurial feel to it. Unfortunately, what happened was that during the 2006, 2007 recession, my father-in-law bought a company that probably wasn't the perfect fit for the business. The recession hit, which was terrible for the business and for the family. Within a year, our business that I've grown to 50 million in revenue, came from a crashing down. It was a very, very tough time for the family.   Steve Rush: Wow.   Shawn Johal: But the good thing was that during, you know, in every big challenge there's opportunities and my brother-in-law and I, at that point had a chance to buy back three of the different divisions. We were able to relaunch this led lighting business in our own way, and we've been growing ever since. So that was in 2009 and the businesses are continuing to go strong today in 2020.   Steve Rush: It's through that kind of scaling up mentality that you've really started to deploy all of your learning. But now also share that as an entrepreneurial and business growth coach with other people, right?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. In 2013, we hit a really bad wall as a business, so many things were going wrong Steve, I can't even tell you. We had no processes. We had the wrong people in the wrong seats. We had absolutely no strategy, no product development. And it really became ethically clear to me one day when we were sitting in our office and we had two customer service people who were working at a desk, but we didn't have enough money to afford a receptionist. And basically, they would look at each other when the phone would ring and neither one wanted to answer it because they were both really disgruntled employees and not, you know, at the right seats. And so, phones would ring. I knew they were customers and the phone would ring 10, 12 times, and neither person was willing to answer it. And that's when my business partner and I looked at each other and said, you know what? We have a really big culture problem in this business. At the same time, our biggest competitor launched a product line. They basically took our catalogue, stole all 150 products that we had in the catalogue and priced them at a dollar less in the market using the same suppliers as we use. And these were people that were part of the previous business. So, it was probably the worst backstabbing feeling I could ever have imagined in my life. These people are like brothers to me.   Steve Rush: I bet.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, and that was when we decided to take on scaling up. And we had an opportunity to read the Rockefeller Habits. In those days the scaling of book hadn't come out yet. And we found a coach and then we implemented the methodology successfully in our own business.   Steve Rush: And it continues to grow to this day, and as part of that Shawn. One of the things I've known about you for a while and come to really respect is the discipline, rigor and habits that you apply in order to make your life successful. And I wanted to get into a couple of those. So, in terms of scaling up. There are kind of four pillars to that, aren't there? That's strategy people, execution and cash. Maybe just tell us a little bit about how that plays out in your business today and how you coach others?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. What we noticed is that those four pillars really represent every business. The four key things every business owner should be really paying attention to. When we go into businesses, as much as my business, as any other business, we'd like to do a diagnostic where we go in there and really understand, okay, what's going well and what's not going well, you know, do you have a long-term goal that's nonfinancial? Do you have the right execution in class with being methodologies and processes? You know, how's your cash flow? Do you have good liquidity and everything that you're doing? Really those are the types of things that we go in and we analyse right from the beginning. And most importantly, do you have the right people in the right seats? And that's something that becomes incredibly clear very easily. So, once we get in there, we do that diagnostic. It's really easy for us to understand where the business is strong and where the business has certain weaknesses. And usually, we'll start off with a couple of strategic days to really build the vision of the business. You know, we'll go with that BHAG from Jim Collins, the big, hairy, audacious goal. We'll build that really cool vision long-term then get into three-year capacities, one-year priorities and the 90-day plan, really helping the business focus on execution the right way. And we'll start fixing things little by little, you know, we can't take it all in one big bite. We've been doing scaling up for seven years in our business, and we're still going strong. I've never seen a business not succeed by doing scaling up. The only times it doesn't work is when a business owner is either too stubborn to let other people share and have their own ideas or the business owner doesn't have the discipline required to implement the methodology. So those are the only two times where it doesn't really work.   Steve Rush: And of course, scaling up will never stop if you have the right mentality and the right disciplines and right approach.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, you can just keep going and going. Now, obviously it really depends on what you're looking for. I think some entrepreneurs get a little afraid when they see scaling up. Everybody wants to grow, but I don't believe in growth for the sake of growth. I think you need to have what I like to call profitable growth. I really believe in profitable growth since we've been doing scaling up in 2013, we've never had a month in the red. We've never once in those seven years.   Steve Rush: Wow, that's great.   Shawn Johal: For us, that's what's most important. But even though we're growing at a really great pace, you know, anywhere between 10, 15, 20% a year, depending on the year. We're very careful to make sure that bottom line is always staying where it needs to be.   Steve Rush: That's consistently 15, 20% growth every year, which for many businesses, they can only dream of that. If you have to kind of peel that layer back and peel all the layers back, is there maybe one thing that is the standout action activity that you would maybe apply to that success? Shawn Johal: 100% and it's going to sound familiar. I'm sure your listeners have heard this, but I cannot emphasize it enough. You absolutely have to have the right people in your business. I've noticed that systematically, I go into companies and I see right away from the strategic team all the way down, I can pinpoint right off the bat, how many people are not the right people in those businesses. And you and I spoke about this in an earlier conversation. I always ask this one key question. Would you enthusiastically rehire every single one of your team members? And it's shocking that the percentages I get, you know, you would think the percentages would be fairly respectable because these are business owners who have built their own business, right?   Steve Rush: Right.   Shawn Johal: But the percentages are always closer to between 20 and 50%, which means that there's more than half the company that the business owner would not rehire enthusiastically. So that means you have about 50% of the people that are not the right people in your business. It's just kind of shocking when you think about it, right?   Steve Rush: Stark, isn't it? Really stark.   Shawn Johal: So that to me would be the number one thing. I have a very specific methodology when I go into businesses and it's been based a little bit on the whole top rating and Who methodologies for anybody who wants to read those books, the two great books, both the top rating and Who, their based a lot around talent and how to hire. But a lot of the people spend time on how to hire the right people, but they don't spend enough time on development and retention and development and retention are the two, what I would say most overlooked superpowers is that every business owner has, are you developing your people internally? And what are you doing to appreciate them? Show them recognition, make sure they feel really, really welcomed and you know, recognized every single day of the week. And what are we doing to make sure that they 10X their development and leadership and get to the next level, because if your team is not taking that next step, your business never will. That's for sure.   Steve Rush: It's one of those things that sounds pretty obvious when you say out loud, but still many businesses. And in fact, many of the clients that I speak to still fall into the trap of not developing their team and retaining and growing their talent. What'd you put that down to?   Shawn Johal: Business owners, you know, this cash with liquidity, there's so many different things that could happen in a business that are problematic. And I think that what happens is we end up taking our people for granted because our people are coming in, you know, our amazing employees or team members are showing up every single day. And we just assume that they're happy. When I go into businesses, I always ask the business owners, are your people happy? Do they feel recognized and appreciated? I always get the same answer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're good. You know, we do a few little things here and there and I'm sure they understand what we're trying to accomplish and I'm sure they're happy. When I asked the employees and the team members, the same question, I get a very different answer. The majority they tell, well, no, I don't know what the vision is of the business. No, one's really communicating that to me. I'm not sure what we're trying to accomplish. I'm not sure exactly where we're going. So, I get very, very different answers from the employees than I get from the business owners. And so that's why it's so important for every business owner to understand, who are my A-players and how am I going to recognize them systematically?   Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. And you've taken your learnings and you've pulled that together and you've written The Happy Leader. Tell us a little bit about what The Happy Leader is?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, and thanks for asking Steve. The book is a book that's written over eight years, believe it or not. I started writing this book a long time ago. I think it's really the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, not being a natural writer or author. I really put a lot of time and heart and soul into this book. I wanted to write something that was written a fable format, you know, because I feel like some of the amazing authors out there like Patrick Lencioni and Robin Sharma, you know, some really, really great leadership speakers and authors. I was always very much impressed with the way they wrote their books. And Bob Burg comes to mind as well, The Go-Giver. And so, I decided to write a book that's written in a fable format. And what I realized Steve, being surrounded by entrepreneurs over the last decade is that entrepreneurs in general seem to be a pretty unhappy bunch. It's shocking, right?   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Shawn Johal: Because we all have businesses. And you think that the dream is to be a business owner, but I speak to business owners and the most of the time they're unhappy. And I'm part of the entrepreneur's organization. We have something called, you know, Forum. A Forum is a time where we get together between 8 and 10 entrepreneurs every month. And we share business ideas, opportunities, challenges. We always start with a thing called the one word open and that one word open is always the one word of where you are today, just in your mind. And the words that we hear are stressed you know, stretched too thin, overwhelmed, can't keep up, unbalanced. It's almost never positive words. And I really realized over time that entrepreneurs are really, really stressed out. So, my goal was to write a book about someone who is also, you know, a business leader who was very stressed out and whose life was kind of falling apart. And, you know, who meets a really incredible person. Who's going to teach him how to become a happy leader, really changed his life around so that he really could find happiness, joy, and success in everything that he does. Understanding that it's the journey and not just the destination.   Steve Rush: Yeah, and you've created 12 steps to help people on that journey. And within those 12 steps or surrounding those 12 steps, you have four laws. Maybe we can spend a little bit of time around each of those four laws.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, I always believe that the first thing that we need to do as human beings is take care of ourselves first, you know, a great friend and colleague Kevin Lawrence calls it, Put Your Oxygen Mask First, which is a great book that I would recommend everybody to read as well. Are we taking care of ourselves before we take care of others? Because if you're not at the right place in your mind and your heart and your soul, it's going to be very, very challenging to have the type of success and be able to lead others as well. And so, the first law of happiness is what I call the law of self-awareness. And what that means is you have to be self-aware of where you're at yourself in your life. And so, the first part of that law is really comes down to what I consider the greatest superpower that we're not using right now, which is meditation.   You know, meditation has taken a lot more space over the last couple of years. We're hearing more about it. We're hearing a lot of incredible business leaders and incredible artists and athletes and people doing meditation. But the reality is that it's still associated with being something very spiritual. And although I have nothing wrong with spirituality, I'm a very spiritual person myself. I like to bring it back to science. And science has proven that meditation has incredible benefits on focus, on creativity, on energy levels. It literally changes our genes and the inside of our brains. And it's shocking to me how little people, even in this day and age, when it's becoming more popular, actually do it.   Steve Rush: It's very true.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, that'd be something I'd really encourage people to do. Something else that I think is really important that we don't do enough of is actually what I call, you know, circular reciprocation. And what that term means for me is what are you doing to practice gratitude, appreciation, and kindness every single day and everything that you do? Again, scientifically, they've done lots of studies and both writing down the things that make you happy and that you appreciate in your life immediately released the right type of chemicals in our bodies to bring that next level of happiness. And so, you know, doing things like that. Meditation, gratitude appreciation are really part of the first law, which is a law of self-awareness.   Steve Rush: Got it. What's law number two?   Shawn Johal: So, law number two, now you've really taking time to be more aware and you're taking care of yourself. Law numbers two is the law of self-improvement. So now you're aware, you know, where you're at and you know, where your kind of the foundation of your mind, body and soul, and now you need to take things to the next level. And so, the law of self-improvement for me has a lot to do with barrier breaking, which is for me, meaning to commit to a stretch goal in your life, something that's way beyond what you've ever accomplished. This could be anything, it could be, you know, it doesn't have to be necessarily a physical goal. It could be, you know, some type of goal where you want to maybe write a book or you want to run a marathon, but you want to do something that stretches you beyond the obvious. And the reason that's important is that, is only when we push ourselves to that next level, that we really get to see our true potential. And I think there's a lot of people that are not meeting their true potential. And there's a tremendous amount of self-limiting beliefs out there that we seem to put on ourselves. Everybody does it, you know, the old imposter syndrome and that, oh, you know, it's not, I can't do that. That person can do it. It's just not true. You know, the reality is that human beings are incredible race and we have so much energy and so much potential. And, you know, we shouldn't be limiting ourselves. And so, by putting a stretch goal of some type that really forces us to go further than we believe possible when you achieve that goal happens is you open up a new world of possibilities, right? Where now you start thinking, well, if I could do this, I could do a whole lot of other things, right?   Steve Rush: Right. Shawn Johal: So, yeah. So that's really comes down to the law of self-improvement, within that law I also have, I like to call habit hacking. So, habit hacking, that's an important concept that you and I have spoken quite a bit about together in the past.   Steve Rush: Sure, yeah.   Shawn Johal: Whereas you're going in there and you're completely revamping all of your habits from morning routines to evening routines to all the way you eat to the way you sleep to the people you speak with, you know, really changing pretty much the you know, the dynamic of your everyday routine.   Steve Rush: Some of it is about unlearning what you've already learned. That's not serving you well and relearning and creating new hacks and habits to create the right foundations, right?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, Steve. It's so important. you know, I speak to so many people and you know, business leaders are all different scopes of life on that. I noticed that the majority of them don't have a very good morning routine, you know, I asked them, okay, you know, what's happening when you start your day? You know, I wake up and right away, started looking into my phone and I started trying to see what's happening with emails to get caught up. And, you know, it's literally the absolute worst way you can possibly start a day. Like you want to start your day where you're giving yourself the intention of what you want to accomplish in the few hours that you have ahead of you. And once you've figured out that intention, you need to take on a few key activities when you wake up that are going to set you up for success and give you a lot of energy.   Steve Rush: Right.   Shawn Johal: So, you should either again, be doing some type of meditation, very quickly reading some positive literature, maybe writing in a journal, really setting yourself up for success before you become a slave to technology, which unfortunately seems to be what a lot of us do.   Steve Rush: You have this approach called 10, 10, 10, don't you?   Shawn Johal: Yes, this was taught to me by my mentor, Warren Ruston, the incredible, incredible human being. Warren has this concept of 10, 10, 10, where he, you know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes. That's what it represents. You would do three different activities for 10 minutes each. It would be 10 minutes of meditation, 10 minutes of journaling, and 10 minutes of reading, positive literature. When I teach this to people, I get a lot of pushback because a lot of people tell me the same thing. You expect me to take on 30 minutes to start my day. I don't even have, you know, three minutes. And so, it's a little bit of a challenge at first. So, what I explained to people to do is say, listen, you can take the 10, 10, 10, which is super impactful. If it's too much for you, what I want you to do instead is do a five, five, five. So, you could just cut it in half and do five minutes of each. And then when I get pushed back on the five, five, five, I tell people, okay, listen, if you can't even do the five, five, five, just do one time five, pick one of the three activities, do one of them for five minutes. Even that starts your day, so substituting, checking email, and you running right away into fires, you know, fire extinguishing, as I like to call it. And instead doing something much, much more intentional, such as a meditation or journal is completely going to change the way your day is approached and the way you're going to take on you know, the activities that you have that day, it really makes a huge difference.   Steve Rush: It switches on the prefrontal cortex. It creates you your strong foundations for the day, rather than being emotionally triggered by other stuff that could impact on you, right?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. It really switches the script where now you're in control of your day. Whereas when you're just becoming a slave to technology, you no longer control it. And you're no longer in that circle of influence that you know, was so well taught to us by Stephen Covey, you have to make sure that you can control your own destiny. And if you're not taking those steps in the morning, you're always going to be chasing your day and chasing your day is obviously not the type of place you want to be mentally. You want to be in a place where you're deciding what's going to happen next, and you're not really having someone else decide for you   Steve Rush: Exactly, right. And of course, if you're not in control, that's when stress starts to creep into the workplace and into our world, which is so counterproductive.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, and I think, you know, as you know, very well, Steve. Stress right now is probably, you know, especially in the virus here, it's the biggest culprit of most businesses.   Steve Rush: Definitely.   Shawn Johal: Right now, recent surveys have said that, you know, over 40% of employees are currently stressed out and they're not telling their employer. Stress levels are rampant around the world. They've been going up every single year, over the past 25 years. People are really stressed. People are really, really stressed, and we have to find ways to reduce that stress for them.   Steve Rush: So, what's law number three?   Shawn Johal: Law number three is what I love to call the law of self-giving. So, what that means is, now you've made yourself fully aware of where you're at in your life. You've taken on new stretch goals. You've changed your habits, you're visualizing your success, and now you need to help others, you know, to do the same. There's a concept that I read a really long time ago from an amazing author, and the book was called The Dream Manager, Matthew Kelly. And basically, that book is incredibly powerful because it really explains, it's more in a business concept, but it really explains how you can go into a business and do, you know, dream facilitation and help people really achieve their goals and their dreams, because each one of us, you and I included Steve, we all have certain skill sets and we have certain connections. And if we use those and help others, we would definitely be able to help them take that next step in their journeys and their success. And so, for the law of self-giving, I like to have people do that, that dream facilitation concept for people around them, you know, it could be for family, it could be for friends, it could be for peers.   What you want to do is you want to find someone and you want to sit with them and figure out, okay, what is it that they are trying to accomplish in their lives? Is it something professional? It could be something personal? Now what is a dream that they wish they could really pursue and they're struggling with, and then you make it a point to actually go and help them accomplish that dream, you use it. I'm not saying it's financial. You know, I'm not telling people to go out there and, you know, give ten thousand dollars to this person, but you have unique skills and contacts that could probably help this person some way somehow. And so, you want to use those so that you can go and help that person accomplish their dreams, and then you become a dream facilitator for them. And so that would be, you know, one part of the law of self-giving, you know, another part of it for me, which is really important is gifting people every single day in a specific way. That's something that we just don't do enough of this. This is one idea that I think people could use really easily. One of my really good friends, Rob Murray, and he's an entrepreneur in Canada. He sent me an email last week and his email was just entitled. Thank you for being you. And the email was just three lines, very quick and short, telling me why he appreciated me as a human being for no reason, just absolutely out of the blue. And that's something that I've been encouraging people to do a lot, you know, pick people in your network and send them a quick email, just telling them why you appreciate them so much. It does not to be crazy long, does not have to be this whole love letter. Just very simply, you know, telling the person why they mean a lot to you and why they're important in your life. And just realize that the impact that will have on that person on the other end is unbelievable. It really, really is, and we don't take enough time to realize the impact our words have. And the intention has when you do something like that.   Steve Rush: It's very true. One of my previous guests on the show actually, who will remain nameless so they don't feel overly embarrassed while I share this story. Sent me a note just a few weeks back saying, Steve, you are amazing. I just felt the whole world lift around me in that moment because nobody does that or rarely people do that. And it felt so special to get that message.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. I mean, it's just so important. It has to be authentic, obviously, that's the key, but the reality is that people are amazing and there's so many people around us that are always doing so many great things and they have so many friends and colleagues. And do we take the time to appreciate them? We, don't and why?   Steve Rush: Exactly. It's one of those things. If you think about how we've become matured in our ways and our thinking, we've unlearned some of the things that weren't natural and organic as we were growing up, such as saying, thank you, or showing gratitude to people. Dreaming big, as you just talked about it and that facilitation of dreams. As children, we would have naturally done that. But as we become older, we've unlearned how to do that effectively. And I think that's a quite neat reframe that you put there around that whole giving law.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, I think you're right, Steve, it's very unfortunate. I don't know why that happens. It's a very bizarre thing that society and the world seems to always be pushing us down. And it's like, dreaming is only now reserved for those very, very select few like 0.001% of people in the world that are, you know, these successful athletes or entrepreneurs or artists, but every single one of us has that creativity within us, we really do. Why are we not using it? I think sometimes beats us down a little bit, trying to get yourself out of that, you know, that little bit of a prison of our minds that we're thrown into and trying to find that creativity again and everything that we do.   Steve Rush: I agree Shawn, and what's law number four?   Shawn Johal: So, ending on number four, you know, now you've gone through self-awareness, you're starting to do go through self-improvement and now you're into self-giving and you're giving back. Finally, its self-belief. Now is really where you're taking the time to say, okay, you know I'm going to take things to the next level. I'm really no longer going to have the imposter syndrome. I'm an amazing human being and I can do anything that I want. And so, the law of self-belief as, you know, a few different elements to it, for me, one of the most important things is what I call spinning positivity. We owe it to ourselves to eliminate those things that are energy drains in our lives. Those things that are really negative, those could be people, it could be situations. It could be the environment, whatever things in your life. Should make a list of all the things that drain your energy.   You know, I like to call them energy vampires and really make sure that you're just getting those out of your way as quickly as possible. And then what I like to call the next step is really the belief building. So, where you're really building your belief system around the new you, because now you've really developed a new personality really, and everything that you've done in the first three steps. And now you can take your own personal success, whatever that means for you. It doesn't mean financial. It means whatever you think, however, you define success for yourself and you can take that to the next level. And then that final step of that last law is really what I like to call, just go big, which again, comes back to the point that we talked about earlier about creativity a few minutes ago. It's just, why are we thinking so small? Like I just don't understand it. We have so much potential, any one of us. This is for all of us you know, and again, it's relative to your own life into what you're trying to do, but I really encourage people now to really think as big and as bold as possible. You know, it's funny yesterday, Steve, I was working with my digital marketing coordinator. We were rebuilding our vision and our business on a few different levels. And we were just looking at the why our company exists and we kind of changed it yesterday. And we really put it as empowering business leaders to create and to accomplish their most audacious goals. And we really spent a lot of time on that because for us, the audacious part, we debated it quite a bit. And we said, you know what? Why not? Like, you know, people need to be a little more audacious. Like you got to, you got to think bigger. When you think about something, I think what you're going to accomplish you should immediately like double two X that and say, okay, now what I'm going to try to do double what I just thought.   Steve Rush: It's often our worldview that holds us back though, right? Those biases, those limiting beliefs that we give ourselves that stop us really thinking big?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. I see it all the time going into businesses and with companies, when I work with them, they've already given them the cells like a ceiling. They've already, most of the time told themselves, okay, we can only accomplish this much as a business. Or I meet individual people who say, this is as far as I can strive for. And it's just disappointing because I know that they can do more, I can see it. They have so much more potential. So yeah, it is almost getting out of our own mind.   Steve Rush: Which in itself is another habit that takes practice and repetition, right?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. You just have to be working on yourself constantly. And that's why things like meditation and journaling and visualization are so important. And again, they're scientifically proven to work. It's not spiritual. It's really science-based.   Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. So, Sean, this part of the show now, we get the opportunity to hack into your mind as a leader, and to really start to think about some of the great things that you can share in addition to what you've already shared. So, the first place I'd like to go with you is to find out what you think your top three leadership hacks might be?   Shawn Johal: I would say to you, the first one is the community. When I say the community, we all have access to some type of community around us. I'm an entrepreneur. I have, you know, the entrepreneur's organization. I have, you know, a lot of friends that are entrepreneurs as well. And so, I'm always, you know, hacking into this amazing network and community of peers that I have, but that applies to everyone. You know, you could be, you know, a business leader, you could be a manager, you could be a frontline employee, you have a community available to you out there some way, somehow. You just have to look, there are like-minded peers that you can share ideas with and surround yourself with to help you take that next step. So, I'm always encouraging people to really get out there and make sure that they're networking and they're finding a community for themselves that could really help them take things to the next level. So, for me, that's definitely number one, number two would be mentorship. And so, there's a community of peers that can help you a lot. We all should have some type of mentor in our lives. And you know, we'd probably take a whole other podcast to talk about how to go find the perfect mentor, but I know a lot of people are intimidated by it. At the same time, it's not as hard as you think. You know, there are a lot of different ways to find a mentor out there. A mentor could be, again, it could be professional, it could be personal. There are probably some people out there that have a lot of wisdom and knowledge to give to you. And it's not just a take, take, take situation. A mentorship relationship is very much give and take. And so, the right type of mentor will also be getting a lot from that relationship.   And so, you know, when you can find the right type of person to help you out there, it will make a world of difference. I've had several different mentors and most recently I've been working over the last few years with Warren Ruston, as I mentioned just the amount of learning that I've gotten from Warren and the guidance and being challenged on my different ideas has been absolutely inspiring. So that would be an absolutely massive element to look into. And finally, hack number three would be habit hacking. We spoke a little bit before we didn't spend a lot of time on it. You absolutely need to change how you wake up and what you do before going to sleep. Those are the two most important times of the day when you absolutely need to master your habits. You need to wake up, have a very, very specific way, whether it's working out with doing the things I mentioned earlier with meditation, visualization and the same thing before going to sleep, you know, I see people are falling asleep to writing emails or to watching Netflix. This is not how you want to go to sleep. You want to go to sleep, you're preparing your brainwaves because you're getting into that Theta brainwave. And then you're going into the deep Delta brainwave. It's a time of day where we have the most impact on our subconscious mind. And so, do you want to be going to sleep or you're stressed out and you're thinking about what you have to do the next morning. Now you're marinating in those thoughts for about eight hours, you know, maybe five, maybe six, maybe seven, and you're not putting your brain at the right place because most of the day, 95% of the time we're living in our subconscious mind. And so, what you put into your subconscious is incredibly important. And so, I always encourage all of my business leaders that I work with, make sure that you have an incredible morning routine, but just as important, make sure you have an incredible evening routine before going to sleep as well.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. It's really, really powerful, and if you do it every day, then before, you know, it's just the way it happens for you. It becomes part of what you do, rather than a routine.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely.   Steve Rush: Brilliant. The next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is where something hasn't worked out as planned, or indeed hasn't worked out at all in some cases, but as a result of the experience, we now use it as a positive in our life. What will be your Hack to Attack?   Shawn Johal: It's funny, this is something that's happened to me very recently. I've been following, you know, I've been coaching a lot of businesses and when COVID hit a lot of the businesses that I was coaching, you know, had to take a back seat and I basically had to work for free for about three months. Now things have come back to normal, but during that time, I learned a lot about online marketing, online courses, you know, launching virtual summits. And I jumped deep. I deep dove into a lot of these, and I followed a lot of influencers. And what happened is that I realized that a lot of these digital influencers make it sound so easy, right? Because apparently the whole world is going digital. And so therefore it's just so easy to have success in the digital world, which is just not the case.   Then recently I launched an online course. And my first online course, you know, it did not have the success that I was really hoping for and really expected. And it really hit me hard because you know, that kind of lived through that failure and to have to deal with it, was tough for me. You know, it's not something that I'm used to. I encourage my kids to fail all day, but when it happens to you, it's actually really hard to deal with. And so, you know, I looked at it and what I realized is that I had completely built it the wrong way. I'd also launched it the wrong way. And it's giving me a tremendous amount of learning. I'm going to continue pursuing that route and launching an online course over the next year, for sure. And I now have the tools necessary to do it the right way. So, I think I needed that first failure to know how to do it properly in the future.   Steve Rush: And it's how you frame it, that's the most important thing, right? To have this principle that there's only a win and learn, there is no fail, and it's that framing of the experience that's going to make you successful in the future.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, and I think most people get caught up in the emotions of a failure.   Steve Rush: Definitely.   Shawn Johal: I do that myself, you know, it's really tough. I'm not someone who's had a tremendous amount of failures in my life without a few here and there, and they've been tough to deal with. And this one recently hit home pretty hard too, and it stopped, while there is an emotional aspect to it, and you have to be able to get over that emotional aspect as quickly as possible.   Steve Rush: The last part of the show, we get to give you a chance to do some time travel, bump into Shawn at 21, and give him some advice or some words of wisdom. What's it going to be?   Shawn Johal: It would be so many Steve, so many, but I'll pick one. I would've said master the arts of meditation and visualization at an earlier age. And for some reason it seems to come later in life where we start having more introspection. I think those are incredible tools that allow us to have so much better control of our emotions and of our own vision. And by doing both meditation and visualization for me, it's been in the last year only where I've started doing it. It's changed my life completely. And I'm trying to teach my kids now how to do it at a very early age, because to me, those are two super powers that are free and that we're just not utilizing much.   Steve Rush: 100%! Great advice. Great advice. So, if folks want to get in touch with you and learn a little bit more about the work that you do with Elevation and indeed how to get hold of some of your insights, where's the best place for us to send them?   Shawn Johal: I say two places where I spend a lot of time, obviously my website, which is shawnjohal.com, so S.H.A.W.N-J.O.H.A.L.com and I spend a tremendous amount of time on LinkedIn as well. You'll always find me posting a lot of things on LinkedIn, trying to provide a little bit of ideas and learning to the community out there. And so those would be the two best places to find me for sure.   Steve Rush: Awesome. We'll make sure that those links are in the show notes and that anybody who's listened to today can literally just click on over and get straight to find more about you. So, it's only left for me, Shawn, to say, thank you for joining us on our community here. It's been amazing talking to you. You're truly inspirational guy. I've learned loads in just listening to you today. And every time I listened to speak with you, I always pick up a couple of nuggets. So, thank you for being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Shawn Johal: Well, thank you, Steve. It's been a real pleasure. I love what you're doing and keep it up. It's really inspiring, honestly.   Steve Rush: Thank you Shawn.   Shawn Johal: Thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there is @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

On this episode of the active CEO Podcast, Craig Johns speaks with Penny Locaso about hacking happiness, her fascination with human behaviour, unpacking codes for busy, microbravery and leaders transforming from an expert into an experimenter. We also talk how she overcome imposter syndrome at Shell, human connections, positively impacting the lives of others, being present in a moment and sharing experiences.

Catherine is here today with Penny Locaso. Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is the world's first Happiness Hacker, on a mission to teach 10 million humans, by 2025, how to intentionally adapt in order to futu...

Catherine is here today with Penny Locaso. Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is the world's first Happiness Hacker, on a mission to teach 10 million humans, by 2025, how to intentionally adapt in order to future-proof happiness. Penny is her own ongoing experiment in Hacking Happiness. Six years ago, she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness. She left a sixteen-year career as an executive, relocated a family from Perth back to Melbourne, left an 18-year relationship and started her own purpose driven company HackingHappy.co Through her journey Penny discovered that happiness is found not in the wanting of more but in the things, we are avoiding. She now works with individuals and organisations around the globe helping them define happiness on their terms and building the confidence to experiment to bring more of it into the every day. Today Penny is an international keynote speaker, educational innovator, and the author of Hacking Happiness. Find Out More About Penny Locaso Visit Penny's Website The Hacking Happy Collective Facebook Group Follow Penny Locaso on Instagram @hackinghappyco It's now time to tune into this one very inspirational human being. Enjoy!!

Today we're speaking with Penny Locaso, the Australian life coach, happiness guru, corporate happiness consultant and author of Hacking Happiness. In this episode, Penny will explain the three ingredients needed for a happy life, how micro-bravery can change your life, and taking action to gain clarity. So if your 2020 has been a bit of a shit-show and you need some helpful advice on how to get back on track — this episode is for you.Additionally, we'd like to dedicate this episode to a personal hero of ours and of women everywhere — Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth, thank you for dedicating your life to securing equality for women and improving the lives of those who faced oppression. We will forever be indebted to you. Rest in peace, Notorious RGB.

Nic Marks is the special guest on show 18. He is the CEO and founder of Friday Pulse, Statistician, Happiness Expert, and Ted Speaker. Learn from Nic about: What happiness is and how to measure it How feelings and emotions come before cognition Why some nations and people are happier than others What leadership activities increase happiness in the workforce How human appreciation increases happiness in us all Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Nic Marks Below:  www.fridaypulse.com Connect with Nic on LinkedIn Follow Nic on Twitter https://nicmarks.org   Full Transcript Below:    ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Joining me on today's show is CEO and founder of Friday Pulse. Statistician, happiness expert, and Ted speaker, its Nic Marks. Before we get to speak with Nic, It is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: In our role as leaders, we have likely to have made some significant decisions of late. Our approach to making decisions will vary from individual to individual and while some considered and thoughtful strategic decisions would have absolutely been a must at work, recent research has found using a coin toss to decide major life decisions may ultimately make you happier. The new study has found overall happiness increased after a six-month period. The study titled, The Review of Economic Studies published in the Oxford University press also found that people that rely on a coin toss to make a decision are more likely to follow through with their choice and be more satisfied as a result. To find out the impact of using a coin toss economist Professor Steven Levitt from the university of Chicago, asked people to make important decisions such as whether to quit a job, move home, end a relationship or quit smoking using affirmative and negative assigned to either heads or tails of a coin.   Users were also asked to include their own questions such as, Should I get a tattoo? And prior to the coin toss, volunteers were also instructed to help identify third party judicators to verify the outcomes and assessed independently the results. After two months participants and their third party judicators were asked to conduct a survey; which found that participants favoured the status quo, making a change less frequently than they would predicted they would before the coin toss, according to phys.org. However, a further study conducted after six months found that this bias towards the status quo had gone, according to the six month survey. Those who were interested to make certain changes regarding major decisions were more likely to do so, and be happier as a result. Participants also said that they were more likely to make the same decision if they were to choose again.   According to the researchers, the findings were inconsistent with the conventional theory of choice, which states that people who are on the margins should on average report equal happiness, regardless of where they made the decisions. Professor Levitt said, society teaches us quitters, never win and winners never quit. But in reality, the data from his experiment suggests we would all be better off if we did more quitting. He went on to say, “a good rule of thumb in decision making is whenever you cannot decide what you should do choose the action that represents change rather than continue with the status quo”. The leadership lesson here is, we often get stuck in change and we're not sure on which direction to take, and whilst tossing a coin might give us a yes or a no to a certain direction. Does that change really bring something new? So that's been The Leadership Hacker News. We would really encourage you to share with us your insights, ideas, and funny stories around leadership, leaders around the world. Please get in touch.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: I am joined on today's show with Nic Marks. He is the CEO and creator of Friday Pulse. He is an author, Ted speaker and a statistician. Nic, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Nic Marks: Thank you very much, Steve.   Steve Rush: So statistician, numbers, I guess that must have started at an early age for it to become such a big feature in your life? Tell us a little bit about that.   Nic Marks: Yeah, there is a lot of syllables in that word as well isn't there statistician? I just was, I was good at maths and was not very interested in much else at school. I mean, I did my A- levels with double mass Physics and half of Physics is mass as well. It was sort of I could do, and therefore, you know, I was top, of the year at school, pretty much all the way through and pretty much ended up at Cambridge reading mass before I made a decision about anything and actually ended up not liking maths at Cambridge. Because it is very, very pure and therefore discovering, I was really an applied statistician. I liked using numbers to solve problems rather than the sort of abstractness of mathematics, which is what you get into in that space. So yeah, was kind of, what I was good at.   Steve Rush: So the fascination really was not just about the patterns and the numbers, but actually how can you use these numbers in a positive way and how can I apply them in doing something that is relevant for people?   Nic Marks: Yeah, that was the big eye-opener. When I started sort of solving things, particularly on health statistics, you know, they start setting you problems to solve maybe in A-level and anything that sort of had a bit more human side to it. I got quite, I enjoyed those questions more and that is what I was actually able to do at Cambridge. I was able to switch into an applied statistics course and you know we did sort of industrial psychology and Queuing Theory. I accused even now if I get in a queue and I can see it is badly organized. That put me in a rage and it is partly my Queuing Theory sort of ideas, but yeah, so anything, it was very practical I got interested in.   Steve Rushs: And even more so, during lockdown where there are queue everywhere, I should imagine for you particularly that is really challenging, Right?   Nic Marks: Well actually, what I don't like about queue is when they're not fair, I don't mind a fair queue, and actually the lockdown queue are very fair, aren't they, you know, you're standing there in order and you let older people pass if you're a certain time or key workers and that all seems very fair. What I really hate is like when you come into an airport and you're queuing up and there's a big queue at the, you know, the passport control and you know, one, they haven't put enough people on, but then you can't see if the front of your queue has got one or two people on it. And so the queue go at different rates and you always end up in this lower queue. In fact, you are statistically more likely to end up in this lower queue anyway, and then it feels unfair. And I once actually had an argument with passport control guy, not an argument as a discussion. I said to him, you know, why don't you queue up in a snake? And he said, Oh, actually it makes the average queuing time go up, which is a very fair thing. And I said to him, well, the problem is the experience of queuing is related to the standard deviation, not the mean and he looked at me and went…   Steve Rush: I should imagine that when down well?   Nic Marks: …Can you put that in writing please? My kids were very embarrassed.   Steve Rush: And who would have known that queues have so much applied maths behind it; Which I guess if you look around society that we are in, there are maths and numbers behind everything.   Nic Marks: I mean, totally. I mean, if you do marketing these days, digital marketing, you've got a lot of queuing theory and mathematics in there and about friction and flow and the way you model it. There is so many ways that at least a sort of A-level understanding of mass can really, really help you. I don't think you need to go much beyond that, but well obviously some people do, but it is very interesting to me anyway.   Steve Rush: So beyond University, then you started applying your learned mathematics, what happened next?   Nic Marks: I did a Masters and then I joined a consultancy. Anderson consulting who sort of now called Accenture and did programming and things like that. I quit really, when I realized they were going to sort of move me around the country to wherever they wanted me to work. And I just got engaged and was in London and didn't really want to move around. And I also started to make more choices in my life. I mean I think some people, this comes earlier, but I started thinking actually, what do I really want to work on? And I went to work for sustainability, environmental investment company, and I started getting more interested in things which were sort of, as I say, sort of more socially useful statistics. Yeah, and I did that for a bit, but I also had a slightly kooky side, but slightly different side. I got very into sort of personal development and I used to go to sort of men's encounter groups. Cause I did not really quite understand how to be a man in the world. I found slightly misogynists, and so I just started exploring all that. And the reason for that really was my mum was a therapist and in the end I trained as a therapist as well as do math statistics, which sort of makes for, I think, a very creative mix, but then unusual mix anyway,   Steve Rush: So that creative mixture you now have, has smudged that psychotherapy and your statistician background together to create what you do now. The last 12-15 years of your life. You have been really focusing on the whole principle of happiness and how we can be more focused and understand some of the metrics and numbers that sit behind happiness. Tell us a little bit. About how that came about?   Nic Marks: Yeah, it started in about 2001. I was doing some other work with a think tank in London called New Economics Foundation. And the director then director said to me, Nic, there is this word called wellbeing coming into public policy and no one knows what it means. And can you help us, he said drive some meaning under the word? And I being a statistician, I said, well, I'd like to know how we could measure it because then, you know, policy makers might take it seriously. So we started a project which eventually became my whole work, and it became something called a centre for wellbeing, but we even started to create metrics around wellbeing that was useful for local, national, and international agencies about people's experiences with life effectively. And some people in the field were already calling that happiness and I shy away from that for a while because it sounded a bit light for the government policy.   But I started to realize that it was a much more attractive word than wellbeing and also more relatable. Ultimately, you know, whether we enjoy our lives or not in whatever basis we want to do, there is kind of, what it is about, so you know, and you can talk to anyone about whether they're happy or not. We can then discuss what that means and we can discuss, you know, whether we mean the same thing, but it makes a much more fruitful discussion, so that is kind of how I got into it. Yeah.   Steve Rush: It is really neat principle. The whole happiness thing that I have explored and there are a number of great authors that have written around the similar subject over the last sort of 10 or 15 years. It almost feels a little bit pink and fluffy and subjective, and I guess what you are seeking to do is to create some more objectivity so that leaders can be a bit more thoughtful of their personal impact around that. Would that be a kind of fair assumption?   Nic Marks: It is kind of fair, but I don't like… it is not you, but I don't like this sort of split between objective and subjective because our experience of life is sort of necessarily subjective. You know, we are the subject of that experience and actually, what a lot of statistics and data does is it objectifies things, so it will say we can measure your standard of life because we can see that and touch that. So we can touch your housing, your income, your whatever, we can measure that, but we don't know what you're feeling, so we can't measure that and actually that's not true. It is just a different type of measurement, and then you have to be careful about how you do it, but you can put numbers on it, and so there is a way we use the word subjective. Which makes it feel like it's very loose and it would change for everybody, but actually, whether people enjoy their lives or not is sort of gradable.   Steve Rush: Yeah, that makes those a sense actually. If somebody was to ask you, what does happiness mean? How would you describe it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I have had various descriptions over the years, but so I often say its feeling good and doing well. And by that, I mean that it got a feeling element, but it's got a functional element to it and we use the word happiness very broadly in English language. So we use it as a sort of momentary feeling. I feel happy, but we also use it as what's tends to be called a cognitive assessment. You know, I feel happy with, or I am happy with, so we are sort of reflecting on a sort of judgment about something. And then there's a school of thought that thinks that happiness is a sort of capability that it's, you know, that knowing or feeding that I can deal with, anything is a feeling of happiness. It is sort of like a perceived resilience going forward that, you know, I can cope with things. So in that sense, I think that there is a functional element to an actually purely from a psychological perspective or a nuisance perspective than our feelings and emotions actually help us acts in the world. So there is a sort of, they are not just there as sort of a nice sensation actually motivate us to behave in certain ways. So that is how I tend to think of it as a, you know, feeling good and doing well.   But then there's another nuance, which I quite like, which goes actually right back to ancient Greek Philosophy, which is whether it's about pleasure and meaning. And the hedonist talk about pleasure and Aristotle and people had talked about, eudemonia thought about it as sort of meaning and virtue. Justified this idea that you can only know if you're happy when you're at the end of your life and you're looking back, which is quite harsh, but in a way I think it's both in the sense that if we have a life which is meaningful, but no fun, then we run out of energy quite quickly. And if it's all fun and pleasure and there's no meaning, then we sort of lose our way and we kind of need both of those parts and, they work in different timeframes and so there's a nice tension between them and a nice synergy between them. And obviously there are times when it get you in life, which, you know, you feel you've got lots of meaning, but no pleasure. And you can get yourself into a crisis about that. I mean, I been divorced and I have actually gotten a situation where my marriage was hugely meaningful to me, but I really did not enjoy it and that created a sort of crack in my life that I had to resolve. I think that way as well, so that's sort of two different ways of feeling good and doing well and pleasure and meaning.   Steve Rush: I quite like the whole principle of it is quite an emotional response as well isn't it. It is a personal response to what is going on around us, I guess.   Nic Mark: Yeah, Our feelings are very much about what is going on around us. They are sort of us, and our environment. In fact, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio don't know, if you've ever read him. Have you read him?   Steve Rush: I have, I have.   Nic Marks: Have you read his most recent one? The strange order of things.   Steve Rush: Maybe give us a snippet from that.   Nic Marks: It is a funny title of a book, but basically he's talking about feelings and emotions come before cognition come before central nervous systems in our evolutionary history.   Steve Rush: Right.   Nic Markss: And, that they actually help us do three things, feelings. They help us monitor our environments. They help motivate us to act and they help us adjust those actions over time. And that first one of monitoring is sort of, you know, our feelings are actually, I have to say our feelings are data that they actually give us information about what's going on around us. And that's not just our feelings become emotions, but, you know, do we feel hot or cold? Do we feel hungry? Do we feel thirsty? It's basically telling us about, and it's motivating us to act in some sort of ways, but you know, our feeling of feeling frightened is that it feels like there's a danger out there and that we need to help avoid or get ourselves out of that threat. And we often have the feeling well before we have the cognition and that's really his argument is that the feeding comes first. Then we apply our intelligence to that feeling and deciding how we are going to act.   Steve Rush: And the cognition of course prevents us from doing crazy things, which is why the executive part of our brain slows down and stops in some cases what we will deal with those emotional reactions, of course.   Nic Marks: Yeah, I am not a total expert on the absolute specifics in it, but they absolutely are interconnected. Actually, even if you think about something positive, like happiness, which is a little bit of a sort of gateway word to a whole range of positive emotions. We can use the word very broadly, but then actually gets specifics. You know, some people would say, even if I say what happiness, mean to you? They will say contentment and other people will say joy. Contentment and joy quite different. Yeah, one is very high energy and one's quite low energy, and of course, there is actually a whole range of things in there. Like, you know, joy and enjoyment are different and amusement. And, you know, things like enjoyment, amusement, laughter are sort of very social and they are very about bonding with other people.   So when you're having a laugh with people or mucking around, you actually slow down…you shut down your executive decision making and your full intelligence because you're trying to bond, but it doesn't pay you to be your brightest, most sort of challenging self at that moment. You better to conform, so, you know, so actually, there are times when we are happy when, we are probably less intelligent, but there are other times, you know if we think about other forms of happiness, such as curiosity or interest, which are very engaging parts, that sort of positive emotion when we are absolutely fully using our intelligence. And I think it's sometimes why in business and organizations, people get worried about happiness. They try to think people be happy, clappy and not very bright. Well, there is certain forms of it, which that is true for, so they can point to it. But actually what they really want is people to be positive and safe, enthusiastic, and sometimes to have a laugh, but just maybe 5-10% of the time and other times we are doing other bits, so there's really this whole myriad of different positive emotions and we want to be agile and moving around between them.   Steve Rush: Sure. Now society also plays a massive part in this doesn't it? So over the last 10 or 15 years, if you think about it, societies describe happiness with good economies, wealth, good social wellbeing and obedience, having researched just that, all over the planet, what's your take on how that plays out?   Nic Marks: Well, it is for certain that nations have different levels of average happiness and actually different distributions of happiness in them and some that both the averages and the distribution can be explained by economic and societal factors. And, and then there's stuff more below that but you know, if we look at rank orders of nations on happiness, then Scandinavian countries tend to come top, and that's a lot to do with their social safety net. Which is, it's not really to do with the fact that that's the sort of…I was going to say the average, but by the average, I mean the media and the person in the middle is not particularly happy and Scandinavia and say in the UK or the U.S. but where they are, they do much, much better. Is that the bottom half of the distribution or the lowest 25% in terms of income are match less unhappy in Scandinavia than they are in the UK, the U.S. and places like that, so it is more that they don't have the tail of the distribution pulling the mean down. They have more equal distribution of happiness within it, and that's kind of interesting if you, you know, because people often go, oh, well, you know, you could say the Swedes are happier, but, you know, don't, they have high suicide rates, don't they have this. And, you know, I don't find the fins very extrovert, but, and that's probably all true. I mean, but there are other factors also, which is if you live in a broadly happy society and you are unhappy, you probably take it more personally, and so actually countries with a higher happiness rate may possibly have a highest suicide rate. Whereas if you live in a country such as India or Pakistan, or somewhere where there is much lower levels, you know, suicide rates are probably lower because people feel more normalized about their happiness.   Steve Rush: Less highs and lows, is that how I am reading it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, sort of. You feel less personal; you know if everyone around you is happy and you are miserable, you feel it is very much your fault. And so therefore, you know, I'm a burden on other people. Then you get into this very difficult logic where you start thinking it is actually better for you to take your own life, which is tragically, how some people get. Whereas if everybody is, you just feel like, what does that mean to all of us? Which you know, which in the current situation with the anxiety around looked down and COVID because everybody feels in the same boat, we are not sort of; we are feeling more open about our anxiety because we kind of know it's not about us feeling bad. It is about the environment, so that makes it easy to talk about.   Steve Rush: You also spent a significant amount of time pulling together, enormous research to create the Happy Planet Index. Just tell the listeners a little bit about what the Happy Planet Index is?   Nic Marks: Yeah, the Happy Planet Index is sort of a proposed alternative to GDP as a way of measuring the progress of nations. And I've always felt that GDP was a really bad measure of welfare, of the wellbeing of a nation. In fact, one of my first published bits of work is from 94 and it was an alternative to GDP, but it was very complicated. It was very objective. It was basically a huge cost benefit analysis of the economy and had a lot of assumptions in it. And I knew it was very complicated, but when I used to go talk to talks about it, rightly or wrongly, but it did show was that about the mid-seventies was about the highest in this index and it trading often. People go to me, that is how it feels to me, particularly older people would do.   Steve Rush: Right. Nic Marks: And I always thought that is interesting. It does not say anything about what you feel. It is just a whole lot of economic data put together. That started me perhaps thinking about how you measure what you feel, but when it came to the Happy Planet Index, which was released in 2006, so like 12 years after that first bit of work, I want to do something very simple and easier to agree with. I sort of learned that complexity and indicators tends to put people off, or if they get interested, they then start looking at all the assumptions and the debate gets about the detail and not the bigger picture. And so what I did with the HPI was I said, well, you know, what's the outcome you really want from a country, and I said, it's to produce good lives that don't cost the earth and the planet, but in there is the sustainability element of it.   And so I went, well, you could measure good lives by asking, by looking at the data on happiness, across nations, say the quality of people's lives, you can then adjust that for the length of our life, so life expectancy, which is a very good, reliable piece of health statistics. You've got data on from around the world, but you've also got to think about the efficiency as a nation. Like how much resources does it use to get there? So the Happy Planet Index became a, you know, environmental efficiency of delivering wellbeing, a sort of bang for your buck indicator and that is what it is. It rank ordered nations across the world and basically you have some countries which have got high wellbeing, but high environmental impact and that will be typically Western rich countries. You've got countries which have got low wellbeing, but low environmental impact, so those are sub Saharan Africa and other nations, which are really struggling. Then you've got countries which are interesting, which I've got pretty good levels of wellbeing and much lower resource use and typically they were central Latin America and, some of the islands of the world, or some of the Asian countries, which were doing well. And that became interesting to think, you know, okay, how can we create a sustainable future, which is also a good future. Because the problem with the environmental movement, which, you know, I certainly have been a part of and absolutely bought into. I think they sell very negative visions of the future with the idea that you can scare people into changing their behaviour and I think we can all see over the last 25 years that has not worked.   So, you know, how do we do it in a way which we actually say to people, actually, this could be a better future. And in some ways, some of that is going on right now with COVID in that people are thinking about, oh, I'm staying at home, I'm traveling much less. It is actually less stressful for me, and it is about identifying those positives, you know, as we come out of COVID. It would be a shame if we don't take some benefits in reducing carbon emissions and other things. I mean, that would be disappointing having had this forced on us to not, gets some positives out and not everyone welcomes COVID; we could still get some positives out of it.   Steve Rush: Almost the planet's opportunity, if you just start giving back, isn't it at this time?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I mean, there are people that go all that way and say it's in a guy's feedback and I don't go quite to that level, but it's an opportunity, isn't it? I think like any setback is an opportunity to learn, even if you didn't want to get into it.   Steve Rush: We are going to start to talk a little bit about what you're doing at the moment with Friday Pulse, but just before we do, what is the happiest place statistically on earth?   Nic Marks: Well, last year's data showed Finland as the happiest nation. Then I, the only within country data that I know very well is the UK. And the regions of the UK, and I think it always surprises people, but actually London is the least happy region because it's urban because inequalities are high there and things of that, and people are very close together. Whereas the happiest region of the UK is Northern Ireland, which is much more rural and of course, recent memories of troubles, so they've actually got sort of point to go back to.   So there's sort of different things, but at the national level, it's Finland at the moment, but it has been Norway previously and Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark have done well. Costa Rica is a very surprising one that comes through that is particularly happy compared to its GDP. So yeah, that is the way it is sort of is.   Steve Rush: Cool, and what would be the kind of one or two things that are consistent across those higher ranking, happier places?   Nic Marks: So there is income distribution, which they basically tend to be more equal countries which is what Scandinavia is, and actually even Costa Rica is more equal than such of neighbours around it, you know, Nicaragua, Guatemala and all those other places around there. So it does very well in that and there's also high levels of literacy. Gender equality in Costa Rico, which of course are things that Scandinavia is particularly good at, so equality tends to come out stronger than people think, but of course, you know, richer countries are happier. That is sort of undeniable. They are just not becoming any happier with the extra amounts of wealth we have. We are not seeing those countries on a trajectory to become happier. The countries that are on a trajectory to become happier are some of the developing countries because they are reducing poverty. They are reducing, you know, early deaths, so you know that obviously is a positive.   Steve Rush: And I wonder, is it more visible to them at the same time?   Nic Marks: Yes, it probably is. I mean, there are differences between them, like South Korea has been studied quite a lot because they have obviously been one of the Asian tigers and, you know, their happiness levels have gone up, but they are very, very materialistic there. And they haven't gone up as much as say a country like Vietnam or something like that who is slightly less so, so there were interesting differences between them. And some of them have to do with density of population as well, but there's not just sort of one straight pathway, there are differences.   Steve Rush: Makes lots of sense. Thank you very much, Nic. So the organization you lead now, Friday Pulse. Seeks to take that distillation of happiness data, but from the colleagues and customers of the organizations that you work with. To create something that leadership and other colleagues can actually use as a lens to get a sense check of how their workforce feels, how happy they are almost. Tell us a little bit, about how Friday Pulse was created?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I did my Ted talk on the Happy Planet Index and other work I have done in 2010. And obviously that's quite an honour, and I sort of came out of it, thinking it sort of allowed an opportunity to sort of bookend that part of my work and I accidentally got into policy and I done it for 10-12 years then. When you are working on something like climate change, it is quite slow moving and, you know, I thought when I have got something in and maybe do something and I was always interested in business, my dad was a businessman. He led an organization and I thought, well, this is very applicable there. You know, if leaders knew how happy you are not, teams were, that would get them useful information. So I started creating a happiness at work survey, which was a one off survey to begin with and learned a lot about how the data worked in organizations started to get my own opinion about what I thought the drivers of happiness at work were and how we could measure them. But actually hadn't created a tool that was exceptionally responsive. You know, it's like a one off survey, like most other surveys are, but started to think, well actually, what really an organization needs to know is how it's moving through time.   And so start thinking, there is a way of measurement of happiness we call. There is three ways of measuring happiness really, We can do, what is called a cognitive assessment, which is what most surveys are, which is we ask people to look overall and reflect on it. You can do something which is called experience sampling, where you basically bleed people during the day or text them or whatever. Say, how do you feel right now? It gives really nice data, but it's really annoying. So the one in between is called episodal, measurements and you get to the end of an episode, you ask people to reflect back on it. And I decided to go for that way of measuring it and started off asking people various cadences, so a month, how has the last month been. A day, how has your day been? and settled on a week because daily was a little bit too annoying.   And also you could only just ask people how happy were you or not, and nothing more. If you ask them monthly, it was not very responsive. You so much can happen in a month. As we have learned recently and weekly is the sort of sprint of work. We go; we tend to work too, so we ask people on a Friday that is why we called Friday Pulse. You know, how was your week? How did you feel this week? And that creates a very responsive, we call it happiness KPI, but a very responsive metric, which when you group at a team level, there's effectively a measure of team morale. When you group at an organizational level, it is people's experience of the culture of the organization, experience of work right now. And so you can look at that, and I mean, the good thing about a question like that is you can ask, you know, truck driver, that question, you can ask a CEO with that question and they can give you an answer to it.   Whereas if you ask people how engaged were you this week, most people don't even know how to answer that question. They have an idea of what the top of the scale is particularly. They know if they are disengaged, they know where the top of the scale is. So when you ask people how you felt and were you happy or not? They can give you an answer that is very good, reliable data in that way.   Steve Rush: And what do you notice the themes are that contribute to a happy culture at work for leaders listening to this podcast?   Nic Marks: There are some general themes across an organization, and there are ways that you can articulate it. So the way that we do is we say there were five ways to happiness at work and, and they are connect, which is relationships are the most important. They are the cornerstone of creating good experiences or undermining experience for that case, for that matter.   The second one is to be fair, which is if people feel they are treated fairly, respectfully, then they can bring themselves to work much more. The third is to empower them sort of their autonomy delegating yet and use their strengths. The fourth is to challenge them, so this is sort of misunderstanding of happiness that people are happy doing nothing. It is actually not true they board and actually, people would like it when there is a bit of stretch. Not, if you stretch them too much, challenge them too much, they go and stress. If you under challenge them, they are going into apathy and boredom. You've got to get the right sweet spot, which has always tends to be the way anyway, and then the fifth one is to inspire, which is about meaning purpose, where they feel it doing is worthwhile.   So those five things connect be fair, impact, challenge, inspire are the big drivers, but then there is specific things that go on, which has really to do with the environment and what is going on around them very locally. Which is that some people, some teams will find them in a very stressful situation or their work environments are stressful. So with people moving remote at the moment and very quickly moved remote a few weeks ago, you know, that some people were happier working at home than others and lots to do their environments, whether they got children, whether they have the right equipment at home, where they had a quiet space, you know, whatever it was. So some of those things are very, very local and some of those bigger, broader cultural things. So yeah, those two effects really.   Steve Rush: And like any business and any part of any business it is feedback, data that I am getting an also alien to that is that leadership choices to what I do with that information as I receive it. Right?   Nic Marks: Totally and in fact, the whole of Friday Pulse is really a feedback loop. And actually it's very similar to therapy in some ways, which is that in therapy. Therapist listens to their client, and they reflect back to them and then they work with them about the challenges that they are facing. And we listened to the population, the employees by asking them every Friday, how do they feel? We feed that back to them and the team leaders, and then senior leaders, you stack the data up in nice reporting, and that enables people to then work together to make better experiences. So one of the things I am very keen on this, people don't just focus on the negatives. Don't just focus on the deficits. They actually appreciate the assets and the positives going on, and so on a Friday, we don't only ask people how they felt. We also asked them, what was success for you this week? Have you got anyone you want to thank because appreciating each other, is really important for both sides of that equation. Then we give people the opportunity to share a frustration or an idea to make things better. But actually most of our clients really, really work on accentuating the positive because in lots of ways, businesses tend to focus on how do you solve problems? What comes up? And actually probably often don't take the time to go, yes, good job, and to actually get that human appreciation, which actually we all really respond well to.   Steve Rush: And hitting back to the neuroscience we talked on a little bit earlier; of course, it will release different neurotransmitters that create that self-fulfilling prophecy of getting additional positive outcomes from our thinking and our behaviours, which helps improve happiness of course.   Nic Marks: It certainly does. And I mean, all of this works together, you know, physically, but I always think about it as like, you know, if someone compliments you and your sort of head goes up and your shoulders go back and you sort of feel bigger because you're feeling confident. Whereas when someone criticizes you, you can tend to sort of hunch up and pull your shell in, you know, and protect yourself. And we're much better when we're expensive and shoulders back, and actually other people like working with us more like that as well. So there is so much to be gained from being positive, but of course you have to be realistic. You know, it does not mean to say you let people travel down into a sort of fantasy world where everyone is doing a good job. No, it was a point is, you know, really differentiating and really understanding and helping people build on their positives.   Steve Rush: So this part of the show, we are going to turn away from you being a statistician, but look at you through your leadership lens of running an organization. And at this part of the show, we like to ask our guests to share their top leadership hacks or ideas. So if you could share based on your experience as a leader, your top leadership hacks, what would they be? Nic.   Nic Marks: I think that the big thing is listening to people, you know, I don't employ people to tell them what to do. I employ people to work with them and, get the best out of them and actually learning to bring the best out of them. The main way is listening to them even when they disagree with you, so I think listening is probably the first one.   Second one is I think little and often, I think I've tried to where I've gone wrong previously would be when I've tried to do big interventions. And actually I think doing smaller ones, checking is a much better way. But consistently I definitely have had to learn that, you know, leadership is a, weekly process, maybe even a daily process, but a weekly one, you know, where you're asking questions every week and you're listening every week rather than just sort of going, right. These are our goals for the next quarter. Then checking in 2-3 months later, realizing people have gone down a different tangent or, something has emerged, maybe for good reasons, but you don't know about them so I think little and often is probably.   The next one for me, definitely, I think inspiring people, which is that I hold the vision for the company. I don't necessarily hold the solutions, but I hold the vision for where we're going and why we're doing it. And remembering to remind people about that, so reminding them of the why, but it's actually, you know, bringing that into, your weekly work. I mean, particularly with all the adjustments we have made just recently and COVID and everyone going remote, you know, I sort of had to remind myself to remind everybody why we're doing this. If that makes sense.   Steve Rush: It makes sense. One of those things that you set up a vision to start with and other things get in the way. And we, as leaders also need reminding that is our job to remind people and to make sure that, we continually talking about the journey and how are we going to get there and what's going to get in the way and remove barriers. It's part and parcel of that. Isn't it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, it definitely is and it is actually a bit of the job I really like. Some of the detail bits, I am less good at it. I mean, it is funny; I am very good at details and stats. But I can sometimes of like, you know, I probably like many people not got the longest attention span and I sometimes sort of get stopped and I have to beat myself up for it, but the inspiring bit and the listening to how they feel and what they're doing. I mean, I can do that for ages because I really liked people and I really believe in what we are doing. So those are the bits I find easier. It is keeping people on track and the detail that is always my learning edge.   Steve Rush: Thanks for being so honest and great hacks also. So when we start to think that this partnership we've really enjoyed getting into the heads of our leaders and our guests where they've maybe screwed up in the past or something's gone catastrophic wrong, and indeed they are now using that experience as a positive in their life. We call this Hack to Attack. What would yours be?   Nic Marks: Hack to Attack? Well, I mean, in some ways I've sort of pointed to it with a little bit of those last bits, but I think that I have definitely been guilty of letting things run for too long cause I wasn't confident enough to challenge people. And, and so, you know, previously had someone in the business and you know, she has some really strong qualities, but just sort of always going pear shapes. And, and I, kept on coming back to every three or four months, but really we should have partied companies at least a year before we eventually did. And that cost us a lot, and she wasn't happy. She was not doing quite what she wanted. I was trying to, I guess, force her, so there was a role that needed doing and I was wanting her to do that role and she was not quite wanting to do it and she was definitely capable of it. But it just sort of ran on far too long, and in the end it all became very messy and angry. If I dealt with it much earlier. We would have had a lot less problems and it's the same problem I had with my marriage actually, which was that, you know, I let things run too long and I should have been challenging about that earlier. I think that is my weaknesses tending to gloss over some of the negatives, my positivity overrides listening to negative feedback or negative signals. And I think that's actually really important leadership is to be able to one, hear the negative signal and two, deal with it because it doesn't go away.   Steve Rush: It is great learning, Nic and also think about the themes that you are now encouraging other leaders to talk about through Friday Pulse. There is a lot of synergies there in terms of what your learned behaviour. What you are encouraging others to learn from now, so that is super stuff. The last thing I wanted to talk to you about, and this is where we are going to ask you to do some time travel. I want you to think about if you were able to bump into Nic at 21; you are able to give him one bit of advice that would make the difference. What would it be?   Nic Marks: I quite like my life, even my mistakes. So, you know, that is not like something I would massively want to change. I mean, I think I was a little uptight as a 21. I was a little serious and I had the future weighed on me quite a lot. I sort of kind of had this feeling. I wanted to do something and I probably wanted to do it quicker than was possible. And you know, and I mean, I have actually done things which are interesting. I think I would just say, you know, relax. It will be okay. Follow what you are interested in, I mean, in some ways I have done that actually. So, but when I was 21, I was a little bit; I was a little bit still uptight, yeah.   Steve Rush: If only Nic would know the 21-year-old, Nic who might have been a little bit uptight. Still found is way to be where you are now, which is, you know, impacting the lives of many of the people, so that's great advice.   Nic Marks: It is nice to think that. The 21-year-old Nic would be horrified at the thought that that 55-year-old Nic got divorced. He would not like that at all, but apart from that, he pretty much take the rest.   Steve Rush: Good stuff. Okay, as people have been listening to you, Nic. We will make sure that we encourage him to get over to Ted and have a look at the Happy Planet Index talk, which I think is really inspiring and I love that, but where else can they find out about the work that you do with Friday Pulse and indeed some of the things that you do now?   Nic Marks: Yeah. Friday Pulse is the name of the company, so it is fridaypulse.com and it is actually, we are offering it free for organizations up to a thousand people at the moment. So they can try it for three months and see how they go with it and see how they like the data and how they can work with it. I create blog articles and posts on LinkedIn most week. Connect with me on LinkedIn; I always like meeting new people there and I have a personal website, which is more my sort of speaking musing, which is nicmark.org. Nic is no K a in that, so those are the main ways to find me.   Steve Rush: We will make sure there in the show notes to accompany this podcast as well Nic. So as people are finished listening, they can literally just click into those links and then hop over to find you.   Nic Marks: Fabulous, thank you.   Steve Rush: Nic, I just wanted to say I am incredibly happy that you have chosen to be with The Leadership Hacker Podcast. I have spoken to you a few times now and I have loved the conversations that we have had and as a result, I know we're going to get a lot of happy hackers listening to you too. So thanks for being on, The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Nic Marks: Thank so much for having me.     Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Happiness is a personal journey that you design for the present: it isn't static and it doesn't live on someone else's home. Join Gail and Lori as they break down the best ways to hack into Happiness, and to shape a life that you're proud of living!

Today we're talking to Rebekah Lambert, a copywriter and marketer and founder of the Freelance Jungle and Hacking Happiness. Rebekah is a known her honest approach to freelance life, the highs and the lows. She helps members of her community cope with the challenges that come with being a freelancer - and today she's going to pass on some tips and ideas to you lucky listeners. Tune in to learn: The main challenges freelancers face What character traits are useful to have as a freelancer How to deal with the feast and the famine How to keep momentum going in quieter periods. Tips on becoming a happier freelancer? Advice on dealing with freelancer isolation Tell us what you think  Leave your thoughts and ideas on the Hot Copy website. And from you we'd love to know, what is your super power? Tell us on Twitter or our Facebook page.   And subscribe on: iTunes | Android | RSS  Share the pod love! If you like what you're hearing on Hot Copy, the best way to support the show is to take just a few seconds to leave a rating and / or comment over on iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks! Oh and thank you Anna for your lovely review. Links mentioned in this article: