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Marci Shimoff: Love and Happiness for No Reason
322 Plays3 years ago
Marci Shimoff is a #1 NY Times bestselling author, a world-renowned transformational teacher, and an expert on happiness, success and unconditional love. Her NY Times bestselling books Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason and six titles in the Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul series have sold more than 16 million copies and are translated in 33 languages. She’s also a featured teacher in The Secret and narrator of the award-winning movie, Happy. She currently co-leads a global online program called Your Year of Miracles to help people live more miraculous lives.
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Transcript
Intro: Laura Coe & Marcy Sheimoff
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Coe, your host, and thank you guys for tuning in. We have Marcy Sheimoff here today, and let me tell you, you're really in for a treat. She's a New York Times bestselling author, a world-renowned transformational leader, and an expert on happiness, success, and unconditional love. She has a couple of books, Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason,
00:00:51
Speaker
And these books have been extremely successful, along with her Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Her books have actually sold 16 million copies worldwide, 33 languages, and have topped the major bestseller list and have been on the New York Times list for, I don't know, 120 plus weeks in a row.
00:01:13
Speaker
And she, you know, if that wasn't enough, she's also been the host of a PBS special called Happy for No Reason.
Exploring Happiness & Love
00:01:20
Speaker
She's been a featured teacher on something called The Secret. I'm sure most of you have heard of that one. And she's also co-leading a program right now called Your Year of Miracles for participants in about 72 countries. So yeah, she's been doing a lot. She's got a lot going on and we,
00:01:39
Speaker
really jumped into it today about what does it mean to have happiness and love without a reason, right? Nothing's connected to it. It's not because you did something, you achieved something, somebody else outside of you, or you did something that made it happen to have the happiness or the love. What does it mean to walk around filled?
00:02:04
Speaker
without a reason.
Marcy's Personal Journey
00:02:05
Speaker
So I was intrigued by this idea. Marcy is literally a warehouse of information. I know you're going to find lots of facts along the way that will help you dig deeper into this concept of what it means to be happy, what it means to have unconditional love, and really then in the end, what does that mean to have
00:02:27
Speaker
if nothing around you changes. Thank you guys for tuning in. If you want to learn more about her website, happyfornoreason.com or youryearofmiracles.com. Again, appreciate everybody listening. Hope you enjoy today's show. Hey, Marci, how are you? Hi, I'm so great, Lauren. So happy to get to be here with you. I am so excited too, and you're calling in from
00:02:54
Speaker
from Marin County, California. Yeah, and while there are some weather elements happening over there, at least you're not going into our Chicago winter that we're just about to brace ourselves for. No, but we're doing our best to just call in the rain while the rain is needed here.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining. I am beyond excited. I literally looked at your resume and I'm like, wow, where do I start? Most people have a book or maybe two, like this body of work, 16 million copies sold 33 languages, uh, New York Times bestselling author. Um, but I really found a theme that I wanted to pick up on and have a conversation with you because it is just,
00:03:40
Speaker
So prevalent I see it all the time and it's this idea of right most people just want to feel happier and they want more love in their life and most people including
Research on Happiness
00:03:51
Speaker
myself for many many many years you're seeking you're seeking you're looking for that you're looking outside of yourself you're looking externally for it and you think okay when I get there then I will have or you know, it's it's like these things in my life the car the person and
00:04:06
Speaker
It's contingent on these external objects or people and then those things change and either you never find it or it's elusive, but it's this struggle and everybody wants it nonetheless. So when I was reading your work, happy for no reason, love for no reason,
00:04:23
Speaker
that is just brilliant, right? Like, what would it mean to be happy, to have more love without a reason? It just is, right? So I want to dive into that. So, um, but I thought if you could start by sharing with the audience, what got you interested in this in the first place, right? Was this your story and how did you, how did you come into this bodyboard?
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, well like you and like everybody I just wanted to be happy, you know, I just wanted to have more love I think this is it's it's our nature that's the that's what I think we're here on the planet for is to learn to To experience greater love and greater happiness Um, but the real kind so I I was my story is that I was born depressed
00:05:08
Speaker
I came out of the womb with existential angst. I was an unhappy camper. I had great parents. I had a great family, but I had this dark cloud around me. I remember watching Romper Room and feeling like I think I was just an empath. I felt the suffering of the world.
00:05:27
Speaker
So I felt depressed throughout my growing up years. My solution to that was sugar. I became a sugar addict and was probably 35 pounds overweight in high school. And when I was in my 20s, I decided, OK, I really got to conquer this happiness thing. And I set five goals for myself. And I figured that once I
Building the Inner Home for Happiness
00:05:51
Speaker
hit those five goals, then I'd be happy. That's what I would need to be happy. And I think a lot of people do this.
00:05:56
Speaker
Sort of thing at least and i'm just going to share with you my five goals because people usually relate to this I wanted number one to have a successful career helping other people number two to have a great husband or life partner Number three to have wonderful friends number four to have a comfortable home And number five was to have the equivalent of halle berry's body
00:06:21
Speaker
If I got all those five I of course I'd be happy right right I did get four out of the five I do not have Halle Berry's body But I but I have a healthy body for which I'm very grateful
00:06:35
Speaker
I'll tell you, Laura, I worked really, really hard to get all my ducks in a row so that I could be happy. I had a turning point moment. It was in 1998. I had, at the same time, three books in the top five on the New York Times bestseller list.
00:06:53
Speaker
I had just give finished giving a speech to eight thousand people and I had autographed five thousand four hundred and thirty two books My client had had a massage therapist there to massage my hand So I wouldn't get carpal tunnel and I I felt like an author rock star right and I had just really worked hard all this was working and I remember that I after I autographed that last book I went up to
00:07:17
Speaker
My hotel room which was the penthouse suite that my client had gotten for me and this by the way was in Chicago Where I know you are yeah, we were I went over to the windows that were overlooking Lake Michigan beautiful panoramic view of Lake Michigan and I took in that view and I turned around and I fell onto the bed and I burst into tears my burst into tears because I realized I
00:07:43
Speaker
I have everything I thought I needed to be happy, and I'm still not. I still feel that emptiness in my heart, that yearning, that something's missing. I could no longer continue to fool myself into thinking that just the next thing was going to do it for me. I realized this is kind of the end of that road.
00:08:00
Speaker
And I at that point I dove head on into the research on happiness I said i'm just gonna do what I can to be happy and I interviewed all the happiness researchers Fortunately, there was this burgeoning field of positive psychology where there was a lot of research and then I also went interviewed 100 what I call unconditionally happy people to find out what are they doing and I started doing what they were doing And it worked
00:08:25
Speaker
Within a fairly short
Practices for Positivity & Empowerment
00:08:27
Speaker
period of time my happiness was totally shifting and I went from If you were giving me a grade back then I went from a d plus in happiness to an a and I I i'm an a I can say that and but i'm still a work in progress i'm still working on it, you know, yeah, but it but it really does work and that's why I am so Committed and passionate about what we all can do to be happy
00:08:54
Speaker
I love it. And I, I mean, I relate and I'm sure many, many of the listeners relate. It's, it's that list you mentioned, who doesn't have that list, right? And you think I'm going to go through these steps and I'm going to get there. And when I get there, I'm going to exhale and I'm going to find this happiness. And I have interviewed and I, for myself as well, many people get there and they're
00:09:19
Speaker
It's not there and in fact, it's it's worse because it's like this. Oh my god How how how could I have gone down this path and been so misled and um, I think a lot of culture tells us that this is the way it's going to work Um, and it does give us a lot of beautiful things It just doesn't fill that core void that sense right inside of yourself So if you could explain I love this little continuum of yours this happiness continuum and you have one for the love continuum which I want to get to
00:09:49
Speaker
But what is the happiness continuum? Yeah. To me, there is a lot of research about happiness. And there's one piece of research on happiness that is the piece that explains it all. And I'll explain the happiness continuum in a minute, but first I need to explain the happiness set point.
00:10:10
Speaker
This explains why these things aren't going to make you happy. Here's the research about the happiness set point. We all have a set point. It's like a thermostat setting. No matter what happens to us, whether it's good or bad, we are going to tend to return to our original happiness set point unless we do something to change that.
00:10:34
Speaker
This is why people who win the lottery, you know, you think all I have to do is win the lottery and then i'd be happy Well, you would be happier for a short while But within a year you would return to your original happiness level unless you've done something to change it And the same happens to people in in challenging times too. They generally return to their happiness set point So the happiness set point is the key it's the key to it all and here's how it's determined
00:10:59
Speaker
It's 50% genetic you're born with it. I was not born with the good happiness genes And you think oh, well that's a bummer But let's let's hear the rest of it before you think that Only 10 tiny little piece of this whole puzzle
00:11:17
Speaker
is based on your circumstances. So your circumstances do affect your happiness. 10%, not very much. Yet that's what we're all out trying to chase after. The other 40% of
Unconditional Love & Self-Care
00:11:31
Speaker
our happiness set point is based in our habits, our habits of thoughts and behavior. And I'm going to take it a step further and say that there are scientists in the field of epigenetics, like Dr. Bruce Lipton, who wrote the Biology of Belief.
00:11:45
Speaker
And they say that our genes that that 50 percent that was genetic of our happiness set point that can be changed right by changing habits Which tells us that 90 percent of our happiness set point is our habits Well, hallelujah. That means I can do something about it Different than chasing after the circumstances to change because the circumstances only move the needle a little bit
00:12:09
Speaker
And so the happiness continuum that I found is that there are really four main stages of happiness we have unhappy depressed That's one stage and that's one fourth of the population in north. America is unhappy Um, that's a big number. It's a big number
00:12:30
Speaker
Then we have happy for bad reason Happy for bad reason is i'm going to do everything I can to fill myself up to be happier, but it's to my detriment So these are the addictions these are you know, i'm gonna i'm gonna eat i'm gonna um drink i'm gonna
00:12:48
Speaker
Um do you know recreational drugs that are going to alter me or or medication i'm going to take medication And and there the addictions Come from being at what I call happy for a bad reason and um, and then there's the next stage of the continuum which is happy for good reason And that is i'm going to fill up my life for a lot of good reasons to be happy It's what we've been talking about. But the problem with that is as soon as those reasons go away
00:13:17
Speaker
you're no longer happy. Very shaky foundation. And we're finding that, you know, a lot in the pandemic, of course, people were relying on their jobs, their income, this and that, of course, those are going to have an effect on us. But when you have, when you're basing your happiness in being happy for those reasons, and that gets pulled away, you find yourself really in, in
00:13:39
Speaker
Shaky territory so what I write about and teach about is what I call happy for no reason and what I mean by that is that you have an internal it's an interstate of peace and well-being that doesn't depend on our Circumstances and that's the solid foundation for happiness that we all really want to want to have right and the reason I love this right is
Consistency in Happiness Practices
00:14:01
Speaker
because Give control
00:14:05
Speaker
Yes, right in the end of the day. It's how many people say God, I'm not happy. It must be the relationship. Let me swap out the spouse or it's the house or it's the job and you just keep moving the things around you thinking when I one time I was like watching one of those acrobatic shows and they have the
00:14:24
Speaker
The plates that they spin all the way down the yeah table and I was like, that's my life like a decade ago, but you just keep um, you know shifting one more thing after the other and then you look down and one's about to fall and break and so you have to get back and it's like we just keep wanting to Get to a place where everything is lined up and then we'll feel okay i've done it um or pleasure seeking to your point, right like yeah, I have to
00:14:51
Speaker
I have to use an analogy that I love based on what you're saying. I call it rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. We're just busy trying to rearrange all these chairs, getting everything perfect, but it's a sinking ship. That way of going is sinking. Right.
00:15:12
Speaker
It gives a fear base because you know it's outside of you and it's a dependency because it's like, oh my God, if these things don't work, then my happiness is outsourced, right? And that's like its own concern. So building this reservoir of happiness within ourselves, if that's the holy grail,
00:15:32
Speaker
how, like that sounds lovely, right? And listening or going, that sounds fantastic, but I don't know what you're talking about. So what does that mean? What are these habits? I read somewhere where nothing but happiness habit bundles, which I thought was the cutest thing ever, right? Like, why did I just move my hand as I'm talking? Why did I, you know, um, use that word? I'm not noticing everything I'm doing. I'm doing it
00:15:55
Speaker
from unconscious patterning. If we're just these little habit bundles, how do we change them? What does it look like to create more habits around happiness? Maybe you could share one of your absolute favorites with your audience. Yeah. Well, this is the million dollar question, of course, how do we do this? Here's the really good news. It's actually not that hard.
00:16:18
Speaker
These are small changes in habits that done consistently over time make a big change in our life And I recommend that people don't do a whole bunch of changing at once They pick one habit and what I found is that there are 21 happiness habits
00:16:33
Speaker
That my happy people happy for no reason people shared and they fell into seven main
Navigating Challenges with Love & Growth
00:16:39
Speaker
categories And what I first want to do is if I can is go through what these seven categories are So that you can see where you're the weakest because what I suggest is that people start wherever they're the weakest That's where they're going to get the most leverage and then i'll give you one or two really specific tools But first let's let's look at the uh at the whole model of the what I call it is building your inner home for happiness
00:17:03
Speaker
Laura you're gonna be my guinea pig if that's okay I'm gonna ask you when I'm done with going through these seven areas which area you're the weakest in I know that people have a hard time remembering Seven of anything so I created this metaphor this metaphor that I call building your inner home for happiness And a home has seven main components. It's got a foundation four corner pillars a roof and a garden And here's how this relates to these seven main areas of happiness the foundation
00:17:33
Speaker
of being unconditionally happy is taking responsibility for your life and your happiness. What that means is not finding yourself in a victim mode in life.
Happiness as a Global Influence
00:17:46
Speaker
How you know you're in a victim mode is if you're blaming, shaming, or complaining. Blaming others, shaming, which means blaming yourself, or complaining. It's all about that. It's all about something else.
00:18:01
Speaker
You know complaining so yeah if you find yourself in blaming shaming and complaining a lot the very first Key for you to get raise your happiness level is to start taking more responsibility for your happiness knowing that oh I can do something about this
00:18:16
Speaker
Then the four corner pillars are the pillar of the mind The heart the body and the soul the mind is our thoughts You know are your thoughts supporting your happiness or your thoughts taking you down? And I think that's the one we'll come back to because that's where people have the biggest challenge Then there's the heart
00:18:38
Speaker
Do you live with an open heart? Do you have gratitude? Do you have loving kindness? Do you forgive easily? Are you generous? People who are happy all are open-hearted.
00:18:52
Speaker
Then there's the body. Do you have the biochemistry of happiness? Do you have enough endorphins serotonin oxytocin? And i'll tell you that's where I found that's where I needed to start. That's where I was the weakest. I had not the biochemistry of happiness And then there's the soul. Do you feel connected to a greater energy in life? Whatever you might call that some call it god or the divine or nature doesn't matter
00:19:18
Speaker
What matters is that you feel you're part of some greater energy Then there's the roof of your home for happiness and that has to do with your purpose in life Are you living an inspired life? Are you doing what you are here on this planet to be doing? And then finally there's the garden and the garden is who you're surrounded by do you have a lot of weeds or toxic people in your garden or do you have a lot of
00:19:46
Speaker
Roses and gardenias the people who are supporting you and your happiness and that feel good to be around So if you look at those seven areas, usually we're pretty good on one or two of them We're we're okay on a few of them and then we're really kind of weak in one or two areas So Laura as my guinea pig, which area or areas do you feel that you're the weakest in?
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a succinct and easy way to look at it. For sure, for me, it's the soul connection. In the last year or two, I've really invested deeply into this idea. But if I'm being honest, it's really a stretch. I grew up in an atheist home, very, very hyper-intellectual family. It's just so hard for me to let go.
00:20:35
Speaker
Except that i'm being supported that the universe is Supporting me that right like um that whole uh belief that there's this greater energy And i'm connected to it. I'm i'm deep in that process, but it's it's a struggle um when things get harder Mm-hmm
00:20:56
Speaker
I so appreciate, first of all, I love your authenticity. Of course, this is a show about authenticity. You're such a beautiful model of authenticity. I really, really appreciate that. I can share with you that I've had that same struggle throughout my life, of trusting that we live in a benevolent universe.
00:21:18
Speaker
In fact, one of the things I found from the people I interviewed, no matter what their circumstances in life were, that they really shared this belief that we live in a loving universe and that the universe is on our side. It's in our favor. I think that that is one of the things that I suggest that people do is that
00:21:41
Speaker
If you have a hard time trusting that it's a loving universe you just try it on You just practice you just you pretend you act as if for a while And that means if something's going what you think is not your way because if we live in a loving universe Then everything's on our side. Everything's in our favor. And so if something's going not the way you want it to be going I suggest you ask this question
00:22:07
Speaker
If this is happening for my greater good or if this is happening for a higher purpose, what would that be? And and just kind of lean into that and see what that is I think that the trusting that this is a loving universe is actually a muscle That we need to build and and some of us not so much, you know Some some people they've got that one down
00:22:31
Speaker
And yet it's another one of these areas that that they have challenge with like as I said for me it was it was Not having the physiology of happiness but the one laura that I find the most common for people
00:22:46
Speaker
Is the thoughts their mind I think that people's minds really take them down and so if we can I just love to spend a minute or two Talking about that and giving you a practice. Is that okay? Yeah, 100% and I mean without question, that's where I started my journey, um, the idea that your thoughts are not necessarily true
00:23:11
Speaker
And that you can do something about them right is a uh, a profound idea and an important one. Um Please whatever whatever you have to to offer there So The average person has 60 000 thoughts today And for the average person 80 of those are negative
00:23:35
Speaker
It's what scientists call the negativity bias we inherited this from our caveman ancestors Who needed to remember the negatives way more than you know to survive And we don't need that tendency the way that they did and yet we still hold on held on to the negativity Teflon velcro teflon syndrome that that our minds are just like velcro for the negative They just stick to us and they're like teflon for the positive. They slide off of us
00:24:03
Speaker
And uh, just a simple example is if you get 10 compliments in a day and one criticism What do you remember at the end of the day? Well, most people remember the criticism. Oh, yeah, not the compliments, right? Well, you don't just remember you repeated reverse that tendency
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You don't just remember it. Sorry, you repeat it, right? I mean, it's like, you don't repeat the compliments 50 times, but you definitely need to rehearse the negative one and feel bad for months. Like people hold onto that. Right, right. We just hold onto that. So happy people have reversed that tendency.
00:24:44
Speaker
And they've created new neural pathways in the brain for happiness. And I'm going to share with you these simple scientific ways to create new neural pathways in your brain for happiness so that you start tending more towards the positive. Three simple steps.
00:25:00
Speaker
And if you're listening to this write these down because you just they're so easy, but you want to do them So number one be on the lookout for the positive Pretend that you are a detective and your job is to look for what's good one of the um One of the women I interviewed for happy for no reason Pretends that she's the academy awards committee
00:25:22
Speaker
And her job is to give out five Academy Awards every day. And so she is always on the lookout for where to give out an Academy Award. So she sees a little cute fluffy white dog out on her walk and she goes, oh, that dog gets the cutest dog of the day award.
00:25:38
Speaker
And and that's what her that's the game she plays if you've got kids It's a wonderful game to play with kids But just be on the lookout for five great things a day that you can give an academy award to that's number one number two Savor the good for at least 20 seconds Scientists say that it takes 20 seconds for the good to really soak in So we've got to really savor that
00:26:01
Speaker
If you're seeing a beautiful sunset, don't just say, oh, that's really pretty. But take it in into your body and let it soak into your cells. And then number three, go for a three to one ratio, meaning three positives for every one negative. So every time you've got one of these negatives coming up, you've got to quickly replace it with three positives. And these three steps will help quickly create new neural pathways in the brain for the positive.
00:26:32
Speaker
I love it. And this aligns with positive psychology. I know these studies have been done and it can be very powerful, right? You can make new neural nets quickly. You can experience the shift in happiness. It's not like you have to do this for five years. Is that correct? Absolutely correct. And that's what I love about it is that I tend to be a pretty impatient person and I don't want to wait five years for change. What we've found is that people, when they take baby steps,
00:27:00
Speaker
You just take baby steps, but you do it consistently. It creates change in a short period of time. I've had people within a month tell me, oh my god, I'm really feeling different.
00:27:10
Speaker
I love it. All of this habit formation, everything we're talking about, I just want to, again, point out what is so, to me, empowering. I think a lot about this idea of what's empowered and disempowered in my life. The victim, the blaming, feeling like things are out of your control, which leads to fear.
00:27:30
Speaker
if you claim this idea that the happiness you seek is within you and it's just a matter of learning the habits which by the way in her book for everybody listening there's pdfs that go along with it and there's endless exercises so you can do these they're very very very simple very well articulated but by doing these small exercises you can increase your own happiness you don't have to wait for the job you don't have to wait for
00:27:59
Speaker
the money you think you need to buy that car or whatever it is that you feel at the end of the rainbow would bring you this happiness, you can have it today. And then this thing I wanted to focus on next was being in a state of happiness, right? Being in the vibration of happiness, learning how to be in a positive state today that increases what comes towards us. You've been in the secret and you've worked a lot with the power of attraction.
00:28:28
Speaker
the law of attraction. Can you speak to that just a little bit?
00:28:33
Speaker
Absolutely. We are constantly co-creating in life and we're co-creating based on the energetics The energy that we're putting out, you know There is this idea that that like attracts like and so our thoughts our words our feelings and our actions so our thoughts our words our feelings and our actions are are an energetic that we are putting out into the universe and we tend to draw to us based on that energetic
00:29:00
Speaker
And so the more we are in the more we actually have new neural pathways for the positive The more we easily see the positive that's out there the more it shows up For us and that's it's kind of it's a self-perpetuating cycle. Yeah. Yeah beautiful well, so
00:29:19
Speaker
I get this, I understand it, but then you similarly talk about love from this perspective. Maybe it's just the point in my life, but I am so fascinated in this right now.
00:29:35
Speaker
Love being external wanting more love from outside the idea of what unconditional love looks like Feeling that the people around us bring love to us or right like why aren't they giving us enough love or why haven't I found my soulmate or somebody to Fall in love with or receive love from
00:29:58
Speaker
But similarly, you talk about love from the same perspective that there's this unconditional love within us. I've been writing from the Akashic Records and I was sharing with you right before the show, but this is exactly what I'm getting from this energetic space. And I'm so excited to be writing about, but it's a newer concept, but it's so freeing. What if that's within us as well? So could you share with the audience, you know, how do you view
00:30:28
Speaker
Well, that you have the love continuum, right? So I'd love to hear about that. And then how do we increase this sense of love within ourselves, just like we can increase happiness?
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah, so another um, thank you for for asking these great questions. I um I like many people have always uh tended to look outside of myself for love, you know, and that just Not a great thing same way we look outside of ourselves for happiness We look outside outside of our self for love and then it doesn't quite work but then you read these um
00:31:03
Speaker
You read stories, you read books of great, wise, enlightened, awake teachers throughout life or people throughout life. And they all say the same thing. They all say that we are love.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yep, and you know, okay, that's beautiful. We are love so what how does that apply to me? Yeah, you know Sounds great good for you glad to know, you know, you are love but I Not so much for me and I wanted to go into well, what does this mean? How do I get there?
00:31:34
Speaker
It's the same thing There are ways that we actually connect in with the inner the essence that we are and know ourselves as love and how freeing now I don't need other people to be a certain way for me to feel love
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, well that's what we really want is that freedom to feel to to experience that love from the inside out And what I mean by love for no reason is the same thing I mean by happy for no reason love for no reason is an unconditional state of love that doesn't depend on anybody else or any other circumstances I generate it
00:32:11
Speaker
And you know to me when I look at these people these wise people who are living An awakened life and they're saying that I go. I I believe that I believe them So now it's just a matter of how do we get there ourselves? And it's the same thing as as we spoke about with happiness. It's about establishing establishing certain habits That allow us to experience our inner state of love
00:32:36
Speaker
Again, it's so empowered and right. I've read every every great work and every spiritual teacher and I sort of think I Don't know. It really almost annoyed me for a while if I'm gonna be totally honest. It's like sure. Oh, right like loves within and self-love and just be positive and I'm like really though really though or you just
00:32:57
Speaker
living in a monastery away from the real world, not in a relationship. And so you do meditations all day and I don't know. You're not part of the real world, but it is. It's the same. You can generate this internal sense of wellbeing
00:33:14
Speaker
Anywhere all the time it is just learning the the tricks I'm experiencing too. So could you share what are some ways people increase that internal love temperature so that they raise you fill yourself up and then you give that to the world yourself and everybody's in that exchange and that's an easier way than needing it to fill yourself up and
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, what I say is instead of trying to extract love from everything around you, you're actually bringing love to everything around you.
00:33:47
Speaker
And so I I love that you're asking about what to do because to me that's where the rubber meets the road Is what can we do? And of course there are a number of things we can do I I you and I both love the work of margaret paul Yeah in her bonding and and I just praise that work. I think that's wonderful I'm going to give you two simple things right now that everybody can do just super easy And one of them is you know when we love things we take care of them
00:34:16
Speaker
But what I notice is that many people don't take care of themselves. They don't they don't listen to what they need So you might be busy out there taking care of everybody else and filling everybody else's needs but not paying attention to your own So this is a very simple practice again. It involves just asking a question
00:34:35
Speaker
Twice a day. I want you to ask this simple question What's the most loving thing I could do for myself right now? Now you can write that on a post-it and stick it on your computer stick it on your mirror I don't care where but just simply stop and ask what's the most loving thing I could do for myself right now and then stop and go do it Now it may be I can go go get a glass of water
00:35:00
Speaker
It may be I can call a friend up It may be I can just take a moment and close my eyes and get centered I don't know what it's going to be but what it what matters is the simple act that you're stopping and asking and then doing it starts reminding you starts uh habituating you to listen to yourself and care for yourself
00:35:24
Speaker
Marcie, I just want to stop you there because this was such an essential thing and I don't want it to slip past everybody. I kind of thought it was more syrupy than that when I was having negative feelings about self-love being like, I love myself. Because don't stop and you said get some water or close your eyes. It doesn't need to be these sort of pedantic, ridiculous things that don't mean anything to you. It's truly
00:35:53
Speaker
What do you need right now? And then people say to themselves, well, it's selfish to ask about my needs. I'm not saying to go buy a Porsche. It's just close your eyes, get some water, some basic things. And so that, while it sounds small, it was transformational for me to lose this sort of, um, inner mantra silliness that it didn't, it
00:36:16
Speaker
I don't need to hear that I'm a great person in this particular moment. I just need some water, right? And I'm not going to feel guilty that I shouldn't get it because I should be doing something else because I'm truly, it's okay. I'm going to go get myself some water and feel good about that and move on with my day. It doesn't need to be so complicated.
00:36:36
Speaker
Absolutely. You are spot on with that because it's really it's just a habituation to listening to ourselves and honoring ourselves It means okay. My needs Are important and i'm going to take care of them in and they're not big, you know Now sometimes they may be you may be in a situation where oh my god right now. I need some support
00:36:58
Speaker
So it may be that you're going to call up a friend Yeah, or it may be you're going to go out and and for me it's getting a little bit of exercise It may be i'm going to go out and i'm going to walk for five minutes. Yep, but It what matters is that you do it? Yep And so then the second thing that i'm going to share with you is a super simple technique To get you back into your heart into what's called um heart rhythm coherence And it's a technique that I learned from the institute of heart math
00:37:25
Speaker
They are the world's leading researchers on the heart as it impacts our happiness and our well-being and they found some really interesting things They found that that when we're angry or upset or frustrated for just five minutes It can suppress our immune system for up to six hours
00:37:43
Speaker
Wow, but when we're feeling love and gratitude And ease that for just five minutes that can strengthen our immune system for up to six hours So so what happens?
00:37:56
Speaker
with our hearts and how we're feeling has an ongoing long-term effect in our bodies. These days, we certainly want to have strong immune systems. I'm not going to do a five-minute process. It's going to be under two minutes. What I want everybody to do is I want you to do it along with me and I want you to notice, do you feel a shift?
00:38:17
Speaker
And what we're doing is we're going from heart rhythm in coherence where which is our normal state our rhythms are pretty kind of erratic and we're going to move into heart rhythm coherence And laura once again, you're going to be my guinea pig. Okay. Yes So you can do this with your eyes opened or closed But if you're in a place where you're able to close your eyes go ahead and close your eyes because it goes a little bit deeper
00:38:39
Speaker
So with your eyes closed, again, three simple steps. The first step is to simply put your hand over your heart. This is called heart focus, heart intention. Putting your hand on your heart starts the flow of a chemical called oxytocin.
00:38:58
Speaker
And oxytocin is known as the love hormone. It's what we feel when we feel bonded and connected with other people But just by putting your hand on your heart you're creating more oxytocin in your body And now the second step is called heart focused breathing just imagine that you're breathing into your heart and breathing out of your heart
00:39:26
Speaker
you're inhaling into your heart and you're exhaling out of your heart. And you do this at your own pace. Just focusing on each in breath, breathing into the heart and each out breath, breathing out of the heart. And you may notice that you already feel a little bit different.
00:39:49
Speaker
Then the final step on each in breath imagine that you're breathing in love ease and compassion Your exhales you can just exhale normally exhale as though it's coming out of your heart But each in breath focus on breathing into your heart love ease and compassion
00:40:16
Speaker
Now, if you're a visualizer, you may want to think or see someone or something that allows you to feel that. It could be a person. It could be a beloved four-legged. It could be nature. Or you can think of a memory that allows you to feel love, ease, and compassion. Or if those don't come easily to you, you can just internally, silently do yourself say just the words, love, ease, and compassion. And it'll have the same effect.
00:40:48
Speaker
Two more breaths on each inhale breathing in love ease and compassion and exhaling
00:40:57
Speaker
One last time taking into your heart love ease and compassion and on the next exhale You can take your hand away and you can slowly open your eyes And as you're opening your eyes, I just want everyone to just notice in your body How do you feel any different than you did about a minute and a half ago when we started this?
00:41:20
Speaker
And you know, do you feel different in your body? Do you feel different emotionally what has shifted? And so laura you were willing to be my guinea pig. Tell me what has shifted for you
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah. Um, there's a, um, like a combination of a release. So I feel sort of a tension or stress in the, my neck or back or wherever I've been holding a little stress in my body, it seems to dissipate. And then,
00:41:52
Speaker
that inner beam of stillness or calm seem to go up exponentially, right? So it's the combination of release and stillness and ease. I feel centered. Centered. Beautiful. So people feel different things. Some people just feel grounded. They feel balanced. They feel
00:42:13
Speaker
what you said, centered, release. All of these are some people have physical sensations. They might feel some warmth in their heart or some tingling. And all of these are signs that you're going into what science calls the love response.
00:42:27
Speaker
There's the stress response. We all know what that is. You feel it. You're stuck in traffic and you're late for something. You're in the stress response. It's got its own brain activity, its own heart rhythms, and its own physiology, its own biochemistry. Likewise, the love response has its own brain activity, heart rhythms, and biochemistry. You can habituate going to the love response.
00:42:50
Speaker
So doing this one time is just a nice experience. It's not going to make a difference in your life really. But what I suggest is you could do this a couple times a day for the next week and you will start to habituate the love response. Do it for a minute or two. You can do it while you're standing in line at the grocery store. You do not need to close your eyes. I do it when I'm sitting on the phone. I've done this hundreds and thousands of times. Now all I have to do is put my hand on my heart and automatically the whole love response starts in me.
00:43:19
Speaker
So what i'm talking about are simple techniques simple things. Yeah, and don't do everything i've said today i've given you three or four different practices to do just pick one And do it for the next week or two and use your life as an experiment and see if you feel any different
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, increasing that love flow within you, feeling that fullness within yourself, sharing that and getting rid of that desperate clinging, needing, or cutoff sensation from love, right? Depending on where you find yourself, it's a game changer and it's so empowering. So then the ultimate question, right? Unconditional love, right? People talk about it, just like we talk about,
00:44:02
Speaker
love within or this unconditional love. And I'm a mom. I feel I, I, I've experienced unconditional love in that sense, but how would you define unconditional love? Is that within yourself that you share? Is that something that, um, how would you define that?
00:44:22
Speaker
Very much like I define love for no reason unconditional love is that inner state of love That doesn't depend on circumstances or conditions or other people or what other people are doing or what's happening It's not that you aren't aware of what it's not like you're in some lala state of denial about life
00:44:41
Speaker
It's that you have this love inside that is just so solid and I can give a few examples of my experiences of people I've had the pleasure of being the honor of being with his holiness the Dalai Lama a few times in person and he just emanates love
00:44:59
Speaker
It's just it's it's he's in touch with that inner essence of his divinity and I think that's what it truly is It's when people are in touch with the divine within and it's like oh everything else is like You know, it's the play of life and and laura. I I really believe i've read so many cases as you may have as well of people who've had near-death experiences And then they come back and they say that at the end of our lives
00:45:28
Speaker
We're really only asked one main question and that is how much did you grow? In your capacity to give and receive love and I think what really that means is how much did you you grow in the? Connection with your with your essence of love how much you do into who you really are So that's what we're on the planet for. This is what this is ultimately what we're here for Yeah, I could I could agree more and and so
00:45:56
Speaker
on that and finishing here. But while that is all true, this struggle that we find ourselves in, the struggle of somebody's done something to us, we are in a very difficult situation. It's not just that we feel victimized, but something very difficult has happened. And what I'm trying to get myself around is this idea that the struggle, that the challenge
00:46:26
Speaker
that the lesson in there is the lesson that my soul needs to grow and that the universe is offering me exactly what I need, although this is really difficult. And how do I keep this love and happiness flowing simultaneously in the face of what does not feel
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, like a particularly good thing like right just being honest like I'm not enjoying this at all And if I look back over my life, there's many of those and I get to the other side and it's a oh my god I gained so much from those experiences and I've grown so much but How do we think about the universe being friendly and supporting us in our growth when it's so difficult right sometimes and
00:47:10
Speaker
Well, i'm gonna go out on a limb here laura Yeah, i'm gonna get really out there for you. Good. I love it Because you're you're you're studying the akashic records and the akashic records basically is the record of our lifetimes And it's been said that we actually chose What what's going on for us? This is like I it's not just that. Oh my god, this is happening But I on some level on some soul level I chose this I mean that's really a stretch for people. So if you can't go there, don't worry about it But here's what I want to here's what I want to say
00:47:40
Speaker
When you build your emotional immune system And what I mean by that is when you establish this higher happiness set point and this interstate of love unconditional love When those things happen
00:47:55
Speaker
Number one you're better able to deal with them you because you have a greater strength at greater resilience It's like it's like if somebody around you has a cold and you what do you do to build? You build your own emotion and you build your own physical immune system. So, you know catch the cold We have a higher happiness set point and a stronger Sense of state of unconditional love those things that happen aren't they don't throw us off as much but then
00:48:24
Speaker
When they happen, you also lean into them rather than resist them. And you go, OK, pretend that you drew this in for some reason, for some great lesson or gift. And it's that question I referred to earlier. If this is happening for a higher purpose or if this is happening for my benefit, what's the gift in this for me? And just lean into that and see how it changes. I tell people, don't take anything I say
00:48:53
Speaker
Don't take my word for it. Try it on. See if it works. See how it shifts you. I know every time. It's not that we're not going to have challenges.
00:49:07
Speaker
little upset yesterday. And I have wonderful friends who actually I called up and I said, this is happening. I can't believe this is happening. And they said, Marcy, put your eye on your heart, do the interviews technique. And they did it with me. And they said, now ask if this is happening for a higher purpose. What is that?
00:49:26
Speaker
And I had to look inside myself and see okay. This is for me. This is not about what they did This is about what i'm here to learn. So, you know surround yourself with people who remind you of that Continue to listen to these kinds of conversations that laura that you offer because that's what we need. We've got a lot of gunkiness out there um, and we need to to continue to remind ourselves of of how to stay on this kind of a track
00:49:54
Speaker
And and I I know we're we're getting close on you know time, but I just I always want to end with one one Concept and that is you mentioned this earlier, you know people might think that this is selfish This is so selfish to be want to be happier and and what about the world?
00:50:14
Speaker
And my answer to that is I believe that this is the biggest thing we can each do to contribute to a better world Because when we raise our happiness at that point when we feel more love inside ourselves We actually affect the people all around us and ultimately we affect the world and and there's a beautiful chinese proverb that I love to share about this and it goes like this it says When there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person
00:50:40
Speaker
When there is beauty in the person there will be harmony in the house When there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation And when there is order in the nation, there will be peace in this world And my prayer and my wish for all of us is that we know that light and that love and that happiness in our own hearts And through that we help create more peace here on this planet of ours that certainly needs it Oh, all right
00:51:07
Speaker
Bring it. Thank you. I'm going to end there. That was absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. Everybody listening, there's just a warehouse of information. Check out her books. Come to my website. If you want more information, Marcy, where can they find you?
00:51:23
Speaker
Yeah, they can go to happy for no reason calm very simple happy for f or no reason calm and actually on there I have a gift for everybody of a free of a workbook that has all 21 of the happiness habits and
00:51:38
Speaker
These um each of the practices that you can use including some of the ones we did today So that's there for you and just really I I want to appreciate everybody for being here for this conversation today because I think that this conversation Is truly what can um how we together we can change the world and I appreciate so much everybody's uh attention on on being happier and feeling greater love in their lives
00:52:07
Speaker
couldn't agree more. And if there's ever a time that I think we all could go inside, find some more happiness, find some more love so that we have more to share, right? This would be the moment. So thank you for sharing these gifts with everybody listening. Thank you, Laura.