Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited about today's focus. I had been thinking about a lot of different ideas that I wanted to share. And actually my original idea for this podcast was something different, and I'll explain a little bit, just what's been going on in my motherhood life actually prompted me to think about something different that I wanted to teach.
So I have three daughters, many of you know that, but if you are new to the podcast, I will give a little bit of a behind the scenes of my life. So I have three daughters, a seven year old, a five year old and a three year old at this time. It's kind of interesting to think, even as I'm recording this, that at some point, maybe my daughters will listen to this, which is kind of fun to think about far, far in the future, and maybe not, and that's okay.
But it's just interesting, and maybe I'll listen to this in the future as well as like a marker in my life. That's where I'm at. And so we've been going through different things. So two of my older girls started basketball, you know, we're getting into friendships and crushes at school and some really fun things.
And I've just been having some great conversations and some really hard conversations about what it takes to be happy and basically how to think in a certain way, so that they can experience life the way that they want to because we do create a reality. And I've said that, and I think it became more clear when I was talking to one of my daughters recently, that when I say we create a reality, it's not like we control other people.
It doesn't mean that we can control all the events in our life, but we can control our experience of life. And as I was thinking about that, the power of that, that not everyone has. I was like, I want to create an episode that's more life coaching than business coaching or entrepreneurship or money. And so I'm calling this episode seven principles for a happy life.
It's not like a book, but I do want to like dedicate it to my daughters and maybe one day that they'll listen to this, but also even if they don't, I think it'll be useful to anyone who listens to it, including you, wherever you might be listening to it. So welcome to the Conscious Coach Podcast.
Let's dive in. Seven principles for a happy life. The first thing that I wrote down is the meaning of everything is the meaning that you give it. And this principle really when applied changes everything. And that does sound dramatic and cheesy, and it's still true. The meaning of everything is the meaning that you give it.
And so you can make things mean whatever you want, right? You can make some rude comment on the internet mean that you are not good enough or that something is wrong with you. You can make it mean that your friend who didn't invite you to the party or that maybe you heard that they were gossiping about you mean that you are somehow less than them, that you are an outcast, or that you are not a good person, or you can make it mean something entirely different.
It's up to you. I feel like that's what coaching is about, is in self-coaching in particular, is deciding what meaning to give the circumstances and the events of your life. Truly this, to me, this is about personal power. So you could make it mean, I'll give you an example that just recently happened in my life, and this is what kind of prompted this whole episode. I was getting the girls ready for school. And if you're a mom, you know, that doesn't always go as smoothly as possible. And so we were getting coats and lunches and backpacks and hair done and all the things. And one of my daughters was really upset, I can't even remember about what, but she was crying and that made all the other girls cry too.
So it was just a lot of emotions, a lot of frustration, at something pretty minor. I actually think it was because I made them wear a coat and do their hair a certain way for the day because it was going to snow. And the snowball effect is so real. So I'm watching in real time how me telling them to wear a coat and put their hair up instead of down, because it was snowing turned into, they don't have any control of their life.
And they're mad at me because I'm telling them what to do. You know, if you have young kids, especially young headstrong kids, you can like imagine how this is going for me. And luckily for me, I do self coaching work all the time. So I'm noticing what my thoughts are about this scenario where my girls are crying.
And I remember like just staying really calm, even though it felt like there was like a storm of emotions going on and I'm just witnessing it all. Being patient, encouraging the girls to like, you know, take a deep breath or what else do you want? How can I support you? You know, do you need a big hug?
That's like a lot of my go to for parenting a lot is, do you need a big hug? Do you want to talk about it? Because sometimes they don't have the words, but if you give them the space, they do have the words and this principle, the meaning of everything is the meaning that you give it was really present because I could see that how I was parenting, the meaning that they gave my words was that I was controlling or that I was unhappy with them or something.
And we got to sit and talk about like, well, what do you think it means when I, you know, want you to wear a coat and put your hair up when it's snowing? And my oldest daughter was like, it means that you're in control of my life. And so in that moment, I knew that was why she was so upset, right? She was making it mean that I was controlling her life.
That's not what I was making it mean, right? When I said, wear a coat, let's put your hair up, I was in my mind taking care of her, right? I was preparing her for a snowy, cold day. And I wanted to make sure that she was comfortable throughout the day.
And so it's just interesting. Same scenario, two very different meanings, two very different reactions. And so as I walked through my thought process, she is very wise, my oldest. And she was like, I can see how you think that mom, but can you see how I think that you're controlling my life? And I tried not to giggle cause she was being very serious, but I could totally see it.
And so I told her that I can totally see that that's how you made it mean and why you're crying and upset. But can you see how I'm making it mean that I want to take care of you and that I want you to not be cold at school, and I don't want your hair to be frozen basically.
And she's like okay, let out a big sign, was like, okay, I can see it that way. I'll let you put my hair up in a ponytail. And I just smiled and went about her day. But even though this is such a small scenario, I really feel like that's often what happens in life. People ascribe a meaning to something that causes them suffering, not knowing that they can choose a different meaning.
And so when you look at the circumstances of your life, and if you've ever asked yourself, what does this mean? Why is this happening? You get to answer that. You get to decide what it means. You get to decide why it's happening. And I think that that's very powerful to know. I remember, another more serious example than the hair and the coat thing.
When I dropped out of my master's program, after my first daughter was born, I was really frustrated about the student loan debts that I had taken on thinking that I was going to become a therapist. And being like, why did I do that? Did I make a mistake? And I can't remember what book I was reading, but it was basically this principle coming to light, right?
That I could choose the meaning of my student loans. And I decided in some circles, like this is called like circumstances are neutral, right? Like there isn't really a meaning except for the one that I give it. And so when I thought about my student loans, the story that I had been telling was that like, I had made a huge mistake. I was naive. I wasn't prepared to make that kind of a decision. I was dumb for not thinking about the consequences.
Like that had kind of been the story that I'd been telling about my student loan debt. And when I was studying, like I said, I wish I could remember the book, but some coachee book, some self help book, and I realized like I could choose a different meaning.
I could tell a different story about my student loans, and I did. And I still do. It's like I made a decision to the best of my ability. Debt is a decision to pay something off over time. If I didn't go into student loan debt to become a therapist and drop out, I would have never found the life coaching industry. I would have never found out how important it was for me to work from home and to start my own business. And so I created a completely different meaning for the same circumstance.
These are all stories from my life, but I think it would be a really powerful exercise for you to do the same thing. The meaning of everything is the meaning that you give it. What meaning do you want to give the circumstances of your life?
The second principle that I wrote down is trade judgment for gratitude. And even as I speak those words, I hear how hard that can be based on the circumstances that you're facing.
But what I've learned is, even before trading it for gratitude, it's almost like you just release all judgment, you just witness. Instead of judging something as bad. Like, this episode will be full of stories. I remember there was a time where one of my cars was having a lot of issues and it was very, very, very expensive.
We had bought this old Audi and it was a fun car to drive, but it became very expensive very fast. Like, things were just always going wrong with it, and we were putting more money into the car than the car was worth. And I remember I had this moment where I was just like judging the crap out of the situation.
Like this should not be happening. This is so bad. Why is this happening? And I remember doing some of my own self coaching and just working through my thoughts about it because I was angry and frustrated. I felt like a victim, like this was happening to me, all the money I made had to go to this car.
Like the story was really painful for me. I was very deep in it. And I had heard the book title. I've never even read this book, but I heard the book title by Gabby Bernstein, Judgment Detox. I still haven't read that book. I think I bought it, but I never read it. But the title alone was like a trigger for me.
Like something in me knew I was judging this scenario, and we can judge people. We can judge our relationships. We can judge our money. We can judge ourselves. Like judgment is so deep. And what I realized in that moment was like, I had a lot of judgment for the situation and only I was suffering. The judgment that I had was causing myself to suffer. And so it's interesting that moment of awareness, like I said, I didn't even read the book, but the title alone changed my perspective of what was going on. It was like, I need to drop the judgment for this.
I think it's so powerful just to witness. Byron Katie has this great, I think she just tells it going for a walk where you don't label anything. You're just being with. So instead of saying, oh, that's a tree. That's a bird. That's the snow. That's a bush. That's the dirt, right? You're labeling things you're judging and that's like a form of judgment is a label. You're just observing it. You're being with the texture of the tree in the way that the leaves look and, you know, what color it is, you're just like being with it. There's no mental labeling going on. There's no dictation happening in your mind. And one of the most powerful questions that she asks her clients, students, and anyone that comes to her events is, who would you be without this thought?
And so I did that work on the car. Who would I be without the thought: This is so bad that my car is breaking down all the time, right? Or that it's so expensive to fix. If I didn't have that thought, it would just be a car, and it would just need repairs, and it wouldn't have been happening to me. It would just be a car in the shop, and I wouldn't have this inner turmoil.
And in that moment, I felt free. And I've had this experience many times where I stopped judging my circumstances as a problem, and I traded it for something different where it was like, well, I'm grateful that that car has been with me for so long. I'm grateful that I can afford these fixes, even though they are expensive.
I'm grateful that I have the cash to do it. I'm grateful that I have my business to pay for this, right? And my husband's job to pay for this. I'm grateful that this car has driven me and my baby safely from point A to point B in so many different places. And as soon as I dropped the judgment, I found a different story to tell about the car and my whole internal experience changed.
And I've done this, like I said, in lots of different scenarios where I traded judgment and I opted for gratitude where it was like, well, thank you. What's interesting is, Neil Donald Walsh talks about this, trading judgment for gratitude in the form of like thinking God for whatever showing up instead of judging it because you don't always know what it's leading you to.
And so to finish that story about the car specifically, we ended up selling the car. I drove my husband's work car for a little bit, and then I decided to buy the car that I really wanted. All because I stopped judging it, and I exchanged the judgment for gratitude.
And it didn't happen overnight, but it did happen, where now I drive a way better car, way more reliable, even it's more of my preference, in a lot of different ways. It's a Telluride, Kia Telluride, and I love it. And I know that that would have never happened if I didn't get out of my story of judgment of circumstances.
And if you're in the middle of this, like I said, it wasn't a happy ending instantaneously over the course of a few months at the place where we bought the Telluride. And I think about that story and among other things where when you're stuck in judgment, it feels like this is the only way to see this, or this is so painful, or this is happening to me.
But when we trade judgment for gratitude, we open ourselves up to different possibilities playing out. One of the things that I teach my clients is this idea of like sequence of unfolding events. And when we're stuck in one part of the sequence, we can use the story that I shared about me dropping out of my master's program, and student loans being due, and my little family, and the financial burden that that became, that was one dot in the sequence of unfolding events.
And if I judged that dot as my ultimate reality, I would have missed the unfolding sequence of events that led me to where I am right now. I would have never found coaching if I didn't need to make money, if I didn't have this opportunity not to be a therapist. And so instead of judging something that's showing up for you right now, find a way to be grateful for it.
And that could come in a lot of different ways, I think part of that is surrendering. I shared this on my Instagram, I say this little prayer that's like, help me see this differently. So when you notice that you're judging something and you can't access another thought, I like to put my hand on my heart and I say, help me see this differently.
Like give me different thoughts about this. And it's like a little prayer. And I have found so much gratitude and so many different perspectives just by being willing to see something differently, being willing to surrender my judgment. So that has made me very happy as well. And now I do it pretty fast.
Like I don't stay stuck in judgment for very long, but when I notice it flares up, I feel uncomfortable. I don't feel good. I have like in a negative state, I know I'm judging something. And so hand on heart helped me see this differently. Usually a new story comes pretty fast and I can get into gratitude for it.
Okay, number three, use duality to clarify and more powerfully create what you want. This is related to number two, but if more people understood this principle, they wouldn't see the contrast and the bad things in their life as bad. They would see it as a sequence of unfolding events.
And this is hard, like I know that a lot of these are hard things to do because it is not taught and it is not mainstream. It is a very unrelatable way of approaching life, but it will also set you free. So when I say this, use duality to clarify and more powerfully create what you actually want. Most people don't know that they want to be rich until they've been poor.
Most people don't know that they want a very specific, loving, kind relationship, until maybe they have been mistreated, or they saw someone be mistreated. Doesn't even have to happen to you. Like duality can happen by you observing other people as well. Some people don't know that they want to be their own boss until they've been in a crappy job, or that they don't want a different job until they've been in a bad job.
The contrast of our life helps paint a picture more clearly of what we do want. A lot of our desires are born in contrast, in the down. Then we're negative. And I'm not saying to discount the negative or to discount the painful experiences.
But you can see them differently where it's like, okay, what do I want? What is this helping me see more clearly about the life that I do want? And I've seen this in business in a number of ways too, right? If you don't have any clients, you want clients. If you have a highly stressful business, you want a business of more peace, right?
Like that's the desire that is shown to you. And so we can kind of shortcut. I feel like I've been able to like leapfrog in success because that's how I use contrast. When I have a client that's difficult for me, I know what I do want in that moment. I want a client that is low drama and that is fun to talk to and honors my boundaries. And all these things came from scenarios and experiences that were less than ideal, but I use them to get clear about what I did want.
And then like a few episodes ago, we talked about consciously creating and speaking our desires into existence. Well, a lot of our desires are born from things that we don't want. And so using duality, using things that you don't want to create what you do want, is life.
Like that is what we do here. And to me, that's been a huge part of building a happy life is when things show up that I don't want, I get more clarity about what I do want, and then I can create it.
Number four is related, which is trade addictions for preferences. And that is straight out of the book Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes Jr.
Highly recommend it. And he talks about addictions are basically, and I've talked about this in a recent podcast, just cause that book blew my mind. But the idea is, it's an addiction that you have, if it's taken away from you and you're unhappy, right? And because this whole episode is about seven principles for a happy life, I did some pretty deep soul searching on what addictions I have.
And I've done this work in different ways. I didn't have these words, and the way that I've said it to my clients. And if you're in the Matrix, we've been talking a lot about this principle of needing nothing from your business. This was life changing for me to realize addictions are when I'm unhappy if I don't have it, versus preferences are important to have. I think it makes you who you are. I think it makes you unique. I think it helps you live the life that you actually want. But if you're not happy, if you don't have it, you're not really free. And so I think you can have preferences but not addictions. And so if you notice anything in your life where it's like, if it doesn't exist for you, you're unhappy. If you don't have a certain relationship, you're not happy. If you don't have a certain amount of money in your bank account, you're not happy. If you don't sign the client when you wanted to, you're not happy.
You have addictions. And obviously addictions, that term is used very loosely. We're not talking about like a physical addiction. We're talking about a mental addiction. And, to me, if I'm mentally addicted to things being a certain way for my own happiness, I'm giving all my power to the circumstances.
What I want to be specific about here is that there's some things that are not going to be okay with you on a soul level. And I would use boundaries to describe that. We're not talking about boundaries here. I feel like there's addictions, boundaries, and preferences. Knowing which are addictions, which are boundaries, and which are preferences are super useful as a human.
It's not okay with me to be treated this way is not an addiction. That's a boundary. And all humans should have boundaries. But like, let's say the example that Neil Donald Walsh talks about in his book, it's so good. He's like, if I throw a fit because I asked for chocolate ice cream and they bring vanilla ice cream, right?
Like that's a problem. And that's kind of what I'm speaking to here, versus having preferences. And so addictions, boundaries, and preferences, understanding which belongs in which category helps you speak up for your needs, helps you make changes when you need to, and also helps you let go when it's time to let go.
So you might even do that work, like what am I addicted to? Basically making responsible for all my happiness and if I don't have it, I'm unhappy. What boundaries do I have in my life where like, this is just my standard of care, this is my standard of relationship. And then what are my preferences? Those three things and understanding them will change your life.
Let's go to number five. So this is specifically about the law of attraction being a tool that you hold one side of the handle and God holds the other side. And this understanding for me has been life changing. So I started in the world of like very hardcore hustle culture, business, like mainstream ideas of success, smart goals, all the things.
Then I was exposed to the idea of like law of attraction and manifestation and a world where it's very self focused and very money focused usually. That's not bad. But for me, it was very soul sucking. It was all about like how much money you're making per month in this hamster wheel of success and comparison. And what I felt was like, a lot of smoke and mirrors. I didn't really know how successful people were because it was like I don't know if that's believable.
Like it was just a lot of glamorized marketing, and you probably have seen this online and it felt like unreal to me. But they were like teaching law of attraction, spirituality, and all these things. And it felt foggy to me. And I realized that while I could understand lots of the universal laws, not just a lot of attraction, you know, I teach law of cause and effect, and especially law cause and effect, but law of detachment, law of attraction, all these different things have really supported me in my success and not just financially, but happily, like my own happiness, which is the focus of today's episode.
And so one of the things that I've learned is that law of attraction is not just to bless your own life, it's to become a blessing. Where you are learning to use your skills and desires to support other people. And I feel like that has been the biggest blessing in my life. I guess the biggest understanding in my life about business is like, my business is always taken care of when I am working to bless other people's lives.
Truly, I always have the clients that I need. I have more than enough money. Like all the things are working for me when I am focused on helping other people get what they want. Said another way, you can have anything that you want if you help enough people get what they want. I think it was Zig Ziglar that said that, but I might be wrong, but that quote has been circulating for a long time. And I think that's my understanding is like the law of attraction is a two-handed tool because, and this is something that I think about a lot too.
When I focus on myself, my energy is one. I'm trying to create something for the singular. But when I focus on creating for multiples, the energy compounds, right? When I'm thinking about helping you guys be more successful, the energy that I'm creating with multiplies. It's like a multiplied effect. And it helps thousands of people, hundreds of people like at the same time.
And so it works better than when I'm just trying to create for myself. And I feel like the misuse of the law of attraction and when people try to like manifest a client or manifest money and they're only focused on themselves. It's not that it's bad, it's not like evil, it's not wrong. It just doesn't work as well.
The tool isn't in the proper order. And so I think it's really useful to think about it compounding as you serve other people. My business has always worked when I focused on being of service, needing nothing, helping other people get what they want. It's like I take me out of it, and then by default and, I would say even just like as an effect, my business is taken care of, I am taken care of because I'm working to take care of other people.
So I wanted to share that because that has made me very happy in my life. When I'm focused on what I can get over and over and over again, I feel constricted. I feel like I'm forcing things. I feel like I'm fear based versus when I'm focused on giving and like using all my skills, and my thoughts, and my desires to help people, everything works better. That's number five.
Number six is recreate yourself and your life. And re-create is the key word. You woke up today. You had a fresh sleep. This is not about going to the past and trying to solve for it. One of the things that I tell many of my higher level one on one clients is that our work really isn't about fixing anything.
It's about creating something. It's about expansion. And this concept has really supported me as I continue to do the work because I think in the beginning when I was reading self help, I think a lot of people resonate with this. In the beginning of my self help journey or whatever; my coaching journey, my transformation journey.
I was really focused on fixing what was wrong in my life, mostly like getting out of debt, and making myself a valuable person, and trying to make ends meet for my family. That was where I was at. So I knew I needed to work on money. I knew I needed to work on brain, like making my brain an asset and valuable for the marketplace and things like that.
And it was like, the energy was, I need to fix this. And after a while that stops being the motivation for people. It also doesn't resonate because I think the higher levels of consciousness that you go, you realize this is not about fixing that you were always whole and enough. And so then if you are whole and you are enough, then why do you want this?
Then why do you want to have a business? Why do you want to coach? Why do you want to make money? It becomes a way bigger understanding, which to me is like recreating myself and my life because that's what we're here to do. That's evolution. That's what's fun. It's not necessarily getting to a certain place.
Like I think about some of my bigger mentors, mentors that I read their books and don't work with personally, like Tony Robbins as an example. Like why does he do what he does? He's financially free? He's learned the keys to happiness? And one of the things that pinged for me was like, oh, like he knows the keys to happiness because he knows progress is happiness.
And so recreating yourself in your life isn't because your life is broken or that there's something to fix. It's because making progress feels good. And so when I think of recreating yourself in your life, it means you choose a horizon, a goal, an intention to work towards. Knowing that getting there won't necessarily make you happy, but making progress towards it will.
And once you achieve something, you just pick a new horizon to move towards; it's an infinite game. And infinite games like personal growth, like business success, like elevating your consciousness. The games that I like to talk about on this podcast are infinite. So it's not about fixing anything. It's about creating, it's about expansion and you have the chance every day to recreate yourself and your life.
And I think that that's a beautiful gift. That to me is joy and happiness. You get to recreate your relationships. You get to recreate yourself with how you make money and how you work in the world and the kinds of clients you work with. You get to recreate what's possible. You get to recreate your relationship with time, with abundance, with spirituality.
Like, every day you get to choose a new. That is such a gift. You do not have to look to your past for what's possible right now. There's a great book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. This is a great book for this concept where it's like you get to recreate yourself. You are not stuck no matter how old you are, no matter how many mistakes you've made, no matter how many times you've tried and failed.
Like you get a fresh chance. And one of the things that I love to tell my entrepreneur clients is like, you really only fail in business if you stop. Because you get the chance to recreate today. The types of offers you put into the world, the marketing you do, the nurturing of relationships that you choose to partake in, the offers that you charge for, the pricing you choose, the niche you choose, where you market on Instagram, in person, email marketing, the events you go to, all of it is fresh chance today. One of the tools that I wanted to mention here is like your God given imagination. I think people stop using their imagination to recreate themselves in their life, and they look to their past at what's predictable, they look around in society and say what is available for me? Instead of looking to their own minds for an imaginative state of being, and I don't mean like delusional.
I mean using your imagination to create a life that you actually want. And maybe you've heard it said this way, like, of your wildest dreams. And your wildest dreams means it starts in your imagination. So when we recreate ourselves, we're not looking to the past. We're looking for a vision that only we have.
That is happiness is tapping into your vision every day, and it can change. Like my vision has for sure changed. When I started my business, what I'm living now is what I wanted. And I'm 30. My life isn't done, it would be sad to think my life is done. And so I think tapping back into the vision, no matter how old you are, no matter what you've accomplished is what keeps the game fun.
Another way of saying number six, recreate yourself in your life, AKA, play infinite games where the game is growth. The point of the game is to keep playing. I learned this from Alex Ramosi. He says, the point of business is to keep doing business. You don't win it. You keep doing it. The point of marriage is not to just get married, it's to stay married. Hopefully, and so it's the infinite game. It's keeping the game going. We want to keep playing and recreating ourself is the game.
And so when you pick a goal, when you pick a thing to work towards, just know it's just for fun.
It's just a point in the distance that you're moving towards. And when you approach that point in the distance in the future, you will just pick a new point to move towards. And this is why we see people who make a 100k, then want to make 300k. When they make 300k, they want to make a million. And when they make a million, they want to make 5 million.
In business, you can see how financially this game plays out. But I think personal growth is the same, fitness goals is the same. So it's not the destination, it's the fact that we have a destination to recreate ourselves a new over and over and over again.
Okay. Number seven, what you do for another, you do for yourself. I'm not going to go so much into Jesus who taught that principle better than anyone I can think of, but he did teach it. And lots of spiritual teachers teach this. It's like what you do for someone else, you are doing for yourself. The way that I like to teach this on more of like a law of attraction level, but we can apply this to so many different ways.
It's like, you can't give something that you don't have. So when you empower someone else to feel more abundant or feel free, it's because you have it. And so in making or causing another to experience it, you get to experience it. So if you want to be happy, help someone else be happy. If you want to be rich, you help other people live rich lives.
And this doesn't mean like you give all your money away. I think there's a lot of ways to experience abundance, or freedom, or wealth. And it's not just the number in your bank account. And this was really helpful for me as a life coach. Cause I, like I mentioned, I started my business in a time of a lot of financial turmoil for me and my family.
But what I learned is if I could help someone feel an abundance in their relationship or an abundance in their mindset or possibilities, like my business started working. Cause I wasn't like teaching people how to make money, especially not in the beginning. It was very much like relationship based or happiness based or parenting.
Like it wasn't money at all, but I needed to make money. And so this principle of like what you do for another, you do for yourself. When I helped other people lived rich lives. And when I say rich, I mean like rich beyond just money, like waking up and loving their life, waking up and having a better relationship with their spouse, waking up and feeling like they knew how to parent better, or like changing their approach to like their job, or going after their dream.
I remember I coached someone who was like, biggest dream was to move to Boston. And then she moved to Boston, had nothing to do with me making money. It was helping her make a powerful decision to do something she always wanted so that she could live a rich life according to her terms. And in turn, my business started growing and I got what I wanted. And so I think when we think about this on a spiritual level, not just a physical level, what you do for another, you do for yourself.
And so if you want more abundance, help other people create more abundance, not just money. In relationships, in energy, in possibilities. There's so many different ways that this can look, kindness, love, joy, peace. All these things that we can give another person, we get to experience it because you really can't give something that you don't have. And so if you've been giving it, in turn you have it. And that principle that I teach, be, do, have, is so important. If you're experiencing someone else to have it, that means you are it.
And so to me, and this kind of ties back to where we started, I guess not quite where we started because we started with the meaning of everything is the meaning you give it. But when we talked about recreating yourself in your life and trading addictions for preferences, I think that this is so applicable because the more that you empower other people to live the life that you want, you will feel it, like you get to experience it.
I'm sure you can think back in your life when you've helped someone or like you were there, you were a good friend, or you talked with someone through the night, or you gave a charitable gift. Like there's so many different ways that this shows up. You got to experience the joy. And that's the whole point.
And so, to me, these seven principles together, and I'll repeat them just to make it cohesive and a nice, kind of like tying a bow at the end of this conversation. But, that's hard to access when you're struggling, and I wanted to just acknowledge that. It's really hard to access that idea that like, what you do for another you do for yourself, or recreating yourself, or trading addictions and preferences like it is high ideals, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a place that we can come back to when we're down, when we feel frustrated, like doing the inner work, so that these things are applied, can truly change your life. I know that they've changed mine.
So let me restate all seven before we end this episode. But number one is the meaning of everything is the meaning that you give it. Number two, trade judgment for gratitude. Number three, use duality to clarify and more powerfully create what you want. Number four, trade addictions for preferences.
And I also mentioned the three things that you should consider are addictions, boundaries, and preferences. In the book Handbook to Higher Consciousness, he really only talks about addictions for preferences, but I do think there's scenarios where you need boundaries, so I wanted to add that.
Number five, use the Law of Attraction as a tool with two handles, one on your end and one on God's to bless other people. And therefore yourself, which is related to number seven, which we'll get to number six is recreate yourself and your life. Don't look to your past for what is possible in the future.
Number seven, what you do for another, you do for yourself. Okay. My friends, seven principles for a happy life. I hope this was helpful. These ideas really changed my life. And like I said, a lot of it sparked with me navigating some hard conversations with a seven year old. I want her to have the tools to be happy.
And so obviously I didn't use these big words with her. I used different words, but really it is in your perception and how you choose to see life. And happiness isn't like always things going right. It isn't always pleasure or like entertainment. It isn't always like being distracted from hard things.
I really think it's the ability to see through the hard things. And to see things differently. And to choose your perspective and to give meaning to the things because you chose the meaning. Not what other people chose, not what the mainstream media chooses to say is the meaning, or even like the meaning that you used to give things in the past. Like you get to choose the meaning, you get to choose the perception you have of life, and to me that's like you are in the driver's seat.
You get to decide the thoughts you think about your life and that means that you have the keys to happiness. And like I said, it doesn't mean that life isn't difficult and there's not duality. Like number three, use duality to clarify and more powerfully create what you do want. And so you can see it with a sense of gratitude. You can see it as a sense of possibility instead of stuckness or frustration.
So I think these tools are super powerful. I hope it was useful. If it was, will you share this with a friend? And if you do share it to like Instagram, specifically Instagram, just because that's where I hang out the most, will you tag me?
I would love that. That would mean a lot to me. Thank you for being a listener of this podcast. Thank you for the support and encouragement through the years. I really appreciate it, and I love hearing your feedback. So, without further ado, I will talk to you next week. Bye.
