Unlocking Happiness: The Surprising Structure Behind Joy

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Good morning and welcome to this week's Choosing Happy podcast.

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It's another solo episode where I am going to explore the structure of happiness.

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It's a really interesting kind of bit of research for me because I think there's an assumption that freedom, happiness allows us to do and feel however we want.

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And one of the findings through my years on the planet has been that actually happiness and freedom take extreme discipline and require courage and require a lot of the resources, if you like, that maybe many of us are reluctant or have been kind of conditioned into being a bit lazy about.

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So I invite you to stay tuned to find out more about not just the structure of happiness, but how you can use the research, the findings around the structure of happiness to actually create happiness in your everyday life in a practical way.

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Stay to the end and find out more in this episode of the Choosing Happy Podcast.

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Welcome to the Choosing Happy podcast.

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I'm Heather Masters, your host and in the Choosing Happy podcast we explore the science and art of cultivating happiness.

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And today we're diving into the structure of happiness and freedom and how we can harness the power of our minds to create a more fulfilling life.

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But it's not just the power of our minds, it's actually managing our state physiologically as well.

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So the structure of happiness.

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Happiness isn't just a fleeting emotion.

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It's a state of being that we can actively cultivate.

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And then neuro linguistic programming, nlp.

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It provides valuable insights into how our thoughts and how our actual physiology help shape our reality and influence our happiness.

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One of the fundamental principles of NLP is that we have the power to control our attention, our states, and consequently our happiness.

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And by consciously choosing our perspective, we can also interpret situations in a way that serves us better.

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First of all, I'd like to explore what we mean by state.

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Our emotional state and our physiological state play a crucial role in our overall happiness.

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And one of the things that NLP discovered very early on was this relationship between our physiological state and our internal emotional state, and therefore our mental state.

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And the ability to manage and control our state is a key factor in not only determining our emotional well being, but therefore determining our behavior as well.

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So some of the ways to effectively manage our state is to identify triggers.

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So to begin to look at areas of our lives where we become triggered, if you like, where we can go from one state of maybe happiness to negativity very quickly.

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When a situation occurs or someone says even a word that's a trigger word, that changes our state immediately.

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Now, I had one of These triggers yesterday, and it was really interesting for me to notice it.

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And a lot of this managing of your state is, you know, creating that awareness, creating that ability to notice when something triggers you and switches you from one state to another.

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Because through doing that, you can actually choose.

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You can make a choice rather than it being an immediate reaction.

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You can choose how you want to respond instead.

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So for instance, if we are a salesperson, for example, and we haven't made a sale all day, we can be sitting in kind of a funk, thinking that we're rubbish at our jobs.

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We can have all this emotional down on ourselves, we can have all this mental chatter going on reminding us how bad we are at sales.

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But then if the phone rings and we realize we've just won a 50,000 pound, $50,000 sale in that second, immediately that trigger can shift our state, our thought patterns, our whole physiology, from being down and grumpy to being absolutely happy and over the moon, you know, we'll jump out of our chair, we'll probably scream and wave our arms in the air because we've got this amazing sail.

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And we know that things have shifted in that moment, but nothing's really shifted in terms of who we are.

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We're the same person we were a few seconds ago.

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And we can choose to change our state irrespective of the external circumstances, because our external circumstances don't really, you know, it's about being in control of your internal state rather than being triggered by your external state.

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And that's kind of where the power is.

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Because we always have.

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We take on the presupposition, if we take on the belief that we always have the resources we ever need, then the, the question becomes, in the moment, how do I find them?

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How do I find them in this moment when it feels like the world is ending and everything's gone wrong?

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How do I find those resources right now?

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Whether it's physiology, whether it's my mental chatter changing it to positive, or whether it's changing how I feel my emotions.

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And those are all under our control.

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And the one of the things to realize about that is that we aren't our thoughts, we aren't our emotions, we aren't our physiology even, because they can all be changed in an instant.

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And we have absolute control over that, Though sometimes it feels pretty difficult.

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And one of the things to also recognize specifically with the emotional state is that it is fleeting unless we hold on to it, unless we create resistance, unless we want to relive it over and over again.

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And the Same with thoughts.

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They pass through our heads at lightning speed, so, so many times that quite often we don't even recognize we've had a thought.

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You know, and it's that ability to take ownership for the fact that we have all the resources we ever need.

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And we have that ability to step back and to create a different choice whether it be in our physiology, whether it be our emotional state, whether it be our mental state as well.

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Because all of these ultimately results in action and the actions we take, the behaviors we have, are based on our state at the time.

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So it's really, really crucial for the structure of happiness, for the structure of well being to understand this and to understand that we do have a choice irrespective of where we are.

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You know, Viktor Frankl in his book Man's Search for Meaning, recognized that our state is our choice.

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Through finding meaning, through finding a vision, through living into our truth, we can choose in any moment where we want to be.

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And that's really the practice.

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And by the way, I'm not saying I'm a master at this.

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One of the reasons I chose to do this episode is a reminder to myself that I do have that power.

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So if you're feeling down, you can change your physiology and it shifts, it can shift everything for you.

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There's a video I did many years ago on YouTube about choosing to change your physiology and just an exercise about how you can experience that for yourself if you stand up and walk around the room.

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This is kind of an acting exercise, but it's also a neuro linguistic programming exercise about how you know your physiology can influence you.

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And it takes into account all of your emotions and your mental state as well.

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So the exercise is if you walk around the room and you imagine someone with a confidence of a 10.

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So absolute superstar truly believes in themselves, values themselves completely.

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So that's kind of your 10.

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And then you've got confidence of a 1.

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Someone who's depressed down, doesn't want to be here.

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So we've got those numbers in between as well.

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So a three, a four, you know, someone who's a five is kind of neutral, kind of going through life, kind of not unhappy, not happy, middle of the road.

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And maybe that's that gray area that a lot of us live in.

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The idea is to walk around the room and then just pick a number and take on the state, the physiology, the thoughts, the feelings of that person who holds that state that's identified by the 1 or the 10.

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And if you play with that and just do it for five minutes, switching the number and then switching how you're standing, how you're walking, how, what you're thinking, what you're feeling to match.

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You'll notice that you do actually have the ability to do that, and you have that ability to shift in any moment.

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Yes, it's.

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It's a challenge to do that when you're really stuck in maybe a negative emotion, but you have to be stuck.

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And that's, that's kind of the.

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The point of this.

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You don't.

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You can choose to be something different.

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And I'm sure we've all experienced maybe, especially if you have children where maybe you've had bad news and you're feeling really down, but your child comes into the room and you have to be the positive.

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Well, you have to be.

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But it's your choice in that moment to be the positive.

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Uplifting parents.

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And you shift for that moment into a completely different state so that you're supporting your child, you're being uplifting, you're being energized.

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And the same happens.

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Maybe if we're doing, for instance, podcasts, or if we're going on stage and we're having to do a presentation, we have to mentally put ourselves in a state where we know that we're going to perform, if you like.

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And it is about performance and recognizing that we can change our state and choose something different irrespective of the outside circumstances.

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When we're doing that exercise of walking around the room, choosing the numbers, the outside circumstances don't change at all.

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Everything changes from the inside.

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And that's kind of the power of recognizing that we do have control over how we feel, our thoughts, and also our physiology.

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And physiology is underrated.

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It's underestimated often in how we see the world and manage our mental health and manage our state.

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And within physiology also, then comes things like nutrition, what we eat.

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You know, the.

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The thing from being a computer programmer many years ago was the garbage in, garbage out.

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If you code rubbish, then you're not, you know, the computer isn't going to give you exactly what you wanted.

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And it's the same with our bodies.

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If we drink alcohol, for instance, you know, it's about acknowledging the absolute truth that alcohol is nothing but poison.

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It doesn't really support our bodies at all.

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And knowing, for instance, you're going to have a hangover the next day, it's one of the things that, yeah, I'm pretty much teetotal now, and that's because I know my body physically can't cope anymore.

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And before I take a drink I have to weigh up.

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Am I willing to pay the price if you like, by understanding how I'm likely to feel the following day?

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And sometimes I can take, even just with one, two glasses of wine, it can take me out for the full day, the following day.

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And is that a price I want to pay?

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So there's that to think about.

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And it's the same with, with all foods.

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You know, we, there's a lot of us want to be healthy, we want to be slim, we want to have a six pack.

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But are we willing to put in the press ups?

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Are we willing to do the sit ups?

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Are we willing to do the exercise it takes to, to get that six pack?

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Now I know that I'm, I'm not willing to do the exercises for a six pack because I haven't seen a six pack in my life.

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Even though at times I have been very, very fit and very, very health focused and working out for hours each day.

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But I've never seen the six pack.

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And that's fine.

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That's, it's not really, you know, I don't think my midriff has seen the light of day for many, many moons.

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So it doesn't make any difference.

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What's more important to me, especially my age, is that I have body strength, core strength, and that I'm fit and healthy and I'm willing to get up every morning and work out for 10 to 15 minutes.

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And that's what I have decided to do.

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And it's a choice.

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And that choice enhances my physiology, it enhances my state in the morning, it enhances how I show up in the world.

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And the other one is, you know, practicing mindfulness, being present in your body.

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And again, this is something that I keep coming back to and it's only because it was a massive realization for me that trauma, fear can really get you to dissociate from your body.

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And sometimes we don't even realize that we're doing it.

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And it can come through as being depressed, it can become through as negativity because we aren't present in our own skin.

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We aren't able to feel, to truly feel into our own body and where we're at and to feel where the emotions are within our body.

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And without being able to do that, it then becomes difficult to manage your state and difficult to manage your mindset.

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And mindfulness helps with that.

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It helps you become aware of your thoughts and your feelings, your emotions, your.

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And where they are within your Physiology as well.

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So.

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And the physiology is really, really important.

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So if you feel that you have trauma and you're dissociated, I would recommend that you do something about that and get help so that you're coming back.

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It's difficult to live in the present moment if you're not present in your own space.

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You can use anchors to create positive associations as well with specific actions or words to quickly shift your state.

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So anchoring, we see this or hear this.

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In effect, if a song comes on, that creates a memory, a really happy memory, you kind of feel your feet moving because you want to dance.

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And it takes you back to maybe a first dance with someone or a really happy moment.

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Whether it's your wedding day or your song, that anchor takes you into a completely different state.

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You've got, you know, your whole mind and body goes back to that moment.

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And literally the.

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The whole neurology fires to put you back in that state of.

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Of where you were at that specific time.

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So managing your state, managing your thoughts, and managing your emotions is all possible.

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And it begins with the presupposition that that is possible for us.

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It comes with believing that you can do it for yourself.

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And using nlp.

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NLP posits that we have more control over our lives than we often realize, and that by bringing unconscious patterns into awareness, we can make conscious choices that align with our goals and values.

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Understanding our values, for instance, and bringing them into the light of day.

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A lot of our values, some of our deepest values, are often unconscious and going through with a practitioner or going through with yourself and really uncovering your hidden values.

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Often our hidden values can be our biggest drivers.

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And understanding that can help you align with your values in such a way that your life pans out better for you.

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So, for instance, one of your values might be family, and you might have a mutually important value of work.

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And what you might find is because of that, you have a potential clash between how much time you spend at work and how much time you spend at home.

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So you might, when you're at work, feel guilty about not being at home, and when you're at home, feel guilty about not being at work.

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But recognizing why that's happening, that you have equal values.

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You can kind of let yourself off the hook by understanding that both are important to you and then choosing to balance how much time you spend at each and recognizing that it's absolutely fine to allocate that work in that awareness or allocating that time to your family in that awareness.

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And that nothing, neither of Them are right or wrong.

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It's just what's important to you.

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So by tapping into our inner wisdom and experiences, tapping into our unconscious, we can find solutions to our challenges and unlock our potential for happiness.

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There's something called presuppositions in nlp.

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And what they say is that we already have all the resources we need within us.

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That's one of the core presuppositions.

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And a presupposition, if you like, is a definition that we choose to try on, we choose to take as a belief, if you like.

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So if we take on the belief that we have all the resources we need within us, then we're not looking externally for the answers.

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So how does intuition play into all of this?

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Intuition plays a significant part in our journey towards happiness and self discovery because it's our inner voice that often knows what's best for us before our conscious mind catches up.

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So our intuition can come through in our unconscious, but it can actually be deeper than that and come from a different place.

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So listening to our body, paying attention to physical sensations that accompany intuitive hunches can really help as well.

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Again, it's about building that awareness and trusting gut feelings so that we don't dismiss our instincts, even if they seem illogical, and go against that thought pattern that's whirring in our mind and just remembering that we do have control over our thoughts, emotions, that we are able to respond rather than to just react.

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And again, using mindfulness, you know, regular meditation to help us tune into our intuition more easily and also to tune into our unconscious mind as well, and to work with the unconscious mind to get the results that we want in our lives and to choose happiness and to create a state of happiness.

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So here are some practical steps to choosing happiness.

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You can reframe your negative thoughts.

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So if you're faced with a challenging situation, you could ask how you can view it differently.

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So one of the ways you can do that is to create an a B list where if you faced with a challenge and there's a load of negative thoughts about it, write those negative thoughts down and then on the other side, reframe them, rewrite them as how can I look at this thought differently?

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So maybe if I'm feeling nervous about something and I'm going through a whole lot of thoughts, you know, I can't do this.

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Then ask yourself the question, how can I do this?

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Have I done this before?

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Can I go back to a time where I have done this before and go back in my mind, my body, my physiology, My state to that time that I had those resources.

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And then kind of create an anchor, whether it's touching your ear and bring those resources back into the present moment so that you.

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You're physically feeling and you're hearing and you're seeing and you're experiencing in your body.

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You're getting the thoughts and the emotions of that state of confidence.

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You're standing in your shoes and you're now re experience in it and bringing those resources back to the present moment and checking that your present state then matches that confidence that you need in that moment.

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And you have that choice to do that.

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So creating those positive anchors, reframing again, expanding your awareness, you know, regularly reflecting on your thoughts and behaviors to uncover unconscious patterns that might be holding you back.

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And when you.

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When you feel triggered, actually, if you can, taking a step back and expanding your awareness to look at, you know, what's here, what's here for me, what.

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What caused the trigger?

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Practice gratitude.

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Taking time each day to appreciate the good things in your life, no matter how small, is always a good way to practice and to choose happiness.

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And some of those things that you appreciate and that you're grateful for bringing them more into your life.

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You know, if it's listening to music, then play music more often.

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Doing something that no matter how small it is, even if it's, you know, hugging your dog, hug your dog more often, whatever it is that's going to bring that experience of happiness and help you to step into that state of happiness as well.

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Bring more of that into your life and cultivate mindfulness.

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Regularly taking moments out to meditate, to breathe, to acknowledge your state, to help you stay in the present moments and in control of your physiology, your emotional state, your mental state.

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And the reason I wanted to do this episode today is that there is so much chaos going on in the world, it's easy to become triggered.

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And one of the other ways to manage your happiness is to manage your attention.

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Where you put your attention throughout the day and because it's the year to where you put your attention is kind of what you create.

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So if your attention is on the fear that's being put out into the world, then you're probably going to create fear in your life.

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It is a choice about where we put our attention.

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If you focus on what you want and you focus on a vision of what you want.

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One of the habits that I'm building, and I keep mentioning this and I'm creating a program around it, is journaling.

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So not only am I visualizing what I want.

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I'm writing that visual vision down on a regular basis because that helps me concretize my thoughts, concretize that vision and to kind of anchor it into my neurology as well.

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So that's why journaling can be so important.

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So remember that happiness is a choice and you have the power to make that choice every day.

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And by understanding the structure of your thoughts, the structure of your physiology, managing your emotional state and tapping into your intuition, you can create a life filled with more joy, fulfillment and freedom.

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Thank you for choosing in tuning into the Choosing Happy Podcast today and until next week, Keep Choosing Happy.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.

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If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.

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And if you really enjoyed it, please leave me a review.

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It really helps the podcast.

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All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy Podcast.