256. Happiness Fix

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 256: Happiness Fix.

Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a master certified life coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.

What’s up, everybody? Welcome to episode 256. I’m going to help give you your happiness fix this week. Are you ready? I want you to have more happiness, more joy, more laughter. I know I talk a lot on this podcast about allowing negative feelings, only because that helps you have more happiness. But today we’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about happiness.

Okay, before we dive into the topic though, I want to speak for just a minute to certified coaches. I know I have a lot of certified coaches that listen to this call and I have a brand-new program that I’m super excited about, that I want to invite you to come and learn more about. I’m not going to give all the details here on the podcast, because a lot of you listening, it’s not going to be relevant to you. So I don’t want to take up time with it, but let me just give you the quick version, so you know if you want to come and learn more about it, which is that I want to take coaches who are already certified through The Life Coach School who have the basic training and I want to help you take all of your coaching to the next level.

I want to make you a more confident, more amazing coach. And I want to work very intimately and personally with you and provide you clients and coaching opportunities to help you to do that. Why am I doing this? Well, the first main reason is because I know I’m going to be hiring coaches in the future. I don’t know when, I don’t know what that will look like, I’m not looking to hire right away necessarily, although who knows, I’m not going to hire everybody that goes through this program, but I know I’m going to need coaches and maybe even a lot of coaches at some point to achieve the goals that I have for the mission I’m trying to accomplish in the world. So I want to bring coaches in and uplevel their coaching and teach them my philosophies and my approach so that I have a pool of coaches to pull from when I’m ready to hire.

That’s the first reason, somewhat self-serving you might say. I also though know that helping you increase your confidence as a coach will serve you no matter what you do, whether you work for me, you go work for someone else or you build your own business. There’s no downside. And I’ve seen coaches who, as I’ve helped them develop their coaching skills, I’ve seen their businesses take off. I’ve seen all kinds of amazing things happen. So in my mind, it’s a win for everybody. And that is why I’m creating this program.

It’s what I wish I would have had when I came out of coach training. I wish I would have had somebody to feed me clients and give me feedback to take my coaching to the next level a lot faster than it happened. So this will be a high-end program. I am taking a very, very small select group. So it will sell out, I’m pretty sure the day I opened the doors. So make sure you get on the wait list if you’re interested. It’s jodymoore.com/coach is where you can get on that wait list, where I will send you all the details and invite you to come and ask questions and learn all about it and you’ll be first to know when we open it up.

All right, let’s talk about happiness. So we’re going to talk about dopamine first of all. And I will begin by saying I am not a psychologist, or a scientist, or a biologist, or a doctor. So I do not claim to completely understand dopamine and how it works. But I do know quite a bit about it and I know a lot about what I’ve observed in both myself and my clients when it comes to what dopamine does and how it drives us. So dopamine is a chemical or hormone that gets released in our brains when we find something good, more or less, that’s just a very, very simple version of it.

So the truth is dopamine is designed to tell our brains this is good, we should seek this more. It’s designed to tell us, this is something that will help us survive, and even possibly, thrive in life, because our brains have a lot of functions, they do many things for us. But the most primitive, most basic, most important function is just to keep us alive as long as possible, to help us survive, okay?

So it’s amazing the way we were created, it’s amazing the way Heavenly Father designed us with these brains, that simply sense dopamine and say, “That’s good, let’s seek that again, let’s seek that more.” So dopamine is not a bad thing, dopamine is an amazing thing. And in fact it’s so powerful that our brains memorize things that give us dopamine hits and drive us to seek those things more.

Now, in today’s world, in the 21^st century that we’re living in, we have a whole bunch of concentrated dopamine available. We have things, I should say, in our world, that when we engage in them and participate in them they give us a highly concentrated hit of dopamine, sometimes I call this concentrated pleasure.

Now, I think this is an amazing, awesome, fun part of the world we live in. But sometimes those highly concentrated things that we engage with are actually not contributing to our survival or our ability to thrive. In fact, they’re having the opposite effect.

So, unfortunately sometimes these concentrated dopamine hits confuse our brains and make it really hard for us to then live the kind of life that we want to live. To live our best life, to have healthy relationships, and healthy bodies, and all the other things that we want, we sometimes sabotage because of the highly concentrated dopamine hit that we get from things that make it challenging to have those things in our lives, okay?

So dopamine is not bad, dopamine is amazing, but concentrated amounts of it, if it’s something that then creates long term problems for us can be problematic, they can create negative effects. So I think that basically what we’re doing is we’re just highly confusing our brains. And we’re training ourselves to seek these highly concentrated versions of dopamine, because we don’t get as much pleasure off just the normal natural dopamine hit when we’ve conditioned ourselves to have a highly concentrated hit.

So the brain, like I said before, is very, very good at memorizing anything associated with dopamine, this is how we form habits. Well, we form habits by repeating things over and over. But one of the reasons we repeat things, and one of the reasons they become habitual is because of the dopamine sometimes associated with those things, so it wires our brain to crave it. And if that thing we’ve wired ourself to crave, creates a problem in terms of our ability to survive or thrive, then now we’ve created a problem for ourselves.

Okay, let’s talk about examples. I think probably the most obvious example would be drugs. So there’s all kinds of drugs out there, some are stronger than others, they’ll have different effects on us.

But let’s just say drugs in general, if we just sort of categorize them into one lump sum, create this highly concentrated dopamine hit that feels amazing and the brain says, “Wow, that will surely keep us alive forever, we should seek that as much as possible.” But we know that drugs actually, if anything, are going to shorten our lifespan, not lengthen it. And we know about all the problems that drugs create.

How about pornography, same thing, so I used to hear it said a lot that, “When you look at pornography, the effect in the brain is the same thing as when you take heroin.” And I want to say, yeah, that’s true because it’s a highly concentrated dopamine hit. But there’s also a lot of other things that have a similar dopamine concentration that we don’t necessarily categorize as ‘bad’ like we tend to with drugs and pornography.

So just be careful about wanting to judge people or shame people for their bad habits, because it’s just the human brain wired for dopamine, highly confused about what will best contribute to its survival. But pornography creates problems in your relationships, it creates problems with intimacy, problems with connection, problems with your perception of others, etc. So while it might create a highly concentrated dopamine hit, immediate pleasure, often is going to contribute to long term problems for you.

Let’s talk about some other things though, that fall into this category. My four year old, Taylor, she’s so funny; she took my phone the other day and was playing on it. And when I got it back I found a bunch of selfie videos on there that were adorable, and hilarious, and highly entertaining. And one of the things that was on there was this little bit about how Taylor feels about chocolate ice-cream in a chocolate covered cone.

Taylor: It’s nice. A long time ago I got ice-cream, and I got chocolate with a chocolate cone, two chocolates, a chocolate inside of a chocolate cone, and it tastes so yummy, it tastes so yummy I’m not joking.

Can you relate to that? Okay, so food, sugar, a lot of times we are using food to get our concentrated dopamine hit, this is why it’s so hard to stop overeating. It’s so hard to stop eating ice-cream or French fries or whatever the thing is that you like to eat. Because your brain thinks it’s so important, it thinks it will keep you alive forever, and make your life amazing to keep eating that thing.

So it’s not that you’re weak. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you, it’s just that your brain has been trained to be confused about what is good for you. Sometimes it’s shopping; getting something new can give us that concentrated dopamine hit.

Alcohol is another one. Now, alcohol sometimes we classify in with drugs, but here’s what I want to mention about alcohol that I find to be so fascinating. If you’re like me, which some of you are, listening to this podcast, in that you were born and raised in the church. And so you don’t really have a history with alcohol, that’s not true for everyone of course. But I was never really a drinker.

I don’t have a history of enjoying alcohol. So when I see people who are trying to stop drinking alcohol, and I hear them talk about how challenging it is, I can relate to it in that I have other things that I would like to stop doing that are challenging. But I can’t relate to it with alcohol at all because my brain was never trained to seek alcohol. I haven’t had those highly concentrated dopamine hits that alcohol provides, so my brain does not tell me, “We should have a glass of wine.” But I know that’s true for many, many people.

But isn’t it fascinating to notice that it’s not hard at all to say no to a glass of wine if you never drink wine, and you didn’t become accustomed to it, and your brain doesn’t think it’s important for your survival?

So it’s truly not the substance, or the thing, or the activity, or whatever it is that is so appealing. It’s our misinformed brains seeking that concentrated dopamine hit.

And so when you try to stop or change one of these habits that you know is creating problems for you, then you’re going to experience a lot of disappointment, because you’re basically subtracting a huge amount of joy from your life. Who wants that? Not me, not you either, I’m guessing.

So I want to talk to you today about how to get your happiness fix. Now, first of all I have to say that no matter what, when you go to cut out a concentrated dopamine from your life, your brain is not going to like it.

Unfortunately I don’t know any way to solve for that problem other than to just be willing to endure the discomfort of it for a while, and to know that your brain will get rewired, and it will get easier most likely, after time. We’re all different, but odds are your brain is going to adjust and it’s not going to be as hard at some point, as it will be in the beginning. Because your brain will rewire itself, your brain will say, “Oh, we didn’t eat chocolate ice-cream last night and we didn’t die.” Crazy, I felt for sure we would die if we didn’t eat it. But we didn’t, and in fact, we feel even better this morning.

So, over time that happens, you can retrain your brain. So you’re going to have to get used to disappointment. I love the idea that the better I can get at being disappointed, the more amazing my life becomes. I know this sounds crazy, but think about it, if I was willing to just be disappointed, I would stop eating junk food, I would stop drinking diet coke, I would stop staying up too late. I would set really big goals and be willing to fail. Think of all the things you could do if you were better at disappointment, if you weren’t afraid of it, if you were just willing to feel it, kind of crazy.

So I like to say this to my kids, I’m sure they love it, when they’re not getting something that they wanted. Here’s what happened tonight, this is awesome. I said, “Oh, you guys, the lasagna, the frozen lasagna I bought that I was going to make for dinner, I didn’t realize it has to cook for two hours, because it’s a different brand than I normally buy. And I don’t think we want to wait till 7:30 to eat dinner, so I guess I’ll just pick up dinner.”

And one child said, “Can we have Costa Vida?” And I said, “Okay, I will call in and we’ll do curbside Costa Vida.” And then the other child said, “Can’t we have Café Rio?”

Now, for those of you that aren’t familiar with Costa Vida and Café Rio, they are basically the same thing, almost exactly. And so I said, “Well, no, I already told child one that we could have Costa Vida.” And the second child was so pouting, and unhappy, and disappointed that we were not having Café Rio, which I was like, “Seriously, that’s what we’re going to do now.”

Anyway, when this happens, when one of my kids is disappointed, which happens frequently, I like to say to them, “Oh, another chance to practice disappointment. Let’s get good at it, because the better we get at disappointment the more amazing our lives become.” Again, they do not like it when I say that, so I don’t say it all the time, but I think it a lot in my head.

Alright, now, so we’ve got to get better at disappointment. But I also have been thinking, as the more I understood this, the more I observe this whole power of dopamine and the concentrated dopamine and the problems we create.

I’ve been asking myself this question for a very long time. The question is this, how do we get dopamine hits, what are the healthy ways, the ways that don’t have negative back end effects? How do we get dopamine hits in our life without negative side-effects? Because when we cut out a concentrated dopamine pleasure, it’s a good idea to try to replace that joy with something else, if you can. You might not be able to replace all of it; you might have to do some disappointment, but what if we could replace some of it?

What if we could substitute that concentrated joy for some real natural, healthy, no negative side-effect type of joy, wouldn’t that be useful? I have found a lot of ways to do this. And I’m going to share with you some of the ways I found today. And as I was writing out my list I started thinking of things that I had forgotten, and going and adding them in.

And then I realized I bet you guys, my listeners, have a whole bunch of good ideas that I didn’t even think of. And, selfishly, I want to steal your ideas, but I also want you guys to be able to learn from one another.

So here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to go to Instagram, there is an Instagram post associated with today’s episode, you’ll see the cover art, you’ll see episode 255 and the title, Happiness Fix. And I would love for you in the comments to share what you do for a happiness fix, or other ideas you have that you might be able to share with us, especially with me, okay? So on Instagram I’m Jody Moore Coaching, go and find me there, because there’s lots of good stuff there anyway, you should be following me, if you’re not, come on.

But second of all, I really would love for you to share your ideas there, and for you to go and read other people’s ideas, okay, but I get to go first, because this is my podcast.

So here we go, number one, laughing out loud. Laughing out loud gives you a dopamine hit, and there’s no negative side-effect to it. In fact, if you laugh long enough and hard enough, you might wake-up with sore abs the next day, but not the kind of sore like you’ve been injured, the kind of sore like you worked out your abs. This is all a bonus. Laughing out loud, they say laughter is the best medicine because it gives you a dopamine hit.

So, how do you laugh out loud? Well, first of all you can just choose to find things funny, did you know this? I have friends who are really good at laughing out loud, who laugh at things, they find the humor in life. I personally like to laugh out loud if I’m at a movie. I don’t really care if I’m being loud; I’m not worried about what people are going to think, or bothering people. I don’t just keep my laughter in, I laugh loud and hard, only because I like to, only because it feels good to me, okay?

So I also like to watch standup comedy because it makes me laugh, if you can find a good standup comedian. Some of my favorites are, of course, Jim Gaffigan, I’m sure a lot of you know about Jim Gaffigan. Another favorite of mine is Nate Bargatze. So go to Netflix and check out his show, The Tennessee Kid, hilarious, and clean. It’s kind of hard to find really funny comedy that’s clean these days, but Jim Gaffigan’s a good one, Nate Bargatze’s a good one. I know there’s a lot of people like Brian Regan.

I like to watch a good standup comedy show because I can laugh out loud, I get a dopamine hit, there’s no negative side-effect to it. I don’t wake-up bloated from eating too much licorice.

There’s another, an Instagram account that my sister told me about recently, it’s also kind of funny, that makes me laugh out loud. It’s called Dude With Sign and he stands outside in New York City, makes these funny signs on cardboard boxes and holds them up. My favorite one is a sign that says, “That Meeting Could Have Been an Email”. They’re just like all the things that we’re all thinking, but we don’t say out loud, and he holds a sign and fights for our causes, kind of funny.

Alright, next happiness fix I have for you is a story. So as I’ve been studying storytelling a little bit lately, I learned actually from a TED Talk that when we hear a good story it releases dopamine in our brains. So the curiosity that we have about what’s going to happen, and now, again, this has to be a good story. I’m not talking about the kind of story that some of the people in your family tell, where they just ramble on, and like your toddlers, and you’re thinking, when is this going to end, there’s no point to this. No, that’s not going to give you a dopamine hit.

I’m talking about a good story that is interesting, that has good characters, that touches you in some way, moves you emotionally in some way, or has some kind of an interesting turning point. A good story can give you a good healthy dopamine hit. So as you look to cut back on your shopping you might want to consider finding a TV series that you can get into, because TV series, a good one will have a good story.

And good TV writers do such a good job of creating what we call open loops in the brain. So at the end of the episode, you know that feeling when you’re like, what, I have to see what’s going to happen, I have to watch one more. That’s because they purposely create an open loop in your brain, meaning a story that isn’t closed, that you have to see what’s going to happen next. And that closing of the loop and everything that happens in a great TV series creates a dopamine hit in your brain, kind of fun.

So find a good TV series instead of overeating or over-shopping. Or it could be a good movie, it could be a good book, wherever you like to get stories, there’s lots of ways to get stories, those are awesome dopamine hits for you, happiness fixes.

Another thing that is a good happiness fix is to learn something new and interesting. I think it’s fascinating how our different brains are intrigued by different things. You’ll know by the things that you tend to remember, the things that catch your attention. So it’s not just learning anything, there’s a lot of things that you were forced to learn when you were going to school, or that people tried to talk to you about or teach you that you’re not at all interested in. But I’m talking about the things you are interested in; that you’re curious about, learning those things will give you a dopamine hit.

So I dare say that listening to this podcast is giving you a dopamine hit because you wouldn’t be listening if you weren’t interested in this topic of human behavior and the human brain and emotions. Because you are, hopefully I’m teaching you things that are interesting, you get that dopamine hit.

That’s why they say that like your intro music on your podcast, you’re not supposed to change it too often. Because a lot of times we start associating that music with the positive dopamine hit that we get from listening to the podcast. So it’s kind of interesting, you just hear the music or you hear the intro and you know you’re going to learn something interesting, the brain immediately gets excited, kind of cool.

Right, number four, doing something nice for somebody else gives you a dopamine hit. Now, I should say only if what’s driving you is a desire, and an excitement for doing something nice. Sometimes we do nice things for other people because we feel like we have to or we should, or we feel obligated. And then it’s not going to give you that. But if you’re doing it because you genuinely want to, then you’re going to get a little hit of dopamine. So this is why we say, “Serve other people if you want to feel better.”

I like to do nice things for people in secret, I find I get an even bigger dopamine hit when I know that I did that thing and they don’t even know it was me. And it’s a little secret I get to keep and I just get to feel good knowing I did it, even bigger dopamine hit than when they know. And then they say, “Thank you,” and that’s nice, but it’s better when it’s a surprise, when you do it in secret.

Alright, number five, winning. We like to win; we like to feel like we’re winning at things. There’s a lot of things we can do to create the sensation of winning that don’t have any negative side-effect. We can play a board game, we can do a puzzle.

We just did an activity, it was put on by the youth leaders in our ward, so it was a youth activity, but they invited siblings and parents and stuff to join in. And it was a Zoom activity, because we’re not able to do activities in person yet. We all got on Zoom and they gave us a list of items and we had 15 minutes to go find them around our house as a family. And each item had a point association, it was like a little scavenger hunt, and there was a prize for the winning family. We were not the winning family, I’m sad to say, the stupid Haymores won. Just kidding, we love the Haymores.

But it was fun, our whole family was running around the house saying, “Go get this, go get that.” One of the things that you got a point for was the family pet, so we were searching for our cat, Oscar, and just searching and gathering up all these things. And even the little kids participated and had a blast and it was super fun. And even though we didn’t win, the thought that maybe we’re going to win, the striving to win, the strategizing to try to win is fun for your brain. It creates little dopamine hits in your brain.

So, engage in activities or games or things like this, this is why kids like playing video games; they get dopamine hits over and over again. So, again, maybe the video game is too much, maybe it has a negative back end, maybe your brain is addicted to that, maybe it thinks that we’re winning all the time and we should play that game non-stop. Then it’s going to cross over into not useful. But if you can monitor it and keep it in check, a little bit of winning can be fun for your brain.

Number six, physical affection. We get a dopamine hit when we are physically affectionate with others. Now, again, remember, it can’t just be any type of affection, it has to be that you desire the affection, that it’s something that you want. Maybe you can relate to somebody touching you when you didn’t want to be touched. Like all of your kids on top of you and you’re thinking, I just want everyone to leave me alone and not touch me, or whatever other situation, so it’s not just the physical affection in and of itself.

But when you’re thinking thoughts about how you care about this person, then a nice hug, or holding of hands, or kissing, or sexual intimacy with your spouse, or what have you, can create a really healthy amazing dopamine hit. That tells your brain, “Hey, this is good, this will keep us alive, we should do this more.” Useful, right?

Alright, number seven, I’ve got a long list here, you guys. I’m on fire. This one is one that I created for myself because one of the things I like to engage in that gives me concentrated dopamine is shopping. I like to go to the store and buy something, some new clothes, I like to get online and buy stuff. And I don’t need any more clothes, or shoes, or any of the things my brain really thinks I need, really.

So what I discovered was that I could get a similar feeling, a similar happiness fix by shopping in my own closet. This has become fun for me to do. So one of the things I did is I moved – I have a full length mirror that was in my bedroom, but for a lot of reasons I moved it into my closet. I have a walk-in closet, so I have room for it, kind of. I didn’t think I did but I realized I don’t need a lot of room for it. I’m not going to be standing in front of it all day, so I put it in my closet.

So, sometimes when I think I want to get online and buy something new, I say, “What if we just go shopping in our own closet? What if I go upstairs and find combinations of clothes that I haven’t put together before? What if I find outfits that I hadn’t considered before?” Like you know in the magazines when they take like five or six pieces of clothing and they make like 24 outfits out of them? I try to do that. I try to mix and match and I try different things on and I try on things that I kind of forgot I had. And I just go shopping in my own closet, it’s really quite fun, give it a try.

Number eight dopamine hit, don’t get mad at me when I say this, but for me anyway, I get a huge dopamine hit when I clean something out, when I organize something, when I accomplish something around my house. You know those things that you’ve been meaning to do forever, like hanging that picture on the wall or getting a shelf for that one spot, or cleaning out the junk drawer or the pantry or what have you?

I’m telling you, getting started is hard, the middle part is okay. I usually can enjoy the middle part a lot better than getting started. But the end is where you get that dopamine hit, do you ever do this? I will clean out a room or something, reorganize a room and I have to keep going in and looking at it 10 times, I’m like, I’ve got to go look at that room one more time. Because every time I look at it I get a dopamine hit from the thought, I did that, it looks so good, I’m so glad I finally did that. I’m so proud of me, it looks awesome.

Dopamine hit, you guys, there you go, for some of you it’s mowing the lawn, but I’m talking like these household chores and tasks, a healthy dopamine hit right there.

Number nine, finishing things, this kind of piggybacks on number eight, but I wanted to mention it specifically because I’m not saying you have to finish everything you start. I don’t believe in that. I think if you’re done with something, be done with it, don’t beat yourself up. But the things that you want to finish, when you have a reason you like, like cleaning out the closet for example, or mowing the lawn, or whatever else.

Finishing gives you a dopamine hit; this is one of the main problems with perfectionism. Perfectionists deny themselves that happiness fix that we get from finishing things because nothing’s ever perfect, and therefore, in their minds it’s never done. They don’t get that pleasure of look what I did; it’s so great, I’m so proud of me. All they do is go, “Wait, that’s not right. Wait, that could be better. Wait, that’s not perfect.” So they deny themselves the happiness fix that’s available. So just allow yourself to be done and be proud and be okay with it not being perfect.

Alright, number 10 happiness fix comes from appreciation and gratitude. Now, we’ve all heard this a lot, but I want to emphasize it because here’s what I’ve found to be really powerful is to notice the little things. The little things that I’m taking for granted, probably because they’re so obvious, they’re so present in my life that I just get busy and don’t take the time to notice.

So, for example, the blossoms on the trees, especially right now in spring, like amazing blossoms on trees. When I’m driving in and out of my neighborhood I almost always have the thought, I love where I live, it’s so beautiful here. I love driving up this street, there’s streets into my neighborhood that are lined with forests of trees. And there are rolling hills, and there are kids playing on the sidewalk.

And I just, I try to notice those little things, I love that I live in a neighborhood where I feel safe, where people are friendly, where people aren’t speeding up and down the street, they’re respectful of one another. Noticing those little things that we take for granted normally, that’s just one example, but I’m sure there’s tons of others, that you can stop and notice and appreciate.

A little moment of one of my kids reading a book to the other one, I like to pause and go, “Whoa, that right there, that’s awesome.” I so appreciate that, I’m so grateful for this life, I’m so grateful for these kids, this family, this home, like all of the things. That gives your brain a dopamine hit, it’s very useful, and it makes you feel happy.

Number 11, being vulnerable, now, again, this can go either way, it doesn’t always pan out. But when you can allow yourself to be vulnerable, and people respond with love, which is going to happen the majority of the time I would say, then you get a little hit of dopamine.

So I think the best example I can think of this is when we bear our testimony. So for those of you that might not be members of my church, we, once a month in church have a testimony meeting. I like to call it open mic day because basically anyone who feels the desire to, can come up to the microphone and just share their testimony.

We just share our thoughts, and our beliefs, and our feelings about Jesus Christ and about the Gospel. And it’s really powerful because usually people will share some kind of a personal example, or a story of something, or some reason why they feel the way they do about Christ and about the Gospel.

And it’s really powerful, it’s powerful for the people listening, but it’s also powerful for the person sharing their testimony, even more powerful. Because you feel that dopamine hit, that little part of your brain that says, “Hey, that was valuable, that was useful.” Connecting with people in that way, opening up, sharing a part of ourselves, seeing how they accepted us, and loved us, and didn’t mock us, that was good, we should do that more, that will keep us alive.

Okay, number 12, exercise. Exercise is good for us for a lot of reasons, we always think about what it does for our body, but do you think about what it does for your brain? It releases endorphins, it releases dopamine. It feels good, although it can feel painful, it’s that good kind of pain. It’s that useful kind of pain that says, “This will keep us alive, we should do this more.”

Creating things, so by the time this airs I think we’re going to be into June, but in May in Be Bold, we’ve been working on creating purpose. Because creating things contributes happiness for us, we are creative beings. Our Heavenly Father created us, he’s the ultimate creator, and we’re created in his image, therefore we are creators as well. So, creating something that didn’t exist before, whether it be like literally a piece of art or something that you sewed, or an idea, or a class, or a story, or a concept, or a framework.

Creation gives us that feeling of that was good for me. That’s helping me grow and contribute, that’s contributing to my survival and thriving, I should do that more.

Music, I find that I get dopamine hits, happiness fixes, if you will, from listening to music. Do you find this to be the case? I think that there’s something about music that helps me connect with a different part of myself. Like it helps me get out of my head and all the verbal and just more into being present with me. I like to listen to a wide range of music, but music can be a great happiness fix, a great substitute for whatever you’re trying to cut out.

Connection with others, now, this is a tricky one, because connection isn’t something that we can define really simply. It’s not actions that you take, and it’s not actions that other people take. Connection doesn’t come from you talking to someone or from other people talking to you or listening to you. It actually comes from the way you’re thinking, okay?

So I don’t have time to get into all of that in this episode, but I will say that when you are able to have a good conversation with a friend that you love, that you love talking to you, that you feel like listens to you. If you’re not judging them or you don’t feel judged by them in return, then you’re going to have connection, that’s a little happiness fix. So calling up that friend, talking to that person that you can have that kind of conversation with can give you a good little happiness fix.

Nature as well, being in nature, now, again, it all depends on what’s happening in your head, but if you can appreciate it, and find gratitude in it, then being in nature can be a great happiness fix.

Last couple that I have here, love, love feels so good. Now, there’s all different kinds of love and different types of love that we experience. But that old saying that love hurts, is actually not true at all. What hurts is our disappointment of people, our expectation that they should have treated us a certain way.

Love doesn’t hurt, love always feels good. This is why if you think about falling in love, like romantic love, when you first meet someone and you’re just getting to know them and they’re getting to know you. And you’re having all of the thoughts about how amazing they are and how they think you’re amazing. That is a concentrated time of dopamine; this is why love is blind in that phase, because it actually even – the dopamine is so high that it blocks a little bit our rational thinking. So not that we’re not aware of their faults, we just don’t really care about them, like we will later when that dopamine settles down a little bit.

And then the last happiness fix I’m going to offer to you is feeling the Spirit. Okay, so that’s the term that we use at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to define connection with God and feeling His presence and feeling Him communicate with us in our lives. So whatever that is for you, connecting with the Divine, feeling closer to the Divine, which includes also feeling connected to other people, to your fellow human beings here on this Earth and in the next life. That kind of connection to a higher source gives you a happiness fix, gives you a dopamine hit.

So there you go, that was what, 17 things I just gave you that you can use to, again, substitute for whatever joy you’re taking away that might be creating negative habits for you, negative routines. Because I’m a believer that you’re designed for happiness, you are here to have an amazing life. It’s available to you if you want it; it’s yours for the taking. But we want to make sure we’re not sabotaging our future success and our future happiness for some immediate concentrated dopamine hit that doesn’t serve us.

Alright, you guys, don’t forget to share your ideas on Instagram. Thanks for listening today, I’ll see you next week, take care.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.