This episode is the fourth in a six-part series in which I take you through six different pathways to happiness, to human flourishing, and with each one I’ll provide you with tools that you can use. This is all based on the current research through a framework called PERMA-V. In today’s episode I’ll teach you all about the M – Meaning – and every other week, when I do a solo episode, I’ll be discussing another one of the 6 pathways. After you listen to each episode, I hope you’ll practice the tools I’m providing so you can apply this to your own life.

Here’s a bit of background to help put all of this in context. In the first episode in this series (Episode 30) I discussed a bit of the history of psychology in the twentieth century and the birth of the field of positive psychology, which stemmed from the recognition that we needed to focus on and learn more about wellness, and not just illness. A key idea in positive psychology is that the absence of illness is not wellness. Just because you don’t have diabetes or cancer doesn’t mean you’re healthy, and just because you haven’t been diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder doesn’t mean you’re thriving and flourishing. Positive psychology started developing the understanding that, more than the surface happiness, which, while it’s pleasurable, is more fleeting, we should be learning to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling happiness. I addressed the concept of the hedonic treadmill as part of the reason why the search for more money and a better job doesn’t lead to true, deep, lasting happiness, and what Aristotle called “eudaimonia,” or wellbeing and flourishing.

The field of positive psychology has been studying what it takes to really cultivate our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and a recent theory has laid out 6 pathways to flourishing: PERMA-V.

• Positivity
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning and Purpose
• Accomplishment and Achievement
• Vitality

In today’s episode I discuss Meaning and Purpose, obviously a topic near and dear to my heart. I talk about how meaning and purpose are so critical to living a happy, fulfilled life, and how Abraham Maslow addressed this in his “hierarchy of needs” (referring to self-actualization). I define purpose as the unique, active impact that you make in the world, and I dive into the concept of purpose in great detail, why it’s so important, why the search for purpose can be so challenging, and how we can begin to uncover our own purpose. I end with several Purpose Power Tips around your own purpose.

Here are a few resources I mentioned:

Ritual, a fantastic supplement that you can get here: https://ritual.com/purposegirl

The Women’s Happy Shop:

https://bit.ly/womenshappy

Victor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, which you can get at Amazon:

https://amzn.to/2RT3VxZ

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunes and leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and click here to receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!

My guest today is Pax Tandon, author, producer, wellness advocate, teacher, and former news anchor. Her mission is to effect mass positive change on the planet, and she believes that the practice of Mindfulness is vital to this mission. Her book, Mindfulness Matters, is out now. She also recently finished work on the Mindfulness Matters short film, which she co-produced, co-wrote, voiced and starred in. Tandon holds a Master’s Degree in Positive Psychology, and certifications in mindfulness, positive psychology coaching, yoga, and past life regression therapy.

Pax believes that mindfulness is the foundation of thriving, and that without purpose, or rather, without aligning with our true purpose, we can never fully achieve well-being. Mindfulness can help us cultivate the inner attunement we need to listen to our inner voice and stay on our “due North” path toward fulfillment. She defines mindfulness as a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment, the ability to sit with the present moment, just as it is, without actively trying to change it or resist it.

Pax addresses some of the many benefits of developing mindfulness, including an improved ability to manage one’s emotions in a healthy way. We can become less reactive and less judgmental and learn to interact with our world in a much more objective, calm way. Do we want to live in upset, frustration, and anger much of the time, or do we want to release ourselves from that, liberate ourselves from that, and live differently?

Mindfulness practices also cultivate empathy, because as we are better able to understand our own thoughts and emotions, so we become better able to relate to and understand others. And as we are better able to regulate our own emotions we become better decision makers, as we can consider options more objectively and be less influenced by overpowering emotions in the heat of the moment. Being in a more positive state of mind is good for so many reasons, including improving our physical health, our social connections, and our ability to do creative problem solving.

In our society today with so many distractions and demands on our attention, it’s so important for us to be able to exercise greater control over where we'd like to place our attention. Discipline and self-regulation are fundamentally liberating. They liberate you from attachments to things that aren’t in your highest and greatest good.

Pax also talks about the importance of a gratitude practice as part of one’s overall mindfulness practice, specifically the writing of gratitude letters; mindfulness in eating; and, the connections between mindfulness and purpose.

To learn more about Pax, you can follow her on Instagram (@paxtandon) and Twitter (@paxtandon), connect with her on Facebook (Pax Tandon), and check out her website (www.paxtandon.com). You can get her new book, Mindfulness Matters: A Guide to Mastering Your Life, at Amazon (https://amzn.to/2SOfdVC). Pax recommends the book, Stealing Fire, which you can also find at Amazon (https://amzn.to/2yYJAjC).

I’ll be talking more about it in the future, but I mentioned the opening of the Women’s Happy online store, which you can find at https://Bit.ly/womenshappy.

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunes and leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and click here to receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!

This episode is the third in a six-part series in which I take you through six different pathways to happiness, to human flourishing, and with each one I’ll provide you with tools that you can use. This is all based on the current research through a framework called PERMA-V. In today’s episode I’ll teach you all about the R – Relationship – and every other week, when I do a solo episode, I’ll be discussing another one of the 6 pathways. After you listen to each episode, I hope you’ll practice the tools I’m providing so you can apply this to your own life.

Here’s a bit of background to help put all of this in context. In the first episode in this series (Episode 30) I discussed a bit of the history of psychology in the twentieth century and the birth of the field of positive psychology, which stemmed from the recognition that we needed to focus on and learn more about wellness, and not just illness. A key idea in positive psychology is that the absence of illness is not wellness. Just because you don’t have diabetes or cancer doesn’t mean you’re healthy, and just because you haven’t been diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder doesn’t mean you’re thriving and flourishing. Positive psychology started developing the understanding that, more than the surface happiness, which, while it’s pleasurable, is more fleeting, we should be learning to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling happiness. I addressed the concept of the hedonic treadmill as part of the reason why the search for more money and a better job doesn’t lead to true, deep, lasting happiness, and what Aristotle called “eudaimonia,” or wellbeing and flourishing.

The field of positive psychology has been studying what it takes to really cultivate our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and a recent theory has laid out 6 pathways to flourishing: PERMA-V.

• Positivity
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning and Purpose
• Accomplishment and Achievement
• Vitality

In today’s episode I discuss Relationships. We all crave relationships, we all want to have deep, meaningful relationships in our lives, but research study after research study has shown that loneliness has been steadily increasing over recent decades. And loneliness has been shown to have serious adverse effects on our health, as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day! Humans are wired for connection, and this has a basis in evolutionary biology. Go back in time, and our ancestors had to band together in order to survive against predators in their environment, raise crops in a community, and fight off other groups. Our brains developed to need relationships and community and connection. I share some fascinating, and disturbing, research that highlights the importance of close connection and that led to the founding of attachment theory.

Jane Dutton, at the University of Michigan, has studied high quality connections, specifically in the workplace. Low quality connections are those relationships that suck the life out of you and are draining. High quality connections leave you with feelings of vitality and aliveness, they feel supportive and loving, there’s positive regard and give and take on both sides. So, how do we create more high quality connections, both romantic and platonic?

In order to have high quality connections, there must be vulnerability and authenticity, and having a safe place to be ourselves helps us build trust and helps us to be more attuned with one another.

John Gottman, the leading researcher on marriage, points to what he calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, four things that will absolutely kill a relationship — criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling — and I go into each of these in depth.

I offer several Purpose Power Tips for building stronger relationships — create rituals, learn about your love languages, utilize love maps, and show appreciation — and I provide details and examples for each. I also explain the communication process called Active Constructive Responding and how we should be striving to use this in our personal interactions (and avoiding the alternatives).

The late Chris Peterson, one of the founders of positive psychology, said that much of the field of positive psychology can be boiled down to three words: Other people Matter. They matter to your happiness, your flourishing, and your overall health.

During this episode I mentioned a book by Katherine Woodward Thomas, Conscious Uncoupling, which you can find at Amazon here:

https://amzn.to/2qp01B8

I also mentioned the Love Languages assessment, which you can take for free here:

https://www.5lovelanguages.com/

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunes and leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and click here to receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!

When we tell our story, do we portray ourselves as a victim of circumstances, or do we portray ourselves as the hero/heroine of our own lives? The ability to tell our own story directly affects our happiness and success, and our guest today is an expert in storytelling: Valerie Gordon, owner of career and communication strategy firm, Commander-in-She.

The stories we tell others impact the way they see us and the opportunities we’ll get, just like the stories we tell ourselves influence the course of action we’ll take. And the stories we tell others are among our most important tools for building and deepening connection with others.

Our past choices have created our present reality, so we should recognize that our present choices, the things we do in our current story, will influence our future story. We can make small changes in our current story to help create our next chapter closer to the way we’d like it to be, with more of what we want in it and less of what we don’t. We discuss my own story, and my pivot point when I realized that my story wasn’t unfolding the way I wanted it to and when I decided to take control of my own story.

Valerie believes that in order to change our story we don’t always need to completely reinvent ourselves. She also says that wherever we’ve come from and whatever we’ve done in the past (maybe a marriage or a job that didn’t work out) hasn’t been a waste. Instead, we can ask what we’ve learned from it, what we can take from these experiences, as we write our next chapter.

She talks about the multiple levels that are present in the stories we tell others. For example, if someone is complaining about something that happened at work that day, at the surface level they’re talking about the specific things that happened. Below that, though, are their own beliefs about why this happened to them, which is the meaning they’re making about it. And the research from the field of positive psychology is very clear that it’s the way we choose to interpret the details of our stories and the facts of our lives that creates meaning for us, and that telling our own story from a redemptive perspective as opposed to from a victim perspective makes us more resilient and optimistic, and leads to greater overall health.

Valerie is all about taking command of one’s story and actively authoring it, and she uses the framework of storytelling to address how we can examine our lives more closely and ask the important questions that will allow us to begin rewriting our story so it unfolds the way we choose.

To learn more from Valerie check out her website (https://commander-in-she.com), where she blogs weekly and where you can sign up for her monthly newsletter or get more information on her group workshops. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (@CommanderInShe), and connect with her on LinkedIn (Valerie J Gordon).

The book that Valerie recommended is “Our Struggles Have Purpose” by Shawn Elizabeth George, which you can find at Amazon (https://amzn.to/2q9P4DG).

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunes and leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and click here to receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!

This episode is the second in a six-part series in which I take you through six different pathways to happiness, to human flourishing, and with each one I’ll provide you with tools that you can use. This is all based on the current research through a framework called PERMA-V. In today’s episode I’ll teach you all about the E – Engagement – and every other week, when I do a solo episode, I’ll be discussing another one of the 6 pathways. After you listen to each episode, I hope you’ll practice the tools I’m providing so you can apply this to your own life.

Here’s a bit of background to help put all of this in context. In the first episode in this series (Episode 30) I discussed a bit of the history of psychology in the twentieth century and the birth of the field of positive psychology, which stemmed from the recognition that we needed to focus on and learn more about wellness, and not just illness. A key idea in positive psychology is that the absence of illness is not wellness. Just because you don’t have diabetes or cancer doesn’t mean you’re healthy, and just because you haven’t been diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder doesn’t mean you’re thriving and flourishing. Positive psychology started developing the understanding that, more than the surface happiness, which, while it’s pleasurable, is more fleeting, we should be learning to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling happiness. I addressed the concept of the hedonic treadmill as part of the reason why the search for more money and a better job doesn’t lead to true, deep, lasting happiness, and what Aristotle called “eudaimonia,” or wellbeing and flourishing.

The field of positive psychology has been studying what it takes to really cultivate our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and a recent theory has laid out 6 pathways to flourishing: PERMA-V.

• Positivity
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning and Purpose
• Accomplishment and Achievement
• Vitality

In today’s episode I discuss Engagement, the idea of being fully IN your life, fully present. I begin with a general introduction to the idea of engagement and how most of us aren’t living engaged in our lives, how we’re rarely truly present, instead ruminating over things that have happened or worrying about the future. I discuss the importance of meditation as a tool to increase our own engagement and ability to be present, and the value of setting intentions, whether it’s for listening to this podcast or for the day ahead. Where your intention is, your attention goes, and being fully engaged means that you control life instead of life controlling you. I also address the importance of willpower and self-discipline to our own happiness, as well as gratitude and savoring.

An important concept tied to engagement is flow. When do you get so involved in something that you lose track of time, maybe you even forget to eat? Researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow as “the optimal human experience.” It’s being engaged with something that requires challenge just at the edge of your comfort zone, so that it gives you deep personal satisfaction, confidence, achievement, and fulfillment. We need to discover what will put us in flow, what will give us this feeling of optimal functioning? The more experiences we have in flow, the happier we are in the other areas of our lives.

Another practice that deepens engagement is doing, living, working from our strengths. When you’re focused on your strengths, you’re happier and more engaged in what you’re doing, and the first of my Purpose Power Tips is learning about our own strengths. For this I recommend using the Values In Action tool, which you can find at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu. I also provide several additional Purpose Power Tips for increasing your own engagement.

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunes and leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and click here to receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!