I’m so excited to announce the first ever Women’s Global Happiness Day, which I’m launching on October 18, 2018! This has been a dream of mine for some time, and we’re now holding events in over 80 cities on six continents! There’s already an International Happiness Day, but we need Women’s Global Happiness Day because there are a number of specific reasons for women’s unhappiness and lack of thriving that are different from that of men. And so I created this international event to address some of the issues that face women in particular, for women to come together to announce that they are worthy of happiness and that their happiness is within their control, and to provide them with actionable tools that they can put into practice to start increasing their own happiness.

If you would like to participate, you have a few options. You can sign up to attend an event hosted by someone else, and if there is one in your area we’ll match you up with the host. You can sign up to host an event, and we provide you with all the info and curriculum that you’ll need. For more info on these two options, go to the Participate page at [http://www.womenshappy.com]. Or, you can join an online event that I will be leading! For more information about this, go to the Free Webinar page at [http://www.womenshappy.com]. The free webinar that I’ll be leading will be Thursday, October 18, at 7:00 pm ET (that’s New York time).

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!

Managing work life and family life can be a challenge, and many moms end up giving up on their dreams or putting their own desires and interests on the back burner. My guest today, Sara Dean, knows all about this. Sara is the creator and host of the Shameless Mom Academy Podcast, a top rated podcast rapidly approaching 1 million downloads. Sara’s biggest passion is helping women own their space. After enduring her own identity crises following the birth of her son, Sara took her background in psychology/health/wellness and rebuilt her identity, one step at a time. Sara motivates and inspires women to stop shrinking and start growing. She is on a mission to inspire women and moms, in particular, to live bigger, bolder, braver #everydamnday.

Sara shares some of her struggles as a mom early on, coming to grips with the way her life was changing, and creating a new story for herself and her own life. She had been running a successful gym, but as she struggled to live a bigger and bolder life and create her own space in this world, she felt in conflict with helping women to shrink their own bodies and take up less space. So, she sold her gym (using curiosity to fuel this transition) and launched The Shameless Mom Academy and The Shameless Mom Academy podcast and began helping women “live bigger, bolder, braver every damn day.”

Sara says that a shameless mom is unapologetic, gracious, and tenacious. She makes space for herself, not by asking for permission but by having confidence around her needs, being vocal about her needs, and taking radical responsibility for building a life that makes her happy. She gives practical suggestions for how one can create space in one’s daily routine, and how one can start the day proactively instead of reactively.

Sara addresses — and challenges — some of the common assumptions about mothers and fathers and how they manage their lives and schedules and families, and provides a framework for helping moms feel comfortable with their choices to create space for themselves and for their own interests and passions. She also offers suggestions for alleviating anxiety and building confidence.

To learn more from Sara, check out her podcast, The Shameless Mom Academy, and you can connect with her at http://www.ShamelessMom.com. Also, you can join her private Facebook group at http://www.ShamelessMom.com/Facebook, and follow her on Instagram (@ShamelessMomAcademy).

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 kicks off 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 P: Positivity, 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.

I start with a bit of background to help put all of this in context. I discuss 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 address 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 Positivity, which does not mean being happy all the time and ignoring one’s grief and challenging emotions, and sweeping difficult experiences under the rug. Positivity is about having more positive emotions than negative emotions, more gratitude than resentment, more joy than grief and rage. We all have negativity bias, we all go more easily towards the negative than the positive, and I offer an activity for you to do that demonstrates this. The pathway of positivity really comes down to understanding how your brain works, and to your mindset, shifting from reacting harshly to stressful triggers to responding to them, so that you can show up in the world as your best self.

Negativity bias served a very important role in our own survival as a species, keeping us on the lookout for threats in our environment. This no longer serves us, though, and in fact it adversely impacts our wellbeing, but it did serve a purpose evolutionarily, and this begs the question: Why do we have positive emotions? Top researcher Barbara Frederickson has shown that positive emotions also played a key role in our survival in that they contributed to building relationships, which helped us fight threats. Positive emotions also facilitate increased creativity and problem solving, helping our brains broaden and build. We need more positive emotions in our day than negative ones, and a major way to do this is through gratitude, gratitude and appreciation for what it, and also holding a vision for a positive future. I discuss the upward spiral generated by regular practices of gratitude, why it’s so important, and how to incorporate gratitude into your daily life.

I talk about the pessimistic thinking style, which is characterized by the belief that challenges tend to be permanent, pervasive, and personal, versus the optimistic thinking style, in which we view challenges as temporary, isolated, and not necessarily personal. Shifting from a pessimistic thinking style to an optimistic thinking style will bring about profound improvements to your wellbeing, and research shows that having a pessimistic thinking style shortens one’s life span by an average of 9 years!

I end with a discussion of the cycle of thoughts leading to feelings leading to behaviors and back to a new thought, and how we can work with this cycle to change our thoughts and therefore change the feelings and behaviors that follow. This comes in part form the work of Byron Katie who teaches us to question our own thoughts.

We can all change our brains, but it takes choice, discipline and practice, and to help with that I end with several Purpose Power Tips for you take action.

And here are links for a few resources I mention in this episode:

Barbara Frederickson’s book, Positivity

https://amzn.to/2QhlUgJ

Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset

https://amzn.to/2QcZ89N

Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology

http://getcertifiedinpp.com

Women’s Global Happiness Day

http://WomensHappy.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!