Thursday, January 14, 2021

What is Happiness and is it Achievable? [Episode #542]

[Podcast #542] Blog Graphic for What is Happiness and Is It Achievable with Kimberly Snyder.

This week’s topic is: What is Happiness and is it Achievable?

A lot of us wonder about happiness. I think it’s something that’s become a big discussion point for the past few years. There have been different documentaries, research studies and books about happiness. It shows that as time goes on, we start to go deeper and deeper into ourselves. We start to really question what life is about and realize that it’s about our day to day experience and how we feel.

It’s not just about our side measurements, like how much money we have or how big our retirement account is or how many followers we have or just material things. It really has to do with our inner state.

I’ve realized how precious the peace and the joy that comes from within is, and really, how few people actually have it. It’s something that we can all tap into and we can create. For me, it’s been the journey of taking a holistic approach with our Four Cornerstone approach with food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. If we just try to approach it from one aspect, then we don’t really get the best results.

Happiness is something that I think is our birthright. I think our natural state is to be alive, to be joyful and to feel free. This is an important topic and this is something that we can all work towards.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]


 Debbie – Texas

Kimberly, can you share what is happiness to you? I mean, it seems to come and go and I wonder how much of it depends on our own mindset?

Taylor – Massachusetts

So much unhappiness comes from others. How can I find happiness without turning into some recluse?

Cora – Alabama 

I have a business that’s dependent on social media for its survival. However, I tend to receive comments where people say I’m faking my happiness. How can I separate myself from this negativity so that I don’t lose my desire, passion and happiness?

Luke – UK

Is happiness sustainable?

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:00 Hey Beauties, and welcome back to our Thursday Q and A Community Podcast where our topic today is What is Happiness and is it Achievable? So a lot of us wonder about happiness. I think it’s something that’s become a big discussion point for the past few years. There has been different documentaries about happiness, there’s been even research studies, there’s been different books. So it just shows that as time goes on, we start to go deeper and deeper into ourselves. I think we start to really question what life is about and we realize more and more that it’s about our day to day experience and how we feel. And it’s not just about our side measurements, like how much money we have or how big our retirement account is or how many followers we have or just material things. It really has to do with our inner state.

Kimberly: 00:54 And as I’ve gone on, I realized how all precious the peace and the joy that comes from within is and really how few people actually have it. And it’s something that we can all tap into. We can all create it. For me, it’s been the journey of taking a holistic approach, our four cornerstone approach, which is food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth, which we will talk about in our show today because I think if we just try to approach it from one aspect, then we don’t really get the best results.

Kimberly: 01:26 And so happiness is something that I think is our birthright. I think our natural state is to be alive and light and joyful and to feel free. So we’ll get into it today in our questions. I will say that for me, the journey… Ooh, my wellness journey, which is now well over a decade has included not just letting go of blow, letting go of acne, but also just increasingly feeling lighter and lighter and lighter and just having much more joy in my life. So I really think this is an important topic and this is something that we can all work towards.

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Kimberly: 02:07 But before we get into the show today, just a quick reminder to please leave us a review over on iTunes, which is easy and free. And I know sometimes I do it too. We put off doing reviews, but if this show has benefited you in any way, if it’s there as a friend for you, as I hope that it is, please just take a moment to leave us a review, which is a great thing to do to support the show. So I thank you so much in advance. And while you’re over there, please be sure to subscribe to our show and that way you get this constant influx of episodes and inspiration and you don’t have to worry about forgetting or missing out. We all get so busy that sometimes things fall by the wayside. So subscription is always a really, really great thing to do.

Question 1: Kimberly, can you share what is happiness to you? It seems to come and go, and I wonder how much of it depends on our own mindset.

Kimberly: 02:52 Okay, let’s get into our questions today. I’m very excited about hearing what you guys have been wondering about happiness. The first question comes from Debbie, who lives in Texas, and she writes, “Kimberly, can you share what is happiness to you? It seems to come and go, and I wonder how much of it depends on our own mindset.” So Debbie, thank you so much for bringing this up. So I think that for me, it’s hard to talk about happiness as a goal. I always talk about joy. And joy for me is deeper than happiness. But I think when most people are trying to feel happiness, what they’re really looking for is joy.

Kimberly: 03:38 And the difference is joy comes from inside of you and it comes from a very, very deep place of being connected to spirit inside of you, which is the source of your confidence and your true beauty and everything else. And when we have that connection, then to your point, Debbie, it doesn’t matter what happens outside of us. Things can crash and fall and burn and changes happen and COVID comes and we may lose our job and someone dumps us, but we still have that deep, deep sense of inner security. Happiness also feels good, but happiness can be dependent on outside things. Happiness can be fleeting. So if we attach our happiness to how much we weigh or this particular job or getting the validation from this particular boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever it is, if those things change, then our happiness levels can change.

Kimberly: 04:34 So to me, my goal is joy. And to me, that is from inner connection. And we really, really strengthen that with our meditation practice. It is the way to access deep joy. But with our other cornerstones, I would say our emotional wellbeing cornerstone, it’s also important to feel joy from true connection to others, for instance. So I think establishing a really strong community, a really strong tribe is very important to our joy because energy transfers and we’re meant to be tribal. We’re meant to be communal. We’re meant to share with other people. But the key is sharing with other people that are positive and will help uplift you as well.

Kimberly: 00:01 So when it comes to community, I will say that we have been building an incredible community over in our Solluna Circle. If you want to join us, if you’re listening to this, then you probably very much do fit in with our tribal circle and our discussions every day. And we do virtual circles every month. So you can check that out over at the Solluna app, which you can download. I’ve got Bubby here on my lap, and he is playing quietly. We’ll see how quietly he can play here as we go through the show. Real life working mama. And our next cornerstone is body. And I think that we are meant to be dynamic, passionate, alive beings, and so when it comes to joyfulness, besides meditation, besides having a tribe, it’s also really important that we move our bodies and we sleep, we take care of ourselves, we go for walks, preferably in the sunlight, or in a gym, if that’s really your only option right now. And I think that’s really important too, because it fosters that dynamic energy that is us, that is our true nature.

Kimberly: 01:11 And then food wise, food does play into joyfulness, because our physical, our mental and emotional beings, spiritual beings, everything is interconnected. So if we eat in a way that opens up our bodies, it opens up our energy, it opens up our just cellular potential and our light, if you will. It really does make a difference. It does impact our meditations, which is one of the reasons that the yogis always talk about diet, and that was the first reason I became plant-based actually, was from going to India, to journeying there, to learning about meditation, and that was when I became plant-based initially. And then, of course, I learned more about the health part, the aspect of elevating health and detoxification and the environmental consequences. But really, it was the energy part that really drew me in, and I will say it does make a tremendous difference.

Kimberly: 02:02 So when we live this lifestyle, we’re able to access more and more of that joy. And to your point, Debbie, it doesn’t come and go as easily with outside circumstances. Maybe we come outside and it’s annoying. We got a ticket on our car, some parking ticket, but it doesn’t have to tank our day. We can take it in stride. We can take a breath and deal with it and move on. Traffic, arguments with coworkers, or whatever it is that comes up in life, when we have that inner anchor, when we’re living this life, the Four Cornerstone Life, we just feel a lot more grounded and we don’t come undone as easily. So that’s why all these practices are so, so important. And I will say on the app, there’s free meditations as well if you guys want to go check them out, some beginning meditations to get you started.

Question 2: So much unhappiness comes from others. How can I find happiness without turning into some recluse?

Kimberly: 02:49 All right. So our next question comes from Taylor, who lives in Massachusetts, and she writes, “So much unhappiness comes from others. How can I find happiness without turning into some recluse?” So I think this is a great question, Taylor. I think that it is very true that human relationships, we need them, we love them, but they can be tricky. It’s like that U2 song, With or Without You. Sometimes there’s people, relatives, family members, dear friends that can drive us crazy, but we love them to pieces. And every one of us comes with different triggers and different wounds and different things that we bring into our communication in relationships. So that’s why they can be tricky, sometimes someone doesn’t mean to offend us or piss us off, but they touch on a sensitivity. For me, it’s about being heard and being seen. So if somebody triggers that, then I either become passive aggressive, or in the past I would, because now I’m a lot more aware of it.

Kimberly: 03:51 Or I would just shut down or maybe say that I didn’t like that person that much, I would avoid them. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of complications that can come in. But I do believe that when we anchor in, there’s a couple of things here. When we anchor into ourselves, we don’t need other people as much. It doesn’t mean that we don’t like them, it doesn’t mean that we don’t love them, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t want to be around them and share life, but we don’t need. So what that means is we start to drop expectations from this person needing to be the person that makes me feel validated, makes me feel good, makes me feel seen. We don’t need it as much from other people because we can give it to ourselves. So in my healing journey, as I started to validate myself and I started to connect in and I started to know from my core that what I was saying was valid and what I was saying was important and had validity because I have validity.

Kimberly: 04:57 Then even if people interrupted me or ignored me or glossed over what I was saying, it didn’t bother me as much. And now it bothers me very little, because we realize that when we put so much expectation in other people, we give our power away, it means that person has the power over us to make us upset, thank you, my baby, to make us upset or to change our mood, or to really just throw our minds for a loop versus that stability in that equanimity that’s talked about so much in yoga, that idea that when we are calm and we are centered and we are connected to ourselves, other people can come and do their behaviors and come from wherever they’re coming from in their journey and they don’t affect us so much. And so the joy and the happiness, I’ll say happiness because it’s a more colloquial term, it’s something that we hear more about in everyday life. But really what I’m talking is that deep, inner joy that supersedes happiness, but that feel good feeling inside of us.

Kimberly: 06:03 It can be a lot more stable the more we anchor in with those cornerstones that I was just discussing with Debbie. It can feel not like something that we’re grasping for, not like something that’s fleeting and always just coming and going, but something that we really, really anchor into within ourselves. I will say that a great way to anchor in practically, food wise, something you put into your body, are these hot elixirs, these warm elixirs that we talk about a lot. And we have a new recipe every month in the Circle. There’s tons of recipes over on our site as well, mysolluna.com, and there’s something about making a warm elixir, stirring in different herbs and different ingredients. The one I have right now is heavy, milky, fatty, hemp milk, or coconut milk. Just the fat feels really stabilizing right now, so it will feel stabilizing in your body. And then I like to put in ginger and shatavari, some are Ayurvedic herbs, ashwagandha. I have a little herbal mix. And then sometimes I put some raw honey.

Kimberly: 00:00 So I think that really, when we start to give ourselves that love that we’re seeking and that validation and everything else that we can give to ourselves, our relationships naturally start to improve. We start to come from the place of how can I give you love? How can I help? Because I’m good, I don’t have so many needs. I don’t have so many expectations for other people. And it’s a really powerful place to come at relationships and it will transform your relationships. So it’s true when we talk about beauty from the inside out, how this glow comes from the way we take care of our inner space and our gut health and what we eat, and also how we’re meditating and how we’re processing our feelings. And also beautiful relationships I believe are built from the inside out because when we come from that place of deep acceptance of ourselves, again, we just don’t put so much pressure on our relationships to fulfill us.

Kimberly: 00:55 We don’t need so much from our relationships. So they’re more relaxed. We’re able to enjoy them more. We don’t have to take everything so seriously and what people say so seriously, it’s not so dire. We can just enjoy the relationships and laugh. And if someone says something that’s hurtful or does something that pisses us off, we can say, “Oh, look at that, maybe they have a wound in that area or that’s just where they are right now and whatever.” We just don’t take it so personally, whereas if we’re in a place where we haven’t yet connected to that deep inner light, we haven’t started meditating yet, or we’re not following the four cornerstones, then we end up feeling a lot more that things are personal and that doesn’t feel as good.

Break

Kimberly: 01:40 And it does put a lot more trickiness, if you will, on all of our relationships. So, great question so far, my loves, we are going to take a short break and we will come back to answer two more of your questions on what is happiness and is it achievable?

Question 3: I have a business that’s dependent on social media for its survival. However, I tend to receive comments where people say I’m faking my happiness. How can I separate myself from this negativity so that I don’t lose my desire, passion and happiness?

Kimberly: 02:02 All right, loves. We have two more questions for you guys on this beautiful topic, which I think affects all of us. Day to day, we all want to feel feelings of elation and joy, I think is really what we’re ultimately seeking versus fleeting happiness. But I’m using those terms a bit interchangeably because I think more of us are used to hearing the word happy, but I think what we’re really looking for is a deeper, deeper level of anchored in joy. So let’s keep talking about it. First question comes from Cora in Alabama and she writes, I have a business that’s dependent on social media for its survival. However, I tend to receive comments where people say I’m faking my happiness. How can I separate myself from this negativity so that I don’t lose my desire, passion and happiness. So Cora, thank you so much for your question.

Kimberly: 02:57 I think that when we are in the world of especially social media, we have to really be anchored before we go in there, because it is sort of like the Wild West and people that have different feelings and different triggers and different wounds can immediately write a comment. They can project it out in a very direct way. And so we have to protect ourselves before we go into that sort of space and let ourselves be affected by other people so much. Because again, the truth is that everybody has their own triggers and they have their own wounds. And it has nothing to do with you. If you put out something and someone reacts to it in a way that doesn’t feel good to you, but it’s really triggering something in them. So the first thing I would say is to just make sure that whatever you’re putting out, that you feel good with what you’re putting out.

Kimberly: 03:58 So that’s the first thing. If you feel that you’re coming from a pure place, if you’re spreading goodness in whatever way, inspiring other people, then you can know that as truth within yourself. And if you go through this and you think, “Oh, well, maybe some of this doesn’t feel as good to me. Maybe I’d rather post these pictures,” whatever it is, but just get clear with yourself. And if you are clear, once you’re clear, then you have nothing to worry about with other people. So what happens is if you get some negativity, you can just let it roll off, like water off a duck’s back. You can read it, you can feel it. You don’t want to suppress it. But if something stings a little bit, you can let that sting come through and then you digest it and you let it go.

Kimberly: 04:49 And you think, “Oh, that hurt a little bit. But obviously they were misreading my intention, my intention wasn’t about ego or anything like that. I was really trying to inspire someone or I was trying to put out some goodness here.” And so if you’re coming from that pure place, then you can really just sit back, feel the feelings, let them go and remind yourself that everybody is coming from a different place. So it’s not your job to try to get that person to understand you. Right now they probably won’t and that’s okay. There’s always going to be a percentage of people that may not. And this is something that I have dealt with myself when I started doing national shows and started talking about being plant-based and not drinking diet soda, and all sorts of things. There were people that were triggered by that.

Kimberly: 05:39 And so in the beginning, I just remember being this very happy-go-lucky person starting out, just starting to write books, starting to get national TV, had a big website. And then I started getting some criticism for things that I thought were so basic. And it really threw me for a loop. And I had to really just sit back and digest that and understand that it wasn’t something that I needed to be taking so personally. So that’s what I would say to you Cora love is just to stay anchor to your truth.

Kimberly: 06:14 Don’t let it affect your passion. Let it roll off like water off a duck’s back and realize that the more you stick to your truth and you put things out, anchor to yourself, do your cornerstones, do your meditation practice, breathe into your body, eat good food, surround yourself with positive people in your tribe. And that negativity that’s out there will not affect you as much, sending you a big virtual hug. I know that’s not much fun, but those things will come and go. And again, it’s not your job to try to appease everybody.

Question 4: Is happiness sustainable?

Kimberly: All right, so our last question comes from Luke who lives in the UK and he writes, is happiness sustainable?

Kimberly: 06:57 So again, I think that we’re playing with words a little bit here. I think that happiness that is dependent on how much money we have. What we look like, our parents, our job, anything external, anything outside of our energy space is not sustainable. If it’s only attached to those things, they will come and go. But there’s a far, far, far, far deeper energy that we can all access. It’s deeper than happiness and it’s the joy. And again, I think that sometimes we get these terms confused, but joy is a much, much, much deeper experience. And we can access that joy from our meditation, from our four corners stones, from connecting in. And we can access that joy by being love, by giving more away, by being generous with other people, by focusing on serving other people. And then that gives us a continual source of joy.

Kimberly: 07:58 And when we give more, it is true that we feel more energy. So instead of anchoring our happiness to, “Oh, look at how beautiful my skin is today.” Or, “Look at how great my life is. I have the perfect job now,” or whatever it is, it’s great to enjoy those things. But if we think that’s our only source of happiness, we are bound to have ups and downs and major fluctuations and feel like frustrations as things start to go away because those things will definitely ebb and flow. But the joy that comes from anchoring in, breathing, being so connected to our inner space, we are carrying as Yogananda would say, a portable Eden, the Garden of Eden around us, this beautiful paradise inside of us, so that any situation we will feel a sting if obviously something happens, we get dumped or we get fired, or these things will affect us, but they won’t affect us as deeply.

Kimberly: 08:58 We know that there’s a part of us that can never be taken away. There’s a part of us that doesn’t ever need to be validated. There’s a part of us that doesn’t need other people. We don’t need the expectations. We don’t need them to give us love, to feel the love, to feel the power inside of us. And the more we meditate, the more we live this lifestyle, we feel that. So again, food wise, eat foods that are clean, that open up the body, that don’t congest the body, reduce or cut out animal products, cut out oils that are difficult to digest, stick with coconut oil or cold pressed oils, raw on salads, try to avoid vegetable oils, heavy animal fats. Have warm elixirs that open up the body, open up digestion. Body-wise, get some good sleep. Take your probiotics, your SBO probiotics to support your gut health in a very sustainable, very holistic way, your gut health will affect your hormones and your neuro-transmitters and so much.

Kimberly: 09:59 Make sure you’re walking and exercising and moving your body. Emotional wellbeing wise, anchor into a tribe, into an anchor, into a community, have space to process your feelings, have some tools and journal. And again, these are all things that we talk about in our circle, which is over on the app. And then finally, as I’ve been speaking about all along, it’s really important to prioritize your meditation practice and to anchor into it and to make it part of your daily life, morning and evening. Even if it’s a couple of minutes, each time to start, but the more you do it, the more you start to find and access this inner world, which has beneath the surface. So it’s beneath this turbulent world where everything’s changing, including how you work, including how you look and work and how much money you make and what other people are doing.

Kimberly: 10:46 There’s this inner space underneath that you can access. And that Luke, my friend, is sustainable when you start to access that and it starts to grow. So at first you may feel like your meditation are really restless and maybe even useless, but then you find that you, as you go on, they start to go deeper and deeper and they become more sustainable. And it really is a game changer when you start to access that. So I love all of these questions my love, thank you so much for participating. If you guys have other questions, make sure that you ask them over at [mycylinder.com 00:11:19], where we look at all your questions and put them into topics. And a lot of us have the same question. So hopefully your question will get answered or other questions that will support you in your path, which of course is the goal of our show.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: 11:34 Before we sign off today, I want to leave you with a quote of the week, which is something that, two words, very simple I wrote, but I actually said it in the show today. But I want to remind you of this concept, which is be love. So you want to be love. You want to embody it. It’s a very powerful essence. It’s a very powerful energy that radiates out. When we try to get it from other people and relationships, we try to get it from validation from the outside world. We start to get desperate and starts to change our behaviors. We start to get thrown off course. We’re not as authentically ourselves versus being love. We can choose to be it, it’s an action, we can give it to people. We can emanate it, we can radiate it. We can be loving with ourselves.

Kimberly: 12:16 We can even bring love to every situation, we can bring love to the way that we make our food, the way that we interact with other people, be love instead of trying to get love. And that will be the game changer of your life. It’s all inside of you, all this beautiful power in your heart where your true beauty resides as well. I thank you so much for being part of our community and I send you so much love. We will be back here Monday for our next Monday interview podcast. So then take care and lots and lots of love.

The post What is Happiness and is it Achievable? [Episode #542] appeared first on Solluna by Kimberly Snyder.

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