Finding How to Be Happy for No Reason

Introduction to Marci Shimoff 0:00

- My next guest is a legend. She is a multi New York Times bestselling author. As a matter of fact, when I was looking at the numbers just like blew my mind. So she has sold over 16 million copies in 33 languages of her book. Her name is Marci Shimoff, she's one of the leading authorities on Happiness, which I'm really excited to delve into in just a minute, Marci and she, one of her books is called or one of her big books was called Happy for No reason. And then she's had other books too. She's been part of the chicken soup for the Woman's Soul series. I guess you've had six of those come out, which is incredible. In addition to Happy for no reason.

It's also love for no reason. I like the no reason part we're gonna get into. Yeah, like a lot of people think when everything's right then I can be loving or when everything's right, I can be happy. But you you have a little different take on it. So she's inspired millions and her work is across 7072 countries with a worldwide program. She leads right now called your year of miracles. Marci welcome to our summit. It is just a pleasure and a joy to have you be involved with us. - It's so great to be with you Tom I love this summit and I love everything that you do.

What It Means to Be Happy for No Reason 1:33

So it's a joy to get to be part of this. - Yeah, so I said we'd go into the no reason part, like a lot of people are happy sometimes when everything's right on the outside and people are treating them nicely, talk to us about what it means to be happy for no reason. - Yeah. So most people spend most of their life trying to make all the reasons in their life, right? So that they can be happy. I call it the, I'll be happier when syndrome, you know, I'll be happier when I have a better job or when I have more money or when I have, you know when I get married or when I get divorced or the ever popular, I'll be happier when I lose £20.

And the reality is there's nothing wrong with having wonderful things in your life, wonderful circumstances except that it won't bring you lasting happiness. And the research shows that so what I mean by happy for no reason is an interstate of peace and well being that doesn't depend on your circumstances. So, you know, life happens, things happen, a pandemic happens and you're gonna have situations where you've feel upset or angry, somebody dies, you're going to feel grief. But when you're happy for no reason, you have an inner backdrop of this peace and well being that you carry with you.

So you're more resilient to be able to come back in times of challenges and that's the real, I think that is the ultimate happiness that we are all looking for? - Yeah, when somebody is counting on their achievements or the outer world to give them happiness, even when they achieve this thing that they're looking to bring happiness for the rest of their life. How long does it typically last? - Yeah, it generally lasts your reasons for being happy will make you happier from anywhere from, you know, a short time a week, two weeks a month up to a year, It does not have lasting happiness and there's research behind that and you know, tom can I just take a moment and share my own story?

Because, you know, people always think, well Marci, you were always happy, right? And my answer is absolutely not. I was born depressed. I came out of the womb with existential angst and I had no reason for being unhappy, I had a great family, I had everything was great, but I just had this dark cloud around me all my childhood and when I was getting to be a teenager, my solution for my unhappiness was something called sugar. I became a sugar addict because it gave me that temporary high And by the time I was in high school, I was £35 heavier than I am now and well, I was not in high school and of course, that didn't add to my happiness.

So Tom I did what most people did when I was in my twenties, I set goals for myself and I thought once I reached those goals, that's it, I'll be happy and I had five goals and I'll share them with you and with everybody because I think people can relate. I wanted a successful career helping people.

Marci's Personal Journey and Turning Point 4:39

I wanted a wonderful husband and life partner. I wanted a comfortable home. I wanted fabulous friends and I wanted the equivalent of Halle Berry's body. Now I don't have Halle Berry's body, I got four out of the five, I don't have Halle Berry's body, but I have a healthy body for which I'm very grateful and I worked really, really hard to get all my ducks in a row so that all that would work. And I had a turning point moment. It was in 1998. I had three books in the top five on the New York Times bestseller list.

At the same time, I had all those other things working for me and I just finished giving a talk to 5 to 8000 people and I had autographed 5432 books. My client had a massage therapist there to massage my hand. So I would keep on signing and after autographing that last book on one hand, I felt like kind of an author, rock star. And I remember going up to my hotel room and walking over, it was in Chicago. I walked over to these huge windows looking out at Lake Michigan on top of the world. I took in a deep breath, looked at Lake Michigan and I turned around and I collapsed onto my bed and burst into tears because I realized this was the end of the line.

I could no, I I could no longer fool myself into thinking that just the next thing was going to make me happy. I still felt that same emptiness and pain in my heart that I had felt throughout my life. And so I decided at that moment, this is it. I'm going to find out what will make me happy. And I went out and interviewed all the happiness researchers. I interviewed 100 unconditionally happy people, and I started doing what they were doing. And it worked. I would say I went from a D plus and Happiness too. A and I'm still a work in progress, but it's solid there and I've since taught hundreds of thousands of people.

And what I've found is that it doesn't matter where you are on the happiness continuum, you could be really unhappy, you could already be happy no matter where you are, you can raise your happiness level. - Yeah. And we talked about or what we will talk about, we talked about prior to how have you know, this is a global energy healing summit, how happiness is a healing emotion. It's obviously healing mentally for any type of mental challenges that people have, but also physical too. So I want to get into that in a little bit. But when you said you went out and you interviewed people that were unconditionally happy.

What did you find in those interviews? What types of things were showing up? What was the evidence there? - So here's what I found, I found that the only difference between happy people and the rest of us was that they were happy was that they had different habits. They had different habits. And let me tell you just a little bit about the research behind this, because I think this is really interesting for people and then we're gonna get into some practical things. So, for those of you who like practical, we're here for you. But here's the research, there's lots of it. But my most important piece of research that I've learned that explained everything to me is that we all have what's called a happiness set point, and it's like a thermostat setting.

And no matter what happens to us, whether it's good or bad, we will tend to return to our thermostat setting. Our set point is the key to everything. This explains why people who win the lottery and, you know, a lot of people think all I'd have to do is win the lottery and I'd be happier. Well, that's true for a few months, but within a year you will return to your original happiness set point. So the set point is the is the key to it all. And here's how the set point is determined, It's 50% genetic, you're born with it, I was not born with the happiness jeans, It's 10% your circumstances now notice that's only 10%.

This is what the world is so busy trying to run after to make better, To be happier. But it only accounts for 10% of it. The other 40% is your habits of thoughts and behavior. And that's where we can really make the greatest change. And I'm going to take this a step further and say that there are scientists in the field of epigenetic six, studying our genes that will tell us like Dr. Bruce Lipton who wrote the biology of belief And they say that that 50%, that's genetic of our happiness. That point, that can be influenced or changed by changing our habits, which means that 90% of our happiness set point can be changed by changing our habits.

That, to me should be headlined News. We've cracked the happiness code. This should be taught in all the schools. The reason anybody wants anything is that they think it's going to make them happier. Let's go directly to the happiness shortcut it

Happiness Research and the Set Point 9:35

and go right to the happiness set point. - I love that 90% within our control. That's awesome. That's awesome. And even when that 10% is not performing up to our expectations, we still get, we still get to control how we feel, you know, this past, you know, this past year and a half. It's been a challenging year for people and and yet there's people that are coming through it with increased happiness, right? I mean, they've really learned how to not by the old ways of living, but by adopting just this internal power that they have.

You've seen that, I'm sure all over with your research. - Absolutely. And it's been shown that actually people who are happier are more resilient. They are better creative, they're more creative in their solution and problem solving. They have better relationships. But also because I know this is a summit on health, your happiness has a dramatic impact on your health and meaning your actual physical health. I'll give you a few statistics about that. The research shows that on average, happier people live nine years longer.

That's exactly right. Yeah, exactly. And on average, they they are one third less likely to get sick, a stronger immune systems. Just and it's actually even been, there's been evidence done around Covid and happier people having stronger immunity against covid. So there's so many great fringe benefits of being happier. It's also been shown that happier people make more money. You know, - there's a relationship probably goes on and on and on. - There's not any area that is affected by raising our happiness that. - Yeah. And you have, you still have people there hearing this and they go, yeah, yeah. The other people, I see how they can do it, but you don't understand my life Marci, you don't understand what I've gone through.

You don't understand my childhood, you don't understand what I'm facing right now. What do you say to those people? - I so understand that sense, that feeling of it's not possible. I can't be happier because look at all that's happened to me, but I will tell you out of the now thousands of people that I've interviewed about happiness. They are from all kinds of backgrounds, including many who have had traumas, you know, very great challenges. And you know, we see this in so many ways, we see people who grew up with horrible circumstances and look what they look, how they're living. So it does it does not matter where you've come from. Everybody can raise their happiness that point and it's not as hard as people think it really isn't.

And I'm going to get really practical on you guys today. So we're gonna I'm gonna show you some steps that you can do right away to start raising your happiness set point. - I love that. We'll do that in just a minute. I want to ask you another question. So when something like Covid happens and people have lots of empathy, they see other people struggling or suffering and they go how can I be happy when, you know this is the way it is, Maybe it's not even impacting them, but they just see it if they watch the news or they read an article is being happy in a situation like that, selfish or is that okay to be happy?

Not about that happening to another human being, but is it still okay to go through your life, your experience with with a lightness, still take that feel for them? What do you think? - That's a great question. I actually think it's the least selfish thing in the world to be happy. And the reason for that is when you're happier, the science shows that you're impacting. Well, we're all impacting the people around us all day long. But what's been found is that when you're happier, it affects five people out, meaning you, your happiness affects your neighbor's cousin's daughter's school teacher, it just we really have an impact on the field. You know, our mutual good friend Lynne McTaggart wrote a book on the field and the effects that we have on each other. So while it's important that we have empathy for sure for each other, it's also important to not get dragged down into you can have empathy and you can still know that you raising your own happiness set point is actually helping the people around you.

- What a great way of thinking about it. So I'm not just being, I'm not just creating happiness for myself, but for the impact it has on on other human beings

Happiness, Resilience, and Health Benefits 14:31

which will influence their mental health or physical health? Just their enjoyment of life, you know earlier today I was talking, I mentioned that we had Donna Eden and David Feinstein on and there was a mix up. They hadn't received the invitation, the zoom invitation to get on. And so I was on, I, you know, I didn't know what had happened. And then the person that runs their business, really wonderful guy, I was communicating with him, I guess he had called me but I turned my phone off and it was like 10 minutes after and I'm thinking, oh gosh, you know, I hope you know they're gonna be okay. And they came on and they were just so happy.

It was like they just had such great energy, it was like and we laughed and we just had a great time. And that was a situation that wasn't ideal for them, but they just came into it with this beautiful energy and they did impact me, right? It was so cool - And you know, and I love them and they are so wonderful, amazing souls and its happiness is contagious. We catch the emotions of the people around us just like we catch their colds. You know, it's so you want to be around people who are emanating that kind of an energy because they actually will lift you up.

I remember one time I was in a, In a meeting with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, we were with a small group of people and I thought there was a negative guy, there were maybe 30 people and there was this guy in the room and he was really negative and I thought, Oh God, how is that going to play out? You know, and the Dalai Lama walked in the room and his being, he was just so steeped in having, you know, he was one of the people that did a lot of the research on happiness and funded now not funded, but you know, collaborated with people research on happiness and his energy so beamed that within just a couple of minutes, this negative guy just couldn't help catch it.

So you know, you we want to be, we all know the experience of getting in the room with somebody who's just a total bummer to be around. And right now everybody's got a picture in their mind of who I'm talking about, it's that uncle of yours or whoever it is and you know what a drag it is. Likewise, when you're around people who have that generate that that just inherent energy of joy of happiness, it's you want to be around it. So this is why happier people are more successful. People want to be around them.

If you have a choice of going to to dry cleaners, they're right next door to each other, they're the same price, but one has someone who's just really a joy to be around and the other one has somebody who's just totally grumpy, Which one are you gonna go to? - Yeah. - We just gravitate towards the innately happy. - That's true. And in business, you know, I like to think that, you know, in certain areas I'm a thought leader, but I never, I've learned never to try and go into any situation and try to be the smartest person in the room or the coolest person in the room, you know, try and compete on that level.

I go in and I just try to be the most positive, like the happiest person. And it's so interesting, like some of my clients and these are people that, you know, are running, you know, $50 billion dollar companies. They just, what they say is you just make me feel better. And so I don't even know if it's like this advice that I'm giving them that they're, you know, paying me lots of money for or if it's that feeling. But at the end of the day we're feeling human beings and when you're around somebody, like we're so worried about this coronavirus, the coronavirus, hey, get more, get more worried about the happiness virus.

Like you know, start spreading that because it is a virus that, as you said, we can catch it, you can be the person that starts spreading it today. One of the things that I like to do and I'm not religious on this, I wish I were, but it start the day by just three things. 33 people that I either text something to just to make them feel good and or you know quick call or an email but three times in the morning and by doing that, I feel better too about me, it just makes things you know so much better.

Responding to Trauma and Suffering 18:38

So I love your analogy that you can catch it. Let's all start spreading the happiness virus, but it does start with us. So what are some things we can do to generate this emotion of happiness? What's going on around us? - Good. So I'm gonna give you what I feel to be the most important things but before I do I just want to comment on what you said, I don't remember the exact quote, but Maya Angelou had a quote that was something like people won't remember what you said, they were going to remember how you made them feel and Tom I can say having spent time around you were both in the transformational leadership council I always go away feeling uplifted in your presence so I can I really I appreciate that perspective that you had, that when you go into these meetings with people, your role isn't to be the smartest person, but to be the person that people walk away feeling uplifted and inspired. - Yeah, thank you, appreciate that. You know, I feel the same way when you're around two. Yeah, so what can we do because I think like you, I don't think I was born that way. I had, you know, I had challenges early on, my father passed away when I was three, I can remember being like a really serious kid, you know, very inner focused, you know, I think I was I guess kind of positive, but I was always, I had a lot of fear anxiety, so for me it is something that I've had to learn, like you said, you know, and but now I think, you know, going back thinking about what you said, I think I probably have changed some of even my genetics over time. How do people do that?

I don't know how I did it. I think it was luck and being around people like you that I could just feel infused by, but but how can people do that? - So Tom what I know that you did is that you practice some of these happiness habits, but you didn't know it, so you just unconsciously we're doing some of these things. So what I found is that there are 21 main happiness habits and that they fall into seven main categories. So I'm going to share with everybody with you the seven main categories and what I want everybody to do is to pick out which one of those areas are you the weakest in because wherever you are the weakest in it's your achilles heel, that's where I want you to focus, so Tom you're gonna be my guinea pig - And I like that strategy too by the way. So you're gonna give us seven.

But everybody pick one, don't worry about oh seven pick one that you can work on and Marci is going to help us here. I'm the guinea pig, - I guess. Yes, you are. So it's hard for people to remember seven of anything. So I created a metaphor to eat more easily remembered. I call it building your inner home for happiness and a home has seven mil main components. It's got a foundation, it's got four corner pillars, it's got a roof and it's got a garden and here's how this relates to building your inner home for happiness. The foundation is taking responsibility for

Happiness as a Contagious Force 21:38

your life. It means you don't show up in life as a victim and the way you know, you're a victim, there are three victim behaviors blaming shaming and complaining, blaming, blaming your life blaming your circumstances. I can't be happy because I had a terrible childhood, I can't be happy because look who I'm married to, you know blaming anything outside shaming shaming yourself. That's self blame. You know, I can't be happy because I'm just don't have it in me, I'm too stupid or I'm too this, I'm too that and complaining just complaining about everything in life, all of those will keep you stuck in victim behavior that you can't even get started on raising your happiness set point if you got that.

So if so notice that as the foundation, then there's the four corner pillars of your home for happiness and it's the pillar of the mind, the heart, the body and the soul. The mind is our thoughts. Do your thoughts support your happiness for rob you of happiness? The heart. Do you live with an open heart? I have never met a truly happy person who had closed heart. So being open hearted means, do you have gratitude? Love, kindness, Generosity, forgiveness. Those are all signs of an open heart. Then there's the pillar of the body that has to do with your biochemistry.

Do you have the biochemistry of happiness? You have enough serotonin oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine this by the way, was where I was the weakest and this is where I needed need to continue to spend. My greatest energy is on that one. Then there's the pillar of the soul and that has to do with your spiritual connection in life and I don't care whether you call it God, the divine nature, creative intelligence doesn't matter. Do you feel connected to a bigger energy in life? Then there's the roof of your inner home for happiness which is your purpose in life. Are you living a purpose filled life?

Are you living inspired you wake up in the morning inspired knowing that you are doing what you hear on this planet to be doing. And then finally there's the garden and the garden is who you surround yourself with and we talked about this already some do you have a lot of toxic negative people? I call them the weeds of the garden or do you have a lot of roses and gardenias, the people that uplift you and inspire and support you? So looking at those seven areas, volunteered to be the guinea pig. So tell me where volunteers you - Volunteered, volunteered? Yeah, that's good.

Good. So you know what's interesting is you went through those. I was as I look at my life, I think I could see several of them were at one point it might have been the achilles heel and now and I've overcome like for instance, early in my career, like my first job out of college, I was with a Wall street firm and I thought it was gonna be my career and I was gonna be so successful and happy and make a ton of money and I wasn't, I didn't feel like I was living my purpose, right? And so when I moved out here to help run Tony Robbins company and I got into whoa, you can, you can really feel I felt fulfilled by really seeing people make these these breakthroughs that would transform their life. So that used to probably be one until I figured that out that was in my twenties surround myself with people, I've always had really cool, great people around me.

So that's probably pretty good responsibility for life. I did feel like a victim when I was younger. Like, you know, when when I was five years old, six years old, didn't have a dad. I think probably in my twenties I kind of shift or maybe in my teens I shifted that one. But that used to be one my thoughts. That's when I work really hard on heart, I'm much more open now than I used to be. So I'm seeing these shifts, I would say probably body is still the one that I probably need to work on a little bit because I tend I tended to have been a more serious

The Seven Pillars of Inner Happiness 25:48

person and introspective and so maybe body, I don't know. - Yeah, I mean body is an important one. We tend to be in our society. We tend to be kind of walking heads and not connected. Real happiness means happiness in the cells of the body head to kind of happiness. And there are some specific things that people can do to to to to create more of the neurochemistry of happiness. And I'm sure actually the processes that I'm sure that Donna and David did with you, those are good for grounding happiness in the body.

Excellent things. So I want to give you, I want to focus in if we can on a couple of these practices to do is that okay, - Yeah that would be great. - So what I find most people struggle with the most is the mind the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. And for the average person, 80% of those are negative. You know, the scientists call it the negativity bias - And 90% plus are the same ones they thought yesterday. - Exactly, exactly. And you know, we inherited this negative negativity bias from our caveman ancestors who had to remember the negatives in order to survive, but we no longer need it, but we haven't consciously changed those pathways.

Some people have and Tom you have, but most people, they Velcro, my friend Rick Hansen calls it Velcro showing the negatives and Teflon in the positives. The Velcro stick the positive slide off, Happy people have reversed tendency. Let me give you an example if you get 10 compliments in a day and one criticism. What do you remember at the end of the day? - Yeah, I know exactly what being a speaker, I'm a speaker, like you get the reviews in and they're, you know, glowing and then you get that one person goes, yeah, but they didn't do this, you're like, what do you what do you remember? - That's right, that's what you focus and what we need to do is reverse that.

So that so that we tended Velcro the positives. So I'm gonna give you three things that you can do to the scientifically proven to change the neural pathways in the brain and they're quite simple. The first thing is be on the lookout for the good be on the lookout, pretend one of the women I interviewed for Happy for no reason, says she pretends that she's the Academy Awards Committee and her job every day is to give out five academy Awards. So she just will be walking along the street. She'll see a cute fluffy white dog, she go, that dog gets the cutest dog of the Day award, or she'll see somebody doing an act of kindness for somebody else and say that gets the kindest act of the day award. Got kids, do this with your kids.

It's a great game. Being on the lookout for the Good. The second step is you've got to savor it for at least 20 seconds. It's been shown that it takes at least 20 seconds for the good to settle in enough to start to create a new neural pathway in the brain. So it doesn't make anywhere near as long for the negatives to reinforce the old pathways, but for the posit to create new grooves in the brain 20 seconds. So when you see that cute little fluffy dog, you go over to the owner and you say, you know, give out Academy Awards every day and your dog gets the cutest dog of the day and you spend time actually ingesting that digesting that, letting it in as though you're having a delicious piece of chocolate pie and you're taking it in savoring it.

If you see a sunset, you don't just go, that's a pretty sunset. But you savor it literally set your clock or your watch for 20 seconds and savor it for that period of time. And then the third step is that you go for a 3 to 1 ratio, three positives to every one negative. The negatives happen automat, they're old brain patterns. So you don't get down on yourself for having them happen but you immediately replace it with three positives. And so those three simple steps together can help create new neural pathways in the brain. Look for the good, savor it and go for 3 to 1 ratio. - Yeah and that 3 to 1 ratio there's actually been research because we use this in business to where if you fall below that you degrade relationships you have with people whether they be personal relationships or or business relationships. And so that's something that we even teach in business that you know you should be putting out, we say 4 to 1.

But for positives for every constructive doesn't have to be a negative, but in the way you communicate you start to you know over rotate. And when you look at like I remember you know Les Brown like Les Brown had a radio show or a tv show years ago he was a friend of mine and and it was you know all on positivity and it got canceled and then Tony Robbins, My friend Tony Robbins had a tv show that came out about people making breakthroughs in it after like three or four episodes, it was canceled and - I was really bummed by, I thought it was good, I liked it. - Yeah, no, exactly, but what are people addicted to and they're addicted to the, you know, housewives of blah blah blah that argue the whole show and put each other down and and that show has been on for, I don't know how many years it's probably never gonna get canceled.

Training the Mind to Notice the Good 31:28

So we do have the odds stacked against us a little bit uh Tony used to talk about even in the dictionary, the percentage of words with negative connotations to positive connotations, it's a way over balance, I can't remember if it's 5 to 1 or something like that. So these habits, when people start to implement them, they might feel a little challenging because their brain might have, you know, be stuck in that old way of thinking, but I guarantee you if you follow what Marci's talking to you about, you make it a ritual like you said, you're gonna change your brain, your brain will automatically. Now notice things that are positive and happy and uplifting and then it's not like you're having to work your tail off to create happiness, it's gonna happen much easier for them, right Marci?

- Absolutely, it really and what I often find people say to me is this is so simple, I can't work, I know that yeah great, you know, what are you doing it? And it is that simple, What matters more is consistency, baby steps and consistency? I'm gonna give you one or two other tips. And what I'm going to suggest that you do is you pick the one thing that I said that resonated with you the most and you just try it out for a week or two and see what happens in your life. - I'm gonna ask all of you to do that too. So don't try and do everything Marci's asking, but pick one thing at the end of this interview, pick one thing and put it into for how long?

What are you saying? Just a - Couple of weeks. - A couple of weeks to start make that commitment. You're gonna be happier. What else do you have for us? - Alright, let's talk about the heart. Okay, and opening up the heart or living with more open heart, we are stressed out as a society and stress puts us into a whole physiological state. We have different brain chemistry, brain rhythms from stress, heart rhythms, from stress and biochemistry. But we also can go into a state that science calls the love response.

It's got its own brain activity, heart rhythms and biochemistry. And I want to just give you an experience of going into the love response for just a moment. I learned this. This actually came from some colleagues of ours tom the people at the Institute of Heart Math and Math are the world's leading researchers in the heart and happiness. And they found that when you're angry or frustrated for five minutes it can suppress your immune system for up to six hours. - Everybody that's coming on to learn how to heal. That's what Marci just said.

- Five minutes of anger or frustration can suppress your immune system for up to six hours. But five hours of love and gratitude can strength. Five minutes of love and gratitude can strengthen your immune system for up to six hours. So what I want to do is show you a process that I learned from them called the inner ease technique doesn't even take five minutes. It's gonna take us two minutes and I want everybody to do it and then I want you to notice how you feel different after this two minute exercise and once again tom I'm gonna volunteer you to be my guinea pig. Is that you are so good the first time.

Alright, so this is a simple process. It's gonna as I said, take us two minutes. You can do it with your eyes open or closed. I think it goes a little deeper when you do it with your eyes closed. So I'm gonna ask everybody to close their eyes as I am doing as well. The first step is simply place the palm of your hand over your heart. Now this simple act of putting your hand on your heart starts the flow of a chemical called oxytocin, which is known as the love hormone is what we have when we feel bonded or connected with each other. But just putting your own hand on your own heart. Like this is starting more of the flow of oxytocin in your body.

Now the second step is to imagine that you're breathing in and out through the center of your heart. It's called heart focused breathing. So you want to breathe in through your heart and breathe out through your heart. Now you can allow your breath to go very deep into the belly. So it can be belly breathing but it comes in through the heart on the inhale and out through the heart on the exhale. So you do that at your own pace and you may start to already notice that you're feeling a shift. But now here's where the real juice comes in third step on each in breath. I want you to imagine that you're breathing in love, ease and compassion.

The exhales. You just exhale normally through the heart. But every inhale, breathe in through your heart as though you're taking in love, ease and compassion. Now some people have an easier time remembering a time when they felt love easier compassion. So you're bringing into your heart that feeling from the past. Some people just like to think about somebody or even a beloved four legged that instills that feeling in them that works. And for some people it's just silently saying the words love ease and compassion to yourself

Heart Coherence and the Inner Ease Technique 36:38

that will have the same effect. So a couple more deep breaths, breathing into your heart. Love ease and compassion, breathing out of your heart one last time, breathing into your heart. Love ease and compassion. And on your exhale you can slowly take your hand away and when you're ready you can slowly open your eyes and as you're opening your eyes and coming back into the room, I want you to just I want everybody to just notice. Do you feel any different than you felt two minutes ago? Either emotionally or physically? In what way did you feel the shift?

So Tom tell me - Yeah, well this is one of my favorite exercises. So I do this every morning when I wake up and I do it in the evening. But yeah, I just I feel so calm and and just open and the room even seems a little brighter. It's really wonderful every time I do this and you know sometimes I'll wake up and I think I'll start immediately thinking about oh my God, like I've got all this stuff I gotta do today and I just go hold on, come right here. And so what Marci had us all do is one of my absolute favorites. Thank you for sharing that with all of us Marci that - Well you know what I love about this is that you can do it.

I do it when I'm standing in line at the grocery store, you can do it anywhere. And what I say is don't take our word for it. Use your own life as an experiment. Try it a couple of times a day for the next week or two and notice if you feel a difference in your life - And if we were hooked up to machines that could measure you know what's going on, there'd be some pretty cool things happening, right? - Absolutely. You would be going into what's called heart rhythm, coherence where your heart rhythms will go in a very coherent pattern versus most of the time they're moving in a pretty incoherent pattern. So it's very cool to be able to actually see what's happening when doing a process like that. - Yeah, so maybe one more thing and then I want to make sure we let people know how to find you.

- Okay, well Tom I'm going to give you one that you might not have ever heard of before. It's called A and it's for the body. It's for helping create more serotonin. Serotonin is one of the key happiness hormones. When you have more serotonin, you sleep better. Serotonin produces melatonin. Melatonin allows you to sleep better when you sleep better more melatonin. It ends up producing more serotonin. You're happier the next day. The research shows that the quality of sleep that you got last night has a greater bearing on your happiness than today than your marital status or your income level.

- I think everybody can identify with, you know what it feels like not to have gotten good sleep, how much more difficult it is to feel happy. - So this sunning meditation will help you not only feel happier but will also help you sleep better. And I learned it from a qigong master named Gil Marin who fabulous, fabulous guy. And all you do is you go outside ideally and I'll tell you how to do it if you can't go outside, but if you can go outside, you go outside and you face the sun with your eyes closed and I'm gonna repeat that again with your eyes closed, make sure you close your eyes, Right, you're not looking at the sun, you're looking you you're facing the sun with closed eyelids and you're imagining the sun's beams coming in through your closed eyelids and hitting your pineal gland, which is in the center of the head and warming up, lighting up the pineal gland. And then you're allowing that sun to come in and light up. You can go down and have it light up your thyroid, your thymus gland, your adrenal glands. You just let it light up your whole system. You do it for about two minutes and if you don't even want to bother with all that, you just have it light up your pineal gland for two minutes and then you look down and open up your eyes and you'll feel like you're looking through Polaroid glasses, Polarized glasses, it just looks very different and that really stimulates that serotonin. So if somebody comes to me and they're depressed unhappy, that's the first process, I'll have them do do it twice a day for the

Sunning Meditation for the Body 40:58

next couple of weeks. See what happens. - Beautiful Now you said if they can't get outside or there's not son, what are - Good if there's some clouds, it's okay, the sun is still coming through. But if there's no son it's raining or you can't go outside, look at something beautiful in nature. It could be flowers, I could look at these are from my garden, it could be flowers or a plant looking at nature will also help create more serotonin, - Wow. You've given us lots of great things. We can do Marci, happiness is so important and powerful and healing and staying healthy, stimulating the immune system and also just, you know, getting through life in a way where you're joyful and really loving the experience.

I think part of the reason, you know, people want to live longer is because they want to be happier longer. But a lot of people give up on life because they just they're not they're not getting that juice, that happiness from it? So this is really, really great stuff. How do people find you Marci, what? Where can they get more from you? - So it's very simple, you can go to happyfornoreason.com and that's happyfornoreason.com and I have a free gift for everybody on that there. And that is a 21 page workbook that has everyone of these happiness habits, the 21 happiness habits and a practice that you can do with it.

And I also we have a happiness self assessment, so you can see where you are on the happiness continuum with that. So that's a happyfornoreason.com. - That's beautiful. And I would say that pretty much everybody on the planet can benefit from your work Marci, even people who are happy, there's always that next level, or as you said, there's seven different areas that are influencing happiness and probably not very many people have all seven in order. So I love the way you've laid that out and allowed us to identify where that in the armor is, and then giving us tools to be able to strengthen that.

- Well, Tom the reason that I am, thank you for that, the reason I'm so passionate about this is that I truly believe people are saying, what can I do to help the world? Well, there's a lot that we can do to help the world, I think, but I think one of the most important things is we can raise our own happiness set point because I said, as I said earlier, when we raise our unhappiness that point, we affect all the people around us. And there's a beautiful Chinese proverb that I always love to share. I know we're about to close but I love to share this and it goes and that's really why I do what I'm doing.

It says when there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. When there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. When there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. And when there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world and my prayer and my

Where to Find Marci Shimoff 43:48

wish for every single one of us is that we know that light in our souls and through that we live healthier bodies, healthier lives and we create more peace here on this planet. - And we don't want to fight with people or create war. It's it's just such a beautiful way of living your life. Well, part of your gift was that you were born, as you said, maybe not the happiest person because I think it'd be hard for you to teach happiness if you didn't know the other end of the spectrum and your journey taking yourself from where you started to where you are now has benefited so many human beings and I know it's going to benefit a lot more before your time is done.

So you got a lot of work left to do, even though you've reached 16 million? I can't remember how many was it, 60 million? Yeah. Come on. There's a lot more people out there, Marci and hopefully all of you watching this will continue to follow Marci . Check out her work. Take advantage of what she has to offer your beautiful soul. Marci really, really an honor and a pleasure to have you with us today. - Tom thank you so much. It was great great to get to be with you as it always is.