Ready to breathe a sign of relief? Welcome to Ask Dr. Jodi where you get trauma-informed mental health and relationship advice that you won’t hear anywhere else. Today, we’re exploring How to Be Happy: 6 Practices for a Robust Mind, Body, and Soul. I’m breaking down the myths about happiness and showing you how to let go of the things that keep you stuck. I’ll share daily habits and practical techniques you can start using today to bring more joy and resilience into your life. You’ll hear all about my "Happiness Formula" and how to focus on what truly matters, so you can release suffering and embrace what makes you genuinely happy. Tune in, I can’t wait to help you transform your emotional well-being!
In this enlightening episode, Dr. Jodi tackles the concept of happiness, debunking the myth that some people are naturally happy while others are destined to struggle. Through her three decades of experience, Dr. Aman shares how happiness can be cultivated through intentional practices, even when life feels unfair or overwhelming.
Listeners will learn about the "Happiness Formula"—a simple yet effective method to let go of suffering and embrace joy. Dr. Jodi discusses the six (or seven!) priorities for a fulfilling life, including purpose, community, routine, novelty, movement, creativity, and the essential practice of celebrating your wins. With engaging stories, heartfelt advice, and actionable steps, this episode empowers listeners to create a daily routine that fosters happiness and resilience.
Whether you're dealing with depression, anxiety, or simply want to improve your outlook, Dr. Jodi provides the tools and motivation to get started on your journey to a happier life. Plus, she gives practical insights on letting go of negative experiences and explains why celebrating small victories can have a big impact on your mental health.
Key Takeaways:
Dr Jodi Aman: Do you want to know how to be happy? How to genuinely Be happy, joyful, calm, um, how to enjoy life. Do you want to be that? I am going to be busting some myths around how to be happy tonight and I'm very excited to do that for you because I think there are a lot of myths here. There are a lot of misunderstandings and these misunderstandings make us feel horrible.
[00:02:19] Dr Jodi Aman: About ourself, make us not understand ourself, make us make conclusions about ourself that is not good and actually makes us more sad, more anxious, more feeling out of control, unmotivated, all of the things that happen when we don't feel happy. So in this episode tonight, we're going to talk about how to be happy.
[00:02:41] Dr Jodi Aman: So how to be happy. We think that like people are born happy and other people are not born happy. And if you're one of those people that don't think that you're born happy, it feels really horrible. It feels like it doesn't make sense. It feels very unfair and unjust. It's confusing because they're like, why, why does, why can some people be happy?
[00:03:03] Dr Jodi Aman: But no matter how hard I try, I can't be happy. And then we feel different, different than other people. And in my work in these last three decades, working with people and understanding problems. Like I have all day long, every day, just really listening and hearing the commonality in all of them. And when we have a problem like that, or a problem that overtakes our life or leads us to struggle, or it gives us a lot of emotional turmoil, whether it's something that happened to you or whether that it's.
[00:03:36] Dr Jodi Aman: You know, just a feeling that you don't feel it's connected to anything. I want to say it's always connected to something and maybe it's something you haven't seen, but there's always a context to how you're feeling. And some of it is what we do to ourself after we feel bad. We either isolate ourself or we judge ourself.
[00:03:57] Dr Jodi Aman: We put all these stories on ourself that we're weak or unable or different or something. And it's confusing and more chaotic. And then we feel more out of control and more anxious and we trust ourself less and we like ourself less and it snowballs from there. So we're going to be talking about how to be happy, but I want to demystify This idea of happiness.
[00:04:18] Dr Jodi Aman: 'cause people are just not happy randomly. And some people are happy and some people are not happy. Happiness is a skill. Happiness is something that people generate. So people who are happy, they generate that happiness every day. And if you've ever been sad, you really understand that. It feels unfair that you have to do a lot of work to feel good.
[00:04:42] Dr Jodi Aman: Because when you're depressed or anxious, you have to do a lot of work to feel better. And it seems like not fair. Why doesn't everyone have to do the work? Why do I have to do more work than everybody? And I want to demystify that because that makes you feel bad. And I want you to be acknowledged for your efforts because your efforts are beyond.
[00:05:00] Dr Jodi Aman: So much. I don't think you, I don't think you acknowledge yourself enough for the efforts that you make when you do stuff that's hard when you, when you go against those problems that tell you that you can't, but people who are happy generate that happiness. So they do things every day. They put things in their life every day to generate happiness for themselves.
[00:05:25] Dr Jodi Aman: And so in observing people and going to a million retreats and in learning how people heal, I've come up with this formula for happiness. And if you've been around my world for a while, you know my formula for happiness, but it's get rid of the things that make you suffer. Bring into your life more things that bring you joy.
[00:05:49] Dr Jodi Aman: And then practice that every day, because there's more things that we're up against, right? There's more things that we're interfacing with that are problematic or toxic or hurt us or make us question, right? There's more things coming at us every day. So we have to continue to release the things that don't serve us.
[00:06:09] Dr Jodi Aman: to let them go, um, to not take them in, to not take them as part of us. You know, when we have experiences that are bad or chaotic, we do take them into our body. We have to learn how to let them go, how to let them out of our body. People heal even from unspeakable trauma. People heal, um, body, mind, and soul.
[00:06:28] Dr Jodi Aman: So there's hope. And, uh, and then we have to bring in, so we have to actively take things into our day or make things part of our day that make us happy. And then we have to practice. So we have to keep doing that. It's not like you do it once and you're happy and you're all set. It's like, we have to keep doing that.
[00:06:50] Dr Jodi Aman: We have to keep reflecting and letting go of what is not, what is making us upset and bringing in what makes us happy, relationships that make us happy, activities that make us happy, uh, things that uplift us like hormonally, all of that stuff, like nourishing food, nourishing content of media that you're watching, we have to bring in things that bring us joy.
[00:07:11] Dr Jodi Aman: Do activities that bring us joy. Watch, read, um, listen, be with people that bring us joy. And we have to constantly either not let them in. If there's someone who is very difficult that's around us or we could physically get away from them. So let's talk about the seven priorities while we're here. That's what you seven.
[00:07:34] Dr Jodi Aman: I meant six. Uh, the six priorities while we're here, I wanted to give you the six ingredients. If you're thinking, okay, what do I have to do every day? Well, these six things, if you put into your life, they're pretty general, but if you put these six things into your life, you will create a happy self because your soul will be nourished, your mind will be nourished, your body will be nourished, and you'll feel good.
[00:08:00] Dr Jodi Aman: You'll feel more energized and you'll feel good. I mean, that's boring. You know, some people have different diseases and I don't mean mental health diseases. I mean, physical diseases that take some of their energy. But when you're mentally okay, often you feel better. And when you're mentally stressed, if you have any chronic pain or immune issues or something, stress makes it worse.
[00:08:25] Dr Jodi Aman: And any emotional struggles causes stress. Stress causes emotional struggles. Emotional struggles cause stress and that's going to increase those things. So, um, let's go. Let's go. Six, six ingredients, six priorities that I want you to put into every day. Besides that letting go thing, right? Letting go. And I've got lots of videos on letting go and I'll link to them up in the, um, in the corner there.
[00:08:52] Dr Jodi Aman: Um, and at the end, I'll link to a video on letting go. Cause I think you're going to really want that after listening to this. You're like, I want that happiness formula. So I have to learn how to let go. And there's a very specific way to do it. You know, I've, I've listened to many thought leaders talk about letting go.
[00:09:10] Dr Jodi Aman: And they don't have the practical side for people. And I really feel like people need the practical side. And so I developed a three step process to letting go that has changed everything for people because it's understandable. It's the only way I've ever seen this taught is when I teach it. So you're going to want to grab that.
[00:09:30] Dr Jodi Aman: Okay. And start practicing it. All right. So these are the ways to generate happiness in your life. The first one is have a purpose. Do something with meaning, right? We want to be meaningful. We want our life to be meaningful. And that directly connects with our sense of worth. Is there a point to being here?
[00:09:52] Dr Jodi Aman: Right? Is there a point to all the suffering that I've done? Is there some kind of purpose that I have that I do in this world that makes it all worth it? And if it's not, it's like we feel stagnant. We feel unworthy and people actually die younger without a purpose. They don't live as long. People who have a very robust sense of purpose, they live longer because they're happier.
[00:10:20] Dr Jodi Aman: And when they're happier, the less stress and physically, uh, there's less disease. Having a purpose is so important because it keeps our mind going. It's going to connect to some other, the, the ingredients here. So the second one is community, having a sense of community and connection. Humans are social beings.
[00:10:37] Dr Jodi Aman: We need other people. We're not really supposed to do anything alone. I mean, you know, you could brush your teeth alone, but in, in general, like in this world, we have this discourse of independence that we're supposed to be independent and we're supposed to be able to figure stuff out ourselves or do things ourself.
[00:10:56] Dr Jodi Aman: And that's just not true. I mean, you don't want everyone to do everything for you. Not like that. It's like, there's a synergy. We do, we decide stuff together. We discern together. We are only a self and relationship. So if you're isolated, and actually I've spoke about this many times, if you're isolated, the symptoms of mental health problems increase.
[00:11:18] Dr Jodi Aman: So anxiety increases, depression increases, immobility increases, stress increases. They'll increase because isolation is not good for our human psyche. We just go into the negative and we can't get out of it when we're isolated and we don't have dopamine hits. So we feel even less and less wanting to do anything if we're isolated and a lot of times people have symptoms of depression and they think this is depression, but it's actually symptoms of isolation.
[00:11:48] Dr Jodi Aman: And when they get out of isolation, their, their V for life, like their joy of life or their interest, interest in life comes back. They had no interest at all. No interest is quite often thought of as a symptom of depression, but it's actually a symptom of isolation. So you have to be with people if nothing else, but to get out of your head because there's nothing good in there when you're alone.
[00:12:16] Dr Jodi Aman: Okay. So community. And number three is, let me just look down here. Number three is routine. I always have notes with me when I do these live videos. So, so bear with me, but number three is routine. Having a routine, a routine settles the mind and it also helps It helps your mental health. So when they put people on routine, routine of when they eat, when they sleep, when they wake up, sometimes if that's the only change that happens, people feel better overall, mentally, emotionally, physically, uh, maybe even spiritually if they, you know, if they have that body, uh, open.
[00:12:57] Dr Jodi Aman: So they, If one thing is changed, right? If people are wake up at the same time, go to sleep at the same time. If that alone can make a huge difference on a person's life, because your mind has, doesn't have to think about as much, right? Chaos of a change every day or a change. You know, some people have schedules that they're all different.
[00:13:22] Dr Jodi Aman: That's kind of hard on the mind. It's doable, and a lot of people do it, and they're fine. It does take a lot of energetic and emotional bandwidth, mental bandwidth, to do all those changes. So if you have some kind of routine, get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, have a bedtime routine, Some activities that you do to settle yourself down.
[00:13:44] Dr Jodi Aman: Um, a morning routine changes your life. Having a morning routine, doing some exercise in the morning, getting outside, getting light, some sunlight on you in the morning, really, really good. It, it could change. If that's the only thing you change, it makes a huge difference on, on your life. Your happiness and your sense of yourself on your connection to the world and you get more creative and you're thoughtful and have a purpose and maybe you'll walk with somebody and have some connections or drink coffee with somebody in your house if you're up early and they're up early.
[00:14:16] Dr Jodi Aman: Great time to get all of those other things in if you think about your routine. Okay, so the next one, number four is having novelty. So as much as we need a routine because it settles the mind, it's less chaos for us to have to grok and have to understand and process. And so it's, it gives us more energy for other things.
[00:14:40] Dr Jodi Aman: We actually also need novelty. We need some stimulation. We need something interesting or different to either try to figure out, uh, try to understand, um, Get inspired by, right? We need inspiration. Because that sparks us, that, that releases our dopamine and that makes us happy. It makes us feel alive and charged up.
[00:15:05] Dr Jodi Aman: So we need some novelty. So yes, you need routine. Seems like the opposite, but you need novelty. We don't want chaos novelty. We want interest. We want inspiration. We want something, a challenge, but it feels good to accomplish like a goal. So you want novelty in your life. So let's review those. We have purpose, we have community, we have routine, we have novelty.
[00:15:32] Dr Jodi Aman: And number five, of course, is movement. Of course, I'm going to add movement to the list, right? We all know that the, the, I actually was reading an article today and I was going to do a video on it, that the connection with exercise and mental health is beyond therapy and beyond medication. So the, the, the benefits of moving your body is the first thing we do when we feel upset as we stay still.
[00:16:01] Dr Jodi Aman: Worst thing you can do for anxiety, because if you stay still, your helplessness goes up, your anxiety goes up, you want to move your body. You want to burn off that extra energy. Uh, you want to get that energy flowing. You want to get inspiration by going outside, get some sunshine by going outside. It increases your energy, it releases your hormones, several different kinds of hormones released.
[00:16:23] Dr Jodi Aman: Uh, beneficial feel good hormones released when you exercise. So get out there and also there's acupressure points at the bottom of your feet. And there's also a lymph node when you're, when you're walking or bouncing or exercising or something, you're getting some, you're cleaning out your lymph nodes.
[00:16:43] Dr Jodi Aman: All good stuff. It's like exercise is like win, win, win, win, win. It's good mentally. It's good physically. It's good emotionally. I mean, it's just, it's good relationally. Um, so you have to get some kind of movement in and it doesn't have to be a HIIT workout. It could just, it could be anything. It could be anything.
[00:17:01] Dr Jodi Aman: All right. So last but not least, number six is creativity. You want to be creative and creativity is going to really build that prefrontal cortex. The more robust, the more energized and enlivened, and it's like a muscle if you think about it as a muscle. And the more you work it out, the better it is, the stronger it is.
[00:17:24] Dr Jodi Aman: And the stronger it is, the more that mammalian brain can override that reptilian brain. which is the anxiety and the frozen, right? The depression parts. So the more you enliven that prefrontal cortex, also the less inflammation. There's been studies that say inflammation, our brain is what is a huge cause of anxiety and depression.
[00:17:45] Dr Jodi Aman: So when we decrease our inflammation, which is good for exercise, exercise helps that and getting enough sleep helps that too. Uh, and good food helps that as well. But decreasing inflammation is going to help you feel better. So you want to have something creative every single day. Something that you do that's creative and it could be a craft.
[00:18:07] Dr Jodi Aman: It could be cleaning out stuff. It could be helping somebody. It could be gardening. It could be designing something or something that you're actually creating a project, product to sell. I mean, it doesn't matter. You're maybe editing videos or making some post, like you take a picture of something and post it on social media because you think it's really beautiful and you share it with people.
[00:18:29] Dr Jodi Aman: Gorgeous. Creativity can take so many different forms. It's actually problem solving. If you think about it, I always say this, but I'm just going to repeat it. Cause maybe this is the first video you've ever seen of mine. Our brain developed for 2 million years to solve problems. That's creativity. If you think about it, creativity is just solving problems.
[00:18:50] Dr Jodi Aman: Like what should I do here? How am I going to make this? How should I do this? What do I need for this? Right? They're problem solving that problem as in like a difficulty problem, but, but something you have to figure out or solve. Now, listen, our brain loves to figure out things and solve things. And if you don't give it anything to solve or figure out, it's going to find something and it's going to find something that's probably negative that you do not want to be.
[00:19:18] Dr Jodi Aman: Putting your attention to because you're trying to figure out a problem that's not even there, but it seems like it could be there, you know? Um, and so it's really, really upsetting and horrible. So, um, why, um, why don't you do something creative? Give that brain something to do to get really robust and healthy and so that it could serve you instead of you serving.
[00:19:44] Dr Jodi Aman: So how about that? How about that? So these six things I want you to prioritize in your day. You got purpose, you have community, you have routine, you have novelty, you have movement, and you have creativity. Six things. things. I know they're general, they're general things, but these are not strange. These are not new things you have to add.
[00:20:06] Dr Jodi Aman: These are things that you know already, right? Your intuition is like, Oh yeah, I know I have to move. This is not new information. It's not new information in, in all of them is that more work to do. It's not more to do is to put on your list. This is a way of thinking about your life. I'm going to add a seventh.
[00:20:28] Dr Jodi Aman: I am. I'm going to add a seventh right now in this, uh, 11th hour here. I'm going to add a seventh because I forgot to add this one is Celebrate your, celebrate anything that you do. You have to celebrate anything that you do. I think that was one of my biggest secrets to happiness is that whatever I did, I was like, I got that done.
[00:20:50] Dr Jodi Aman: Right. We always look at our deficits and what we haven't done yet. And as soon as we get something done, we're like, Oh, well that's, you know, that took me too long and now I have a million other things. And we don't stop and celebrate what we did do. And we just feel more overwhelmed. But if you celebrate the things that you did do, man, you got energy for the next thing.
[00:21:10] Dr Jodi Aman: You like yourself, actually, you're having fun with it. Cause it feels productive. Uh, so much better. when you celebrate your wins. So that's a little extra bonus for you about how to be happy. Thank you for listening to this episode of Anxiety, I'm So Done With You with me, Dr. Jodi. Here, I give trauma informed advice to parents, educators, counselors, and teens.
[00:21:35] Dr Jodi Aman: Please leave me a comment and give me five stars on Apple Podcasts. If you wanted to catch me live, I stream this talk show on YouTube at Dr. Jodi, at D O C T O R J O D I. I go on every Monday at 8 p. m. Eastern. And if you're there, you could ask me your questions in real time. Get on the list for reminders at jodiahmond.
[00:21:57] Dr Jodi Aman: com slash guide, and you'll get my Generation Z Mental Health Resource Guide. I'll talk at you next week, but in the meantime, be present and let that you that you want to be shine through.