322: 7 habits that make me a more joyful person (as someone who’s not naturally optimistic)

Spoiler alert: I’m not naturally an optimistic person. In fact, I tend to lean pretty pessimistic, which means being a joyful person is something I’ve had to be really intentional about. The good news? It’s gotten easier over time!

In this episode, I’m sharing 7 simple habits that have genuinely helped me become a more joyful person – from adding a little more whimsy to my home to getting the F off my phone. These aren’t complicated life overhauls but small, intentional things that help me notice the good, be more present, and actually enjoy my life a little more. ✨

In this episode, I share:

• 7 habits that have helped me become a more joyful person (as someone who’s naturally pessimistic)

| RESOURCES |

⋒ Stanford article
⋒ Harvard Health article
⋒ 2027 collection sneak peek highlight
⋒ Peacefully Productive Journal use the code PODCASTJOURNAL10 to get 10% off
⋒ Get $10 off a Brick
⋒ Sign up for Hustle Sanely emails
⋒ This episode’s blog post
⋒ Instagram: @jessmmassey & @hustlesanely

Transcript

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Hi, besties. I am so glad that you're here and I hope you're taking care of yourself. Welcome to Hustle Sanely, a podcast about slowing down, letting go of the pressure to do it all, and making more room for what matters most. We are breaking up with hustle culture and building peacefully productive lives so we can pursue our goals without sacrificing our well-being. If you constantly feel spread thin, your mind is always working through what needs to get done next, and you're running on fumes by the time you get to the people you love, you are in the right place. Okay, before we get into today's episode, let's have a quick little chit chat about some podcast updates. I did share these over on Instagram back in August. So if you hang out with me over there, these updates are not gonna come as a surprise to you. Can I be so honest with you guys? I'm gonna be. Okay. I was planning to retire the podcast at the end of September. If you've been around for a bit, you know that I've been podcasting since 2019, which is so wild. And truthfully, I just don't have the capacity to create content how I have in the past. Now that we're prepping to start our homeschool journey next year, I still want to create content, but I have to do it in a way that honors my capacity and our new season of life. So 2026 has kind of been the year of trial and error here on the Hustle Stanley podcast. At the beginning of this year, we added in a video format of the show. And truthfully, it takes twice as much effort, probably more, to do a video version of the podcast. Not just the editing, because so many people are like, oh my gosh, just hire a video editor, no big deal. But like the whole production of actually filming each episode, like setting up the camera, getting ready to film, just like the energy, it takes way longer than just recording into a mic. Okay. So if you listen to my recent life update episode, which was episode 317, so not too long ago, we are trying to simplify my business so that I have more energy to put toward homeschooling everly next year. So even though all of the online business gurus are over here saying that if your podcast doesn't have video in 2026, it's obsolete and you shouldn't even bother, I'm gonna do it anyway because that's what feels good for me in this season. And I would rather have an audio only podcast than no podcast at all. I still wanna have the space in my schedule to create my bookish videos on YouTube because I genuinely enjoy doing that so much. And so instead of feeling like I have to do one or the other, I've decided to keep the podcast going with audio only episodes every other Tuesday, focusing on peaceful productivity. Two to three bookish YouTube videos a month with one monthly reset video, which will also focus on peaceful productivity, and then two-ish Instagram posts a week that include both bookish and peaceful productivity content. Y'all honestly, I thank you so much for your grace as I figure out in real time what living a peacefully productive life looks like for me right now. I know I had a couple of conversations with y'all in Instagram DMs, just you guys thanking me for actually sharing this like messy figuring it out part and just kind of owning the fact that sometimes it's a little bit nerve-wracking thinking that me trying things and then not sticking with them is gonna come off as like flaky or wishy-washy or whatever, but it's not. It's just me being a person and trying things out. I've never been in this season of life before. So I have to figure out what works for me, you know? Anyway, okay, now that we're all on the same page, let's get into today's topic. Okay. Habits that make me a more joyful person as someone who's naturally pessimistic. So a pessimistic person looks at life with doubt, focuses on the negative parts of a situation, and thinks the worst outcome will happen. People who follow me online don't always believe me when I say that I tend to lean more pessimistic than optimistic, but it's true. Okay, spoiler alert. I have to be so intentional about choosing to be a positive person because it just doesn't come naturally to me. And I'm so glad that new people that I meet associate me with being optimistic because let me tell you, I work my little booty off for that. Okay. Shout out to my mental health hygiene routine. I feel like now it's way easier for me to be a joyful person. It doesn't take as much mental work as it used to to embody joy. So I thought it would be helpful if I shared habits that have actually made a difference in helping me be a more joyful person. And I know that this is a topic that's gonna resonate with some people because in Hustle Stanley study hall, we had a call last week and someone was actually talking about like I need help with being more positive. And I was like, girl, I got you. We have a podcast episode scheduled for that topic. And so here we are. Here is that podcast episode. But before I start giving you like tips and habits and all the things, I want to start off by saying that truthfully, my joy is rooted in Jesus. Y'all know that I'm very vocal about my faith. And uh when I'm prioritizing time in the word, time in prayer, and time in worship, I'm able to access joy way more easily than when I'm neglecting those things. I know not everyone shares my faith. So of course, I've got seven other habits that I'm gonna share that I feel make me a more joyful person. But just know that me personally, I am only able to access true joy because of who Jesus is. Okay. So anyway, let's get into them. The seven habits that make me a more joyful person. Number one, adding touches of whimsy to our home. And when I say whimsy, I just mean those little things that don't necessarily serve a practical purpose other than making you so happy when you look at them. So for me, that's cute coffee cups. I love opening up my cabinet and getting giddy over my selection of coffee cups. It's having seashells in our kitchen windowsill. It's making silly clay magnets in the shape of ice cream cones to hang photo strips on our fridge with. It's putting disco balls around my house so that in the afternoon the sun reflects off of them. It's having seasonal fresh flowers on our dining room table. Adding touches of whimsy to your home is choosing something because you think it's fun rather than because it's the most practical or neutral or whatever the current home trend is option. I think as adults, especially as women, we can get so caught up in making our homes functional that we forget that they can also be fun. Like, make spaces in your home a vibe just because you can. Okay. Our environments affect us way more than we realize. A calm and happy space really does help us have a calm and happy mind. We spend so much time in our homes, so we might as well make them places that make us happy to be in. You know what I'm saying? Nothing makes me happier than when I turn a corner in our home and I see a little area that I've just curated to intentionally bring me joy. And I'm just like, wow, I love it here. And that just like sparks joy in me a couple times a day, every day. And so I had to include that one. Number two is going on walks, slash being outside in general. I will die on the hill that fresh air is healing for us as humans mentally. I especially remember how true this is when we are cooped up inside from June to August here in Florida because of how unbearably hot it is. I notice a huge downshift in my attitude when I'm not spending as much time outdoors, making time to get outside and be in the fresh air, even if it's just walking around the block for 10 minutes after dinner or what I've been doing when it's like unbearably hot is when the sun goes down, I will go sit on our back patio stairs for like five minutes to just soak in the fresh air. It really does up my joy and it makes me a more pleasant person to be around. Also, being outside has a way of, I don't know, just kind of like getting me out of my own head. It reminds me in a good way, in a good way, how small I am compared to the world and it just grounds and recenters me. It's just a good perspective check and it fills my joy tank. Okay, so number three, this one's gonna be so annoying, I know, but it's getting good quality sleep. Listen, I am a different person when I'm not getting good quality sleep. When I am sleep deprived, every little minor inconvenience sets me off. I am constantly teetering on an emotional ledge. When I'm prioritizing my sleep hygiene, on the other hand, it's so much easier for me to tap into joy, even if circumstances around me aren't the best. Truly, when I am getting outside every day, doing my mental health hygiene most days, which we'll talk about that in a minute, prioritizing good quality sleep and eating mostly nutrient-dense foods, joy becomes my default. It really does. I know, especially if you're a mom of littles, like I am. Well, I only have one little. There's no littles here, just one. But I know that we can't always control whether or not we get to sleep through the night. I would say that in our house, we usually get up with Everly one to two nights a week in this season. Usually it's her asking us to put her blanket back on. I'm like, girl, you can put your own blanket back on. But what we can control is making sure that the sleep that we do get is top-notch, right? So here are my current sleep hygiene habits that make a difference in my sleep quality. I diffuse lavender essential oil in our bedroom around 8 p.m. My diffuser runs for six hours. So it's running still when I get in bed. My phone gets put away at nine o'clock. At nine o'clock, the phone on the charger, nowhere near me, not in the same room as me. And then I stop watching TV by 10 p.m. and I go get in bed and read until I fall asleep, which is usually between 10:15 and 10:30. That's it. Nothing crazy, just simple and intentional. Sometimes Adam and I get in the habit of falling asleep on the couch and then waking up at like midnight to go to bed, and it's just not the vibe for good quality sleep. Number four, this one, I almost didn't include it, but I had to because it's something that actually works for me. And it's actually smiling. Okay, like hear me out because I know that this sounds so silly, but literally the act of smiling makes me a more joyful person. I have RBF. Look it up if you don't know what that is. So I don't walk around naturally smiling. Okay, but I have started habit stacking smiling. I know this makes you sound insane, but that's okay. Stick with me. So as soon as I get out of bed in the morning, I smile. When I'm done with my workout, I smile. After I make my coffee, I smile. You get it, okay? I really do feel a boost in my mood when I smile. And I wasn't sure if it was like in my head, placebo effect or whatever. So I looked it up and I found an article in the Stanford report, which I'll link in the show notes if you want to like do a deep dive. But this question has been part of a long-standing debate among psychology researchers about whether facial expressions influence our emotional experience and an idea known as the facial feedback hypothesis. In a recent paper published in Nature Human Behavior, an international collaboration of researchers led by Stanford research scientist Nicholas Coles found strong evidence that posed smiles can, in fact, make us happier. So the effect isn't like strong enough to overcome depression, is what the researcher said, but it provides useful insight into what emotions are and where they come from. So here's a few little bullet points of how smiling actually affects our brain. So it releases chemicals. Your brain releases endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin when you smile. It lowers stress. These natural chemicals help to reduce stress and body pain, and it tricks the mind. Even a forced or a fake smile can cause a small boost in your mood. So smiling more really does help make me more of a joyful person. Okay. Number five is celebrating things, especially, especially the little things. So if you follow me on Instagram, you saw that my daughter started preschool last month. And you better believe that I decorated our dining room so that when she woke up on the first day of school, she would feel the excitement in the air. I want her childhood to be filled with enthusiasm and wonder. So it's my job to make that happen. And pursuing that has really helped me become a more joyful person. I was so happy when I was actually decorating the dining room. And then I was happy all over again in the morning when she woke up and was so excited to see all the streamers and balloons and the pancakes with sprinkles. Y'all, celebrating is what makes our lives special. It's what keeps all of our days from kind of like running together into one giant blur. So take the time to celebrate milestones, big ones, small ones, decorate for the seasons, make a big deal out of things like the first day of school. Like be extra. I personally love being extra. It really does make me more joyful. And y'all know that I'm all about romanticizing our lives. Romanticizing your life just means treating everyday routines with care and finding beauty in ordinary moments. It's a practical tool for mindfulness, helping us beat burnout, find joy in the mundane, and reduce stress by shifting how we're perceiving our daily reality. If you want to be more joyful, start celebrating more. I'm telling you from experience, okay? Number six, the sixth little habit slash tip that has made me a more joyful person is gratitude journaling. You knew this one was coming, didn't you? I cannot talk about being more joyful without mentioning gratitude journaling because journaling, specifically gratitude journaling, quite literally changed my life for the better. I don't know about you, but when I know that I'm gonna be writing down a handful of things that I'm grateful for most mornings, you bet that I am looking around all day trying to pay attention to what I'm grateful for so that I'm not left staring at a blank page when it's time for me to be grateful. When you look for things to be grateful for, you find things to be grateful for. And gratitude equals more joy. How do I know? Let me tell you how I know, y'all. An article from Harvard Health told me so. And I believed it. Okay. Practicing gratitude helps us feel more joyful. When you notice and appreciate the good things in your life, your brain releases feel-good chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. This daily habit lowers stress, boosts your mood, and makes it easier to experience lasting happiness. Boom. Okay. Harvard told us. Harvard told us. So if you felt in a rut with journaling lately, I want to introduce you to the journaling method that I've been doing since probably like the beginning of the summer that has kind of rekindled my love for journaling. I was kind of in a journaling rut there for a second, but I saw this method in an Instagram reel by the user. I'm just gonna spell it out. So I don't know who she is. Okay, the reel just came up on my for you tab and it sparked something in my brain. I use the method that she shared in her reel as inspo to kind of make one that's very similar, but I kind of like made it my own. So here's what she shared. It's called the glow journaling method, G-L-O-W. The G stands for gratitude. Hello. The L stands for let it out, the O stands for own your desires, and the W stands for weight. So here's what I've been doing. Very similar, but I just kind of shifted it so that it aligned with my values a little bit more. So G for gratitude, L for lay it down. So that's really the only thing that I changed. Instead of let it out, I put lay it down, O for own your desires, and W for weight. So in my peacefully productive journal, I fill out the left-hand spread. So if you've never used a peacefully productive journal, every day there is an entire spread. The left hand page is guided prompts, some for the morning and some for the evening. And then the right hand page is just a blank page for you to like free write basically. So in my peacefully productive journal, I fill out the left-hand spread, which covers gratitude because on that page there's a space for gratitude, tracking hours of sleep and jotting down how you feel that day. Then on the right hand side, so that's why I do the G is in the like predetermined gratitude section in the journal. Then on the right hand side of the spread on the blank on my heart section, the top half, I do a lay it down paragraph where I write just a few sentences of things that I'm laying down at the feet of Jesus, things that have been making me feel anxious or stressing me out. Then on the bottom half of the page, I write an own your desires paragraph where I pray about something specific that I want to see come to fruition. And then for the wait part, I just like to read what I wrote out loud. Y'all know that I love a framework. My brain just does really well with them. So having this method to guide my On My Heart journaling page has been so great. I've been so consistent with journaling and actually excited about it every morning. And that is really important. I have to be excited about something in order for me to show up and do it. And journaling is probably the most important step in my mental health hygiene routine, which I personally aim to do my mental health hygiene routine four mornings a week because I'm not trying to have this perfect thing where I'm like, okay, I have to do it seven days a week. Cause that's just like not feasible in my season of life. Like as a toddler mom, sometimes mornings are very unpredictable. And so I like to give myself the wiggle room to aim to do my mental health hygiene four days a week. And so just having that standard for myself, it helps hold me accountable, but it like doesn't hold me to this impossible standard of perfectionism. You know what I mean? So I'm still getting it in. And then because I love you guys so much, I'm gonna link the journal in the show notes that I use, and I'm gonna give you a 10% off discount code for Peacefully Productive Journals. Okay. So this is gonna work on the digital version and the paper version. And the code to get 10% off is podcast journal 10, all caps. And I will have the code in the show notes for y'all as well. And then that brings us to number seven, the final habit that we're gonna talk about that has helped make me a more joyful person. Are you ready? Getting the F off my phone. This one is a no-brainer, but I couldn't leave it out because this is another habit that I notice a stark difference in my attitude when I neglect it. So the higher my screen time, the more anxious, creatively drained, stressed out, and overwhelmed I feel, the lower my screen time, the more present, grounded, creative, and joyful I feel. Amazing, right? Funny how that works. Funny how that works. I don't think that I even need to go like research and pull stats to read to you to convince you that this is true. Because I think we can all feel a positive difference in our mental health, our mindsets, and our attitudes when we spend less time on our phones. I know that I never shut up about my brick, but it's seriously changed my life. I use it every single day and it's helped me regulate my screen time without me having to depend on my willpower because I'm gonna be so honest, my willpower sucks when it comes to staying off my phone. Okay. If you don't know what a brick is, it's a small little magnetic physical square that has an NFC chip in it. You use the brick app to choose which apps you want to lock yourself out of. And then you have to physically tap your phone to the brick to unlock it. Or I, this is what I usually do. I have schedules set up so that you don't have to like manually go to the brick if you don't want to. So, like, I have a schedule set up to kick me off all of my social media apps at 9 p.m. And I cannot get back on them until 9 a.m. Like if I try to open them, it says like, oh, you're bricked out. Like, get back to living life. So I love my brick so much. And someone made a post in our Hustle Stanley Study Hall community forum that I want to share. This is from Kristen, and I laughed at it because she said, Here to report that unfortunately the brick is worth every dollar. I've been spending way too much time scrolling TikTok or Instagram. Decided to go back to bricking my phone, and I'm spending more time reading and being present. And I could not agree more. Listen, I know some people question if the brick is worth it because it is 60 bucks. The app itself is free, but the little device, like the square magnet piece, is $60. It's a one-time purchase, but it's one of the best investments that I made in myself in 2025. I bought mine last year. I do have a $10 off code if you want to get one. So I will link that in the show notes for you. It's so worth it. I'm telling you, I know some people like, oh, just use like the screen time app on your like phone. I just click ignore screen time, like continue playing on my phone. It doesn't work for me. I need the physical thing. And I like I said, I know not everybody needs that, but my willpower is not great when it comes to staying on my phone. So I need that added layer of resistance to keep me the F off my phone. All right, y'all. That is what I've got for you today. Seven habits that help me be a more joyful person. And side note, if you're wondering about the 2027 collection launch, make sure that you are on our email list because that's where we've been sending out updates. We are getting so close to launch. And if you missed it, I've been sharing a lot of sneak peeks over on my Instagram too. I will even link the highlight where I've saved a lot of the sneak peeks. We have a new cover option and and we have a new weekly spread option. Y'all, we finally have a horizontal weekly planner. Don't worry though, if you're a vertical girl, our original vertical weekly layout with the timestamps isn't going anywhere. We're just adding in another weekly option that is horizontal with no timestamps. So, for real, if you want information, like you want to stay in the know with all things that are related to the 2027 collection, you need to be on our email list. Okay. I'll leave a link for you to get on the Hustle Stanley email list down in the show notes. Wow, I have got a lot of show note linking to do this episode. Anyways, I love you guys so much. I will talk to you in the next episode, and I hope you have the best day ever.