Happiness Blueprint

Happiness isn’t a luxury — it’s one of the most powerful longevity tools you have. In this episode, I show you how feeding your joy through movement, nourishment, and intentional living literally makes you younger, more radiant, and more resilient. If you want to age like fine wine, this is your blueprint for turning happiness into vitality.

Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Jolie Life podcast and I am super excited to be here with you today because part of 2026 is fully stepping into my own desire for myself and my desire for women that we grow younger with every year, that our vitality increase, that our sense of confidence, of agency, our love of our bodies, our comfort in our bodies, our health and wellness in our bodies, that it increases year by year and that we be like that Drake song, that we get better with time like fine wine. That's what I want for you and that's what I want for me. And in this episode, we are going to talk about happiness because happiness is a key to vitality and it is as much connected to your mind and your spirit as to your nutrition. And I want to preface this by saying that I am a woman who has had lots of responsibilities.
(01:13)
I am a mom of seven and I know what it means to sacrifice and I know what it means to be in the mindset of serving everyone else first. And so relax, sit back. I am not going to tell you not to serve, not to help, not to care, not to provide, not to do all the things that you love to do as a woman. I would never tell you not to do that because I love those things. I love making a beautiful home. I love providing a dynamic, loving environment for my children. That is one of the things that makes me really, really happy. What I am going to talk about though is putting on your gas mask first and how important it is that we as women are happy. And why is that? It is in your interests and it is in the interest of everyone else.
(02:10)
So let's start with a little story. So part of the reason why I, like probably from child number three or my decision to do natural family planning, I was intent on being a mom who radiated.
(02:30)
She's no longer alive, a grandmother who was wonderful. She had 13 children. The thing that I remember most about her as a child is that as a woman, she seemed overwhelmed by motherhood. And obviously I was a child. I do not know what was in her inner world. I never was of the age to ask her that. And it probably wasn't the generation to really consider those things. But I know as a child, I just felt like, gee, she didn't radiate in my opinion. I didn't look at her and be like, "Oh my gosh, this is the woman I want to be. " And as a woman who I knew I was going to have a lot of children, I didn't want that. I didn't want that for my children. I didn't want that for myself. And I also didn't want that as a picture of motherhood.
(03:23)
I wanted to be vibrant. I wanted to be alive. I wanted to be joyful. I wanted to be radiant. And so one of my number one priorities as a mom was to ensure my own happiness. And the benefit of ensuring your own happiness is that everyone else is brought higher through your happiness. So giving out of a cup that is full, giving out of a cup that is overflowing allows you to give to others without keeping track of what you're giving. It allows you to give to others without feeling like you deserve anything back. It allows you to give to others without any bargaining like, "I'm giving this to you and so I expect this. " And it allows you to give to others without depleting yourself. So when you invest in your own happiness, it allows you to give from a place of generosity, from a place of abundance, from a place of unconditionality.
(04:31)
I just made up that word. It allows you to give without strings. And when you have been in the space of receiving from someone out of their generosity and you know how that feels in your body, you have also been in the space of receiving from someone who had strings attached or had expectations about what they were receiving or what they were giving rather or gave to you conditionally. And you know what that feels like. And if I asked you to choose, would you rather receive from someone who gives from abundance and generosity with no conditions or would you rather receive from someone who gives out of depletion, out of deficit with conditions, expectations, or strings attached? What would you choose? You would choose to receive from the person who gives out of generosity. Receiving that kind of love, that kind of provision feels really good in your body.
(05:36)
And on the flip side, giving out of abundance feels really good in your body. So when we as women are able to give from our abundance to others, to our family, to our friends, to our children, we not only lift ourselves higher with that good vibration, good feeling, we also lift those that we give to higher. We give more life to them. We give more joy to them because we are giving out of a place of joy. And that to me is the number one reason to really hone in in your own happiness because by honing in your happiness, you give vitality to yourself and at the same time, kill two birds with one stone, you give vitality to others. And so when we focus on our happiness, it is not a selfish pursuit, it is a pursuit for the good of everyone. And I will put a little asterisk here, happiness and we're going to dive into what that means does not mean doing things at the expense of others, although sometimes you will have to carve out time for yourself.
(06:50)
It doesn't mean being reckless and self-centered and only out for you. What it means is seeking your joy. And so how do we seek our joy? If I asked you what lights you up or what do you enjoy or what's your favorite this or what's your favorite that? Hopefully you have a gazillion answers for me. But oftentimes when I ask, what are the things that light you up? Or what do you like to do or what do you like to spend your time or your money on? Sometimes people come up empty. They haven't considered what they like, what makes them happy, what makes them fulfilled. And so the very first step in pursuing your own happiness is allowing yourself to focus, to be attentive to, to be intentional, to monitoring what you like. And the easiest way to do that is through your body. So the things that make you happy are the things that make your spirit feel lighter.
(08:03)
They're the things that you look forward to. They are the things that after doing them, they make everything else that you have to do easier. They are the things that you do and time passes quickly. They are the things that you do and it gives you more energy than when you begin. So that is one way to hone in on the things that make you happy. Another way of honing in on the things that make you happy is one exercise that I do for myself is I will carry an index card around with me for the day and a pencil. And periodically throughout the day, I will stop and I will take my temperature and I'll say, "Okay, what in the last hour has made me really happy or what this morning made me really happy?" And so for example, today my list was what made me really happy this morning, having a warm hot coffee, having warm lemon water in the morning, listening to my favorite music on my way to solid core, finishing solid core, connecting to my daughter after solid core, and waking up before my alarm.
(09:12)
So those are things I know make me happy. And by focusing on those, then I can generate more happiness in my life. Because for example, if I know having a nice hot cup of coffee really makes me happy, I can amp up my happiness by every morning making sure that I have a hot cup of coffee. If I know completing solid core makes me happy, then how can I amplify that? I can amplify that by in the morning waking up early enough, carving out the time to go to solid core because that's one of my happiness, like happiness keys, I call them, or happiness blocks. And so we can begin to build more happiness into our lives by beginning to notice what lights us up and including more of that in our life. The other important thing that relates to this practice is happiness can be amplified.
(10:17)
And so part of happiness is A, experiencing the thing that makes you happy, but the other part of happiness where you can amplify it is remembering, recalling, dwelling on those things that make you happy. So the amazing thing about our brains is that our brains don't necessarily differentiate between what is real and what isn't. And so if having a warm, hot coffee in the morning makes me happy and my body releases the neurotransmitters of dopamine because I'm happy. And if I later reflect on how much I enjoyed that coffee, guess what? I get an extra boost of dopamine. My body does not know the difference between my memory of a happy event or experiencing the actual happy event. And so that way I can amplify my happiness even further. How else do we make ourselves happy? One of the things that we do is we notice our environment and what environments give us peace, what environments don't give us peace.
(11:23)
And a big way of amplifying our happiness is choosing environments that give us peace, choosing environments that light us up, choosing environments that really feed our spirits. And so these are ways that you can begin to notice, okay, what makes me happy? So now that you know what makes you happy, and now that you have began to notice and write down and remember the things that make you happy, now the job is to support yourself in that by carving out things that carving out more space for things that we know create happiness, create happiness on a neurological level. And so two things that I really want to hone in on, well, actually three things in terms of creating more happiness for yourself are exercise, things unsaid and nutrition. So exercise, I'm going to start there first because it is indisputed that exercise helps us to have a more buoyant mood, a more buoyant outlook on life, a more optimistic outlook on life.
(12:42)
So one way that you can help to restore vitality to yourself, to amplify your vitality is to always include exercise in your day. Exercise is the thing that gives to you more than it takes from you. And you don't have to do much. You can do 20 minutes a day, that will be fine, and you build from there. But that is one of my keys to being always even tempered, to being optimistic, and to being able to hold space from a place of abundance is exercise. Exercise helps to metabolize any negative emotion I have, so it helps to dissipate in a negative emotion. It helps to empty my body of stress and tension, and it also causes the release of positive neurotransmitters that increase my happiness quotient. So exercise, super duper important. Next up, nutrition. How does nutrition relate to happiness? What we eat has a direct effect on what our brain does.
(13:52)
It has a direct effect on how our body feels. It has a direct effect on how much inflammation, how much pain, how much discomfort we have in our bodies. Discomfort, pain, inflammation is a joy killer. It saps your energy, it takes energy away from ... It partitions energy away from the joyful pursuits of life because inflammation, disease, pain, all of those things require us to divert energy to healing, to managing our discomfort, to managing our pain, to managing what goes on when we are inflamed. And so nutrition is very, very important. When your body feels good, when you wake up in the morning and you can put your feet down on the ground and you can get out of your bed and you have no pain, guess what? You are setting yourself up for a lot of joy. When you start the day in pain, no joy.
(14:54)
And so this is where your food, your nutrition is so, so, so important. And I cannot stress enough how an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, that when it comes to nutrition, our daily care of ourselves is going to reap more benefit than you can ever imagine because waking up every morning and having your body do what you want it to do, feel the way you want it to feel, not feeling heavy, not feeling bloated, not feeling aches and pains is a true gift. It is a true joy maker because then you can attack your day, you can go about your day, you can enjoy your day on a whole different level. And if you don't think this is true, think about when you have been sick or when you have been in pain, maybe you rolled your ankle, maybe you're dealing with a condition, maybe you are recovering from a procedure.
(15:50)
So much of your energy is diverted to that, to managing that. And that means there's less available for joy. And oftentimes the management of that takes you out of joy. And so I encourage you to really focus on your nutrition. When I was a stay-at-home mom and I decided to focus on my nutrition, it was amazing the benefit it gave me in terms of being happier with myself, having a more positive relationship with myself, having a more positive attitude with myself. And when my relationship, my attitude, my interactions with my self-change, my self-talk change, because I felt good about what I was eating, when that changed, my relationship with everyone else changed because so much of how we deal with other people is really rooted in how we're dealing and how we are feeling ourselves. And so when we can help ourselves to feel better through exercise, through nutrition, then we really change how we relate to the outside world.
(17:03)
And here, it brings me back to our beginning. When we feed our own happiness, and here we're literally talking about feeding it, we bring everyone else higher. So when we feed our bodies in a way that makes us feel good about ourselves, it is so much easier to feel good about everybody else in the world. It is so much easier to smile. It's so much easier to cut someone some slack. It's so much easier to be gracious because that good feeling we have in ourselves determines how we relate to everybody else. And so I highly encourage you to put your nutrition on track. That is one of the goals of Jolie in general, 10 years younger plan and specific and many of our programs is to help you feel just good about yourself because you're feeding yourself well, you are nourishing yourself, you know you are doing a good thing for your body and that changes not only you at a cellular level, but it changes you at an energetic level.
(18:13)
The other aspect of happiness is mindset and spirit. And this is where I call happiness gorilla warfare because it is so easy to feel bad. It is so easy to overlook happiness. It is so easy to give up. And sometimes it's really, really, really, really a struggle to choose the thing that's going to make you feel good. It's really a struggle to choose the thing that you know that you need to help your own self. And so this is where choosing happiness is guerrilla warfare. Choosing happiness means that sometimes like the thing that might make you happy in the moment might be a little bit hard. It might be a little bit controversial. It might take a little bit effort, but here's where I really want you to dig in and just come to accept that this is guerrilla affair and that most often the thing you resist the most is the thing that you need the most.
(19:22)
And so let's go back to exercise. Exercise might be the thing that you can think of a gazillion reasons why you don't want to do it, don't have time to do it, can't do it, shouldn't do it, don't have the money for it, don't have the, you're afraid of getting hurt, whatever it is. There's so many reasons. Gorilla warfare says, no, I am going to invest in myself even though it's hard, I'm going to do this for however long I commit to doing it. And guess what? On the other end, you feel better. Gorilla Warfare is choosing to count the things that give you joy versus counting the things that don't give you joy. Gorilla Warfare is knowing I'm super busy, but I'm going to stop and fill up my water bottle and carry it around with me so that I can be hydrated and being hydrated makes me happy.
(20:12)
Gorilla Warfare is taking that extra drive to get my lemons because lemon water every morning makes me happy. Gorilla warfare is choosing to sit and have lunch instead of skipping lunch because it makes me happy. But also sometimes guerrilla warfare is skipping lunch because I want to get something done that is going to make me even happier. So where you're spending your energy is very individual, but what I want to say is that the effort it takes to do the thing that is good for you is effort well spent. And oftentimes, and I found this a lot when I was a stay-at-home mom, it is so much easier to not choose my happiness. It's so much easier to not go to bed on time and finish those last dishes. It's so much easier to not make myself a proper meal and just eat the leftovers that my kids have.
(21:12)
It's so much easier to say, "I don't have time to go work out because I need to take so- and-so to hockey." Those things are a lot easier. It's harder to say, "Hey, I'm going to wake up at 5:00 AM in the morning or 6:00 AM in the morning just so I can exercise or I'm going to make an extra meal for myself so that I know I always have something on hand for me or I'm going to order Joey life because I always know I have something on hand for me. " But I really encourage you that when you know something is good for yourself and there is resistance in you, that you, instead of taking it as a sign that you shouldn't do it, take it as a sign that you really, really need to do it. And so in this practice of being aware of our joy, of investing in our joy, investing in our movement, investing in our food, investing in doing the things that we know are going to make us happy, guess what happens?
(22:17)
What happens is you feel better, you feel happier, you feel more content, you feel more comfortable, you feel more joyful. And the benefit of that is that your vitality grows because one thing we do know is our human spirit has a huge impact on our health. It has a huge impact on our longevity and it has a huge impact on our disease resistance. And so to bring this all back to health and wellness, the happier you are, the more resilient you'll be, the more vitality you'll have, the younger you'll look, the more sparkle they'll be in your eyes, the more easily you'll smile, the more joyful you are. And when we look at studies that assess age, a lot of how we assess age is by the twinkle in the eye, the pep in the step, the joy, the smile, the grace, the acceptance, the openness.
(23:20)
These are all byproducts of happiness. And so I really encourage you to dive into your own happiness and get an index card, carry it around for the next couple of days and take a moment and find out what are the things that truly light you up. What are the small, teeny, tiny things in your life that make you happy? What foods make you happy? What movement makes you happy? What songs make you happy? What daily rhythm makes you happy? And as you begin to notice those things, amplify them, put more of that in your life, put more exercise, put more joy life, put more healthy food, put more positive thoughts, put more moments of smiles and joys and giggles and laughter. And you will be amazed by how not only do you turn back the clock, but how you really change the environment in which you live and the joy and the energy that other people experience around you.
(24:27)
And so in my own journey to increase my happiness, I have found that it has made motherhood so much easier. It has made motherhood so much more joyful and it has helped to keep me open and keep me flexible and keep me growing and keep me vibrant. And so that's what I encourage you today. And hopefully you have taken something from this. You have your little index card. Please share this podcast with someone. Please share this podcast, particularly with someone who's struggling or someone who needs a little bit extra encouragement or to the person that wants to have optimal health and wellness and wants to live a long full life, share this with them. That's it. And I will talk to you guys the next time. Lots of love. And remember, you can always catch me at thejolilife.com and you can email me at julia@thejolife.com.
(25:25)
And I love to hear from you. Bye-bye.