Be Happy, Make Good Choices & I Love You

 In this episode of Why Am I Yelling? — Musings from a Middle-Aged, Menopausal Mom — we're unpacking the nine words I say to my kids every single time they walk out the door: "Be happy. Make good choices. And I love you."

Sounds simple, right? Turns out, there's a LOT hiding inside those nine words.

🟡 What we're getting into today:
→ You are the creator of your own happiness — and no, that doesn't mean toxic positivity. It means stopping the "I'll be happy when..." cycle for good.
→ The power of the pause — why thinking before you speak or act changes everything, and the 24-hour draft rule I swear by.
→ Why the world is starving for more love — and how small, ordinary love is the most powerful kind there is.

This one's a little funny, a little raw, and maybe a little closer to home than you expected. Grab your coffee (or your wine, no judgment) and let's talk.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello, yellers. Welcome back to Why Am I Yelling? Musings from a middle-aged menopausal mom. And why am I yelling today? Honestly, because nobody listens when I use my inside voice. I'm just kidding. Not really. Welcome back, or welcome to the first for the first time, in which case, buckle up, friends, to why am I yelling, the podcast where one menopausal mom, that's me, with a lot of feelings and a mediocre thermostat regulation system, just talks about life, about chaos, about the things I whisper to myself in the car when I'm alone, because I have 30 seconds to be quiet. I'm your host, Krista Rizzo, and today's episode is one that I have been talking about. I've been talking about this for a long time now. Um, my good friend Kathy, who when I was becoming a mom for the second time, uh, she was a mom to two boys. I was about to be a mom to two boys, and I was asking her advice, just chit-chat, chit-chatting one day at work. We're coworkers a while ago. And I said, What's one piece of advice that you can give to me as a boy mom or just as a mom? You've been doing it longer than I have. And she said, There are three things I tell my kids every single day. And that is, be happy, make good choices, and I love you. And I thought about it because obviously that makes perfect sense, right? We say those things in ways to our kids pretty much every day in some way, shape, or form. But it kind of sat with me and she explained it to me in a way that I'm going to kind of explain and walk you through it today because uh, you know, there's a lot of things that we need in this world right now, and one of them is a very large dose of love. Uh, but we're gonna save that one till the end. So I have since adopted the be happy, make good choices, and I love you uh conversation with my own children uh every day, just about. I know my big guy is no, is not here every day, but when I talk to him, he knows, they know. Uh, they roll their eyes, right? They say, Mom, you say that all the time. And I say, that's because I mean it every single time. Uh and you know, I say it because it's important for them to hear. And they're absorbing things, even if you think that they're not. Because one day they're gonna come back to you and say something that you have said or that they heard you say, and you're gonna be like, oh, these kids are listening, right? They're nine words, nine small words, but you know what? Those nine words are actually everything. If we could bottle those three ideas happiness, good choices, and love, and actually live them, we're set. So that's what we're gonna unpack today. Those nine words, three big ideas and approximately 30 minutes of us getting into it. So let's G-O go. So, first we're gonna start with be happy. Um, when I first started saying this to my kids, I really didn't think about what I was asking of them, right? I just meant it the way you kind of mean, you know, when you when someone leaves for a trip, right? Have a good time, be happy. Like happiness is just a coat you can like throw on, right? But as I got older and um started coaching, because this all this conversation happened before I became a life coach uh with my friend Kathy, but uh I started coaching and I started digging into people's feelings and being able to help them through their own life choices and things. This theme comes up a lot or has come up a lot, right? Uh, and I guess the older I get in my solid middle-age hormonally depleted state, I have come to understand that happiness is not a coat. It is not something someone else hands you. It's not waiting for you at the end of a promotion or a relationship or a number on a scale or a vacation to somewhere with better weather than wherever you are at the moment, covered in snow in the northeast still. Happiness is a practice. It is a choice. And you, yes, you are the one who has to make it. Now look, I want to be careful here because I'm not one of those people who's gonna sit here and tell you to choose joy while you are in the middle of something genuinely terrible. Grief is real, depression is real, hard seasons in life are real. I'm not diminishing any of that. If you're going through something heavy right now, I see you, I feel you, and you know, just be happy is not the advice that I'm giving to you. But for the general everyday, this is how, this is just how life is kind of stuff, right? We have way more control than we give ourselves credit for. Let me give you an example of my own extremely glamorous life. A few years ago, uh, I was going through a stretch where I was pretty miserable. Not catastrophically, but I had just gone through a lot of loss in so many different ways and a lot of adjusting. Um that even though I had a perfectly fine life on paper, there was still stuff happening. And I was kind of waiting, waiting for things to get better, waiting for, you know, things to calm down, waiting for the kids to need less of me. I was really stretched at the time, waiting to feel better because I wasn't feeling great, uh, waiting for something outside of myself to change so I could finally relax into happiness and joy. And then I was sitting, I I do a lot of thinking in my car when I'm driving places, or if I'm, you know, sitting in a parking lot getting ready to go to another place or whatever it is, right? And I was driving in the car, and uh I was just kind of in a funk, right? And I started thinking about what I would say to a client. What would you say to a client, Krista, if they were feeling this way? And Kathy's words kind of came back to me, right? Be happy. And something clicked in that moment, right? And I kind of thought to myself, there nobody is coming to save me. Nobody is gonna arrive and rearrange my life and hand me a permission slip to feel better. That information and and those feelings are 100% on me. It wasn't a magical moment. It wasn't, you know, immediate transformation, but it was really, you know, a uh just a spot in a shift, right? It was a shift in a choice that I knew that I needed to make in order for me to kind of get out of the funk that I was in, the gr from the grief that I was dealing with with and and just from whatever it was that was happening at the moment in the moment at that time. So now, like, what does it look like to actually create your own happiness? Because it's not just positive thinking, right? I will not be out here telling you to just slap on a smile and manifest your dream life. That's not it, right? It looks like this. It looks like noticing what actually fills you up versus what drains you. And slowly, intentionally shifting toward more of what fills you up. It looks like stopping the comparison spiral. You know what that is, right? Because nothing, nothing kills joy faster than looking at somebody else's highlight reel and then measuring it against your behind the scenes. They're two very completely different things. Your life is very different from somebody else's life. Stop comparing the two. Happiness looks like gratitude, not the performative Instagram caption kind, the real quiet kind, where you sit still for a minute and go, okay, what's good right now? Even if it's small, even if you are in the middle of a hurricane happening in your life, even if it is just that your coffee is the right temperature in the moment, that's small. What am I grateful for right now? Happiness looks like setting limits, not walls, but limits around the things and the people that consistently make you feel terrible about yourself. You are allowed to do that. In fact, it is necessary. And we are gonna have a whole nother episode on boundaries at some point. But it's important that you have them, that you have put up your limits. And happiness also looks like letting go of the idea that you have to earn it. That you'll be happy when the house is clean, or when you lose the weight, or when you get the job, or when the kids grow up, or when things settle down. Newsflash. Things never settle down. There is no when. There's only now. And I want to say it again because I also needed to hear that. There is no when. There is only now. Um, one of the concepts that I've kind of dug into a little bit, it's not new, right? It's a philosophy that, you know, lives in Stoics and Buddhism, and it's, you know, wisdom tradition that uh is the idea that we suffer far more in imagination than in reality. That we borrow trouble from our future, that we haul regret with us from the past because we can't let it go. And we completely miss the present moment because of it, which really, in truth, is the only place that happiness can live in the now. I have definitely been working on this for a long time. I'm not perfect at it. I my brain is still good at catastrophizing for sure. I am still, well, thanks to my progesterone, not as much, but I still lie awake sometimes at night running through, you know, scenarios, worst-case scenarios of things that could potentially happen that newsflash never do. But I've definitely gotten better at it, and I'm continually to work working on that, and I'm I get better at it every single day. So when I say the words be happy, what I really mean is build a life that feels like yours. Make small choices every day that trend toward joy. Don't wait for permission. Give yourself permission. Don't wait for conditions to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. Find good in the ordinary because the ordinary is most of it. It is your responsibility to create your happiness. No one else can do it for you. That is not a burden. That is actually one of the most liberating things in the world once you really truly believe it and embrace it. Okay, so be happy, right? There is another thing that I like to remind my children as they go on about their days in their lives, and that is make good choices. You know, if I had a dollar for every bad choice I've made because I have reacted before I thought about what I was doing, I would definitely have a few dollars. Here's the thing about choices. We make thousands of them every single day. Most of them are tiny and automatic. What are we going to eat? What route are we going to take to work? Uh whether to respond to the text now or later. But some of them carry real weight, real consequences. And the difference between a smart choice and a regrettable one is almost always the same thing. A pause. Just a pause. I know it that sounds really simple. Like, what are you talking about? How could it just be a pause? But think about how many times in your life things went sideways because you skipped the pause. You sent the email before you cooled down. You said the thing before you thought it through. You made the big decision in an emotional moment that you later regretted. You posted the comment. You bought the thing. You said yes when you should have said, let me think about it. I have definitely done all of it. I am not throwing stones from a glass house here. I am the glass house. There have been several moments in my life that I wished I had taken the pause on. Right? I have, you know, definitely gotten into conversations or arguments with people who I could have had different conversations with in my life, right? Heated moments, uh, high energy, uh, you know, just conversations or interactions that could have gone very differently had I just stopped for a minute. And maybe the other person too, but I can only control what I can control. So we're talking about me here. If I had just stopped and paused, right? Uh I definitely have gotten into arguments with people I shouldn't have gotten into arguments with. And I have apologized in those in those words, right? The minute it leaves your mouth, the words leave your mouth, you feel it, right? You get a sick dip in your stomach that, you know, tells you that you just crossed a line. Uh and you can't take it back, right? Words hurt. Now they're out there, right? And I definitely have apologized for those things, those times. And they haven't been, there haven't been many. There have been few, which thank goodness for, right? But those words sit between you. And they sit between you for a long time if you don't resolve it, right? Because words, they don't disappear because the argument ends, right? We are creatures of habit, we humans, and we think about things and we dwell on things. And so I have often thought about those experiences and wondered what would have happened if I had just paused. Even for five seconds. You don't need a long pause. You just need long enough to think about if this is true, if it's necessary, if it is kind, if it's gonna help anything. The answer to that is no, no, no, and absolutely not. But because I didn't pause and I reacted, the reaction went without reflection, and that is almost always a road to somewhere you don't really want to go. So here is what I want to be clear about. Because sometimes when I talk about thinking before you speak, people hear be a pushover or suppress yourself. That is absolutely not what I am saying. You are allowed to have feelings, you are allowed to disagree, you are allowed to advocate for yourself. I encourage that. You can say hard things and have difficult conversations. You can do all of that. But there is a massive difference between responding and reacting. I used to teach a class on this. A reaction is what happens when you let your nervous system drive the car. It's fast, it's hot, it's usually about what happened two minutes ago, and it doesn't care about consequences. A response is what happens when you let your brain, your thoughtful, considered, future aware brain, get a word in edgewise. It might say the same thing. It might be firm, it might even be a little bit uncomfortable, but it says it with intention, with purpose, with some sense of where you actually want to end up. So there is a practice I started a few years ago, and I have taught this uh to clients and in classes that I've taught, and in seminars and workshops. If I'm having a reactive kind of experience, right, before I send that reaction or that response, I write it out. And I write it like in an email. Like I'll open the email, I won't put anything in the two-line, I won't put an address there. It'll just be, or I open a Google Doc or something where I can write it out, right? I write the entire thing. All the words, all the emotions, all the everything that I'm feeling in that moment. And then I walk away. And I walk away for, I don't know, a few hours, 24 hours. And then when I come back to it, inevitably I change something. Sometimes I change everything. Sometimes I don't even send it at all. Sometimes I will send it exactly how it's written. Because as it turns out, there was a completely reasonable response. But it gives me a confidence to know why I'm responding the way I'm responding. And I didn't just hurl it into the universe in a moment of not thinking, right? In a moment of feeling. So I call it the few hour or the 24-hour rule, right? It works not just for emails, but for decisions, for conversations, for purchases, for anything that feels urgent in the moment, but probably isn't actually on fire. Here's another piece of advice that I think is underrated. Thinking before you act isn't just about avoiding bad outcomes, it's also making space for better ones. When you slow down enough to ask yourself, what do I actually want here? You start to notice options you would have completely missed if you were in a reactionary mode. You start to see the bigger picture. You ask questions, you gather information, you realize that the thing you were about to do wasn't actually going to get you what you wanted. It was just going to make you feel less powerless for an out. 90 seconds. And I want to talk about this in terms of our kids for a second because that's the kind of lens through which I try to see everything. One of the most important things we can model for our kids is thoughtful decision making, not fearful decision making. I'm not talking about paralysis, but about being so worried about making the choice, the wrong choice that you can make any, you can't make any choice at all, right? It's like you're you're paralyzed and you can't figure it out. I'm talking about bringing your whole self to a decision. The part of you that knows what you value, the part of you that can project forward and think about the consequences, the part of you that can slow. Slow down, even when everything in you is screaming to just do something. Because here is the truth. Smart informed decisions don't always feel good in the moment. Sometimes the right choice is the harder choice. Sometimes the pause is uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to sit with uncertainty for a little while before you know what to do. But the regrets, the deep, lasting regrets in life almost never come from pausing for too long. They come from not pausing at all. So when I say make good choices to my kids, I'm not talking about never messing up. They're gonna mess up, I'm gonna mess up, we're all gonna make choices we wish we could take back. We are all human. I'm talking about building the habit of the pause. The tiny moment between stimulus and response where you get to decide, actually decide who you want to be in this moment. The pause. That's where your character lives. Sit on that for a minute. Right? And now we get to the third part of those nine words. The part that I say every single day, multiple times a day, without exception, as my kids walk out the door, as they walk in the door, as they go to bed at night, I love you. And yes, my children are at the ages now where they they say it back, but there's a little mumble to it, like, oh yeah, love it too, mom. Love you, mom. Before the door shuts, before they go down for bed, whatever it is, before we hang up the phone. It's fine. It's exactly how it should be at this stage of things, right? Because the fact that it's become a reflex for them and for me, that's not nothing. It's actually everything. We need more love in this world. I know that sounds like a bumper sticker. Or the lyric from a song from the 1900s when I was born. But I mean it in a very specific, practical way. So stick with me, right? I've been thinking a lot lately about how starved we are for genuine human connection, right? We hear about loneliness epidemics, and, you know, as people who are living in a time when we are more connected than we have ever been in the entire history of humanity. We have devices that let us reach anyone, anywhere at any moment, and somehow we are lonelier than ever. There's research that bears this out, right? Lonely is at epidemic levels. And I think a huge part of that is that we've confused broadcasting, social media and all those places, with connecting, posting with caring, liking someone's photo with actually loving them. Love is a verb. It requires action. It requires showing up. Now, I'm not just talking about romantic love because you know, we all know we can use more of that, right? I'm talking about love as a broader practice. Love is the way you treat people. Love as the thing that makes you call your friend just to check in. Not because anything's wrong, but because you thought of them. Love as the thing that makes you let someone merge in traffic in front of you, even when you're running late. Love is the thing that makes you make eye contact with a cashier and ask how their day is going and pay them a compliment. Small love, ordinary love. Love that doesn't require grand gestures or perfect conditions. I know I have told this story before, so if you've heard it, pretend it's new for you. And for those of you who it's new for, uh, a few years ago, it was my son's, my little guy's birthday, and I was at the grocery store buying stuff for his birthday party, and I went over to the floral area where they have flower arrangements and balloons and all the things because I wanted to get balloons in a specific color. And I think we were, I think it was a blue, a specific blue. I don't really remember what color it was, but let's say blue. Uh, and when I went over to get them, the girl behind the desk was pleasant. She went through all of her blue balloons and we they didn't have the color that I wanted. And I was bummed because I was like, oh my gosh, this is I would really would just like these colors. But that's okay. I get it. You don't have it, you don't have it. I wasn't gonna, I'm not a jerk in real life, right? They didn't have it. So I would, you know, went to walk away. But what I didn't know was as I was having that conversation with a very pleasant person behind the counter, another person who worked at that store overheard our conversation. And she had run to the back storeroom to see if they had any of those balloons in the color I was looking for back there. And as I was wrapping up my conversation with the other person, the new lady came out and she had a handful of the balloons in the color that I needed. And she just said, I found some. And I was like, What did you find? And she was like, I found some of the balloons that you need. And I in that moment looked at her and said, Oh my God, I love you. And she kind of paused and looked at me for a minute and then got a big smile on her face. And she was like, I love you too. I didn't say it. I said it because I truly meant it. I love you for going above and beyond and doing something kind for me today. Thank you. I love you for being thoughtful. I just I love you. I love that there are people in this world who want to make somebody else's experience better. I try to do that every single day with my family, with my friends, with my clients, with random strangers on the street. I love your shoes. You look really great. This whole thing is like that's just love. It's not the dramatic kind, it's the small cost you nothing kind. And this is what I believe truly in my bones. If more of us operated from love as our default setting, not naivity, not letting people walk all over you, not pretending everything's fine when it isn't, but from a base of genuine care for other human beings, the world would be so, so, so different. So many of the conflicts that we see in families, in communities, in the comments section, in politics, between countries, and fundamentally about people feeling unseen, unheard, unloved. And I know it sounds reductive. I know the problems are complex, but I also know that most cruelty comes from pain. And most pain has love or lack thereof it, somewhere at its root. So here's a challenge. I want you to think about the people in your life who you love. Not just know, but love. When did you last tell them? When did you last show them in a way that they could actually feel it? Because here's the thing that breaks my heart a little. We are often so stingy with our love. We think it, but we don't say it. We feel it, but we don't express it. We assume that they know. And sometimes they do, and sometimes sometimes they don't. My mother lived to be 74 years old. And she said, I love you incessantly all the time. She could not she loved, she loved hard, she loved big. And, you know, I knew when she died, I knew when she died. I know I know that she knew that we loved her. We still we talk about her all the time still. We love her. But I think about people who don't know that, right? I know that she felt it in her bones that we loved her, and I know that she knew that we felt it in ours, right? But I it just makes me sad that there are people out there who don't know that, who don't get to feel that, who sometimes have to wonder whether they were loved or not. And I never ever ever want anybody that I know in my life to feel that. I want them to know that they are loved. So say it louder. Find more ways to say it. You don't have to actually say the words, but say the fucking words. It's not gonna kill you to say I love you. Find more ways. Say it more. Say it to your people. Say it to your kids when they roll your eyes. Especially when they're rolling their eyes. Say it to your parents while you still have them. Say it to your friends who have been there through all of it. The new ones, the old ones. Say it in small ways with your actions and your presence and your attention. And extend it outward. Be a little kinder than you need to be. Give a little more grace than feels warranted in certain situations. Remember that everyone you encounter is carrying something that you cannot see. Treat them accordingly. We need more love in this world. I don't know a single person who would argue with that, I don't think. And love like happiness, like thoughtful choices, it starts with you. It starts with one small decision to lead with instead of with fear or frustration or indifference. It starts with saying it out loud, even when your kids are halfway out the door. So there, yellers, you have it. Nine words, three ideas. Be happy, which means stop waiting for someone else or something else to hand it to you, and start making the small daily choice to build it for yourself. Make good choices, which means take the pause. Build the habit of thinking before you react. Bring your whole thoughtful self to the decisions that matter, and give yourself grace on the ones that don't go perfectly. Oh, and also, college kids, nothing good happens after midnight. That's your mother speaking. And I love you, which means say it, mean it, show it, be the person who makes someone feel less alone in a grocery store. Lead with love, even when it doesn't feel efficient or practical, because I promise you it matters more than most things that feel efficient and practical. I say these things to my kids because I want them to have a full life, a life where they're not just getting through. They're actually in it, feeling it, choosing well, loving generously. And I'm saying them to you today because I think we all need to hear them, myself included. So as you walk out the door today, metaphorically, physically, whatever way applies, take this with you. Be happy, make good choices, and I love you. I mean it. So, yellers, that's it. This has been Why Am I Yelling, the podcast where a middle-aged menopausal mom like me talks about the things that keep her up at night and also strangely give her hope. If you guys like this episode, if it resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Leave a comment, leave a review. It generally helps people find this, and more people I think need it. Come find me wherever you find podcasts or on social media where I post things that are either kind of funny, very life centric, and could potentially be embarrassing for my children, which I've been told over and over again. Until next time, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I love you.