Piece Of Mind Podcast

Ep 30: You’re Missing These Key Pieces of Happiness

• Ashley Badman

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The word "happiness" is often misunderstood as an emotion we should feel all the time, but true happiness is about looking back at your life with satisfaction knowing you lived authentically and fully.

• Happiness isn't a destination but a capacity we build internally
• Your nervous system must feel safe to experience and sustain joy
• Achievements without meaning rarely create lasting fulfillment
• Quality connections with others require first connecting with yourself
• Healing creates emotional space for happiness to enter
• Authenticity matters more than external validation or success
• Nervous system regulation is foundational to experiencing sustainable happiness

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Speaker 1:

welcome back to the peace of mind podcast. We're doing an episode on happiness and fun fact about the word happiness. I was actually going to call built for better the happiness project and then I did a poll on my other Instagram, my Ashley Babin Instagram, and built for better was the winner. So we went with built for better, but I still feel like I need to do a whole episode on happiness because I think the word happiness is often misunderstood. I think it's even the reason why people didn't vote the happiness project for me and for my business. People message me and I so appreciate that. I appreciate when people vote and I appreciate when people actually message and be like. This is why and a lot of people were kind of messaging me being like I don't think the happiness project because happiness isn't the goal.

Speaker 1:

Happiness is an emotion and we can't be happy all the time and I 100% do agree with that. Happiness is an emotion. We obviously can't be happy all of the time and I 100% do agree with that. Happiness is an emotion. We obviously can't be happy all of the time, but for me it was a little bit different than trying to be happy all of the time. It was more about an overall happiness. When I look back at the end of my life, I'm happy with the life that I led. I'm not, you know, sitting at the end of my life, however old I am and however far I've made it, regretting things or knowing that I lived in fear and wishing that I had done the things that I want to do, or living to please others and be what others want or expect of me. It was more this idea that we can look back at our lives and be like I fucking did it. I'm happy with what I did. I'm happy with what I've achieved. I'm happy with who I was as I navigated life and as I went through life. I didn't self-sabotage my way through life and always get in my own way. I didn't people please my way through life. I worked on myself, I stepped into who I truly am. I lived for myself and I lived fully and to me that's kind of what happiness is.

Speaker 1:

But we're going to have a bit of a deeper conversation around happiness and how you can be happier and how you can find happiness and what it's really all about. So we're going to start here, because I think this is one of the biggest things people misunderstand when it comes to happiness is happiness isn't something you achieve, it's not a goal. You tick off for a destination you finally arrive at and then you just stay there permanently. And yet so many of us chase it like that. We think, once I reach this milestone, once I earn more money, once my life looks a certain way, then I'm going to feel happy. But really, even if those things come, happiness won't just magically stick around if you haven't actually built the internal capacity to hold it. And that's something I really want to land here.

Speaker 1:

Happiness isn't just about what you have or what happens to you. It's about what your mind and body can actually handle, feel and stay present with. Because I've seen so many people and I've experienced this myself too where life gets objectively better, things start going well, goals are being met, there's like stability, there's joy, there's success, but inside it actually doesn't feel safe. And that's when people start numbing out, disconnecting, overthinking or just sabotaging the good in their life. And this happens because their nervous system isn't really familiar with happiness, it's not used to peace, it doesn't trust when things are feeling good. So, even when the external circumstances finally match what they thought they wanted, internally they're just still in survival mode, and survival mode doesn't know how to sit in joy and happiness and peace. It's always scanning for danger, it's waiting for something to go wrong, preparing for the next fucking crash disaster in your life.

Speaker 1:

So when I say happiness is something you build capacity for, I mean that quite literally. If you've grown up around instability or chaos or emotional unpredictability, your system might associate happiness with the calm before the storm. You might start thinking this feels too good to be true, or I shouldn't get too comfortable. And if that's your internal reality, it's really hard to fully land in a life that you're trying to create. That's why mindset work, emotional regulation, the nervous system, awareness work are so important, because they would allow you to not just reach the life you want but to actually live it, to actually enjoy it, to feel it, to hold it, to not fucking accidentally unconsciously throw it all away or to have it and to not even feel happy when you have it, to feel like I need more. I still feel empty, I still need to be achieving and building. That kind of capacity doesn't come from actually doing more. It comes from actually your ability to slow down enough to feel what's actually going on underneath, inside, internally, it comes from learning to sit with emotions instead of avoiding them, from widening your tolerance for good things without panicking, and from trusting yourself to experience joy without bracing for a constant fucking downfall.

Speaker 1:

So no, happiness isn't something you chase or achieve once and you have it forever. It's something you practice, it's something you create space for, it's something you grow into emotionally, mentally and physically, and that work is that really is what matters the most. There's nothing else. There's nothing else more important in this fucking lifetime other than understanding and working on those things within yourself, because then everything else flows from that. Because it's not about creating a life that just fucking looks good to other people. It's about becoming someone who feels safe and worthy, living inside of it. I've seen countless people and worked with countless people, really successful people, people who are ticking off goals that they only dreamed of in a distant future, that they didn't actually ever think they were going to get to, and they don't feel worthy of having it. They still feel this tension inside of them because they don't feel worthy of all of the things that they have actually achieved. So it's not just about achieving the thing, it's not just about being the person who has it. It's about being the person who can hold it and who can enjoy it and who can actually live feeling worthy, and enough of all that they have.

Speaker 1:

Something else that comes up a lot when we talk about happiness is this idea that achievements are what make us feel fulfilled. Even if we don't consciously say like when I achieve that, I'm going to be happy, there is this unconscious part of us that does believe that. We believe that there's another thing for us, whether it's a job or a money goal or a career goal, body goal, when we look a certain way, we're going to be so happy. Maybe it's relationships, maybe it's having kids and a house. Whatever, we are looking for an external achievement to make ourselves feel fulfilled. And if we just keep hitting milestones the more money, the better job titles, the growing business, ticking the next boxes we'll eventually feel content. That's what we are led to believe. That's what we truly do believe, whether we say it out loud or not, and there is nothing wrong. I want to make it super clear. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things. I'm not here to say ambition is bad, because I don't think it's bad at all. I think it's fucking brilliant and great.

Speaker 1:

But the reality is, achievement without meaning rarely leaves people feeling satisfied. There's actually a lot of research on this. One study in particular found that people who felt a strong sense of purpose in their day to day life actually reported higher levels of happiness and long-term wellbeing than people who were just chasing status or financial success. And that doesn't mean purpose has to be some big world changing thing. It just means that what you're doing and how you're spending your energy feels like it matters. Because when you're only focused on achievements for the sake of achievements, it gets really empty really fast. You get the promotion, you hit the income goal, you finally get the recognition you thought that you needed. And then what? If it's not backed by a sense of purpose or contribution, it starts to feel flat like cool now what? What do I do now? What? Now? It's kind of anti-climatic, but when there's purpose behind what you're doing, even if it's small, even if it's messy, it actually does feel different. It could be helping your kids grow into really kind humans, running a business that creates impact, showing up in a job where you support people, creating art, building a community, mentoring someone. It could be fucking anything.

Speaker 1:

The actual role doesn't matter as much as the feeling that you're doing something meaningful. And when you zoom out and ask yourself, where do I feel useful or where do I actually feel like I'm making a difference, those are the answers that point towards your fulfillment, not just achievement. As humans, we do want to feel useful. We do want to feel needed. So often we think we're burnout because we're doing too much and, yes, sometimes that actually is true for a lot of people. You need to slow the fuck down. But more often I think people are burnout because they're pouring so much energy into things that don't feel meaningful. They're chasing goals that don't reflect who they really are. They're performing at work, in relationships, online, trying to get validation through achievement, but feeling completely disconnected in the process. And that disconnect is what erodes happiness, because when you're not connected to your why, when you don't feel like you're doing something that aligns with who you are, it doesn't matter how much you get done, it just doesn't stick. So if you're in a season where you're doing all of the things but you're still feeling flat and unfulfilled or like you're constantly searching for the next thing, this is where I would start Ask yourself where do I feel useful? Where do I feel like I'm making a difference. Where do I feel useful? Where do I feel like I'm making a difference? And am I actually giving those things time, energy and attention, or have I been stuck chasing something that looks impressive but doesn't feel meaningful? Because, more than anything, that sense of purpose, of knowing your energy is going somewhere that matters, is one of the strongest building blocks for real, sustainable happiness.

Speaker 1:

The other thing we need to chat about when it comes to the idea of happiness is connection. If there's one thing that consistently shows up in research about what actually makes people happier, it is connection. There's this one study I always come back to, and it's probably the most well-known one when it comes to long-term wellbeing the Harvard study of adult development. It has been running for over 80 years, which is so crazy, and what I found was that the single strongest predictor of people's overall life satisfaction and health wasn't how much money they made or how successful they were in their careers. It was the quality of their relationships, not how many friends they had, not how busy their social life looked, but the quality, how safe they felt, how supported, how known, and I think that really says something, because we live in a world where you know it's more connected than ever on the surface, but deeper connections it's actually becoming a lot harder to find. And the part that people most often miss.

Speaker 1:

If you don't feel connected to yourself, you're going to struggle to truly connect with others. Because if you're constantly performing overthinking, hiding or not even sure who you are underneath at all, then even the most well-intentioned relationships will feel kind of shallow and disconnected. You might have people around you, but you still feel lonely. You might be social, but you might not feel supported. You might talk to others all day but still feel like no one really sees you. And that's not just a relationship issue, it's a self-connection issue, because when we're disconnected from ourselves, when we don't know what we feel, what we need, what we value, we end up showing up in relationships with a version of ourselves that isn't fully honest. We say we're fine when we're actually not fine. We avoid deeper conversations because we don't want to feel too vulnerable. We keep things light and safe and surface level because depth feels too risky for us. But depth is where the magic is. That's where we feel closeness, that's where we feel seen, that's where love and friendships and support and intimacy actually really live and look.

Speaker 1:

That doesn't mean every relationship in your life needs to become some deep emotional heart to heart. It does not mean that at all but it does mean asking yourself do I feel emotionally safe with the people in my life? Do I feel known? Do I let people see me and, most importantly, am I even connected enough to myself to let them? Because you can't build real connection if you're constantly disconnected from what you think, what you feel, what you need and who you really are. It starts with you. So if you're craving more closeness in your life and I mean like real fucking closeness, more love, more support, more intimacy it's not about finding the right people, it's about coming home to yourself, because the more connected you are internally, the easier it is to experience that true connection externally.

Speaker 1:

Another really important thing, another key kind of thing and this is what I like to do when I plan out my podcast is I like to think of a topic that I really want to talk about that I think is valuable to you guys, and then I write down the key points that I want to make. This is another key point, because I honestly think one of the most overlooked parts of happiness is healing, not the surface level, just move on, kind of fucking healing, but the real internal work of facing what you've been carrying and understanding it and giving yourself permission to finally put it down. Because the truth is you can be doing all of the right things. You can be practicing gratitude, you're meditating, you're journaling, whatever. You're doing all the things. You're ticking the boxes of personal growth. You've listened to every fucking podcast, read every book. You're doing all the things.

Speaker 1:

But if you're still holding onto shame and resentment and grief or unprocessed pain, there's only so much happiness you're going to be able to feel and hold. It's not because you're not trying hard enough, it's because emotionally there's no space for it yet. Your system is still in self-protection mode and when you're stuck in that place, when you've been operating from survival or pushing things down to cope, it's really hard to access joy in a sustainable way. You might have moments of it, but it doesn't last, it doesn't really land, it doesn't stay and a lot of the time you don't even trust it when it's there. That is why healing matters, because healing clears emotional space. It kind of like softens the edges. It quietens the noise, it allows you to stop reacting from old wounds and start experiencing the present moment for what it actually is, not what it reminds your body of. And that is such a massive shift.

Speaker 1:

Because joy doesn't live in your head. You can't logic your way into happiness. It lives in your body, and if your body doesn't feel in your head, you can't logic your way into happiness. It lives in your body, and if your body doesn't feel safe, then joy won't land there. So when people say things like I just want to feel better or I just want to feel lighter, what they're actually saying is I want to stop carrying the weight of everything I haven't had space to process.

Speaker 1:

And here's the thing inner healing doesn't have to mean reliving everything. It's not about going back to every single hard moment you've experienced ever. It's about starting to understand how those experiences shaped you, what they taught you to believe about yourself, what patterns or beliefs they left behind that are still running in the background and dictating big, big, big, big big chunks of your life. Because when you can see those things clearly, you're no longer trapped by them. You can make different choices, you can show up in your life from a place of truth and not protection, and from that place, happiness isn't something that you're really chasing anymore. It's something that you actually really start to feel. You really start to feel within your body.

Speaker 1:

So if happiness feels far away or like something other people get but not you, I'd really invite you to ask yourself what might still be taking up emotional space inside of me. Is there grief, shame, judgment, anger, sadness that I've been pushing down because I don't know how to deal with it? It is really time to let some of that come up and come out, not to dwell in it, but to make room for what you actually want to feel, because healing is not about fixing yourself. Contrary to popular belief, so many people come to me and they're like I just want to fix this, I want to fix my self-sabotaging. It's not about fixing. You're not broken. You need to actually understand yourself. You need to connect with yourself. You need to have compassion and accountability and self-respect. You don't need fixing. You need to actually go within and know who you truly are, because you are misunderstanding yourself. If you think you need fixing, it's about freeing yourself, and when you create that kind of space internally, joy doesn't have to be forced. It's not something that you need outside of yourself. It just starts to find you. You become a match for that. You become more abundant in your thinking. All right, moving on to authenticity, especially authenticity over achievement.

Speaker 1:

So one of the biggest blocks to happiness, especially for high achievers or people who've spent years trying to, like, get it right, is living a life that looks successful from the outside but feels completely disconnected on the inside. And I say this with love, because I've seen it so many times. We follow the path we're told to follow. We hit the goals, we do all the things that we thought would make us happy, and yet it still does not feel like enough. Hello to me who ended up in the police for fuck knows why? Because I thought it would make my family proud. I thought it would look really cool from the outside of like, yeah, I was a teen mom, but look at this cool career that I have. Like who was I trying to impress? Making decisions in life? And I convinced myself no, this is my dream job, this is my dream career, this is what I really want to be doing. No, let's check in deeper.

Speaker 1:

You want people to think that you're doing something with your life. You want people to think that you're doing something with your life. You want people to be proud of you, you want to feel like people think that you have your life together, regardless of if you actually love your life. And usually that's because we're chasing an idea of success that was never really ours. It was built on expectations, what our family wanted of us, what society praises, what social media glamorizes.

Speaker 1:

And when your life is shaped by other people's definitions, it's no wonder that you feel unfulfilled. And there is a study to back this up Researchers found that people who live in alignment with their core values report significantly higher levels of well-being than those who are constantly trying to meet external standards. And that makes total sense, right? Because when you're living in alignment, things feel true, they feel grounded. Even when life is challenging, there's this deep sense of I'm on the right track. But when you're performing for the world rather than living from your own truth, there's always this underlying sense of disconnection. You might be very busy, you might be super fucking productive, you might even be killing it in the eyes of other people. Other people are like fuck, yeah, go girl, you're absolutely slaying. But internally there's a gap, and that gap is the distance between who you're being and who you actually are. And here's the truth most people won't say out loud.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes happiness isn't about doing more or achieving more. It's about getting radically honest with yourself about what you actually want. Not what you said you wanted five years ago, not what sounds good or looks good on paper, but actually what feels aligned to you now. And that takes so much self-trust, like so much self-trust. It takes a willingness to let your desires change, to let your identity evolve, to say, maybe this version of success no longer fits me and that doesn't mean I failed, it just means I've grown. So if you're constantly asking yourself why you're not satisfied, even though you've done everything right, maybe the question isn't what more do I need to achieve? Maybe the question is where am I still trying to impress, prove or please, rather than live in alignment with what's true for me? And sometimes that's a really tough question, because it's almost like there's a string and we're about to pull and everything in our life is about to unravel and we're like fuck. Sometimes it's so much easier to not pull the string and to just keep living life, proving yourself and doing everything that you think that you should be doing, because a lot of the time when we pull that string we've got to face a lot of shit and we've got to make a lot of hard decisions and we've got to that life becomes so much better. Happiness just lands in your lap and you fucking feel it. Because when you start living from that place, when your goals are actually yours, when your days reflect your values, and when you stop performing and start showing up honestly, that's a deep, quiet kind of happiness that really starts to settle in.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't mean that life is always easy. That's not what trying to find happiness is. That's another massive misconception. If I just like do all the things to make me happy, my life's always going to be easy. That's not what trying to find happiness is. That's another massive misconception. If I just like do all the things to make me happy, my life's always going to be easy. I'm never going to face a challenge. I'm never going to come up against myself and my own patterns again. That's not what it means. But it does mean that you're finally walking your own path and that's a feeling achievement alone will never give you. And you get to choose, because life is going to be hard and challenging either way. You are going to get uncomfortable in your life. You choose what that discomfort looks like. Do you want to be uncomfortable, living a life for everybody else, or do you want to be uncomfortable and know it's for you and know that you're doing it for a greater purpose, and know that you're doing it to get to where you actually want to get Something to think about?

Speaker 1:

We can just see, like I don't know, when you guys listen to this podcast. I have like a lot of similar downloads on each podcast, so I'm assuming it's like a lot of the same people which, if that is you, I love you so much. I hope you're getting so much out of the podcast. Thank you so much for being here and also, don't forget to leave a cheeky rating. There are so many more of you listening to this than there are ratings, so I know that so many of you are tuning into this and then getting off of Spotify or getting off of Apple or wherever you're listening, and not leaving me a rating. So please do that, because I will be very happy.

Speaker 1:

So if there's one piece of this happiness conversation that is still massively underrated, it is the role your nervous system plays in your ability to actually feel good, and when I say feel good, I mean consistently and sustainably and in a way that's not dependent on external circumstances, because you can have the job, the partner, the house, the business, the income, all of the things that you said you wanted. But if your nervous system is chronically dysregulated, your body simply won't let you feel safe enough to land in any of it. And that's the part that many, many people miss. They're chasing a version of happiness that lives entirely in the mind or in the goals that they've set, without realizing that their body, on a physiological level I can't say that word, but we tried physiological there we go. It might actually be locked in a constant state of hypervigilant shutdown or just a constant state of stress, and when that's happening underneath the surface, it doesn't matter how good your life looks. Joy does not stay there, happiness does not stay there, peace feels uncomfortable, rest becomes impossible and happiness, even when it does show up, it's very, very fleeting because your system doesn't know how to actually stay with it. And this is why stress management and nervous system regulation aren't optional add-ons to a happy life. They're the foundation.

Speaker 1:

And I'm not talking about extreme routines or perfect daily habits. I'm talking about the basics that are often overlooked, like quality sleep, breathing properly, and I remember when I was first learning about this and I'm like I breathe every day, I'd be dead. Like I know how to fucking breathe. We don't. We actually don't breathe properly Slowing down, taking breaks without guilt, knowing your boundaries and actually honoring your body when it says that it's had enough. We live in a culture that constantly tells us to do more, to feel better. Add another tool, add another task, add another productivity fucking hack.

Speaker 1:

But sometimes the thing that's keeping you stuck in dysregulation isn't that you're missing something, it's that you've never been taught how to stop and actually listen. Your nervous system doesn't need another 6am routine to feel safe. It might just need less pressure, more space, more softness. Obviously, there is duality in this. You guys Some of you do need to actually just wake up earlier and do some things that are fucking good for you, like get outside and get some sunshine on your face, but for a lot of people, it's like you're actually just doing so much you don't actually give yourself time to slow down, to be present, to simply be, and our nervous system does need that as well. So if happiness always feels like it's out of reach for you, or like it shows up but never stays. You might not need to actually push harder or try to fix anything. You might just need to slow down long enough to regulate your nervous system.

Speaker 1:

And that starts with asking some really honest questions. Ask yourself what actually is constantly draining you. Where are you ignoring your body and what it's trying to say? And what would it look like to create more space? No-transcript, because regulation doesn't make your life perfect, but it gives you access to it. It allows you to feel the goodness that's already around you and when your system is regulated, suddenly joy does become more accessible, connection feels easier, rest feels deserved and happiness becomes something that's not just fleeting, it becomes a very familiar part of your life. And that's why this work matters Not because it makes you feel good all the time, but it gives you the internal conditions to feel anything fully, without constantly shutting down, speeding up or just fucking numbing out. And that emotional availability that's one of the most underrated forms of happiness that we can create.

Speaker 1:

So, as you take all of this in, everything we've covered around happiness and healing and connection and purpose and nervous system, health and identity, I just want to leave you with this one question what if happiness isn't something you need to chase, but something you need to make space for, because maybe for you it's not about doing more or fixing yourself or hitting some new milestone. Maybe it's about slowing down enough to reconnect with what actually matters to you and rebuilding your life in a way that makes room for that. And if this episode has landed for you, if it has made you reflect or feel seen or realize that you've been carrying things that you are really just ready to let go of, there are a couple of ways that you can take this work deeper with me, which obviously I'm obsessed with this work. I love it. I think that truly, truly, truly, like to the depths of my fucking core. The more people that I can get actually actively, intentionally and purposefully doing this work not just listening to a podcast, not just reading a book, but actually doing it the happier more people will be, the better the world will be the trickle-on effect of just happy, powerful, confident women and people and that just warms my heart.

Speaker 1:

So if that is something that you want to do, the first thing that I would highly, highly suggest is my first Built for Better in-person event. It is in Harvey Bay. You likely, if you're listening to this, will have to travel. I have pretty much everyone coming at the moment is traveling either very, very many, many hours in the car or they are flying from interstate. The people are coming are amazing. The women that you'll get to connect with are absolutely incredible, and the day itself will be life-changing, like it will be a really epic day. It's a full day experience designed to help you actually do this work, like really do it clearing the blocks, regulating your system, reconnecting with who you are and what matters.

Speaker 1:

It is honest, it is powerful. We're going to go deep, but in ways that feel supportive and grounded. And if you can't make it in person, that's so fine. You can always come join us inside the Built for Better Academy, which is online, which you can join at any time. You could get your booty in there today and I'll just give you a cheeky little heads up. If you do my free quiz it's on my Instagram you also unlock a 15% discount and that 15% will stay with you for as long as you stay in the Academy, so that will be your price. It is incredibly worth it at the price that it is, but with a 15% discount.

Speaker 1:

Chef's Kiss amazing. It is packed with tools, lessons and resources that take everything we've talked about in this episode and turn it into something you can actually implement. Plus, there's a community and support the whole way through. We do live community calls every single fortnight. It is just incredible, and if you want to be in there, I would highly recommend you just take the leap and you join. I'll put the link in the show notes, but if you do want to be cheeky, go to my Instagram, do the free quiz, get the 15% discount code.

Speaker 1:

So, whether you do this work on your own, whether you do it with me, whether you do it with somebody else, just know you're not broken, you're not behind. You are simply just human, and the fact that you're even thinking about what happiness really means to you. That is such a powerful place to start. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for being here. I love you for being here. By the way, anybody who's here listening to this, I literally am sending so much love to you because it means that you care enough about yourself to want to learn, to want to be better, and like hats off to anybody who does that. Again, leave a little cheeky rating if you were here before you get out of Spotify and go about your day. It would mean the world to me. I will catch you guys in the next episode.