A Conversation of Hope With Brett

Master This and Enjoy What the Happiest People In the World Enjoy

• Brett and Shannon

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0:00 | 26:30
SPEAKER_01

Welcome to a conversation of Cope with Friday. This podcast is all about you. The master to remind you that you are the masterpiece. To inspire you to join the game. To equip you with simple simple strategies, try to you can start using today. To begin your journey, it's going to be possible.

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Hey, hey, hey, welcome, welcome, welcome to a podcast of hope. I'm so glad you tuned in this week. I know your time is valuable. And my commitment to you is I will give you everything I have every week and you will be better off. I promise. This episode's fantastic. So I think you're really going to enjoy it. All right, here we go. Last week's challenge was to do something for you. Self-care is priceless to a successful life. If you're taking care of yourself first, you will always show up for others as the best version of you. You and all your people in your life deserve the best version of you. Never, never, never neglect taking time for you. All right, y'all. Welcoming you to part two of our game plan to create a one-year plan for a great life. In this podcast, we will discuss relationships and how having a great, healthy relationship is crucial to you having the life of your dreams. You are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. Be very picky of who those five people are. You can love everyone, no doubt, but the core people in your life should be positive and have healthy relationships. Identify relationships you might need to limit. If you have any unhealthy relationships and you truly want to live your best life, you will have to limit the unhealthy ones. Be intentional about this to ensure your success. Identify relationships you might need to create. Maybe joining a group of motivated people to help you grow and achieve more. Maybe you want to do a life coach that can help you with bringing all of your relationships to the next level. All right, y'all. Let's take a look at some of the things that healthy relationships have. So common traits of a healthy relationship that lasts a long time. Healthy, long-lasting relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or familiar, tend to share certain core traits that keep them strong over time. Here are some of the most common and essential ones. Number one, mutual respect. Each person values the other's feelings, opinions, and boundaries. There's no belittling, controlling, or dismissing. Number two, trust. Trust is foundational. It's built through honesty, consistency, and reliability. Without trust, long-term connection becomes difficult. Open communication is number three. Partners or friends talk openly and honestly, even about uncomfortable topics. They listen to understand, not just to respond. Number four, emotional support. Healthy relationships involve showing up for each other during tough times, celebrating the wins, and being emotionally available. Number five, shared values or goals. You don't have to be the same, but sharing key values like honesty, family, ambition, or lifestyle creates long term alignment. Number six, individuality. Each person maintains a sense of self. They have their own goals and their own hobbies, friendships, while still being deeply connected to the main relationship. seven conflict resolution skills. They don't avoid conflict, but handle it with respect. Disagreements are worked through calmly without personal attacks. eight, appreciation and gratitude. Expressing thanks, complimenting each other, and not taking each other for granted helps relationships thrive. nine physical and emotional intimacy. In romantic relationships, healthy physical connection matters. In all relationships, emotional closeness and vulnerability are key. ten flexibility and growth. Long lasting relationships adapt as people change. They grow together rather than growing apart. Here's some things you can do to strengthen your relationship, whether it's romantic, platonic, or familiar, takes intentional effort, communication, and care. Here's a list of things. So let's take a look at it. Number one, communicate openly and honestly. Share your feelings regularly, even the uncomfortable ones. Practice active listening. Really hear what the other person is saying without interrupting them. Number two, spend quality time together. Schedule regular date nights or hangouts, even if it's just to take a walk or share a cup of coffee together. Try new experiences together, to create things exciting and create shared memories. Number three, express appreciation often. Say thank you for both big and small things. Leave little notes or messages to show you care. Number four, learn each other's love languages. Understand how each of you best receives love. Words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, quality, time, or gifts. Speak your partner's love language regularly. Number five, resolve conflicts respectfully. Don't avoid tough conversations. Approach them calmly with empathy. Use I statements instead of blaming. I feel hurt when. Support each other's goals. Encourage each other's personal growth and passions. Be their biggest cheerleader, not just a competitor. Number seven, keep the physical connection strong for romantic relationships. Hug, kiss, and hold hands often. Physical touch builds closeness. Talk openly about your needs and desires without shame. Number eight, be willing to apologize and forgive. Say sorry sincerely when you're wrong. Let go of grudges and focus on moving forward together. And number nine, maintain your own identity. Continue growing individually with your own hobbies, friendships, and goals. A healthy me contributes to a stronger we. And last one, number 10, reflect on your relationship together. Check in with each other. How well are we doing? Talk about what's working and what could be better. One of the cool things that I noticed when I was researching the happiest people on the planet is they have God, they love, they're filled with love. And then they also have a tremendous amount of gratitude, and they have that community and they have healthy relationships. That truly is one of the biggest things that impacts longevity. So here's some things where you can see a good relationship and the impact that it has on your health. Number one, it lowers stress levels. Supportive relationships help reduce the body's stress response. Just having someone to talk to can lower your cortisol and help you feel emotionally safer. Number two, you will experience better heart health. People in loving, secure relationships tend to have lower blood pressures and heart rates. Studies show that emotional support can actually reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Number three, stronger immune system. Chronic loneliness weakens the immune system, making you more vulnerable to illness. Close connections, especially those that make you feel seen and loved, boost your immunity. Number four, increases longevity. Harvard's 80-year-long study of adult development found that strong relationships are the best predictor of a long, happy life. Boy, does it benefit you to have very healthy, strong, loving relationships all around you. That's how powerful relationships are in your life. And I believe at the end of your life, the biggest things that you're gonna have that you're gonna value is God, number one. And number two is the relationships that were in your life. Everything else is gonna come and go. All the cars, the houses, the boats, all that, it's gonna come and go. But those strong relationships, I think that's gonna be one of the biggest things that you're gonna be grateful and thankful for at the very end. And number five, better mental health. Healthy relationships help reduce the risk of depression and anxiety. People with strong social ties are more resilient during tough times and less likely to feel hopeless or isolated. Number six, it improves your self-esteem and confidence when you have healthy relationships. Being loved and accepted reinforces your sense of worth. Encouraging relationships can push you to grow, take risks, and believe in yourself. Number seven, you'll have quicker healing and recovery. People who feel supported tend to heal faster from surgeries or illnesses. Number eight, healthier life choices. Partners or friends often influence each other's habits like exercising, eating well, or quitting smoking. Being in a good relationship can motivate you to take better care of yourself. Wow. That was a lot to take in. How powerful the relationships that you have around you are to your longevity, to your health, to your happiness, and to your success. Alright, here we go. It's time, my friends, for a joke break. And I think I have a good one today. We'll see how it shakes out. What do you call a well-balanced horse? Oh yeah. Now let's look at some traits. This week I have two great stories for you. First one is when a homeless man finds $17,000 outside of a food bank. Remember, he's homeless. He turns it in so he can help feed others. Wow. When a homeless man stopped by his local food bank for a meal earlier one August morning, he found a lot more than just food outside the door. Kevin Booth had originally planned to grab some of the free baked goods that are left outside of the summer food bank for people to take when the facility is closed at night. Instead, he saw a peculiar brown paper bag sitting outside the locked front door. Thinking that it held food, Booth opened the bag only to see it contained stacks of $20 bills. The bag was collectively filled with $17,000 in cash. Holy moly. Needless to say, that money would have made a great difference in Booth's life, and there was no one around to know that he had taken it. But the 32-year-old says that he knew that the money would serve more people at the food bank, so he waited until a volunteer Anita Miller arrived to open up the facility. There are a lot of people who would have taken it, Booth told the news. I'm just not that person. She was shocked to hear about what had been left outside their door, and she immediately called the police. The Sumner Police Department of Washington reviewed the security footage, they were not able to identify who dropped off the package. After waiting the necessary ninety days for someone to claim the cash, they turned it over to the food bank and honored Booth for his compassion. Miller says that she has been sharing the cash with Booth by giving him portions of the donation in the form of gift cards. Though he lives in a tent in the nearby forest, he has turned down her offers of shelter, although he does accept her gifts of winter clothes. Additionally, a town resident has started GoFundMe Page to help raise money for Booth to buy the VW van that he dreams of using as a shelter. The food bank serves free meals to roughly 1,000 people every month, including Booth. And thanks to the mysterious multi thousand dollar package, which is the largest donation ever made to the food bank, they will finally be able to finance a new walk-in freezer. Miller excitedly was telling the reporters that. She admitted before interrupting her son's plea to have her arrested by hanging up on the operator. It's a typical police response to visit houses if a 911 call is hung up abruptly, and they wanted to make sure the ice cream allegations were not a cover for something more serious. Knocking on the door, his mother opened it, clearly humored by the whole thing. Oh, it's the police. They came for real, she said, and she was impressed on her son, who used Siri to call 911. However, when the boy realizes the police had arrived, he took charge of the situation, demanding his mom be held off because she ate his ice cream. They asked of the boy if he preferred ice cream over his mother's arrest. He reluctantly admitted, in fact, preferably two days later, the officer is obliged, surprising the young whistleblower with two scoops of ice cream topped with blueberry sprinkles. Oh my goodness, that is hilarious. A little four-year-old boy. Hey, I want to share something beautiful that I saw this week. I just thought it was so awesome. Because sometimes as parents, we're always thinking, you know, a lot of times the fun things that we want to do with our kids cost a lot of money, maybe going to Disney World, Disneyland, or wherever you want to take your kids. But my wife and I, we enjoy doing electric bikes. So we'll take electric bike rides all over our town, our area. We have a reservoir real close by that we love to go to, and we always have fun. Well, this time we ended up at a park, and while we're just sitting on the park bench enjoying each other's company, I hear a lot of laughing. And I'm like, wow, okay, cool, what's going on? So I look over and I look at a father and his daughter who is probably 10 or 11, and they're literally just rolling down this grassy knoll, laughing, having a blast, chasing each other around the field. And I thought, my goodness, you know, I know kids spell love T-I-M-E. They truly just want your time. And these two were having an absolute blast just rolling up and down a grassy knoll together, laughing, giggling, chasing each other. And I was like, wow, that is what it's all about, right there. Learn from that, father. Take the time to make time for the ones that you love. And even if you don't have a lot of money, man, there's so many things you can do out there just to have a blast that your your kids or you know the people that you love will truly, truly, truly enjoy. All right, y'all. It's time for the weekly recap of my top three podcast episodes that I enjoyed. Because I, like you, I'm endlessly listening to podcasts, trying to grow. Every day, I'm trying to get better and better every day in every way. So, my first one was John Gordon, who's amazing. If you haven't listened to some of his stuff or read some of his books, he's really, really good. Activating your competitive advantage is what it was called. And let's see how it breaks out. He talks about always growing yourself, never stop learning and getting better. Have a great vision for you and for your team. Have a positive attitude mindset. Having that changes everything. Not everyone will share your vision and dreams, and just know that you might have a lot of goals and dreams that you're excited about, but other people might not see it, and that's okay. They can have their own vision and dreams, but don't ever let them affect your dreams, your desires. Your faith and vision will be greater than the doubt. So you always want to make sure you have that faith and that your vision is super strong. So if you do have some naysayers, it doesn't stop you from achieving your goals. Avoid energy vampires in your life. People that are very negative. You want to avoid them very quickly. And if they have to be in your life, maybe it's a coworker or something like that, then address the negativity with them. Say, you know, we're not going to do that. Deal with the elephants in the room. If you have some big things that you need to deal with, definitely deal with it. Talk about it. Don't just work around it. Talk about the hard things so that you can grow and get better. And then the no complaining rule. You can't complain unless you have some solutions with it. So he talks about in certain businesses and other areas, they have a no complaining rule to the extent you can still obviously give your feedback and all that, but if you're going to complain, come up with some solutions that can help solve the problem. Super good podcast. As always, it'll be in the notes. So you can just quickly hit the link and listen to the podcast if you want to listen to it in detail. Number two is Heather Younger, The Art of Self-Leadership. This one was really good. The power of self-care, she talks about. She was not taking care of herself and began to have panic attacks. Your body will shut down if you don't take the time to take care of it. She's talking about how she was working so hard between being a mom, trying to build a business, doing other things. She never took care of herself. And her body completely shut down. And so she talks about taking that time. We talked about a little earlier, but it's so true, so true. Sometimes, you know, in the past, people would make you feel selfish if you were taking care of yourself first and stuff, and thinking that's not the right thing to do. But I promise you, it is absolutely the right thing to do. Take care of yourself first so that you can show up your best for others. People are always watching how you care for yourself. So, like your kids and other people. And when they see you, say, hey, you know what? I need to go get a workout, I'll be back in a bit. That's a big deal because they can remember in their life they need to take time for themselves. Part of the self-leadership is modeling behaviors of what you want to see in your team and your family. So you want to model that behavior of excellence to your team and your family. Taking vacations and time off to refresh and recharge, that's a big deal. So many people work so hard, don't take that time off, don't take the vacations. They think it's a badge of honor. They actually did a study on 3,000 people, and the people that take breaks and lunches during their workday are actually 30% more effective and have more productivity than the people that do not, because those people that do not never take time to recharge. She talks about the power in celebrating your wins and celebrating your victories, even if they're small successes. You want to definitely take that time to celebrate those and then have the grace for yourself. Allow yourself to fail in trying. Journal nightly, the wins of the day. Get away from comparing yourself to others. It's not healthy. She shared some of her biggest failures before her successes. So a lot of very good, powerful stories in this podcast. And once again, it will be attached to. To our show notes. Michael Wickett. Life can be joyful if you're willing to supply the joy. He talked about a mother that was angry with her teenage daughter, and in her mind, her daughter was not okay and was not doing anything right. The mom took a course to better her relationships in her life. She realized she needed to start looking for the good in her daughter and how to support her, not just be critical and critique her all the time. The mom wrote her daughter a positive note of all the things that she loved about her daughter. The relationship began to blossom. The daughter started writing her mom nice notes about all the things she loved about her mom. Focusing on the positives in others can totally change the dynamic of any relationship. Applying gratitude and appreciation into a relationship changes it very quickly. Every situation is a result of the energy that's applied. So if you're focusing positive energy, you'll get that. If you're focusing negative energy, that's what you're gonna get. What would our life like if we woke up every morning being thankful for all that we have? We've kind of talked about that as a community in the past. Totally agree with it, totally support that thought process. It's right on. It's all on what you focus on, will expand. Alright, everyone, let's talk about our challenge of the week. One random act of kindness to make the world a better place. I actually looked up some acts of kindness, and I thought, you know what? Sometimes we're thinking, what can we do? So here's a list that I got. 20 things that you can do to be kind to others. Okay, here we go. Hold the door open. Smile at someone passing by. Pay for the person behind you in line. Let someone merge into traffic. Offer directions to someone who's looking lost. Leave a positive note in a public space. Pick up the trash in your community. If you see anything on the roads and stuff, pick it up. Give a genuine compliment to somebody. Feed someone's expired parking meter. Offer your seat on public transit. Share your umbrella in the rain. Buy a hot drink for someone homeless. Leave coins at a vending machine. Say bless you. Or gas soon tight, sincerely if you're a stranger. Sneezing. Help someone carry heavy bags. Give someone a warm greeting. Leave a kind note on someone's windshield. Return a stray shopping cart. And number 20, let someone go ahead of you in line. So some good ways to be uh kind, because in our community, we don't want to be a group of people that just take in the world, but we want to be people that contribute and make it better every day. And it's only a choice. Alright, so please listen to the voice in your head as I go through these. If it's contradicting anything that I'm saying, just know that it's incorrect. Listen to that self-dialogue. I do it all the time. Trust me, I gotta correct it a lot. You are amazing, incredible, a masterpiece, a blessing to all around you. Never, ever, ever stop dreaming and believing big. Your best days are straight ahead of you. Our community is on the road to one million. Until next time, I just want to say God bless you and have a fantastic week. Thanks for tuning in. Your best days are yet to come.

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Thank you once again for listening to a conversation of hope with Brett. Brett wants to remind you that you are loved and appreciated. If you found value in this episode and know someone who could use a little hope and encouragement, please like, share, and subscribe. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to Brett's top three podcasts of the week. And don't forget, Brett is offering a free copy of his book. Just send an email to gpdxfreedom at gmail.com to claim for it. If you're facing a tough challenge and would like another perspective on how to navigate it, feel free to email us at gpdxfreedom at gmail.com. We'd love to help. Until next time, wishing you and your family an incredible lead and ultimately a great life. Because you, yes, you deserve it. God bless.