The Happier You: Empowering Your Journey to a Joyful and Fulfilling Life

What You Offer to Others, You Give to Yourself: Happiness Tools for Real Life EP#114

• Bona Normandeau/ • Season 5 • Episode 1

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Episode Title: What You Offer to Others, You Give to Yourself: Happiness Tools for Real Life

Welcome back to season five of The Happier You podcast! In this episode, Bona shares a powerful interview with Teri Murray, who participated in one of the early 21 Day Happiness Challenges. Together, they explore key happiness tools, including “What You Offer to Others, You Give to Yourself” and the importance of self-compassion.

Teri opens up about how she used these tools in her life, including helping her son navigate anxiety during the pandemic. Her journey reminds us that when we offer acceptance, kindness, and understanding to others, we are also working on giving those things to ourselves. Bona also reflects on the struggle we all face when learning new skills like self-compassion, sharing that it’s not always easy but is crucial for long-term happiness.

Key Takeaways:

  • What You Offer to Others, You Give to Yourself: When we offer understanding and acceptance to others, we learn to offer it to ourselves.
  • Self-Compassion: Struggling is a normal part of life; self-compassion helps us move through difficult moments with more grace.
  • Personal Growth: Progress in happiness is an ongoing journey, not a destination.

Challenge for the Week: Take time to consider how you treat those around you. Are you offering kindness, patience, and understanding? As you do, remember that this kindness extends back to you. Offer yourself the same compassion when you're facing challenges.

Quote of the Week: “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” – Buddha

Links and Resources:

Thanks for tuning in, and as always, when you have a choice, choose happy!

Welcome to the Happier You podcast. I'm your host, Bona Normandeau. The Happier You is about encouraging each of us to connect with our unique self and figure out what our personal happiness looks like. Not what anyone else thinks our happy should be, but what really fills up our cup and brings us joy. Each episode is about exposing you to new ideas, perspectives, and tools to help you build more happy moments into your day to day life. Your happiness is your responsibility. So let's get this figured out so you can start living your best life today. Hey, happy people. Welcome back. And welcome to season five of the happier you podcast. I am back fresh off a great summer. And the first year I ran reruns of my favorite podcasts during the summer break, I was surprised at how much I forgot. I mean, I realize I'm not going to remember all of it. Every episode, because now there's over a hundred of them. But I was surprised at how much I enjoyed going back through them and listening again in order to choose the ones I was going to use for the rerun. But what happened as I was going through the old podcasts is that I could only choose three for this summer, as I publish a podcast bi weekly and I do the email newsletter on the off weeks from the podcast. So only choosing three for reruns was a little hard. But what happened is I found an old podcast that I wanted to still share with you, even if I didn't use it for the reruns. I'm going to share some parts of an interview that I did with Teri Murray back in February of 2021, right after she participated in one of my 21 day happiness challenges. Now, if you're new to the happier you community, then you won't have heard of the 21 day happiness challenge because it doesn't exist anymore, but it is essentially the precursor to my kickstart your happy course that I run every fall and winter. It has the basic happiness tools that I think everyone should have in their toolbox as they're building their happier life. So in the beginning, what I did is it was kind of like drinking from a fire hose. People got 21 happiness tools in 21 days. Crazy, right? I know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But as you can imagine, by about day 12, people started dropping off and they just didn't even open the emails anymore. It was crazy. Overwhelming to say the least. There was so much information in there. Now we've made it way more palatable and we coach you through it week by week and you don't just learn the new happiness tools, you actually implement them and I think that's a game changer. After the challenge, I would invite different participants onto the podcast to share their biggest takeaway and their biggest struggle, because hearing about people's biggest win was inspiring, but I also think that hearing about what people struggled with can make Help us to realize that we're not alone. So I think the two ends of the spectrum are powerful and they're great to share in case someone else needs to know they're not alone. So today from that interview with Terri, I'm going to share with you the things she liked most about the 21 Day Happiness Challenge and then I'm going to share what she struggled with. I had forgotten about a lot of this interview until I listened to it again and I love Teri's win. I remember that day that she had it because she emailed me and told me about it. I found it so powerful I asked her on the podcast to share it with everyone else. But here's the other thing I realized in going back and listening to these things. Unless we keep these concepts, or as I call them, happiness tools, top of mind or close at hand, we forget about them. And I realized in listening to Teri again, There's some things that I could use more of in my life, and I've just forgotten about them. So this season, you're going to hear me bringing up some old happiness tools that maybe you haven't heard me talk about in a while, because again, I think the more things are top of mind, the more we will, uh, remember to use them. Okay, so first thing I want to share with you what Teri's response was when I asked her what she loved most about the 21 Day Happiness Challenge. There was so much about it that I found amazing, but day 16 when you said what you offer others you give yourself and that one was a really great one for me because it just happened to be when. Things were getting agitated. We were still in our lockdown here in Ontario again after Christmas, and it was just, it was getting heavy, and I noticed that a lot of my answers and responses when I was feeling agitated, impatient, or anxious were not ideal. So it made me really reflect on what I thought I could do better and then it just happened to be that day my son was really struggling with anxiety because things started opening up again in Ontario and without any lead in time or heads up or, you know, a week notice, nothing. Camp power and hockey was boom starting right away and his anxiety just spiked and my normal Response would have been like get over it You're going because one I spent a lot of money on it and number two I don't want him to live ruled by his anxiety But I honestly took a step back because of this challenge, and I looked at my son and I could see that he was really struggling to stay calm and try to find a way to work through it. So, I just said, go for your walk, because it was second recess, he walks the dog, get out of the house and have some fresh air. And while he was out, I reached out to the organization. And I was like, we're just going to take a pass this week just so you know we're not going. And when he got home, I said, hey, how are you feeling? He's like, much better, but I'm still really anxious. And I said, would it make you feel better if I said that you don't have to go? We're just gonna not go this week, give you time to process it because you have a voice and you've thought through this and you're not just throwing in the towel. You just need more time and I appreciate that and just visually you could just see the weight come right off his shoulders and he gave me the biggest hug and anyone that has 13 year olds know those are kind of rare sometimes. So I was like, okay. This is awesome. It was a total win. And then, you know, moving forward from that, we removed him from the power skating. He chose to stay in hockey, but that was his way of sorting through it. And I'm really proud of him, but I'm really proud of me because I would have just been like, Get on with it. And I wasn't, I actually stopped, looked at him, saw how he was feeling and found a new way through it that we were both winners. I love that Terri took that concept and immediately used it in her life. She saw her son struggling as so many of us were during COVID 19 and she used it to nurture him through a a high anxiety, stressful situation. So this happiness tool, what you offer to others, you give to yourself. You might not have heard me talk about this before. So basically when you can offer acceptance, understanding and forgiveness to others, you're essentially working on giving that to yourself. And let's be honest, we all want to be accepted and understood for who we really are. And yes, forgiven when we slip up. The more we offer this to others, the more we learn to give it to ourselves. So when we judge someone else or shame them for not being like the rest of us or not fitting in, we pass that judgment on to ourselves. So that was essentially the gist of day 16 happiness tool that Teri was talking about. Now, four years later, I realized that this happiness tool goes hand in hand with self compassion. What you offer to others, you give to yourself is essentially asking yourself how you can be a supportive and accepting of others when they're stressed and struggling with something. And self compassion is offering that support and acceptance to yourself and figuring out how to help yourself through that struggle. So now that I've talked about these two happiness tools, I found it very interesting when I asked Teri which happiness tools she struggled the most with, here was her answer. What challenge did you find the most resistance to and how did you deal with that? I know this one hits you and it hits us so many people and I see this a lot just in the coaching that I do. The self compassion day, like day 18 near the end, that day I was on the struggle bus. I was on the struggle bus so bad and I was really, really fighting my inner dialogue. And no matter how much I tried to do my way of coping, Hit it face on, own it, acknowledge it, let it have its little space, and then move on. I just could not get out of my own head that day. So I found that one really, really challenging. Being self compassionate doesn't mean that we're going to have less pain or suffering. Knowing that we're going through it, acknowledging it, and then being kind to ourselves and asking ourselves, what do I need in this moment? What do I need to help me get through this struggle? It doesn't alleviate the pain. But what it does is it allows you to nurture yourself through the moment or through the feeling. So by acknowledging it, you can help yourself. After all the research I've done on it, I believe self compassion is a superpower. It's not the way we're programmed or raised to respond to ourselves or others when we're struggling. But the research shows that when we show ourselves self compassion, we bounce back faster. We get back on our feet and back at whatever we've come up against and we can figure out how to deal with it faster. We can learn to help ourselves through these tough situations instead of judging and shaming ourselves. So the question is, which of these two happiness tools comes first? What we offer to others we give to ourselves or self compassion? Well, my answer is, who cares? Work on the one that is easier for you to work on because the most important thing in this is getting to the point where you're able to help yourself and others in a way that's safe. In that moment of struggle, all the personal work you do on yourself cannot help but spill over into the relationships around you. As you saw from Teri's example, it was easier for her to offer compassion and understanding to her son during his struggle than it was to help herself Through her own struggle, and I have to say I absolutely love that term, the struggle bus I'd never heard that before when she said she was on the struggle bus and didn't, couldn't get out of her head to help her. She wasn't able to show that self-compassion and figure out what she needed to get through it. So I think the first step is realizing that she needed self compassion from herself, even though she wasn't yet skilled enough to give it to herself. I know this is frustrating. We've all been through it. But as in any new skill we're learning, there are going to be these days, and we just have to keep working on it because it's uncomfortable in the beginning. It's not our natural way to react to these situations. I've been working on self compassion now for years, and guess what? I'm still working on it. Self compassion is counterculture, but there are some very strong voices out there that are encouraging us to seek it out and get better at it. I know I'm working on it and I hope after today you are too. Maybe it's easy for you to start with offering compassion and understanding to those around you. Practice that way, and then it'll get easier to offer it to yourself. Now, before I let you go, I want to share one more part of that interview with Teri from four years ago. Teri, what would you say was your biggest takeaway from this challenge? The thing that I love the most about this challenge is that although some of the areas needed a lot more work, I discovered that overall I am much happier with my life. I'm so much happier now than Carrie of two years ago when I first started. And the challenge allowed me to dig deeper in areas where I have let some things linger or just be. Be and I, I just didn't progress them and overall, I just, I found it a really positive experience. Now, the cool thing here is that Teri had been on her own personal happiness journey for a couple of years when she happened across my podcast back in 2020. What I loved is that by going through the happiness tool, she realized that she'd made progress. She was happier than Teri from a couple of years ago. That's why it's a journey. We're going to continue to learn and grow. It's not a destination. We don't get somewhere and stop. It's constantly something that we're working to improve and deepen our understanding of. And it's important to acknowledge lessons that we've already learned along the way and keep pushing ourselves to learn more. As I love to say, we are a work in progress. We just need to love ourselves through the progress. I hope you enjoyed going down memory lane with myself and Teri today. Your challenge for this week is the same challenge I gave Teri and the other happiness challenge participants back in February of 2021. Consider what do you offer to others? When you offer acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness, you work on giving that to yourself. This week, when you're dealing with people, Be patient and look to understand and accept them. Notice what you're giving those around you. Is it loving acceptance, kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness? Remember, what we offer to others, we give to ourselves. Alright, before I let you go, today's quote is from the Buddha, and he says, You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. Alright, happy people, remember, when you have a choice, choose happy, have a good one, and go get your happy on.