Episode 14: 10 Things To Create More Happiness Right Now

Today’s episode of the podcast is about 10 Things To Create More Happiness Right Now

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Let's explore some techniques to bring more positivity into life to help us deal with the obstacles of Alopecia and life itself.

Here are ten things we can do right now to bring happiness:

1. Buy yourself some flowers.

2. Listen to fun dance music that brings back happy memories.

3. Watch some comedy.

4. Go to the movies.

5. Don't wait for people, just go and accomplish something.

6. Do something good for somebody else.

7. Invite a friend over.

8. Bake something yummy.

9. Think of ten things you are grateful for.

10. Cuddle, or get a hug.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU CAN'T SIMPLY MISS

• It's just as empowering to buy ourselves some flowers 01:20

• Listen to music that puts you in a good mood 02:24

• Watch something funny that will make you laugh 03:32

• Go to the movies, watch a movie and enjoy yourself 04:50

• Don't wait for anything. Enjoy your own company, you're doing something for you 05:10

• When you do something good for somebody else, you bring about more positivity in your life 06:28

• If you can't find someone to do something good for, maybe you can find somewhere where you can volunteer or give to charity 07:33

• Make a meal for a friend and make them something special 08:31

• Bake something 09:45

• Be grateful in all things 10:15

• Cuddling is great for oxytocin. It's great for feeling good. It's great for, you know, exuding those emotions 11:51

• There are ways to still be happy, amidst the situation 12:48

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Transcription

Awaken to hair growth. Awaken to hair growth because there is, possibility to get your hair back. Awaken to hair growth because we're not told that we're able to conquer and overcome alopecia. Awaken to hair growth because I want to be a positive light and beacon for you because I've healed my alopecia and now I help others do the same with different types of alopecia, men, women, children, of all ages of all races and ethnicities.

Welcome back to the alopecia angel podcast. I am your host, Johanna and today we are talking about 10 things to make you happy right now. If there's anything that we need is more happiness in our lives right now, am I not right? This is so important especially after last week's episode where I got a little emotional there, um, for you, and this happens quite, quite frequently, you know, when, when my heart opens up, but today we're talking about everything you can do right now to bring in more happiness.

So number one, buy yourself some flowers. Many times women, especially always, you know, we kind of wait for others to buy us flowers, whether that's our partner or boyfriends or girlfriends, or parents or whoever and I find it that it's just as empowering to buy ourselves some flowers right now.

Daffodils are in bloom where I live and I love daffodils that are yellow. They're bright, they're happy so buy yourself some flowers. It doesn't have to be a huge bouquet of roses, but it could be something cheery, something that makes you happy. It could be tulips or just maybe like a garden bouquet from your garden, or it could be from the supermarket.

I find supermarket flowers are just as great as many other flowers as well. It doesn't have to be anything fancy but I do love having plants in my house and I love having fresh flowers as well, especially bright ones in the bathroom. They bring joy to me so that would probably be number one. Number one, buy yourself some flowers, get them from your garden or from your neighbor's garden and do an exchange there.

Number two, listen to some fun dance music that brings back happy memories. There's a lot of songs, growing up that I grew up to, that I love that put me in a good mood that bring in a happy beat and sometimes when I'm feeling down, this is what I like to do. I like to just turn on some good music and start listening to something that brings back the memory of something that makes me, you know, get out of the doom and gloom of what's going on.

Whether that’s the politics or the environment of the world, or whether that's the situation with alopecia. You know, these are some of the techniques that I used to bring in more positivity into my life, not just during the obstacle of alopecia, but then also in other obstacles of life, or even let's say in dark, ugly winters like where we're facing right now.

So listen to some fun dance music, like who do you like to listen to? Is it Janet Jackson? Is it Justin Timberlake? Whatever it is, you know, put some on and dance to it. I love old stuff, new stuff, I like it all. So put some on today and that'll give you a nice, you know, three minutes to listen to while you're in the car very easy to do

Next suggestion for number three of this top 10 things to bring in more happiness into your life right now would be to watch some comedy. Netflix is a great place for this. I love Dave Chappelle. I got my husband the other day. He's watching Allie Wong. For those of you who do not know who Allie Wong is, she's a wonderful artist as well as a comedian and she's from Vietnam and she's a Vietnamese American, and she's hysterical.

I love Dave Chappelle personally, but there's a lot of other comedians out there and so if you like movies that are funny or even comedians and watch them stand up comedy, you can do this on YouTube, you can do this on Netflix and this is easy thing to do and between sometimes when my baby is sleeping, we'll take advantage and we'll watch a little comedy and you have no idea how much that laughing or listening to comedy or watching comedy really affects your mood and how much positivity you bring on a daily basis. And the rest of the day was just so much fun because we had started with watching some comedy.

And so this is another thing I love to do, and I highly suggest the next thing to bring in some more happiness into your life right now would be to go to the movies and maybe even do it by yourself. Get the snacks, be in the dark, no one is looking at you. No one cares about your alopecia. No one even knows about your alopecia because you're in the dark.

So go to the movies, watch a movie and enjoy yourself. And, you know, I used to always want to go with somebody because I always found it weird that I would see people alone, uh, you know, at the movie theaters, but then I'm like, no, this is probably the best thing to do is just to go by yourself when no one can go with you, because you're enjoying your own company, you're doing something for you.

And a lot of times we don't do enough for ourselves to make ourselves happy. So don't wait for anybody. Just go, just go and do, and really on that same vein, don't wait for anybody to go with you to the movies, to the festival, to the restaurant, to the trip, to the vacation, to anything else that you want in life, like, just go do it, go do it.

If there's anything that we've learned with COVID with the situation today in the world is to wrap life by the horns and to take it and to do as much as we can that you want to do, that you want to accomplish, that you want to do. Don't wait for people and don't wait for anything. Just go, go do it and I say this as someone who loves to travel as someone who's been to over 61 countries, and a lot of those trips I've done by myself and a lot of those trips I've done, solo and I love it and I don't wait around. So that's another thing you can do. Just go to the movies by yourself, get the snacks, be in the dark again, it's a safe alopecia place to go and you'll have fun.

Next step to 10 things to bring more happiness into your life right now would be to do something good for someone else and when you do something good for somebody else, you bring about more positivity in your life. You become more grateful. So even if it's saying a prayer, a baking, something for them, walking their pet around the block, maybe washing their car, doing something for a neighbor for a loved one for a friend or a family member is a nice way to get yourself out of your own head and to bring some positivity in the world in even if it's just in a small way.

And on the same vein I like to give to charity. So at the end of the year, I like to thank back to which charities, do I like to give to? I like to do this around December, December is kind of like that month of giving. I'm not just giving to friends and family because of Christmas, but then also it's my birthday month.

So I also like to give away to charity and I find charities that are close to my heart and it takes a minute right to really weed through them but I try to find different charities each year. And this is important to me so if you can't find someone to do something good for, maybe you can find somewhere where you can volunteer or give to charity.

And if you can't give to charity, maybe you volunteer somewhere. This is another thing I love doing too is volunteering and when I lived in Colorado, I used to volunteer my time or even in Miami, in California, I used to volunteer my time all the time to nonprofits and to charities like habitat for humanity or for the dog shelter.

Cause I love animals or for different things you can just sign up for and, and help them out. And this is fantastic. I also love donating blood. So this is also another way to give back. To somebody in need without even knowing them. So you don't even have to know them to give, right? You can give blood and not even know them and you know, it's going to a worthy cause. So those two go hand in hand, but it's still part of this top 10 of bringing more happiness into your life right now.

The next would be to invite a friend over for lunch and dinner or breakfast and make them something special. And maybe you make them a new recipe out of my cookbook, or maybe you make them a new recipe that you've learned recently and this is a possibility to get them into a healthier scope. Let's say, if you are trying to be healthier, let's say you've done my program or maybe you haven't, but you're still on a healthier kick then maybe you, you create something healthy for them.

I know when I have family or friends over, I make everything very very healthy, very, very delicious though, too. And I like to surprise and delight. I like to surprise them because I'm using different ingredients because I'm making things tailored to my family and how we eat. But at the same time I incorporate what they like and they're always surprised. They're like, what really?

This is made with this. This is made with that. And I like to surprise them because you can have and be healthy without taking away the flavor or the delicious aspect of food, you could still be a food and still be healthy. I believe those two can work together. 

So number eight on the list of 10 things to bring more happiness into your life right now would be to bake something yummy. So this morning I made scones with my husband. It was out of the blue and we decided to bake something. He's not the baker, I am, he likes to cook, but at the same time, we switch off back and forth. Sometimes I cook and today. Teach me how to make scones. So I did, and we had so much fun doing that this morning, and this morning was fun in that sense, because we had enough time to bake it before he went to work so that was great. 

Number nine on the list is to think of 10 things you are grateful for right now and relish in that feeling of being grateful, relish in the feeling of how those 10 things make you feel and what life would look like. If you didn't have those 10 things. Whether that's your health, whether that's, your job or your friends or the house you live in or anything else.

So many times when I feel like there's a dark cloud over my head, I like to revert back and I like to stay in the positive, even though I know for you and I both it's sometimes it's difficult to do this and sometimes we just need a minute or maybe an hour to get over our negative cloud, but once we break through, once we see the sun, you know, this is part of it.

And it's to think about these 10 things that you're grateful for and to relish in that feeling. And I gotta say, when you do relish in that feeling, you start to see the bigger picture. You start thinking outside of you and you start to realize that there's so much more to life than what's going on the here and now. And I think this is good for children to know a gratitude practice is something that I love to end the day with. And so I would say yes to 10 things that you're grateful for. Write them down. Think about them. Relish them and relish in the feeling.

And number 10 of the 10 things to bring in more happiness into your life right now would be the cuddle. You can cuddle with your dog, with your pet, with your partner, with a baby or  a friend or somebody else. Cuddling is great for oxytocin. It's great for feeling good. It's great for exuding those emotions and I love hugs. Hugs, do the same thing. If you can't cuddle somebody, then get a hug.

And I think we all need more hugs, especially in this day and age. And so on a recent trip to seeing family and friends, I was very touchy and just hugging them, hugging my friends, hugging my family. And they probably saw it as weird, but it's because we don't see each other so much anymore.

And you never know when the next time you are going to see them. And so take the opportunity to hug them, to tell them how much you care for them. And yeah, I give, give somebody, you care for a hug, a cuddle and play with them and you'll see that the oxytocin will come bursting out of you.

That's my list of top things to do, to bring more happiness into your life right now, I know alopecia is a downer, but there are ways to still be happy, amidst the situation, amidst the healing, amidst looking for the solution, amidst, taking things day by day, amidst getting better each day. And so we need to remind ourselves that we can still choose to be happy today. We can still bring in more happiness and more positivity on a daily basis.

And again, sometimes we just need to get out of our heads. We need to get out of that funk that we're in and let those dark clouds disperse. So I hope you choose at least two of the items that I've discussed and let me know how it goes. Send me a message and hopefully I'll hear back from you.

Enjoy the rest of your day, make it a happy one. Take care.

Thank you for listening to the alopecia angel podcast, a positive light and healing alopecia. You can do this and we can help. Spread the word that reversing alopecia is possible by telling your friends and family.