Ep492 Your Happiness is NOT Contingent on Your Circumstances
May 26, 2024
Julie Holly
Your happiness isn't hinged on your circumstances, and that's the hill I'm willing to die on! Join me, Julie Holly, as we traverse the landscape of personal freedom, blending health, mindset, and wealth. This week, we've lined up content that spans from the power of passive investing through syndication to the vital knowledge of mineral balancing and gut-brain health. It all ties back to cultivating your inner strength and resilience, empowering you to shine your brightest, even when current events seem to cast the longest shadows.
A heartfelt conversation awaits you later this week as I sit down with top-tier investors and health professionals whose insights will help you climb to the heights of health, fortify your mindset, and craft the wisest wealth strategy. Your journey toward a life unbound by circumstances begins here – let's navigate these waters together, with wisdom as our compass and unwavering support as our constant companion.
Access Julie's calendar, the investor club, Conscious Investor Growth Summit, social profiles and more when you CLICK HERE
Your happiness isn't hinged on your circumstances, and that's the hill I'm willing to die on! Join me, Julie Holly, as we traverse the landscape of personal freedom, blending health, mindset, and wealth. This week, we've lined up content that spans from the power of passive investing through syndication to the vital knowledge of mineral balancing and gut-brain health. It all ties back to cultivating your inner strength and resilience, empowering you to shine your brightest, even when current events seem to cast the longest shadows.
A heartfelt conversation awaits you later this week as I sit down with top-tier investors and health professionals whose insights will help you climb to the heights of health, fortify your mindset, and craft the wisest wealth strategy. Your journey toward a life unbound by circumstances begins here – let's navigate these waters together, with wisdom as our compass and unwavering support as our constant companion.
Access Julie's calendar, the investor club, Conscious Investor Growth Summit, social profiles and more when you CLICK HERE
Hello, conscious Investor, and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth. Conscious Investor, welcome back. You know your happiness is not contingent. It is not correlated to your circumstances. This is not a popular statement to make, but I will live my life based on the statement and I hope you choose to as well.
Speaker 1:
Before I dive into today's episode, I want to give a super shout out to um to an amazing review, and I'm so grateful. Um, this review says thank you. It's from Don Senchio Uh and it says I recently became a client of Julie's as she was referred to me as a coach by a good friend, I had no idea she even had a podcast. Now, a couple of months into working with Julie, I can honestly say she's the real deal. Listen to her podcast if you want to get good advice without feeling talked down to. I've yet to scratch the surface on investment advice. I can only imagine my progress once we go down that road. I've never been a good podcast person, but in listening to her podcast I feel like it's just an extension of our sessions. Thank you, julie, Looking forward to hearing more and excited for the future. Thank you, julie, looking forward to hearing more and excited for the future. Thank you, dawn. I really appreciate the time you took to leave a review over there on Apple Podcasts and, by the way, if you would take a moment to leave a review, it makes all the difference for the show and also sharing makes a huge difference. So so, so huge. All right, let's dive in. I'm so excited to tackle this concept.
Speaker 1:
Your happiness is not contingent on your circumstances. It is just so true and the reality is is that I don't think it's just me conscious investor. The reality is is that sometimes, in fact, I'm wearing a pair of pants right now that came in my Nuuly box, by the way, nuuly is absolutely amazing and I get this pair of pants and I put them on and I asked Super Rad, steve, like, what do you think of these pants? And I was kind of on the fence on the pants. But you know, I was listening, you know and you know what those of you who have been in a committed relationship you know for a great length of time, which is anything longer than a week, when it comes to giving this type of opinion. I said what do you think? And he said, well, and he gave me his honest input. They weren't his favorite, by the way, input. They weren't his favorite, by the way.
Speaker 1:
Now I could have responded and I could have allowed that to deflate me and I could have taken that to my body image and like, oh, you know, I need to do this, that and the other thing. I could have taken what he said a lot of different directions. I could have taken it as a personal front. No, it wasn't, he just didn't like pants, but a lot of times we do that. We tie our thinking to direct circumstances. I don't know why it is, but if the traffic isn't going the way we want it to go, or if someone's driving too fast, too slow or they're turning the wrong way, a lot of times we take it as like they're doing this against us. We allow it to shift our feelings, our emotion, our energy in those circumstances and then we don't show up as our best, fullest, brightest self. I'm a culprit of this too Conscious Investor.
Speaker 1:
Recently I was pulled over. I got a ticket. I'm a culprit of this too conscious investor. Recently I was pulled over. I got a ticket. I was not happy about this. Yes, I do like speed, but I do drive the speed limit in certain areas where I know speed limit is important. Spoken, spoken like somebody like we'll just leave it there, we won't talk politics.
Speaker 1:
All this to say, I allowed that circumstance of getting that ticket to completely derail. I allowed that ticket to completely derail my entire evening and I don't even know what that did for my son's evening. I was taking him to a civil air patrol meeting in town when I got the ticket. So we're on our way there and I was frustrated about this ticket. So what do you think that energy does? For his energy? He's trying to go somewhere and do something really awesome. And then what did I do on my drive home? I'm gonna throw myself under the bus because it might be helpful for you. What do you think I did? I broke one of the rules of the first agreement. I picked up my phone and I didn't use my words. Well, I picked up my phone. I called my husband. Can you believe? There you go Poison, just spreading poison. Then I get home and my energy is still not balanced.
Speaker 1:
My happiness was completely tied to my circumstances and because of that, I infected everyone around me in a really gross way everyone around me in a really gross way. There are a few other things that happened over the course of the days following getting that ticket, but that was the trigger moment for me that really caught my attention as to why am I allowing this to overrule my life? Why am I giving my joy, my happiness, my peace, my the best parts, to a circumstance? Now, maybe you don't get speeding tickets God bless you but we also have these circumstances where we're such productivity junkies and we're so caught up in the moment of that productivity that we are not even living. We're so caught up in that moment, in those circumstances, that we don't show up with presence and fullness with the people around us. Again, throwing myself under the bus, I get this. I just want to drive this point home because I want us to really relate to why most of us are depleting our happiness tank unnecessarily.
Speaker 1:
Let me give an analogy. We know I give some unique analogies. When I was a little girl we would drive up to Shaver Lake. There is a cabin that we would stay at and on the drive there you're driving down. I did, I lived in a suburb right, we established that Modesto. But we drive up into the mountains, into the Sierra Nevada range, favorite mountain range to this day, and if you just look out the window as a kid, it just looks like the trees are just going by, go by, go by so fast, and it just seems like a blur. And that's how most of us are living life.
Speaker 1:
Most of us are living life in the fast lane out on, you know, a forest road and everything seems to just be flying by us. We don't even have time to be happy, we just have time to like make sure we don't die, make sure we get the project done, make sure we get the kids where they need to be on time, make sure we, you know, give a hug and kiss before we go, you know, say goodbye. It's just a must do have to not want to kind of life, not a life where there's a room or space for happiness, like true presence that creates that happiness. But the interesting thing about this is that when we stop and slow down, when we get to the cabin, it was calm, it was still. You could see the bark on the trees, you could see insects, squirrels, you could smell, you could actually smell the fresh mountain air. All of your senses are just invoked and it's amazing your senses are just invoked and it's amazing. You see, most of us are so wrapped up in our circumstances, driving down that horse road, letting everything just go by, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, that all of our senses are just raw and we need to just find that stillness, find that peace. That happiness is there all the time. It's available to us at any given moment, but we're usually so busy going by that we miss out. We miss out on that feeling, we miss out on that experience because we lack that presence.
Speaker 1:
Here's something else. We are probably used to this concept. I'm going to ask you a question, conscious Investor. Is your standard of living the same as it was when you were 18, 19 years old, even if you are a teenager listening to this as mom and dad are driving down the car? And, by the way, if you're a teenager and you listen to my podcast, high five, you're like I'm your raving fan. But I want you to know something that our standard of living, even if we're a teenager, has already increased. We don't usually stay at the same standard of living. We have a greater earning potential and we usually increase that standard of living.
Speaker 1:
And it's kind of interesting because a lot of times we correlate our happiness to the external world. And so, while our standard of living increased, therefore my threshold, the prerequisites for me to be happy, have increased. Does that make sense? It's an interesting thing to correlate. Now, I'm not saying those two are usually correlated, but I want you to also just think about happiness in a prerequisite, a measurement where, well, I have to do all of these things, then I can be happy. That's not living life. Life isn't contingent. Your happiness isn't contingent, based on circumstances taking place. You're going to see this, it's very true, because you can look at people who live well below the poverty line and they are happier than people that are, you know, well above the poverty line. They have more peace, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose, presence. You can go around the globe and see people living in a destitute state and yet they still smile. And that is why I have the confidence to say one of many reasons why our happiness is not tied and correlated to our circumstances. We have to develop that internal strength. We have to know what our buy box is like.
Speaker 1:
We talked about in the previous episode on clarity. Right, if we know what our life is about, if we have clarity around that, we can step into that presence of the moment, into the purpose, into the plan that brings about so much peace, joy, love, satisfaction, conscious investor, if you are feeling frustrated, if you are feeling like you are raw and numb because you are just driving down that forest road and everything's flashing by you and you feel like you don't have time to just stop, I want to assure you the world will not fall apart just because you freeze time. In fact, that's exactly what you need to do for yourself. You need to step in and you need to freeze that time. Everything that you say is most important to you is begging you to freeze that time, those relationships in your life that you're not present for. They're begging you to freeze the time so that you can figure this out, so you can do that internal housekeeping and house cleaning and that spring cleaning Sometimes it needs to take place where we just unload a lot of things that are no longer necessary in serving us. That's what I've got for you, conscious investor.
Speaker 1:
I hope that you reflect on this throughout your week. I hope that you decouple your happiness from your circumstances. You can't allow that significant other in your life to be your source of happiness. Your happiness comes from inside. Your job is a job. That's not where your happiness comes from. Your happiness comes from inside. Your job is a job. That's not where your happiness comes from. Your happiness comes from inside your kids. They're not your source of happiness. They can bring you all these things can bring you happiness at different moments and they could make you happy. That's not the source of happiness. The source of happiness is within you, and when we realize that we get to incubate the happiness, magic happens. It is powerful.