The Science of Happiness: Ignite Your Spark & Increase Your Potential with Kim Strobel

[00:00:00] Welcome him to soul guide radio. Thank you, Alison. I’m excited to be here. I am so excited. So I, you know, I get, Hey, the podcast is to a place where I get a lot of people applying to be guests. So that’s good. Right. Yes. Sign of something. And I always. I thought you were special. Yeah, exactly. So the first question I always read is not how many social followers they have.

[00:00:29] It’s nothing like that. I always read their proposed title. And I, what I love about your proposed title, which I believe is part of a title of a book or what you, you have a book coming out that’s about this, is the science of happiness. I know. That’s what pulled me in. Yeah. Give me some science. Science.

[00:00:50] It is, and that’s the title of my keynote, which really is mind blowing to people when they learn the science because we just, we don’t know what we don’t know. And so I’m so excited to share with you the science of happiness that I think is really going to shock you and your listeners. Oh, I love to be shocked.

[00:01:08] Um, do you, you follow a little bit human design? Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. I learned about it actually when I was in, um, have you heard of Catherine Zanchini’s Manifestation, babe? Yes. Don’t know a lot about it, but I’m familiar with it. Yeah. So I took her program and she went into that and it’s funny. A mutual friend of ours, Fran, we pulled out our charts the other day to discuss them.

[00:01:30] Oh, I love that. I love that. Um, I have defined the gate, uh, 51, which is, I believe it’s the gate 51. Um, my human design, uh, specialist will correct me, but it’s the gate of shock. And, um, so it just means that, um, you know, people who have this gait defined, and we all have all parts of the chart, so, um, but if you have this, uh, gait defined, it means that you can, uh, tend to attract shocking circumstances, but what I’ve noticed about this gait is I love to be shocked, like, like, not necessarily with a trauma, but like, shock me, Kim, with something like the science of happiness, like, I, that, like, you, you’re speaking my language.

[00:02:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that does something for you vibrationally too, I guess. Yeah, isn’t that funny? It’s funny how we, as we get to know our charts, we kind of see how it pops up both in the, in the light and in the shadow. And, um, I wanted to say something else we’re talking about. Oh, the other thing I wanted to say before we start really unpacking this is I want to say a word about science and spirituality, because I get really, um, Annoyed and even angry when I hear people say, I believe in science in the context of, I don’t believe all that woo crap because I need the science to prove that this is real.

[00:02:56] And that a plus B equals C. And I believe we are evolving to a point where science and spirituality are really starting to overlap. We’re starting to find the science of our intuition. We already know about the science of our energetic frequencies and how this enables us to connect to higher intelligence.

[00:03:14] And this is coming from people sitting in labs and doing tests and finding these vibrational frequencies and, and finding this stuff out. So you can absolutely believe in science. Yes. And you can be an extremely spiritual person. They are not mutually exclusive. No, and I think you’re right. I think we are really headed in that direction.

[00:03:34] A great book that I read this last year that really does an excellent job of combining the two is the biology of belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton. Have you seen or heard of that book? I love that book on my bookshelf. Yeah, mine too. And so a lot of what you’re saying is that, but it’s also understanding that a huge part of how we operate in the world is.

[00:03:59] Is belief right and believing in that, that we cannot see that we know is true and so, and so that’s what’s really cool about your podcast and your listeners is. I do think that people who understand that and practice that that is what elevates them. That’s what leads them to kind of different levels of success because they don’t always have to have.

[00:04:22] You know, the black and white to know and feel that they’re headed in the right direction. So true. You know, people sometimes say to me, you know, Allison, am I intuitive enough intuitive enough to work with you? Because I’m, I’m very high on the intuition and the spirituality and I’m a channel and I’m a psychic and all those things.

[00:04:42] And I say, all you have to have is an openness. If you’re open, we can go anywhere, but if you are closed off, meaning you don’t believe, then you cannot see, you cannot see what is right in front of you if you do not believe, you know, so you really, yeah, you really do have to believe it, but it’s not like believe it in the sense that you have to, whatever, like you, you’re not in an exploration of it, you are, but you have to believe in the openness of the possibility, then you can see it.

[00:05:13] Yeah, and then I think too, I mean, if it really, you know, you and I did a session back in December and, um, we did a ton of healing work and kind of going into these core wounds. And I was telling Fran that, you know, it’s not like you walk away from that. You’re like, oh, okay. I’m, I’m all better. I said, it’s been like weeks of me seeing things lift, but because I understand and 100%.

[00:05:39] Yeah. Believe in these healing modalities. I never lost faith. It wasn’t like, oh, it’s been a week and whatever. I’m still having these issues. And it’s kind of just like this little by little by little. And we don’t know, right, Alison, you know, if it’s going to take me a week to unload that or two months.

[00:05:57] Um, but I was telling Fran that for me, it’s taken longer. It’s been slow. And then all of a sudden I’m like, oh, oh, okay. I have been feeling. And there’s a little shift here that’s going on. And so for you to do your work, it takes me also believing and knowing that what you do does work. 1, 000%, 1, 000%. And the fact that sometimes healing is fast.

[00:06:26] I had a client once who was. She’s terrified of being attacked in her sleep at night. It had nothing to do with anything that happened in her current lifetime. She had a terrible past lifetime trauma where she was attacked and actually murdered in the middle of her night, in the middle of the night, in this horrible past lifetime.

[00:06:44] It’s how she ended her life. So she carried all that trauma forward into this lifetime. She had this seemingly irrational fear, right? She’s like, why do I have this fear? Like nothing’s ever happened to me in the dark. We did one session, Kim, and she reported, she still reports to me that after that one session, she was never afraid of the dark again.

[00:07:06] That’s incredible. That is That’s incredible. But that’s not typically how it works. I wish it, like, man, do I wish it would work like that. But typically, it’s exactly as you described. That, this is a more typical example of, it’s releasing little by little. We did this big healing session, but then It’s unraveling little by little.

[00:07:25] And by you seeing, seeing it and recognizing it, you’re actually aiding and facilitating and expediting your own healing. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I love it too. Felt really good. So you’re doing everything right. And just to say Fran is a mutual friend of ours, uh, that, uh, we’re, we’re mentioning here and I want to talk about the science of happiness.

[00:07:52] Yeah. I mean, it’s all, this is all related, right? It all, it’s all part of it. So tell us about the research. Let’s get into some research. We woos. They tell us that we don’t, we rely too much on, you know, this invisible thing you can’t see. Okay, fine. Give us some research. Yeah, well, and I tell people, you know, sometimes when I, um, get introduced as a happiness coach and I come out from behind the curtain and I feel like, oh, wow, 80 percent of those people probably hate me because I think I’m some kind of sunshine butterflies and and sprinkles.

[00:08:25] And the way that I got into the study of happiness goes back, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I was in the midst of my own. debilitating struggle that you and I have talked about severe debilitating panic disorder. Um, and really having to go within and rebuild my life from the inside out. And, um, so I was reading everything self help.

[00:08:46] I just was absorbing it all because all of a sudden I had frameworks and guidebooks that said like, this is how you get your life back. And then I got down to happiness. I just stumbled upon it. And it just like talk about an instinctual feeling inside knowing that this is what people need to learn. Um, and I feel like 10 years ago, if I was introduced as a happiness coach, I would have been laughed out of the room.

[00:09:12] But like you said, Allison, we’re entering into this new age where we are starting to consider way more spiritual practices. And it’s not necessarily like. Put your head to the grindstone, work as hard as you can, you know, don’t have a life outside of that because you have to do all of these things. And we’re understanding like, gosh.

[00:09:30] We’re really maybe not as happy as we want to be, and now we’re interested in knowing how to. We’re hungry for happiness. And so, um, I want to start out by saying that the research shows that we all have what’s called a happiness baseline. So maybe your baseline is here and mine’s a little bit lower, Alison, for whatever reason, you have a higher baseline and something good happens in your life.

[00:09:53] Maybe you get a new job, or you get married, or you go on a trip, or your kid gets into college, or. You just experience like something really good and your happiness level bumps up for a period of time, might be 2 hours, 2 weeks, 2 days, but it always is going to come back to whatever your baseline is. Now, this is where I think that in research, it’s very, very interesting is it says the same is true.

[00:10:18] Allison and I know you see this with the clients that you work with, we can endure really terrible things in our life. The science says trauma adversity. Injustice illness, you know, traumatic events, we can endure hard in our life, either big trauma or little trauma and our happiness level will go down.

[00:10:40] But for almost all human beings, it does recalibrate back to the baseline. And if you’re like me, you fight with the research a little bit. You’re like, I don’t know, like, there’s just some things that I feel like if those things happen to me, I don’t think I’d ever get my happiness back at all. Like, I just can’t even see.

[00:11:00] But then, Allison, I know I have good friends who have endured some very traumatic things in their life, and they go on to live joy filled, happy filled lives. Not that they don’t feel the grief of that, but they are able to recalibrate back to creating a life of happiness and joy. So then that begs the question, okay, Kim, but why is Allison’s baseline higher than yours?

[00:11:28] And where does, where does this come from? So this is where I think it gets interesting. So I want you to picture a pie chart as your long term happiness. And what we know is that 50 percent of your long term happiness is genetic. No. Yeah. I know, right? I reject that. That’s true. I know. And I’m a little bit like, I want to reject it too, because I feel like we can actually go in and rejuvenate ourselves and we can like do things to like, yeah.

[00:12:03] So funny. Whenever I tell people that I feel like 80 percent of the heads drop and they’re like, I’m so screwed. I mean, I have weird parents because they, um, I mean, I think I, I had good parents, so I can’t say I had good parents and I would say they are pretty happy people, but I also feel like my father is a glasses have half empty kind of dude.

[00:12:28] You know, he’s a midwestern farmer. Who almost went bankrupt in the eighties and he’s never got over it. Chip on his shoulder kind of thing. Yeah. Um, so it’s very interesting. I think it’s for me, it’s kind of, it’s kind of all right. All right. I’ll I’m going to do okay. And then I’m kind of like, oh, I’m doomed all at the same time.

[00:12:47] I always say like I was born to a super loving, nurturing mother. Um, but her brain is wired to pick up every little. thing that might be wrong. I always say she would have been a great quality control inspector because I mean, she can just pick up anything. And then my dad is wired with a brain that just kind of always just sees, you know, the good that’s going on.

[00:13:11] And so it’s kind of like some of us were born and can look at a French fry and gain 10 pounds and others of us can eat French fries and be okay, right? So there we know there’s this genetic disposition. There is a part of me that says, Oh, but you don’t know my spirituality and you don’t know what I could do with vibration.

[00:13:26] So I’m not sure. But I think, you know, the research is showing that we all have genetic tendencies towards different things and happiness is 1 of them. I don’t know. I would be like, well, what about energy healing every time you heal a block and to include ancestral trauma, right? Right. Which is what brings us down.

[00:13:47] You know, this is what brings our happiness baseline down. Is that trauma when we heal that and our parents don’t heal that we’re going to be higher than they are. Yeah, yeah, we’re going to say that this is for people who don’t understand and know that we have these healing modalities because, like, even for me, I mean, I feel like I have a happy disposition.

[00:14:11] Um, but I also see that I have a tendency to like, um, I, I go into resistance when something doesn’t go my way and I resist and resist and resist. And then that, like, causes my suffering because I get, you know, I won’t just accept that this is what has happened. And, and so I see, like, my brain likes to churn things like that.

[00:14:29] But then for me personally, you know, there’s so much ancestral stuff that has come through. The years that like I am at a cellular, at a cellular level, I am changing. I am changing this for future generations. So, um, but it, but it is really, yeah. So the science. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, I just think the science on that is, you know, it’s like there’s so many, when we say happy, it’s like, how do we respond to stress?

[00:14:57] And how do we navigate difficulty? You know, like I said, I think I’m like, people would say, Oh, Kim’s usually just got a happy disposition, but Kim also, her brain gets very fixated and she can’t always get it out. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. So we’ll, we’ll accept that. A lot of our ancestry, our upbringing is going to be in the mix when it determines our mate baseline.

[00:15:23] We’ll accept that to the varying degrees you wish to accept that. Um, so what’s Maybe without healing and without working on yourself, that’s what it would be. You know what? I bet you that is. I bet you that is. And I’m sure the research, I don’t deny the research, but I do think we’re evolving. You know, we’re evolving and the research doesn’t always Quite catch up to that.

[00:15:43] Uh, so what’s the other half of it or the other part? So, um, this is where I think it gets even more shocking. Is that the research shows that we, and this is research that has been studied for the last 40 years by Dr. Martin Seligman. He wrote the book, Flurry, Sonia Lubomirski, Sean Acor and basically what we know is we can take every external circumstance that a human being has had.

[00:16:09] What kind of childhood did you have where your parents married, single, divorced or widowed? Where you, uh, did you live in poverty or not? You know, what kind of home did you live in? Even as an adult, we take everything that you’ve ever experienced, all external circumstances, and we can throw them into the pie.

[00:16:27] And the research shows over and over and over again, that external circumstances only account for about 10 percent of long term happiness. Wow. Yeah. If you’re like Kim Strobel, you let people and experiences sometimes still way more than 10 percent of the pie. That is amazing. You know, I have an interesting story.

[00:16:52] I met my husband in Afghanistan, where I was a humanitarian aid worker and he was in the military. And, When you’re in the military and you’re, and he was assigned to the U. S. embassy, so he was kind of more of an in an office job, not necessarily like out on the front lines kind of thing, but they have a very strict rule where they cannot, when they are deployed to a place like Afghanistan, people in the military cannot fraternize with anyone.

[00:17:21] And so we met each other and we fall, we fell deeply head over heels in love with each other. And so we did a lot of sneaking around and kept it very quiet. But so we spent a lot of time, I was living in a FEMA trailer. It was a FEMA trailer. It was like one single bed, one toilet, one shower, and a desk.

[00:17:41] And that was it. It was tin walls. And I look back, that time we spent together, and we had to spend a lot of time in the FEMA trailer because it was a secret! We couldn’t be Yeah, you were hiding! Oh, we weren’t hiding! And Kim, that was some of the happiest time of my life by a lot. And it was living in a FEMA trailer.

[00:18:02] Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, that’s the thing. And when I tell you what the other 40 percent is, that’s going to shift to and I can’t wait to talk about why this formula for success has been backwards for all these years. But, um, you’re exactly right. And, you know, I think, like, sometimes we do have things happen that are going to steal more than 10%, right?

[00:18:21] Like, if my husband that I love dearly decides he’s leaving me today, I mean, obviously, I can’t be like, well, the happiness research says it only stills 10%. So I need to so this is not about ignoring our hard feelings. And I want to be really clear about that, too, because, you know, I believe toxic positivity is a real issue where we’re not acknowledging that we’re allowed to feel.

[00:18:42] The hard feelings. We have to fill those. My issue is, is when, when we let something still our happiness, we let it still it for way too long. We hold on to it. Back in 2020, Allison, I had to work on forgiveness because I had had some people in my life that had done, in my opinion, some really terrible things and hurt me in big ways.

[00:19:06] And I had so much bitterness inside of me and talk about holding on to something. It’s like I knew that I was letting my thoughts were dominating what they did to me. Um, and I knew I was letting it steal my joy and I still couldn’t stop it because like, self righteously, I just was like, no, this, this was wrong.

[00:19:26] And this is what they’ve done to me. And I held onto it, held onto it. And knowing that I studied the law of attraction and have been a student of it for. 20 years. I was like, this is impeding. This is impeding my business to be able to expand. This is impeding every area of my life. And so in 2020, I decided.

[00:19:44] I’m zeroing in on forgiveness. I’m sick of giving more than 10 percent of the pie to these individuals. This is on me. At this point, this has been on Kim, right? It’s no more. I’m, I was playing victim. Um, and so I did that, Allison, and I know we’re kind of venturing off the path here, but I did that. And in one year’s time, I doubled, doubled the revenue of my business.

[00:20:08] Wow, you know, so understanding that we all have these external circumstances that do affect us, but that honestly, for the most part, many times we’re choosing to let more than 10 percent be taken from us. Yeah, yeah. And I think that we think. That, you know, if I make the money and can afford the nicer house and the nicer car, then, then I’ll be happy when I have those external things that I think I want, then, then, and only then will I be happy.

[00:20:42] Well, let me just tell you, the listeners needs to know that when you’re on a podcast episode with someone who is deeply psychic and intuitive. They still where you’re going next, because I literally say that statement. And I’m going to say it after I tell you the third piece of the pie, but I’m sitting here going, Alison, I say that on the stage, I literally say exactly what you just said on the stage.

[00:21:05] And I’m in your head. I’m in your head, Kim. Problems with you. I’ve never interviewed with a psychic and intuitive. These are the problems. She’s stealing my red carpet. I love it. But you, you go, you, you say it better than I do. First of all, if 50 percent is genetic and 10 percent is your external circumstances, the part that absolutely infuses me is that we all can increase our happiness levels by up to 40 percent because that’s up for grabs.

[00:21:36] I like that. I mean, who doesn’t want to, and I’m going to tell you when we increase those happiness levels, um, we start to move the lever in every other area of our life, but that 40 percent includes these three things. Are you ready? Yes. Send it. The thoughts that you’re thinking on a daily basis, which you and I know that there’s so much more to that because the thoughts we’re thinking become the beliefs that we hold and the beliefs that we hold become the actions that we do or do not take.

[00:22:01] And the actions that we do or do not take become the reality we’re living in. So we can say forever about that. The 2nd thing is the actions that you’re taking on a daily basis. Oh, Allison, my, did you see the balloons that just came up? Yeah, that was lovely. When I do quotes or something, my, my screens have been doing like confetti.

[00:22:22] If I give a thumbs up, sometimes a little thumbs up, I don’t know what’s going on. But anyways, I love that. Yeah. Thoughts, actions, and behaviors. Thoughts, actions, and behaviors. And those are the pieces that we can control. And this is what I tell people. So we can have people do bad things to us. We can have Lots of, but the bottom line is at the end of the day, I’m 100 percent responsible for Kim’s struggles life and you’re 100 percent responsible for Allison’s life.

[00:22:51] And at some point we have to go, you know what, I’m no longer playing a victim to these circumstances. I’m moving over here into warrior mode because I’m the only one that gets to control the next steps that happen in my life. Yeah, I love that. You know, it makes me think, you know, this 40 percent right that we have control over.

[00:23:11] Um, when am I bigger? And, you know, I’ve been talking about this. In my podcast and, uh, you know, blog posts about how 2023 was the year that I experienced the most joy in my business, not the most revenue, but far and away the most joy. And when I look back and it’s like, why, why was it such a joyful year in my business?

[00:23:35] Like it was like those little things, like I got to know my human design environmental arrow. Which is right facing, which means that I need to be in a variety of different environments working to be in harmony with my energy. But before I got to know that I was always in my home office and my home office was starting to feel like a cage.

[00:23:55] So it was very simple. I just started working from coffee shops and a coworking place and I got a variety of different environments going and that did more to my happiness. That little thing, it was crazy. That is amazing. That’s so, and to think that you didn’t even know for a while that something, that little bitty change.

[00:24:19] Could have that little bitty change. Yep. And then I think the other thing that really added that joy factor, that happiness factor was I’ve landed on an offer that I’m like, this is me. This is the offer in my business. I meant to birth to the world. And then I, and I have offered it before, but this was like the third or fourth time I was offering it and I attracted just a collection of extraordinary people.

[00:24:49] And it was just like a joy. It was just joy. And that one offering spread throughout my whole business. It just made my whole showing up in my business just so joyful. And you have to wonder if because you didn’t, um, acknowledge and begin to practice in different environments, knowing what that does for your joy.

[00:25:11] I mean, it had to open up other, um, access to other parts of your creativity, which is how you were able to kind of bundle and package and then feel very aligned with this particular service that you want to offer. A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. So, and it’s nice to know, like I know from my own experience without a shadow of a doubt that having joy is more joyful than having revenue.

[00:25:40] Joy or happiness is more valuable there. I want to say it that way. It’s more valuable than having more revenue. Yeah. But the science would tell you that, um, and this is where, uh, we’ll get into what you said just earlier, but the science would tell you that when you prioritize happiness, uh, first, when you make happiness.

[00:26:06] An important pillar in your life that then you are, you will start to experience more success in all the forms that that looks like, whether it be, uh, you know, more revenue, stronger relationships, more love in your life, more abundance. Um, but that’s where we get into what you had kind of prefaced earlier is, you know, we’ve all been kind of embedded and I’ll tell you, I bet you were super embedded with it.

[00:26:31] If you are the daughter of a farmer, but, um. We were kind of told this social script from our parents, our teachers, even, uh, this media that this is how you get to success. Allison. This is what I need you to do. I need you to work really hard in school, and I need you to get really good grades. And if you get really good grades that I need you to get into a really good college.

[00:26:50] Now, I need you to work even harder because you’re competing with way more people. And I need you to have a really good. Uh, GPA, grade point average, right? Here’s why you need that. Because now we need to land the good job or the good internship. Because if we can get you a good job and you can make good money, now we’re digging in.

[00:27:05] Like this is all about work hard, work hard, work hard, work hard. Because eventually, if you can make the money, then you can get the nice home, you can get the nice car, you can have the 2. 5 kids. And way over here, when you’ve achieved all of those things, That’s how you get to happiness. Now you’re there, right?

[00:27:21] And even though we’re all shaking our heads and we’re like, that’s such a BS story, we know that’s not true. We all have these social scripts so deeply embedded in us that, that sometimes. You know, they’re so stuck in the subconscious. And so my son, Spencer, when he was at university at college, he went through coven in my, you know, straight a B student started like, just coven just destroyed those students.

[00:27:47] And he was getting like, these and I mean, I went into like, mama. You better get it together. You’re going to graduate from this school. We got to get you a good job. And, and I was like, I just lost my mind for a minute there when I saw those grades come back. And that was, even though I know the research, Allison, and I know that my level of income is not tied to my happiness, even though I know that logically.

[00:28:10] We’re still so ingrained with like, this is, this is the grind that we have to do to get there. And if our kids don’t do it either, they’re not going to get there. And what the last 20 years of research has said is that formula is 100 percent backwards. In fact, we need to flip it. And the flip is. That success is not the thing that fuels happiness.

[00:28:33] It’s that happiness. fuels success. And when we get your happiness at the forefront of your life, we move the needle in your relationships. We move the needle in the, in, in your job and fulfillment of your job. You know, we move the needle in every single area, but it means that your happiness comes first.

[00:28:53] And that doesn’t mean like, Oh, I’m just, you know, I need to make sure I get a massage every week or get my nails done. Or, you know, we, we kind of tout the self care stuff, right? Like, You know, take care of you and all. Well, yeah, but I’m talking about, like, really intentionally creating happiness habits that literally flip your brain to positive more times than negative, neutral, or stressed.

[00:29:18] Ugh, I love it. I love it. I love your example with your son. Kim, I find stuff coming out of my mouth to my daughter, and I’m just like, oh my god, this is the collective conditioning talking and not me. So it’s like, stop, Allison, stop! And it’s interesting, you remind me of a conversation I was having with my dad last summer when I was like, you know, dad, I don’t actually desire a lot of material things.

[00:29:44] I don’t like to have a lot of clothes. I don’t drive a car. Um, I like to have an okay house, but I don’t want a big house. Like I don’t. I don’t like, uh, that just doesn’t drive me, but things that do drive me is travel. Travel really drives me. And I like nice travel. I like luxury travel and as well as eco travel and camping travel.

[00:30:04] Like I like the full range of travel. And I said to him, you know, I would just love to be able to have enough money someday that I could always afford business class if I wanted it. So if I’m going on a long haul flight. I can book business class and it’s not going to break my bank and it’s going to be just a totally fine purchase.

[00:30:21] So that’s my goal in life to always comfortably be able to afford business class. And his first response, well, you’re going to have to burn the candle at both ends then. And I said, maybe dad, maybe, but maybe I need to make sure that I’m well rested. I’m not overworking. And then I’m And I’m happy in my work and maybe that will lead me to my business class.

[00:30:49] And that’s the thing. And my husband and I kind of laugh about it because, you know, I’ve been on this spiritual journey of co creating for a very long time with spirit and my husband believes it because he sees what I’ve done, but he, he doesn’t intentionally practice it. And 1 of the things I’ve proved to him over and over is, um, because he has started to travel with me a little bit more when I have a speaking event somewhere, we’ll add on a few days and he’ll get some, take some days off work.

[00:31:16] And I’m like, oh. You mean you landed two more signs while we were laying here by the pool on vacation? That happened. And so what I’ve noticed is that I now have made a lot more time for play, even though in my head I have to fight it because I’m like, Oh my goodness, Kim, you only work two and a half days for the last like four weeks here in January.

[00:31:37] Um, and I told myself I was going to take it easy, but I’m like, Oh shoot, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m really growing this business. Am I really doing the right things? But But I know that when I incorporate more play in my life. Right. That when I take the time to go on hikes and go in the woods or read my novel or take a nap, it’s like everything expands because of that.

[00:32:00] And I think that for people like us who did grow up with a generation of people who literally say, okay, well, it’s all about the hours you put in and those court, you know, those are directly aligned to the money you’re going to make. This new age of people, which is your listeners are going. You know what?

[00:32:16] Actually don’t believe that to be true. Um, and by the way, I have to say the happiness research says that a bigger house isn’t going to make you a lot happier, you know, people who make 50, 000 versus 50, 000, 000. You know, there’s not actually when you look at income levels, but research does change around the 75, 000 dollar mark, because it says, like, if you’re below 75, 000, there are some stressors that take place that really do impede your happiness.

[00:32:43] But after 75, 000, it doesn’t matter if it’s 75, 000, 000, there’s not there’s not a big jump in happiness. Right? It’s amazing. That’s amazing. It really is. And it’s, it’s like, but we all tend to think again, that’s wired in us. And, and I’m still convinced when I can get the beautiful beach home, I’m going to be a lot happier that, but the bottom line is, is yeah, I’m going to be happier for a couple months.

[00:33:08] And then my brain’s going to recalibrate because it has hedonic adaptation. It’s going to go, Oh, well now you’re used to this Kim. Now you need another bump. What else do you need to be happy? And what we’re talking about. Yeah. Is finding those things that consistently keep us elevated. And one of them, Alison is called experiences.

[00:33:27] So you wanting to invest your money in travel experiences, that is one of the pieces of research that says is really going to help you maintain that is it says, do place your money in experiences because that’s I love that. Yes. Yes. Um, that’s so cool. And, and, and lately when I’ve been Designing my travel.

[00:33:54] I’ve been trying to get more intention about intention about it and thinking about like, okay, I’m going to this fabulous place. What do I want to experience and not just go through the motions and we’ll, this is what most tourists do. And I I’m really trying to go next level in that experience. So I love hearing that.

[00:34:12] There’s a word for that called savor that I want you to keep in mind. Favor. About savoring your experiences. And if you think of savoring in cooking, right, it’s like being really enmeshed. Really savoring your surroundings, your feelings, your experiences, being in awe of what it is that you’re actually doing and, and so, and being very present.

[00:34:38] So there’s this term called savoring your experiences. I love that. I hope that’s a chapter in your book. That’s gotta be book two. Yeah, I think that’s book two, right? Oh my God, that’s, that’s. That’s fantastic. Savoring your experiences. Okay, Kim, I’m loving this conversation. Oh my gosh. This is so amazing.

[00:34:57] So I love frameworks, processes, and formulas because I love taking really cool concepts, but having something to plug into it so I can integrate it and take action. And sometimes I think in the spiritual discourse that can lack, but I understand you have a formula for us for success and happiness. Am I correct?

[00:35:18] Yes, yeah, you’re correct. And so again, making sure that we’re doing these intentional things, and they’re just intentional happiness habits, and we can’t do all of them. My book goes into, I forget, there’s like 8 research based happiness habits that I tell how I’ve applied to my own life and how they’ve moved.

[00:35:35] the needle drastically. Um, but I, I have, I have time to teach one really solid one and it’s not going to blow anybody’s mind. But what is going to blow people’s mind is why it works because I’m somebody you can tell me to do this stuff all day long, but I have to know why, how’s it really going to change my life?

[00:35:52] And so one of the top five research based happiness habits that will work on that 40% Is the practice of gratitude. Okay. Now we’re going to talk a little bit more deeply about that, but here’s why it works. On average, humans have about 70, 000 thoughts a day. Did you know that Allison? Ugh, 70,000. Yeah. And for those of us, I have defined head center and defined ajna.

[00:36:21] So we’re probably, we’re probably up there around a hundred thousand. Yeah. Some people go up to one 20. Yeah. . So if you have definition, I bet you you’re on the higher side, and if you’re open, you’re probably on the lower side, right? Right. And so where it gets even uglier is that for the average human being, 80% of your thoughts in a day’s time are negative.

[00:36:44] No! Yeah, and you’ll Oh my gosh! I know, and your people will understand this because sometimes people are like, there’s no way. And first of all, they can’t even believe they’re having 70, 000 thoughts. But I say, yeah, if you’re an average human being by the time you put your head on the pillow at night most of us have had 56, 000 negative thoughts.

[00:37:08] That’s insane. The issue is, is that so many of them are housed in our subconscious mind. So we’re not even aware, right? So like, when we get up in the morning, I mean, I bet some people have had, and again, this would be on average, if you’re an average human being, you’ve probably had 46 negative thoughts before you even got into the bathroom.

[00:37:28] The alarm went off and you went. And then you went, I didn’t get enough sleep tonight. And you’re like, oh, I have that day meeting and you get up and you start walking to the bathroom. You’re like, oh, my back hurts. And then you look in the mirror and you’re like, geez, my, my eyes are so puffy this morning for this interview.

[00:37:42] And so I always say, like, some people have had 76 thoughts within the first minute and we’re not even aware of them. Oh, Kim, I have a seven year old who, um, flops on me in the morning. I mean, I probably have a rapid fire negative thoughts in like my first five minutes. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And, and, um, the reason we’re wired this way is it goes all the way back to cave man, cave woman, our, our cake times where, um, we have this thing placed in our called an amygdala.

[00:38:14] And the amygdala is, uh, the number one job of it. Is to scan 24 7 for danger, right? Because back then we had to be on alert all the time. Is there a saber tooth tiger who will destroy attack and kill me? Do I, can I find a cave for shelter or are we going to freeze to death tonight? Is there a plan of whatever coming into, you know, so our brains.

[00:38:36] That was a safety mechanism to constantly focus on the negative. The issue is, is it’s 2024 and you and I still have an amygdala. And it’s number one job is still to scan for danger. So our brain is automatically clicking like that. And what’s even crazier is of the 80 percent of thoughts that are negative.

[00:38:56] 95 percent of the 80 percent that are negative are the exact same thoughts you had the day before. Oh, what a buzzkill. Every morning that seven year old is flopping on you and you’re like. And I’m like, Oh, I was deep in sleep. Oh, why does she do that? Oh yeah. Oh my God. What we know. I just feel that. I think the reason why it’s such a buzzkill is because I’m just like, I so feel the truth in that.

[00:39:25] Like I’m like, yeah, I feel that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that most of us can resonate with that because again, we’re just going to blame it on our amygdalas. Right? I mean, we’re just damn amygdala. I know. But well, can I say something interesting cam from a human design perspective? The human design folks say that by 2027, our center, our energetic center, if you will, point of awareness is moving from the spleen, the spleen energy center, which is our survival, fight, flight, am I going to be eaten by a tiger today?

[00:40:05] To the emotional solar plexus, which is more the intuitive, the emotional, the connection. So, I believe as we evolve, we’re evolving hopefully away from that negative brain bias to this higher consciousness. This is part of it. Yes. Yeah. And I think you’re exactly right. And when we combine that with the own work that we’re doing on ourselves, so like when I teach my brain to, so what I know is I can, the brain that has neuroplasticity and I can rewire the route that it keeps taking by default day in and day out because our brain has thousands and thousands of roadways and whichever one we travel down the most is the one that gets more ingrained, which means if, you know, like for women in particular, Okay.

[00:40:48] They body shame themselves all day long. Like if we had a little, a little, um, thing that said, okay, I opened my app and today, Kim, you had, you know, 8, 072 negative thoughts about your body today. Guess what? Tomorrow I’m going to have 9, 000 cause now that’s even deeper. And the next thing I’m going to have 90.

[00:41:05] You know, and so it just keeps getting deeper. So what we know is that when we get you to write down and you do need to write it down, because that’s how we get it into your subconscious mind. When you write down just 3 different things that you’re thankful for. Every single day that what happens is you literally begin to reroute the new neural feedback loop in your brain.

[00:41:28] And so your brain is used to go in this route, but now all of a sudden you’re massaging and growing and strengthening this other. And what happens is you literally change. The new neural feedback loop in your brain and you shifted a little bit positive, which means you go throughout your day. And now all of a sudden, more things are popping that you are seeing as like, whether it’s opportunities that were there the whole time that you didn’t know were there.

[00:41:53] Or it’s just like, Oh my gosh, the sun is like, we haven’t had sun now for two weeks. And the sun’s coming through my window. And you know, my dog, George is laying here just gazing at me because he’s my Velcro dog. It’s like all of a sudden our brain starts to see all of this good. And when we get our brain to positive, we start to move the needle in the other areas of our life.

[00:42:13] And so it’s like a two minute practice. I say, Oprah preached this for 15 years. I never would do it. I started doing it 10 years ago. And it is a game changer. And the only rule I have, Alison, is I want you to be specific. I want you to get a journal or a notebook, and I want you to write the day every day, and I want you to use the words I am dot, dot, dot, because you and I know probably you’ve studied Wayne Dyer, Wayne Dyer said, I am two of the most high vibrational.

[00:42:44] Words. There are, oh, there’s one. I love Wayne Dyer. I heart Wayne. I think it’s a spirit guide is telling us right on sisters. Yeah. And I’m sure, you know, about the emotional, uh, frequency, vibrational skill and guess what? Higher than gratitude. It has the highest vibration of any emotion. And so when we’re putting ourselves in that daily, and we write the words, I am dot, dot, dot.

[00:43:13] And the research says, you only have to do 3. I do 5, but the research says, write down 3. And the only thing I tell you to do is be specific. Don’t just say, I’m thankful that, um. I have a strong body. Say, I’m thankful that these legs today are going to run 12 miles for me. Don’t just say, I’m thankful for my family.

[00:43:34] Say, I’m thankful that every Thursday night we go on a pizza date. Like we do need to be specific, but it’s a two minute practice. And I tell people when they do that daily gratitude, they are shifting their energetic vibration that they are in, you know, emulating that that is changing them at a cellular level.

[00:43:53] And the higher vibrational you get, the more you actually quiet that amygdala, you quiet that negative bias of your brain, and you can look at the exact same situation, and you will just have a different conclusion. It will not be like, well, that situation sucks so bad. Oh my God, my daughter’s jumping on me in the morning.

[00:44:14] It would be like. Ah, this is fun. She’s going to be 16 soon and I’m going to miss these days. You know, like the higher you vibrate actually also helps to get your brain interpreting situations just differently and in a more open, expansive way. It really does. And I tell people the power of gratitude is not that.

[00:44:34] Can you do it on an easy day? It’s can you do it on a hard day? You know, I had a really hard day. I remember it was a couple months ago and I went for a run and I was like, okay, and I didn’t even want to think positive thoughts, right? I just wanted to be in my ugly, but I’ve been in my ugly for a little bit too long.

[00:44:49] And so I was like, just look around while you’re running. I’m like, oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Look. There’s like the grass is starting to come up. I see the green grass. Okay. Let’s be thankful for green grass. And I’m just going to go picking what most people just think are menial, but it literally flipped my brain.

[00:45:04] Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, and I think for all of us, we understand the power of vibration. This is why, you know, the people who tune into this podcast, we understand that we are these energetic bodies and whatever we’re vibrating at is what we’re attracting into our life. And. Even though like I, I live in a very beautiful home, um, and I’m, I’m more thankful for it than probably the normal person because I was a single mom at one time in my life and I made 8 an hour and it was really, really tough.

[00:45:37] And so I’ve been in this home now for 10 years and, and the happiness research would say, Oh Kim, your brain just got used to it. And now it’s not such a big deal anymore. That that’s why putting money in, you know, like there’s nothing wrong with living in a big home, but if you think it’s going to bring you a ton of happiness, it’s probably not going to elevate your happiness level too much.

[00:45:56] But for me, Alison, because of where I came from and I never lost sight of that, when I pull down this driveway almost daily, I look at this home and I go, wow, who I love. The cozy comfort home that sits on two acres. Like I’m always sending it gratitude as a way to remind my brain that this is something to be super thankful for.

[00:46:22] I love that practice. A couple of things. I love everything you just said. And I totally agree. A couple of things I’ll just add a way I approach it is, um. About the, um, getting specific. 100 percent agree. And notice when you’re, um, saying the same thing over and over again, try to think about something like, well, what happened today?

[00:46:46] At least one of your three, try to get something new in that you haven’t been grateful for for a while. Or it’s something that happened that day. I think that also because with the gratitude routine, like, just like you said, you can get in sort of like, I’m grateful for my kids. I’m grateful for my, you know, and you can get in a little Of a routine of it and then it, it doesn’t have its energetic magic as when you just give it a second to be like, what happened today, even if my day was very crappy.

[00:47:12] And then the other thing I’ll say is a practice is it’s exactly what you’re talking about. Um, and it’s a practice I call wanting what you have. Right? And you’re doing that beautifully with your example of the house. And it’s so easy. It’s that brain bias that once we get something, it immediately wants the next thing.

[00:47:33] Once you have your first 100K year in business, then you want your 200K year. And it’s just odd. If you don’t watch it, your brain will just automatically go for the next target. So I like to play a little game called wanting what you have, which is exactly what you’re talking about. Where you just like want what you have.

[00:47:52] I want my house. I want my husband. I want my kids. Like all the things that you didn’t have and you worked to manifest it and now you have it. Spend some time just wanting it. I just want this house. I just love it. And it’s the same as gratitude, but I think it kind of like, it almost has almost a different frequency to it where you’re, you’re just desiring something that you already have.

[00:48:14] Yeah, no, I, I love that. And I think that honestly, we, we don’t always look back and see how far we’ve come. And, and, you know, you’re right. Our brain is triggered to look for the next thing. And especially, I mean, I have a feeling that a lot of the women that you, you know, work with, we. We are out there to make a really big impact in the world.

[00:48:32] And so our brain is naturally going what’s next, what’s next. Instead of, um, it’s so funny that you bring that up. I tell you, this is your intuitiveness, but like, you know, there was a time when I was waking up every morning at five 30 and driving an hour to a job that I just couldn’t stand. And this is all before I launched my business.

[00:48:48] And so I’ll listen. Normally I get to, you know, I kind of sleep in until like seven 30, but. You know, we had this schedule, so I had to get up at like 630 my time and I’m like getting ready and kind of like, you know, in the mirror and I’m like, Oh my gosh, Kim used to get up an hour before this every single like, just take a moment.

[00:49:06] Kim Strobel, take a moment and feel the beauty of your life, you know, that’s what you’re saying is like, let’s look around and really feel the goodness of the stuff that we wanted. That is now ours. And I love that. Idea. And the second thing I want to say, because you and I could talk forever. I can tell, but going back to the gratitude.

[00:49:25] I want to challenge your people because I think that self love and is really a hard thing, especially for women. We don’t bestow enough of it on ourselves. And so I would challenge them. Like, I challenge myself that 1 of the 3, I write something that I’m grateful for about myself. Oh, I love that. I love that.

[00:49:42] And I’m just going to let people know, and I’m going to send some gratitude for Kim. She was, she’s recording at 7 a. m. her time because we’re seven hours apart, uh, because just to accommodate my schedule, which I have, I have to go pick up my daughter after we record this. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that.

[00:49:59] And this is a beautiful segue, and it can be. You can loop what you just said into, can you leave our listeners with an invitation? Yeah, well, and so here I, I want to, and I’m going to actually send you a downloadable thing. You can add to the show notes. It’s called our gratitude prompt and tracker. And it gets you, you were saying, Hey, let’s challenge yourself.

[00:50:22] Let’s not just constantly be thankful for our family or our health. And so this is going to give them five prompts to kind of start to get their brain looking for different. different areas of gratitude that they haven’t considered before. There is a 21 day tracker if they want to use it, but, but my challenge to them is, look, if we’re going to incorporate a habit and we’re going to make this a part of our everyday life, then we have to know when it’s going to take place.

[00:50:47] and have a trigger for it. So we have to make this a part of our everyday routine. So for me, I wake up, I meditate, I do my gratitude journal, I write my affirmations, I drink my shake, and I exercise. I know that sounds crazy to some people, but those are the five things that are part of my morning routine that are going to happen every single day.

[00:51:05] And that’s the order that they happen in. And the reason I’m successful is because I know That my gratitude is happening every day at that place at that time. And then my gratitude journal sits out. So that I see it because I have to have a trigger. So what I tell people as a coach is if we’re going to incorporate a habit, we have to engineer our environment to be successful.

[00:51:26] So my challenge to them is to consider the gratitude practice, to get a notebook, to think about when during your day, is it going to happen? Is it going to happen in the morning? Is it going to, is it going to be on your nightstand at night? Um, the research is actually a little bit stronger than if you do it right before you go to sleep.

[00:51:42] It’s even more powerful, um, and so, and then really to just kind of take it on as like a 30 day challenge and say, okay, I don’t really know if it’s going to shift my life, but I’m going to dedicate 30 days to doing this. And we’re going to see what happens. That’s my challenge. I love that challenge so much and I want to get my hands on this gratitude prompt and tractor because I sometimes get in a little routine rut with my gratitude practice and I’m thinking this is not giving me the energetic zap I want because I’m just sort of doing it to do it instead of really getting in the energy of it and so I love that you have these prompts and I think that that kind of stuff really can help.

[00:52:21] I love what you’re saying about setting your environment up for success and having those triggers. Those triggers like, oh, there’s that gratitude journal on my nightstand. That means before I go to bed, I, you know, or before I get to do my nighttime crossword puzzle, I got to do my two minutes of gratitude journaling.

[00:52:39] So we will leave the link to that. Very nice gift in the show notes. Kim, tell our listeners how they can find you and connect deeper to you. Oh, yes. So my, my book is called teach happy small steps to big joy. Now I have to tell you, I was a former teacher and when I started doing motivational speaking, I started doing a lot of it in the education space.

[00:53:04] And now we’ve, we do, do it in the corporate space, but my book is full of, okay, if we want to work on that 40%, if we want to elevate our life in that way, here are the habits that we need to consider. And it’s basically a framework for saying, like, how do we get out of the hustle and bustle of our life?

[00:53:22] Like this hamster wheel that we’re all on, because we don’t even know how to, we don’t even know what to take off of our plate, right? We’re, we’re mothers, we’re, we’re wives, we’re entrepreneurs. It can become so much. I have to say that. But throughout the book, it’s written specifically with some teachers in mind, um, because I have an education publisher, but it is truly a book that anybody will pick up and be like, okay, these are the habits that if I’m ready to shift, but I just want to be real honest about that.

[00:53:51] There’s going to be examples of like teachers and working with students, but it’s called teach happy because I believe that when we can teach each other how to incorporate happiness habits. And what that might look like, especially for women. I feel like women are drowning. Allison, I, I don’t know if you feel that pressure or not, but you know, I, here’s what I always say.

[00:54:12] I always say, and I, I say it because I saw it somewhere, but women are expected to raise children as if they don’t have a full time career. And they are expected to work a full time career as if they don’t have children. And this is in, in, in the book, you know, I specifically say, look, if you’re still the one that is holding most of the household responsibility or most of the child rearing, which again, most of us have, here are the steps that we have to take to free ourselves up to get some space in our life.

[00:54:45] And so, you know, we give some really, I feel like the book specifically talks to women. I love that. And we have a lot of coaches. We have a lot of coaches who teach. We have healers who teach. So there’s a lot of teachers in this audience. So listeners, get a hand, get your hands on a copy of Kim’s book. I mean, this is just really shocking in such a good way.

[00:55:07] Stuff that we’ve been talking about. Um, we will leave a link for her book and the show notes. And how about social handles websites? Yeah, so my website for, um, for school teachers is strobeleducation. com. And then my website for non school teachers is kimstrobel. com. And I’ll, I think you have both of those and I’m on Instagram.

[00:55:30] I’m an animal lover. So if you’d like to look at dogs, I I’ve rescued 200 and 206 dogs. Oh, my gosh. That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, three of them right now are they’re they’re my permanent ones but my Instagram handle is at Kim Struggle Joy. I love that and I have a rescue myself. I love people who do rescue work.

[00:55:53] So, thank you for the for that work in the world. Um Kim, this is I just Could keep talking to you forever. Literally. I love these interviews that you just like, I’m like, I got to wrap this up. I got to wrap this up. My daughter, I got to get my daughter. And then if my husband is going to get her, I don’t know.

[00:56:10] Like I haven’t heard, he might’ve taken off and then she’s going to come busting in here. And making appearance. So either way I need to wrap up, but this has been so fantastic. I, I just love this. And I, I wish you like amazing, amazing success with your book launch. I really do feel like this is wisdom that just needs to get to a lot of people.

[00:56:31] Yeah. Well, thank you. And thank you for the work that you’re putting out into the world. It’s, it’s aligned energy and I feel it through the screen. So thank you so much.

Timestamps:

00:01  Intro

05:48  Meet Kim Strobel

08:09  Science & spirituality

10:04  “Am I intuitive enough?”

11:56  Pace of healing

13:23  Happiness research

17:02  Genetics, ancestral trauma & resistance

21:02  External circumstances 

23:50  Toxic positivity & forgiveness

26:36  40% of happiness

30:45  Happiness fuels success

34:19  Sources of happiness

38:33  Savouring experiences

39:40  Happiness habit & our wiring

44:19  Human Design & neuroplasticity

47:07  “I am…”

54:30  Invitation & conclusion