Further Your Lifestyle

Ep.60 - Are you HAPPY? Yes or No? | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast

May 01, 2022 Your Host: Chris Furlong Episode 60
Further Your Lifestyle
Ep.60 - Are you HAPPY? Yes or No? | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast
Show Notes Transcript

Ep.60 - Are you HAPPY? Yes or No? | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast

this may be a hard conversation to have... but it is an important one!
Are you happy? Yes or No? Lets dive in to both answers

Watch in YT: https://youtu.be/LpAMePxBFpw

▬▬▬▬ CHAPTERS ▬▬▬▬

0:00 - Episode 60
0:30 - today’s topic is HAPPINESS
2:43 - are you happy?
3:33 - why are you feeling unhappy?
4:32 - what do you control VS don’t
7:03 - what actually drives our happiness
8:30 - find your purpose and drive happiness!
8:42 - a tough question to ask yourself
10:00 - the reality of it… cones down to this
11:51 - capture the flow of what makes you happy
13:36 - these moments help…
14:02 - happiness will always be better than the ideas of happiness
15:00 - story time, what I use to think… happens was
17:09 - one thing I do which works well for me
18:05 - I don’t have it all figured out..
19:10 - have a conversation with someone

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[00:00:00] Chris Furlong: Yo, yo yo, welcome back to the further, your lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris Furlong. I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here. Having the conversation with you episode sixty is today, which is a huge milestone, another big celebration or a small win, I guess, depending on who you are, but I want to just say a quick, thank you once again.

[00:00:21] Chris Furlong: I appreciate you being part of this journey, being part of this podcast, whether you're a listener, whether you've been here from day one, or maybe you've just stumbled upon this podcast, go check out some of the other episodes. But today what we are talking about, and that is, I want to chat to you about.

[00:00:36] Chris Furlong: And it's one of those conversations, which happens a lot. It's very cliche, but it can also be a very simple conversation. And that's why I want to dive into it. But regardless being simple, complicated, or cliche, it's a very important conversation. I feel it's a very important conversation because over the last week I've been.

[00:00:55] Chris Furlong: On a few things. I've had a few conversations with different people and happiness has been a really key part of that. And I think, why not talk to you guys or whoever's listening about this and see if it can resonate with you? Cause it's definitely resonated with me. So we're going to dive into that. And I guess as I said, I could probably actually make this very, very simple if I wanted to.

[00:01:17] Chris Furlong: And by doing that, I could ask you this simple. Are you happy? And if you were to answer, you would respond simply with yes or no. Maybe, you know, you might go into a bit more, but hypothetically it will either be yes or no. And I can say, so why not? If you answered no. And you know, basically I could leave it up to you to figure out, but what I want to ask you today is this question and then dive into it a little deeper.

[00:01:41] Chris Furlong: I actually want to have the conversation with you and play it out in case you are saying no, in, in case you are saying. And see what this potentially could mean. Now, of course, this is from my own understanding. This is from my own perspective and I guess opinions at the same sense. But at the end of the day, I'm here to have the conversation with you.

[00:01:58] Chris Furlong: And if you do want to chat about it, let's chat about it. But otherwise I want to ask you this question and then dive into it a little bit, because I think it's very important that we do have the conversation and. You know, maybe it will help you work through some deeper thinking behind it and maybe it will lead you to understanding why you're not feeling happy.

[00:02:15] Chris Furlong: And that's essentially why I want to help you dive in a little deeper and help you also understand what is driving your happiness. So you can make that be a more common element in your life. Um, Will you do this with me? Will you go through this process, I guess, follow along and hopefully you've discovered a little bit more about your happiness or maybe lack of happiness.

[00:02:36] Chris Furlong: So let's do this. Let's get into it. Right. And so let me ask you this right now, as you were listening, I need you to answer this question and you, you might have to stop. You might have to think about it, but seriously, consider seriously. Think about, are you. Right. Like, seriously, think about this. Like, have you been smiling today?

[00:02:54] Chris Furlong: Are you happy with how you started the day? Are you happy with how the day, when are you feeling frustrated about anything? Is anything annoying? Are you really happy or are you just telling yourself you're up? Are you really happy or are you just telling yourself you are and think about this, think about it a bit more and really digest it.

[00:03:12] Chris Furlong: If you need to pause it, do that as well. When we start to really think about, what's been, you know, itching at us, what's been frustrating us or maybe something hasn't and we're feeling really great. And that's really, really good, but I need you to answer this to yourself if you are not, or if you are happy and if you're not happy, that's what we're going to dive into first.

[00:03:32] Chris Furlong: And let's, let's find out why, why are you not happy? What's driving it? What is causing it? What is making you feel this way? And how can we change it? How do we take back control? I'm going to ask you, why do you feel unhappy? Is it the frustration? Is it annoyance? Is it disappointment? Is it maybe you feel stuck?

[00:03:52] Chris Furlong: Are you angry with someone or do you just feel down? Do you feel low? Maybe it's a lack of motivation. Maybe you're feeling tired, maybe things aren't going as planned or maybe things aren't what you expected by this time. Or maybe you're getting stuck with comparing to others. What is it? Which is it? And it could be a whole bunch of days and maybe it's not all of them.

[00:04:11] Chris Furlong: And some of these. Uh, not always to do with happiness in itself, it's actually to do of other things, which then make you feel unhappy or just frustrated or, you know, all those different things that I've just said, but we really need to understand what's driving this. And I think we can start to tap away or chip away at different things that help us get closer to what that is.

[00:04:31] Chris Furlong: And the first thing is we need to identify what is in your control versus what is not in your control through. Annoying you, all things frustrating you and things that are making you feel unhappy. Can you control any of that? Like other things that causing this or making you feel this way, are they in your control or are they out of your control?

[00:04:52] Chris Furlong: Now the simple answer to this is if they are out of your control, you need to be rid of them. They're irrelevant. There is no point trying to waste your time, or I guess waste any time in trying to figure these out or trying to solve these or trying to get mixed up in them because you can't do anything about it.

[00:05:09] Chris Furlong: You were better off driving. And pushing them away and spending that energy elsewhere. Now, if you can take action on something, if you do have the ability to take control or to regulate something or to, to pivot or to just yeah. Take control of a situation, then you need to ask yourself, well, what can you do about it today?

[00:05:27] Chris Furlong: Right. And I think it's going to come down to one of these things. Is, is it, do you need to have a tough conversation? Do you actually need to do some work? Like do you actually have to put in some work and take action? Do you need to stop procrastinating, maybe it's as simple as you need to set a plan to then take some actions.

[00:05:45] Chris Furlong: The list will go on. But I think those four are probably the top areas, which I feel like is usually the things that we need to handle with. Sometimes the tough conversation can be with ourselves. It might be with a friend, a family member, a loved one, or your boss or someone that maybe, um, you know, you don't like having that confrontation with.

[00:06:03] Chris Furlong: And sometimes we, we know we need to step out of our comfort zones and do take action or do action. And sometimes it can be scary. So we procrastinate, we push back, we make excuses, or sometimes we just need to put it down on paper and figure out what do we actually need to be doing? What do we actually want?

[00:06:19] Chris Furlong: And as I said, the list goes on, but those I think are going to be the key ones. And we do, we tend to make a lot of excuses and we blame it on those things above or. We blame it on the whole scenarios of, I wish this would change or I wish that would happen. Or I, you know, if I can only do this, if that happens well, once again, can you actually control some of these things, but even more so, and this is where it gets interesting.

[00:06:43] Chris Furlong: If these things were out of the picture, if these excuses, these things that you say you need to have done or achieved before you can move forward, if they were completed, if they weren't in the picture, if they were fixed, if they were not. Would you still be happy? I think a lot of the time is we don't actually know what the root of the problem is.

[00:07:00] Chris Furlong: That's annoying us. That's frustrating is that's making us feel unhappy and I'll think you'll find if we start to left click a bit more or dig a little deeper, that the things that are frustrating is the things that are making us feel unhappy. Come down to. Time free time. Work-life balance our work situation, our working situation, our relationships, our friendships, our hobbies, or lack of hobbies, our health, our fitness, our food intake, all of these drive our happiness.

[00:07:28] Chris Furlong: And this there's more as well. You know, there's physical, there's, um, spiritual and so on and so forth. But all these different areas drive our happiness. What else drives our happiness. And sometimes more than what we know is purpose, because a lot of the time, all these things are framing back into what we want or where are we going?

[00:07:48] Chris Furlong: You know, if you know what your purpose is, what you want to be doing, you know that you need certain amount of money. You don't need all the money in the world. You just need something to keep you going. You need something to keep you funded. You need. An element of money in your space, you know, how much time it's going to take and how much free time you need, you understand that it's going to require a work-life balance.

[00:08:07] Chris Furlong: And sometimes that means more work or less work or whatever it may be. You know, that when you have a purpose, the relationships and how important they're going to be for you, you understand the importance of hobbies. You understand. And what that looks like. I think when we have purpose, it starts to put all these things into perspective and helps us see the importance of them and how they can help us move forward and essentially enable us to be happy.

[00:08:32] Chris Furlong: So if you can figure out what your purpose is, where are you going? What are you wanting? What are you doing then that will start to help drive the happiness I'm serious about this is sometimes we have to stop and we have to refresh ourselves and we need to ask ourselves the question. What I'm doing right now, is this going to get me closer to where I want to be in 30 days, 90 days, six months, one year, two years, five years, 10 years, whatever you've set in terms of your vision and goal, but you need to check yourself, you know, if you're working a job and you have an idea to you want to run your own business, do you want to be in business owner?

[00:09:10] Chris Furlong: You want to have people working for you, but if you're not doing anything, anything within your realm of time, in terms of your weekly time, you. Whatever that is going to actually get you closer to that goal. Then you're probably not going to be actually happy. You might think you're happy because you're getting money.

[00:09:26] Chris Furlong: You're working a job, you feel secure and you're saying, oh no, you need to do this before. You can do that, but you can actually be doing things. That's getting closer to your purpose, getting you closer to where you want to be. That job might actually be getting you closer. It might be getting you the experience in the industry knowledge that you need to then go to that next level.

[00:09:42] Chris Furlong: But if it's got nothing to do with where you want to be, then you need to have. Tough conversation with yourself and actually see, is this what you want? Right? And this, this is real. This is raw. This is the reality of it. You say, you can have lots of money. You can have all the money in the world, but if you're not doing what you love, you won't be happy.

[00:10:01] Chris Furlong: You can have less money and be doing what you love. And I guarantee you will be happy. I guess the whole, their whole reality of this is there's. There's no, there's no secret sauce to all of it. It's kind of. Other than asking yourself these questions and be willing to, I guess, make a change or adapt or change, adapt or pivot, or take ownership of what you want.

[00:10:23] Chris Furlong: Then nothing's going to change. Thus. It means you need to be able to be willing to have a tough conversation with yourself or with someone you actually need to be willing to do the work. You need to stop procrastinating and you need to set a plan and you need to take some out. That that's the reality of it.

[00:10:40] Chris Furlong: And then you need to play that back into the realms of what do you want, what is your purpose? Where do you want to be now, if you don't know what your purpose is, let's have that conversation. And I've got some episodes talking about, you know, what's the end game, what's your vision, what's your north star.

[00:10:53] Chris Furlong: You can listen to those, but this is a tough conversation. And I'm not here to say that what you're doing is wrong. I'm not here to say that you need to be re-evaluating everything. What I'm saying is are you feeling. And let's dig a little deeper. Sometimes it might be, you've just had a bad day and you need to have a conversation with someone.

[00:11:10] Chris Furlong: But sometimes as we dig deeper, we realize that there is a lot of things, a lot deeper and a lot rooted to that. Come back to our purpose. And that's really what I wanted to say. So let me recap. Are you happy? No. What is making you feel this way? Can you control it? If you can't control it, don't waste your time on it.

[00:11:30] Chris Furlong: If you can't control it, what were you doing? What will you change? What can you do about it? How will you get closer to where you want to be? Which is your happiness goal, and ideally understand what your purpose is. Are these things, getting you closer to that purpose and do the things you love, make sure that is incorporated in where you're going, and that will help you be happy.

[00:11:52] Chris Furlong: Now, if we turn it over, if we do the whole flip side and let's say at the start of this conversation, I asked you, are you feeling happy? And you say, yes. Yes, you are. Well, let's capture this. Let's make sure we understand. Why are you feeling happy so that when you are feeling maybe not happy, you can come back to this and make sure you can get yourself back into position back on that straight path in being happy.

[00:12:15] Chris Furlong: So you need to write some things down and you might need to stop what you're doing, and it might need to pause what you're doing, but you need to write this down and. What things, what is it? The situation, the people, the environment, what is it? What things put you into the flow of happiness and what I mean by that is what makes you smile?

[00:12:34] Chris Furlong: What makes you feel that. What makes you feel in your element or where do you feel at peace? What are the places that help you feel this way? Who is it? Who are the people? What relationships make you feel happy that you're at your best self? What is it? Things, is it, you know, things that you're able to interact with?

[00:12:53] Chris Furlong: What are they? You need to identify them now, right? Um, I, um, I'm not joking. Write them down and figure out what gets into this flow state of feeling happy. You need to think about a time that you were feeling at your peak happiness, that there was no other worry in the world. What was this? When was this?

[00:13:13] Chris Furlong: Why was this? And what were the factors? Write these down. Right then. Damn so you can understand, you can revisit them. You know, it's like when you're sitting on Facebook and scrolling and you get the little memories pop up and you go back to one year, two years, seven years and year, there's a lot of cringe moments and you think, what was I thinking?

[00:13:29] Chris Furlong: But then there's moments of, oh, I remember this. This was, this was great. And you reflect on it and it makes you feel. This is kind of what we're doing. So having these, um, I guess having them written down, but then when you are struggling, you can go back to these and they can help bring you back to the reality of where you want to be back.

[00:13:46] Chris Furlong: On course in helping you get back will be key, right? And that's why you want them. It's not always going to be that way. You're not always going to be happy. Sometimes you'll need a nudge. Sometimes you will need some help. Sometimes you'll need a reminder getting back on track. And I think one. That is true though.

[00:14:03] Chris Furlong: His happiness will always be greater than the idea of happiness they are present and not in the distant. And what I mean by this is there's a point in time is in now, you're either happy or you're not, and you can be looking at all these things. You can be seeing all those things, whether it's going shopping and buying something or saying, oh, you know, once I get this, I'll be happy.

[00:14:21] Chris Furlong: These ideas of having. You know, we, we tell ourselves is to make us feel happy in the moment, but they're just, they're just fake. It's not really actually getting to the core of the problem. We need to step back and go back up to the steps before and actually figure out what's causing that unhappiness.

[00:14:37] Chris Furlong: And you know, it's not about putting a bandaid on it. You actually want to make sure you're really here. You always need to make sure that, you know, it's not an idea of happiness, but you are feeling happy. You will always have moments, which make you feel happy. So these are key to know when they were what they are and what are the triggers.

[00:14:55] Chris Furlong: So then when you do get into those sticky situations, you can get back into your happiness flow. You say, I once thought, um, I once thought of happiness was, was chasing the stereotypical rat race. And once again, I want to be very clear that I'm not here. You know, I'm not against people working nine to fives and corporate jobs and things like that.

[00:15:13] Chris Furlong: What I'm trying to say is like, I did that, you know, I, I got a secure job. I got a solid income. I was getting promoted. I was, you know, wanting to buy a house, you know, wanting to get married, all that jazz, the typical things that most of us, majority of us follow and do. And that's okay. But as I was doing this more and more and doing more work, I guess, you know, in the back of my mind, I had all these dreams, goals and ambitions.

[00:15:39] Chris Furlong: I started to realize that, you know, unless I am starting to work on those, nothing's going to change and I'm working, I'm getting promoted. And, you know, I was getting money to help me feel closer to making these ideas possible, but I wasn't executing, I wasn't taking action because I didn't have the time.

[00:15:55] Chris Furlong: So I was kind of in this rut of feeling happy because you know, you get paid or someone compliments you, you get promoted, but it wasn't really the true happiness I was looking for now. Now that I am in my zone, in my element, doing what I want working towards my north star, working towards where I want to be in everything that I'm doing now, my LS, but I have more time.

[00:16:17] Chris Furlong: I can create my own day. I get to do anything or everything that I want. And those are all closer to my end goals. They're all closer to my dreams and ambitions and those, those ambitions and goals might change. But at the end of the day, You know, I am doing what I want to be able to be and you know what I want in this life.

[00:16:39] Chris Furlong: And stepping closer to that each day, I can look back. I can reflect at the end of each day and say, am I happy with today? And I know I can say yes now. I can start to dive in what went wrong and maybe was I distracted. Maybe I just had a conflict. Maybe, you know, you are going to have bad days. Maybe I didn't hit a sales target.

[00:16:57] Chris Furlong: Maybe I didn't get enough. You know, people interacting with the podcasts, those things do help us feel sad. I'm not saying that you have to be perfectly happy all the time. That's not going to be realistic, but you know, I can actually start to dive down and see where it is quite easy. Now, there is one thing that I want to kind of share, which is kind of like a tip or trick.

[00:17:14] Chris Furlong: And I guess if there was ever a moment of doubt for myself, what I like to do. I come back to asking myself, what am I grateful for? And instantly I am reminded that I am in control, that I have everything I need and I can change the narrative of the story any time. And I think that's the difference is, as I said before, I think clearly identify where the problems are is because I've, I've gotten rid of the things that I can't control and I've got majority of the stuff I can control.

[00:17:41] Chris Furlong: So when things are figuring. In the way I want them to be, you know, whether it is coming from, I'm not hitting a target. Maybe I had, you know, an argument with someone I can identify these pretty quick and it's taken me a while to do this. It's take me a last year to figure out, to be able to tap into those things.

[00:17:56] Chris Furlong: And I'm trying to be more open to it, own it more and be vulnerable to it because these things helped me steer the right course of where I want to be going to be a hundred percent honest. I'm not here to say that I've got it all figured out either. Like I. Um, but what I can say is that I figured out what I want and I'm doing that.

[00:18:15] Chris Furlong: Therefore I am happy and I know how to bring myself back to reality if I'm falling off that happiness path. And I really, all I want is to be able to help other people, you know, find this happiness too. And if you think you're happy, that's great. And if you know, you're happy, that's even better. Okay. I think the key thing is if you are happy, write it down, understand what it is, know what it is, visualize it, have it in place so that when you do stuff up, when things don't go as planned, you can do exactly what I said.

[00:18:48] Chris Furlong: You can check, check yourself with a gratitude check, but also you can play it back and say, okay, well it's not all these things. Cause those things are out of my control. And it's not all these things because I have control. What areas in your life are making you feel unhappy. So I feel like it's been quite a deep conversation.

[00:19:06] Chris Furlong: We've kind of dived into it and there's a lot here. And at the end of the day, it is about being happiness. There's, there's no right or wrong way to figure out your happiness. This is what's been working for me. And I would love to encourage more people that if you are feeling down, if things aren't going as you planned.

[00:19:24] Chris Furlong: The best thing you can probably do is actually talk to someone. You can do all these steps and they will help, but have a conversation with someone. If you feel like you're in a right, if you feel like you're not going where you want to be, if you've got these ideas, but you don't know how to blossom them, let's have the conversation reach out.

[00:19:38] Chris Furlong: You can hit me up on Instagram, um, at further your lifestyle or drop me a message. Uh, Twitter, you can tweet me at, for the, your life or send me an email. Hello at, for the, your lifestyle.com. I want to have the conversation with you. I would love to hear more about what you're trying to do, what you want to achieve, where you want to be, or what you're struggling with.

[00:19:56] Chris Furlong: I want to hear your struggles to see if I can have. To see if I can encourage you. And you know what together in helping you get out of that rut, that's a hundred percent honestly, all I want to do, I want to help you further your lifestyle, right? And further your life. So if that sounds like you, and you do want to chat, do reach out, Hey, I've even left a little link below.

[00:20:14] Chris Furlong: If you want to reach out, you can send me a little message. If you want to drop a, an, an anonymous message to me and you don't want to reveal. You can do that. You can drop it down. There's a little form that you can fill out and you can ask questions or you can reveal yourself. That's fine too. But please have the conversation.

[00:20:30] Chris Furlong: Follow these steps. See if that can work for you and helping you getting out of a right end, you know, actually asking some of the tough questions. It will require you to do some tough work, um, and have that self-awareness. But I think it's super important that we come back to this and I do, I have to come back to it, to myself on a regular basis as well.

[00:20:47] Chris Furlong: Really do appreciate being here. If you've got any questions more than having to answer. Um, and if you want to continue the conversation, you can leave a comment, reach out. As I just said, otherwise you have. Cheers. Now, if you didn't know, we do have the podcast merge and this is with a key focus of enamel pins.

[00:21:03] Chris Furlong: Now, if you haven't checked these out, make sure you do because the intent of these are really just to be a small token and reminder for you to charge on, to push on and to further your lifestyle, whether it is a gift for someone else to encourage them or maybe to inspire them, or maybe it's a way to motivate.

[00:21:19] Chris Furlong: Or you can simply just make a purchase to simply support the podcast, which would be greatly appreciated. We do also have some sweaters and some long days, so make sure you check it out, link in the description and in the show notes, really to appreciate it. Jeez.