Ray Loewe, The Luckiest Guy in the World believes that the luckiest people in the world are often the happiest people in the world. Happy people attract happy people. Being happy opens your brain to opportunities and possibilities. Our guest today, Sarah E. Brown PhD has great insights into how to be a happy person.
Sarah E. Brown, PhD - sarah@thebookofyou.com, thebookofyou.com
Diane Dayton
This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster
Good morning everybody. This is KC Dempster and I am not in beautiful downtown Woodbury with Taylor, our engineer. I am at home, and with me is Ray Loewe. He's at his house, and we have a guest who is at her house, we will introduce you to Sarah in a little bit. And I want to welcome you to changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live. And write often calls himself the luckiest guy in the world. And he's been doing this for about four years formally, he might have said it before, but it's really took hold about four years ago. And but that doesn't mean that there can't be other people that can be lucky just because he says he's the luckiest guy. We believe that there are a whole lot of luckiest people in the world out there and a whole lot more who could be part of the club as well, if they understood a little bit more about what it is. So that's kind of the purpose of our podcast is to start to help people understand how they too can become the luckiest people in the world. So on our last podcast, we talked about some of the characteristics that we have observed about what makes people the luckiest people in the world. We interviewed Kris Parsons of Parsons, PR, and we identified three characteristics. The first one is that we believe luckiest people in the world change the rules to fit themselves. You know, as children, we're often saddled with rules made by people and institutions, and they're probably necessary at that point. But as we get older and become adults, oftentimes the rules don't really fit who we are and what we want to do anymore and some people change it. And some people just keep following those rules and they're not happy.
he second characteristic is that the luckiest people in the world always find a positive solution. Sometimes the rules get changed outside of our control, like in this current viral pandemic, and the luckiest people in the world find a positive solution from this change, and they move forward. And, you know, I've often found in my own life, that if I, if circumstances get changed on me, and they kind of divert from where I thought I was going or wanted to go, I feel pretty badly about it. And at some point, in in my advancing years, I realized, you know what, your feelings are true. They belong to you. So you're entitled to feel badly about it. But don't feel badly about it for more than a day. Get a good night's sleep and the next morning, get up and figure out what you're going to do about it. And I think that's part of what makes people the luckiest people in the world.
And the third Ray, you were gonna say something Oh, no go ahead.
Well, I was gonna give you the third characteristic to say, because I know you have a hard time not jumping in. So why don't you tell us what the third characteristic is.
Ray Loewe
I can do that they have a plan and, and it evolves into a plan. And I found it exceedingly interesting to talk to Chris. Here's a woman whose PR business was mostly a people, the people business she was out and about, it was all about lunches, it was all about face to face meetings. It was all about campaigns and formal dinners and fundraising events and all of these things. And all of a sudden, the rules came in and bang.
Now in this case, we all kind of agree that the rules are pretty good in this case, I mean, we don't particularly want to go out there and catch this stuff. And so this, this self quarantine stuff has some merit. But But you notice there are two different kinds of people here, there, there are those who hide, you know, just kind of digging in and you don't see them again. And, and there are those who confront the rules. And they either change them or they adapt to them, and they find out what's going on. So Kris did a really good job of telling us how she recognized what these rules are, that were going to make a difference in how she was going to run her life. And, and then she sat down and she said, okay, out there. There's a bunch of things I can do. And I can do them now. And I got an email from Kris earlier this morning. And she was saying, you know, we've been talking about the new normal and the new normal and the new normal, but maybe we ought to change this. And maybe we ought to be talking about the better normal...Okay, the new better normal or something like that, or the new, new, better, better normal or whatever it's gonna be. Okay.
Yeah, the whole idea is that we can learn from this and we can, we can make this better. And then she had a plan, she had woven this into a plan about how she was going to cope with this. And not only how she was going to cope with it now, but where she was going to go and the kind of changes that she was going to make going forward, forward. Okay, so I want to add another factor of the luckiest people in the world and in a couple minutes, we're going to meet another one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and as soon as she opens her mouth to talk, you're going to know why. Okay, okay, so what's this new factor? Well, it's happiness. I don't know if you noticed, but Excuse me.
KC Dempster
Some, some people seem to get up in the morning and they're happy. Now, that's probably fake. Okay? I think so. Most people don't just get out of bed and they're instantly happy but they have a process and they have a routine for getting happy. And more important than that is they know how important being happy for the day is. And if you think about it, who are the people you want to hang out with? You want to hang out with the happy people, you don't want to hang out with those people that are downers all the time. Right? And, and when you're happy in the morning, you change the whole environment around you, you seem to draw other happy people to you, and you feel better about the way life is going. And so I think it's really important to wake up and find some way of getting happy. Now Sarah, in a minute is going to give us all bunch of ideas, but I want to bring up two that I've kind of come up with out of my past. .
Can we take a quick break? And then we can really get in do a deep dive into this?
Ray Loewe
No, no, we're gonna wait until after I'm done then we'll take the break. And then Sarah will come on because I want to devote the block of time to Sarah. So they're okay. All right. So we're changing the rules again. So, I started in my second phase of career life. As a life insurance agent. Long ago, it was back in the very early 70s. And I remember going through training and one of the things that they did is we gathered at 730 in the morning, now how can we be happy at 730 in the morning gathering I we weren't okay. But what they what they used to do was to make us listen to motivational tapes. Sometimes it was listening to comedy. Okay. But the The fact is that after About an hour this you had to be happy. I mean, you're sitting around laughing You're joking you had this thing called coffee. I mean, life was pretty good and and and you went from mundane to happy. And and the second thing that I, I talked to a woman yesterday and I just asked her out of the blue I said, so you seem to be a happy person most of the time. How do you get happy in the morning? And, and she said, Well, it's really pretty simple for me. I'm grateful. And I'm grateful for some pretty simple things like coffee to hot running water. Okay? So things that we take for granted for Okay, so now you can take your break, and then we're going to come back and talk to maybe one of the happiest people in the world, but she certainly is going to give us all those deep dark secrets to how being how to be happy.
Diane Dayton
You're listening to changing the rules with Casey Dempster and Ray Loewe The luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
KC Dempster
Welcome back, everybody. And I would like to introduce you to our guest, Sarah Brown. And I could say Dr. Sarah brown because she has a PhD in psychology. And she worked in the corporate world for many years and began to make some observations about people and took a flyer and went out on her own and forged a new path, where she created a process to help people understand their unique personality, which what makes them, them and what they can do to be happy, successful, and understood. So welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Brown
Thank you. It's great to be here.
KC Dempster
Good to see you too. And I can hear the smile in your voice. So, Ray promised that you were going to talk to us about being happy, So maybe we should first start about why it's important to be happy. I know Ray touched on it but from a professional standpoint, why is it important to be happy?
Sarah Brown
Well, there are a couple reasons but I want to qualify myself on this cuz Ray was talking about meeting me and and understanding that I wake up happy and that's not the case. I don't just wake up happy. And if people if you ask people about who I was 10 years ago, they would tell you I was the biggest pessimist there ever was. So I think part of this happiness thing is deciding to be happy, and learning how to be happy. And the the, from my perspective, it comes from two things. One is knowing who you are, and what it is about you that lights you up and make fly for worth living and going after that. And the second is is just making this decision.
To be happy, so you come from happiness. And you actually put the habits in place that will allow you to be happy. Why is that important? Well, it's important because when you are coming from that place, and if you get your day started that way, you're going to begin to see opportunities that you never would have seen before. And you will be able to pursue, you will be able to better able to achieve your dreams, go after your goals, the things that Ray was talking about before back deciding to go get something. When you are happy and coming from that play, you will see the opportunities that help you to actually get there. And in addition, if there are things that you need to perform work you need to do to get there, you're much more likely to be able to make that work productive and effective. There's actually a study done sorry, studies done around basketball players. And those that actually envision actually making thousand shot will outperform people who actually practice doing foul shot. So getting your your frame of mind right? before you actually go about doing things means that it's much more likely you're going to achieve what you want to achieve and get what you want to get out of life. And you're going to see opportunities that you never would have seen before.
KC Dempster
That's fantasy. That's fantastic. Ray, Did you have a comment?
Ray Loewe
I certainly do. So this visualization is something that I've always found interesting and always found incredible. And athletes do it all the time. And there's a there's a big difference to when you you get up on a starting block to get into an athletic competition. And you visualize that you're going to finish first because it's really easy to cop out, it's really easy to take the easy way out and say, Well, I'm competing, okay, and you don't win that. And and, and I think, you know, winning the battle to stay happy here is is so, so important. And you talked a little bit about being happy in the morning but it's also about staying happy. So what are some of the secrets? What are some of the drills that you might have your people you coach to get happy?
Sarah Brown
Well, let me let me tell you what I do in the morning. And this is what I suggest that my clients practice some as well. So when I get up in the morning, I practice some kind of meditation to actually help me get in touch with really the essence of who I am to get silent and to get focused. I do some form of exercise. Now I don't do this because people say It's really good for you to do this. I do this because I truly love it. It is something that just gives me joy. So I do something in the morning that I just truly love that gives me joy. So I'm focusing on who I am, I'm focusing on something that gives me me joy. And then I visualize what I'm going to be doing that day and get myself feeling how I want to be feeling as I'm doing that, because I'm going after things that are important to me. So for me, the critical things are meditation and getting silent, getting in touch with with who I am, in my essence, it's exercise, but it's for me, it's because I'm doing something that just brings me joy. And then it's affirmations and visualization that gets me in the right frame of mind to do the things that I need to do that day.
Ray Loewe
Okay, you you said something I find fascinating that you you try to feel how you're going to feel. Can you talk a little bit about that one?
Sarah Brown
Yeah, I actually, I, when, when I do, when I think about the day, and I think about what I'm doing, I kind of get in the frame of mind of those basketball players actually, you know, practicing and practicing those foul shots and they, when they're practicing those foul shots, they actually see the ball go up and through the net, and then they feel how they're going to feel when they actually have that success. That's what I do. I visualize what I'm going to be doing, who I'm going to be talking to how I'm going to feel when I'm doing that so that I get that in my body so it so it actually permeates me and and it becomes something that goes beyond just mere thought.
Ray Loewe
Okay, now, you also said earlier that you weren't always a happy person. So what made you decide to be happy? What happened?
Sarah Brown
Um, I, I learned that it was under my control. I thought that my circumstances were what controlled how I felt. And when I finally got that I was 100% responsible for the outcomes in my life, and that I could generate these feelings of happiness myself, regardless of what was going around me and realize that a heck of a lot of this was because of my habits, my thinking habits, my visualization habits, and that I had it under my control to change that. I changed it.
KC Dempster
That must have taken a lot of work
Sarah Brown
Well It did. And I'm not going to tell you that it happened overnight. There are additional studies that showed that when you're dealing with neurological patterns like this, it takes a minimum of 30 days of solid practice to begin to see any any change. And that I will tell you, for me, it was a lot longer than 30 days. But I will tell you that the difference and how I wake up and start my day today, versus 10 years ago is like night and day.
KC Dempster
That's fantastic.
Ray Loewe
Okay, so we actually have the power to change how we feel. I thought we could say, okay, however, it's not easy. Number one, you have to have the attitude and I think attitude is everything in this case. I mean, there's there's always two sides to every every story. And I know some people want to be miserable just because they get attention being miserable. The problem is they only get that attention for very short period of time before nobody wants to talk to him anymore. Okay? But thought but the whole idea is you start out with this attitude of I'm going to be happy. You have to tell yourself that you have the power to change. And then do you have you know, we really talk about your drill, because I think it's so important. So you created this set of steps.
Sarah Brown
Well, well my drill is, is three key parts it is meditation, exercise, and again, the reason I do exercise is not so much for health reasons is because I just love it. It brings me joy, so I do something to bring me joy. And then the third thing I do is my affirmations and visualization of me going through the day. Those are my drill steps, but I can point your listeners to a great resource on this. Hal Elrod has written a book called The Miracle Morning. And he talks about five steps are to do essentially the same thing. And he's coined it and the acronym Savers, s-a-v-e-r-s. S stands for silent. A stands for affirmations. V stands for visualization. E stands for exercise, and he does it for health reasons, not so much for joy reasons. R stands for reading and S stands for scribing or writing down thoughts and an idea that you have. So that's a great resource to get into a morning routine. Again, Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning, but I've adapted it for me because I'm, I need it to be a little more simple. I can't handle more than three steps. So the three critical ones for me are meditation exercise, and then the The affirmation visualization of my day.
Ray Loewe
Okay, can you go over the savers? Again, just because it went through my head really fast.
Sarah Brown
Okay, the acronym that he used that Hal Elrod again in the book Miracle Morning is S-A-V-E-R-S. S stands for silence, another word for meditation or another form of meditation. A stands for affirmations. V stands for visualization. E stands for exercise. R stands for reading. And S stands for scribing another word for journaling. So, those are his steps.
KC Dempster
Mm hmm. I thought you said striving it first. So, I was trying to figure out what that was. so scribing okay.
Ray Loewe
Okay, I think this is pretty cool because I think, you know, let's, I think most people would like to be happy.
Unknown Speaker
Don't ask, you know,
KC Dempster
we hear all the time and I've heard it from most of my life, this half glass half empty glass half full thing. And, and I, I know, a lot of people that I would consider as glass half empty, and I used to feel that that was a negative that they were negative people. But then I heard somebody say that, you know, when you call somebody a pessimist, it may not be it's just that they're coming at something from a different way than an optimist is and they want to be prepared. So they're preparing for the worst, whereas an optimist some people might say are a little bit...In fact, I was told that that it's because I'm an optimist that that I was looking at the world through rose colored glasses and that I was not realistic. And so I mean, do you think that that this optimism and pessimism is an inborn trait? Or is it? You know, because I don't recall that I set out to be an optimist. It's just always the way I was.
Sarah Brown
I don't know for sure, KC. But I do believe that there is a tendency that we all have, I believe I came into this world with a pessimistic tendency, okay. But I also believe it's changeable. And therefore I have learned about thinking and brain patterns, the more I have realized that a tremendous amount of this is a habitual thought patterns which we have the power to change.
KC Dempster
Well, that's encouraging
Sarah Brown
and one of the things that I have learned and I I see over and over again, I actually do demonstrations of this in my workshops is the more you think certain ways, the more you screen out and develop mental filters to only see certain things. So if you're thinking about always thinking about the negative things that could happen in the vein of being prepared, you're more likely to see them and less likely to see some of the more optimistic and positive opportunities that you would miss. So I think it is really important to be aware of how much of this is really under our control, regardless of the predisposition that we came into the world with, or the early thinking patterns that we developed.
Ray Loewe
So this is a self fulfilling prophecy, to a large extent is what it is. So happiness begets happiness and miserableness begets miserableness. And maybe those are the wrong extremes because
KC Dempster
Well, I mean, but there is expression. That expression misery loves company.
Ray Loewe
I know, though, for a fact that for me personally, I want to hang out with people that are happy. I can put up with people that have problems for a while and we all certainly have them. We have things in life that go wrong. And like you said, KC, put up with it for a day or two, and then you decide what you're going to do and move on. Okay? But I can't. I find when I meet people, they're always miserable. I pretty much divorce myself from that pretty much and I do it pretty quickly. So Sarah, I think your power of choices are what I got out of this that we have a power of choice, okay. And we can choose to be happy. And we have this multi step process whether you want to use the savers or Whether you want to use the visual meditation to exercise, but another thing I'm trying to put together an acronym for that I can't do it. So savers guy had an edge here.
Sarah Brown
I agree. And if you come up with an acronym, I'd love it.
Ray Loewe
Alright, well, we'll spend the next 17 days working on that. We can come up, right?
Sarah Brown
Give us a website where people can reach you, both for the book of you and for your coaching expertise. And we're going to post this with a podcast note so it'll be hard, hard written for everybody. Okay, but tell us what it is.
You can find me at bookofyou.com that's B-O-O-K-O-F-Y-O-U.COM. Stick with that.
Ray Loewe
Okay. Okay. And we Have Savers, and we have visualization meditation. And the third one was, say I've lost it already.
KC Dempster
Well, exercise or what brings you joy?
Sarah Brown
Joy, right?
Ray Loewe
Yeah. Cool. Okay, so thank you for being with us today and we're gonna take a break. And KC when we come back, I want to talk for a minute about luck. Okay?
Diane Dayton
You're listening to changing the rules with Casey Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
KC Dempster
Okay, luckiest guy in the world. You throw that term around constantly. What exactly do you mean when you say luck or lucky?
Ray Loewe
Well, I think that a luck maybe has nothing to do with being lucky. Okay. How's that for getting everybody confused?
But you know what we see definitions where we think of people that are lucky as people who go on out and they win and million dollars in the lottery. And I've seen stories about how those people who become become winners, the lottery becomes some of the most miserable people in the world because everybody wants their money. I think I think luck is a state of being I think it's how you feel. And I know some of it is really luck. I know, I was lucky from the standpoint of I was born to parents in the United States who cared, okay, and it gave me a tremendous edge. And I had nothing to do with that. I didn't make that lock. But I think the luckiest people in the world make their own lock. And I think as we go forward, we want to talk more about this. It's kind of like an adjunct to happiness. And, sure, I think, thanks so much for your insights in here. I mean, I think we quantified this and I think
We've given our listeners some rules, that they can, they can change, how's that? But they're not gonna want to change these, I think they're gonna want to adapt them and use them to be happy. So what are your insights into luck? And then it's almost time to sign off unfortunately.
Sarah Brown
Yeah. Well, I think that your frame of mind is whether or not you recognize opportunities, and those opportunities are luck. But But you're not going to be able to recognize luck or see opportunities in a situation if you're, if you're filtering it out.
KC Dempster
Right. I once heard somebody say that their definition of luck was preparation and opportunity, and when preparation and opportunity met, so a lot of times it's a matter of preparing yourself and it might you might not even be preparing yourself for a specific event. But even people who win the lottery if they don't go out and win and buy that ticket and that's the preparation, then they're not going to win the lottery. So it's preparation meeting opportunity.
Ray Loewe
Okay, so hold those thoughts and hold the thoughts about happiness because we're going to come back and discuss this a lot more. I think happiness is so much an important part of being one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and by the way, I think I think we're gonna give Sarah brown here the title of the one of the luckiest people in the world. I think she already had it and she already had this, but but Welcome to the group because every time I've met you, you inspire me, you know, you give me thoughts about how to be better at what I do, how to understand me better, how to be happier, and
Sarah Brown
I'm extremely happy I met you. Thank you. I'm really pleased to have met both of you.
Ray Loewe
Okay. So we'll be back in two weeks. KC?
KC Dempster
yes, then we're going to continue talking about happiness. I Understand?
Ray Loewe
Well, yeah, and and just kind of as a preview, we have a gentleman on one of our future shows who is a professional clown. And he's going to talk a little bit about how he can control happiness. By the way, he outfits himself, all right, don't give it away. So keep that thought in mind. And we'll see you guys in another two weeks. Right. And Sarah, thanks again for being with us.
Sarah Brown
Oh, it was pleasure.
KC Dempster
Thanks, Sarah. Bye. Bye, everybody.
Diane Dayton
Thank you for listening to changing the rules. A podcast designed to help you make your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topics on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.