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From Stress to Bliss In Business And Life With Moneeka Sawyer

 

When you’re frustrated, you may notice something unexplainable happening in your body, which doesn’t feel good. How can you turn stress to bliss? Join your host Moneeka Sawyer as she dives deep into building authentic happiness, emotional intelligence, and self-discovery. She discusses how the power of being in a bliss mode affects your business and whole life. Nothing changes until you take action and you determine your life with the choices that you make. So why not choose to be happy? Tune in to learn valuable insights about managing our emotions and embracing the joys life has to offer.

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From Stress to Bliss In Business And Life With Moneeka Sawyer

Real Estate Investing for Women

In this episode, I have something a little bit different for you that I wanted to share. Originally, my flagship book was called, Choose Bliss. For a long time, I talked a lot about that. I traveled around the country and whatever, and then I moved into Blissful Investor. I started this show and all of that stuff. During this time that I’ve been so focused on Blissful Investor, I haven’t been asked to talk about Choose Bliss very often. I’ve been on television a couple of times. During the pandemic, I was on television, talking about Choose Bliss. When you’re on TV, it’s like a 3, 5, 7 or 10-minute spot. It’s a short period of time. They’re usually asking questions.

I was asked to do a 30-minute talk on Choose Bliss. I have to confess I was a little bit wary because I haven’t been talking about it for a long time. To be honest, I personally have changed quite a bit since I wrote that book. That book was the beginning for me. It felt channeled. There’s so much about it that I learned as I read it because I don’t remember everything. I’m still me, but the book inspires me often. I have evolved and changed. When I got asked to talk about it, I thought, “I just can’t pull up one of my old talks that I used to do. I needed to create something different.” I did that. I did my first talk about Choose Bliss since the pandemic. It was so much fun.

I did something completely different. It’s very interactive. I had so much fun presenting it. It was delightful for me. I thought that you ladies might appreciate it. I’m hoping that you will benefit from it. I would love to hear your feedback on it because it’s the new format that I’m looking at doing for my Choose Bliss talks. If any of you have any advice, I’m always open. If you feel that it’s valuable, I would love to hear that too. I wanted to share that with you. I hope you enjoy this. I also hope you have an amazing week. I’ll see you soon. Thanks.

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Moneeka Sawyer has often been described as one of the most joyful people you will ever meet. I can attest to that. For over a decade, she has been helping successful professionals, executives and entrepreneurs ease anxiety, overwhelm and stress so that they can experience more joy, ease and success in all areas of their lives. She is the author of the international best-selling book, Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment, which is honored by the prestigious Quill Award for best literary work from the governor of the state of Maryland and several other awards.

Moneeka is known as the blissful millionaire. She is a TEDx speaker. She hosts the highly acclaimed podcast and nationally syndicated radio show, Real Estate Investing for Women. She has been featured on stages with Suzanne Somers, Martha Stewart, Ice-T and Coco, and places like NASDAQ, Harvard, Carnegie Hall, and on TV, NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox reaching over 150 million people.

She was also interviewed by my hero, Hal Elrod of The Miracle Morning community on his podcast. That was huge because I’ve never met anybody who’s been on his show. With that, I want to introduce you all officially to Moneeka. Moneeka, it’s a pleasure to have you here. We look forward to learning from you and smiling by the end of the day.

Thank you so much for inviting me here, Anastasia. I’m honored to be spending this time with everybody. I was here a couple of weeks ago, and Anastasia mentioned what it is that I took from Hal Elrod’s show. It warms my heart when people integrate what I talk about. Sometimes as a speaker, you’re talking out of the ether. Many of you are speakers so you know. You don’t know what happens. Thank you, Anastasia. I’ve been smiling ever since because of that.

It’s nice to meet everybody. What a wonderful conversation. I love that everybody does introductions. I get to know all of you. Before we start, I would like all of us to ground for a minute. Would you guys join me, please? Let’s take a couple of deep breaths in and push that breath down to the ground so we can all be present. Let’s do that together.

Thank you for joining me in that. I like to start every day with a little bit of grounding so I can be aware of my bliss. We’re going to be talking about bliss. I want to start with this. Did you know that your mind in bliss mode, which is different from neutral mode, stress mode or negative mode, gives you a huge advantage in life and business? Many of you understand about mindset. I’m sure that you’re aware of that, but I’m not just talking about the positive mode. I’m talking about bliss mode.

Definition Of Bliss

Let me define what I mean by bliss. Bliss is a deep sense of joy and contentment, and the confidence that you can handle anything that comes your way. Bliss is about emotional mastery and emotional resilience. Why is this important? What does this have to do with our life or business? Warren Buffett says, “If you can’t control your emotions, you can’t control your money.” If bliss has to do with emotional mastery and emotional resilience, you can see how this relates to Warren Buffett’s world of business. I hope you can also see how it relates to everything else we do in life.

If you can control your emotions, and I like to say manage rather than control, if we can manage our emotions, we’re able to make better decisions that will support the joy in every area of our life, whether it’s our health, working out, what we eat, relationships, business or investing. We talked a little bit about real estate. All of those things are going to be affected by how we make decisions. If we make decisions based on the filters of bliss, we’re going to make decisions that are more supportive of the joy of our life. I hope that makes sense to everybody and that feels relevant.

I put together something special for this group. This is not my normal talk. When I visited before, I noticed how interactive all of you are and how much great wisdom is already here about mindset, bliss and joy. I wanted to have an experiential talk rather than just talking at you. I hope that’s okay. I hope you’ll join me and be fully engaged as we move into this experience of bliss. This is going to be funny because we’re going to start with the unblissful piece. I promise I will pull you out of that fast, and you will end the day feeling blissful.

Frustration

What I would like to do is for all of us to think about something that makes us unhappy, something that causes frustration, and might cause a reaction in you in a normal circumstance. Maybe it’s getting cut off at work. Maybe it’s thinking about the school system. Maybe it’s watching the news. For me, one of the examples that I like to give is if I wake up in the morning and my website has been hacked again. I don’t know why this happens so much to me. You can imagine that something like this will send my head into a complete tailspin.

I want you to have this experience in the same way. At that moment, what can happen to me is my head would go into a tailspin and then the story started. My monkey brain goes crazy. I’m like, “Again? I can’t believe this is happening. I hate tech. It never supports me. What am I going to do?” My mind goes on and on. Eventually, I worked myself up into tears, call my webmaster, and then he takes care of it. Still, I’m in this state of frustration, which is hard for me now to focus on the other things in life that I would like to be doing. It takes me time to come back to my bliss state.

That’s the thing that I’m looking for. I would like you guys to think of something like that, that sends you or could possibly send you into that feeling of frustration. Think about it. I want you to feel it. I promise we’ll get you out of there, but I want you to feel into it. As you’re doing that, I also want you to notice what happens to your body. We’re going to talk about this in a second, but I’m going to stop talking for a minute so you can get into that mode.

Bliss is a deep sense of joy, contentment, and the confidence that you can handle anything that comes your way. Share on X

Are we all there? It’s interesting from my perspective to watch what happened with all of you. Everybody was smiling. We were all happy. Now everybody is like this. Notice what happens to our bodies. When I get frustrated, you saw what happened. My hands went to my head. My head is down. I’m all scrunched over. My shoulders are forward. My lower back hurts. There’s physiology also that happens when we’re feeling that level of frustration.

More About Bliss

Now let’s switch gears and we’ll talk about bliss. What I want you to think about now is something that makes you feel happy and good. This is going to be a bliss trigger for you. For me, I’m lucky that I have a bliss trigger that happens every single morning. I get my little puppy out of his crate. He’s all wiggly, waggy and adorable, and wants to be cuddled. We get to cuddle in the morning. One of the things that I reminded myself of way better than meditation, although I do meditate, to put me in a specific bliss mood at the moment is cuddling with him, feeling the joy, and breathing into that joy so I can take that joy with me into my day.

What I would like you to do is take a minute. This one, I want you to feel into it because I want to pull you out of that yucky feeling you just had. Think of something that makes you feel good. This is going to be a bliss trigger for you. It’s something that feels yummy, that makes you feel happy and smile. I want you to write down a couple of trigger words for that. For me, it would be, “Morning with my puppy.” That way, you know you can go back to it. I’m going to be quiet for a moment and let you guys think of that and then write down some trigger words.

I’m watching people’s faces change, but I’m noticing a couple of faces haven’t changed yet. Are we all there? Give me a nod if you’re feeling. Susan, thank you so much for that comment. We’ll get back to that later. How are you guys feeling? When you think of something that brings you joy, it happens emotionally. You can’t help it. Our minds affect our bodies and our bodies affect our minds. You’re feeling joy.

I want you to take a look at your bodies and what’s happening there. For me, when I think about my puppy, notice that I’m sitting up straight. My shoulders are back. I’m smiling, eyes forward, and so much more engaged with the group. My head isn’t down like this. There’s a complete physiological change that happens. When you’re in this bliss mode, now you can look at things from a different filter.

What I want you to do is now to think back to that yucky situation we introduced earlier. Think about that and notice what happened to you. Did you slump over? Did you have the same reaction that you had before, or is it different? Do you feel differently about it? Would you react differently to it? For instance, in my computer hacking situation, let’s say I had this lovely moment with my puppy in the morning. I’m feeling all blissful. I go to my computer and I noticed that my computer has been hacked.

 

In this situation, I would probably take a couple of deep breaths as I did with you earlier. I feel my frustration. I would then immediately call my webmaster and have him handle it. Now it’s off my plate. It’s out of my day. It only caused a little bit of frustration and I’m back to work without much interruption. Can you see that in bliss mode, I’m much more productive, I’m much more joyful, and I’m making better decisions? Does that make sense? Did anybody else have the same experience? I would love to hear some feedback from you guys, maybe 1 or 2 people. Yeah, thank you, Susan.

I start my day quite early with exercise classes from Sloan Kettering on Zoom. When Zoom throws me out or freezes, it does set my head spinning. It’s my fault, but that does change my mode.

Susan, did you feel a difference when you thought about that first and then we went into bliss mode and then you thought about it later? What was the difference between those two ways of looking at the same situation?

When I thought about what makes me smile every morning, I smiled.

How did you react to the Zoom dropping you off?

Let’s not have it happen with you. I won’t know for a minute. Those things happen intermittently. They happen and it’s how we perceive them.

When you're in the bliss mode, you can look at things from a different filter. Share on X

We can create filters on how we perceive them. If you’re going to put on filters, you might as well put on filters that support your joy, don’t you think?

That’s a good line.

Choose Bliss

Here’s another line that I love. This is not mine. A friend of mine gave it to me. I’m going to read it so I get it exactly right. “Your mind on bliss always finds better solutions to anything that comes up than a mind without it.” You guys have had this experience. I hope that demonstrated my perspective on what bliss is. This is why I called my book, Choose Bliss, because living a blissful life is a choice. What filters you see the world through is your choice. You’ve experienced this right now. You could choose to go into it in your normal reactionary mode, which is how most of us live, or you can choose to prime yourself with bliss and then go into your world in that way.

Bliss Tool And Moments

The next thing is that you can use your physiology for bliss. I’ve given you one tool. It is to create a bliss trigger. That’s the first tool that I’ve given you. I like to make sure that you guys have things to take away as Anastasia did from one of my other conversations. You’ve got a bliss tool. I want to make sure that you hold onto that. You’ve got some trigger words. What I would like you to do is think right now of a couple of other bliss moments that you can utilize.

This is why I want you to do this, we’ve all been in business for a long time. We’ve all lived full lives. We all know that when stress happens, no matter how much training we’ve had, stress takes over frequently. A challenge can take over. In those moments, it’s hard to be like, “I should be thinking blissfully. This is what I’m going to do.” Instead, you’re starting to have that reaction. If you’ve got scripts already prepared and memorized, you can immediately replace the monkey brain that’s happening for you with a new script that will give you joy. That’s why I like people to have prepared in their mind moments that they can now turn to and decide to live to change the filters at that moment.

What I would like you to do is take a minute and think about a couple more. We got one. I want to give you three because one isn’t always going to do it. I would like you to have three. Think about two more moments that would give you great joy. Write down some trigger words. I’m going to be quiet, so you go ahead and do that.

 

Let me know when you guys feel like you’ve got a couple that you can utilize and you’ve written around some trigger words. Go ahead and nod. I’m hoping that all of you have those. I would like you to leave this presentation with some tools in your bliss tool belt. I hope you got that so you can utilize them. Even if you don’t, you got time. This is a practice that you want to do for the rest of your life. This is one other thing that I want to say about living a blissful life, it’s not necessarily easy. It’s a habit that we create.

Anastasia mentioned something about when I walk into a room, people see me as the most joyful person in the world or whatever it is. The reality is I have bad days too. Being blissful does not mean that you do not have the full range of emotions. You can go from depression to ecstasy. We all have emotions. Those emotions are our right. They teach us. We have lessons. They tell us what’s going right and what’s going wrong. They tell us what to aspire for. Our emotions are a good thing.

A blissful person doesn’t live in the range of emotions. They experience them and then they come back to the core state of bliss that they can call home. Living in that place is a habit. It’s a habit of creating the right filters. It’s a habit of training our minds. If you want that and you want to be able to do it consistently, you have to practice. You need some of these tools. You need to practice again and again. It’s not necessarily easy and it takes time. It’s like brushing your teeth. You don’t get to do it once and then have it be over. Your teeth will all fall out.

You want to make sure that you’re doing this every single day to support yourself. It’s an effort, but it’s worth it. If you make those habits or if you create that in your life and you make those filters, now you get to live a blissful life most of the time. You also make better decisions in your life. You also are more productive like we talked about. There are many more advantages to living a blissful life. It gives you that advantage in life.

Now that I’ve given you one tool, let me give you my second favorite tool. That is to pay attention to your physiology. You already have this experience of walking through what a difference it makes when you’re sad, upset, angry or frustrated. What happens to your body? For most of us, our shoulders will fall forward. We contract. It will show up in different ways in our bodies. When you’re in bliss mode, you expand. This doesn’t look natural, but we do expand.

That physiology is an indicator, first of all, of whether we’re feeling blissful or not. It can also be a leading indicator. Maybe we wake up on the wrong side of the bed or maybe something is starting to happen in your day and you’re starting to collapse, just do the things that you would naturally do. It’s different for everybody. You had this experience before, so you’re aware of what your body does. What does your body do when you’re blissful? Now, position your body in that way. For me, I’ll pull my shoulders back. I’ll start to breathe more deeply. When I’m upset, I breathe much more shallowly. Breathe more deeply. I’ll put a smile on my face. I’m not faking the smile. If you put it on your face, maybe it will become real. It is an indicator for me if I’m feeling good or not. It is whether I’m smiling or not.

When your mind is with bliss, you always find better solutions to anything that comes up than a mind without it. Share on X

Control

I’m not going to go on this tangent, but there is scientific evidence that when you smile, all these muscles in your face react. There’s a release of endorphins. Smiling is scientifically good. It makes you happy. Even physiologically, the act of smiling tells your body, “I’m happy. I’m feeling good.” With that physiological response, we can create a posture of bliss to then create the mood of bliss. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that you have absolute control over your bliss. We can do it with our minds by using the bliss triggers. We can do it with our bodies. In both cases, when you get into a moment that’s feeling unblissful, all you have to do is a little tweak and suddenly your mood alters.

It’s a little bit like magic. The more you do it, the more you get to experience that blissful life that will support everything that you want to do, your productivity, good decisions, good relationships, good business, and good investing. It affects everything. Was that valuable? Did you guys feel like those are some yummy tools that you can use in your toolbox? That’s bliss for a lot of people, I have to confess.

Ashley, you guys have so much wisdom in this room. I’m going to want to hear more about your bliss practices when we get into the Q&A. Keep those in mind because I would love for you to share those. Susan shared about laughter in the morning, and then about bacon. We’re going to talk about that. We need to wrap up, unfortunately, because I don’t have a huge amount of time.

There are two more practices that I want to share with you. One is in the form of a gift and one I will give to you because it’s quick. The golden ticket or the master key to bliss is gratitude. It turns out that your bliss is directly related to your gratitude and how much time you spend in gratitude. This topic is important that I wrote a full chapter of it in my book, Choose Bliss. It’s a deep concept. It’s not just, “Thank you,” although that is good. That’s a great place to start, but there are ways to do it that will enhance your bliss.

The interesting thing about gratitude is you can do it wrong. Some people will do gratitude practices where they’re avoiding lack. They say it in a way that makes them scared to lose it, whatever it is that they’re grateful for. You don’t want to be doing a gratitude practice that causes fear. In my chapter, I talk about the right way to do a gratitude practice. Since I don’t have the time to go over it right now, I would like to give that to you as a gift.

It’s CoreBlissLife.com/survey. I have a little appreciation form for you guys to give me feedback on. If you don’t want to fill these forms out, don’t worry about it. You can go down to the bottom and say, “Yes, I want you to gift,” and give me your email address. That’ll be fine. If you do feel like giving me feedback, I would be honored to hear your thoughts. I respect all of you in this room and would love to hear from you. If you would rather not do that, go to the form, get your free gift, put in the email address, and then use the next couple of minutes while people are filling out the form to write down some practices that you personally do to achieve bliss in your life, or maybe write down some things that you’re going to use from this presentation going forward in your life.

 

Extra Credit Strategy

Thank you to those of you who filled out the form. For those of you that want the chapter, I will get that out to you as soon as I can. As I promised, you got an extra credit strategy that I want to give you before we open up the floor for Q&A and your comments. Here’s my extra credit strategy. It is called Stop, Drop and Breathe. This is my favorite one because it’s quick and easy. You can do it anywhere, anytime with anyone. It’s super effective.

This is how this works. Imagine that you’re in that yucky moment. For me, it was my computer getting hacked. I start to notice the monkey mind is going. Understand that a situation does not cause a reaction. The story in your head about the situation causes the reaction. What you want to do is that you catch, “There’s this story starting to happen in my mind. I’m starting to slump. I’m starting to have a reaction.” First, you stop. For me, quite literally from my office, I will say, “Moneeka, stop.” If I’m in a grocery store or in public, I might snap. I have some triggers to stop the monkey mind.

Take your mind and drop it down into your heart. Literally remove it and take it into your heart. That’s the drop. Now take three deep breaths in through your nose. Have that breath go all the way down so it’s tickling the back of your belly button and then breathe out through your mouth. That’s an energizing breath. You want to do three of those or as many as you can do. If you could only do one, you do one.

Notice my voice has dropped. My frustration has gone. Now you’re in a place to be able to respond again from a filter of bliss. Use this all the time. This is my favorite strategy because I use it the most. You can use it in a second. You don’t need to engage your brain. You just engage your body, which is significantly easier.

This one is a little bit of a challenge in the beginning because a lot of people can’t get the breath. We can’t stop the brain or the monkey mind. We can’t get the breath. Don’t give up on it if it doesn’t work the first time. If you practice it 6 or 7 times, you’ll start to notice, “That’s easier.” All these bliss practices take a little bit of practice, but they’re totally worth it. This one is the easiest one to get access to immediately. It has been an honor to chat with you and to spend time with you.

I hope that the experiences and the tools that I gave you were valuable and will help you to live a more blissful life. I know there’s a lot of wisdom in this room. I would like to hear from you. What is it that you do to create bliss in your life? What is it that you loved that you think you will take forward into your life starting right after this meeting to create more bliss in your life? Would anybody like to share? If you have questions for me, please feel free to ask. Anastasia go ahead.

Living a blissful life really is a choice. What filters you see the world through really is your choice. Share on X

First off, I want to go back to that exercise that you had because I’m fully aware of the whole body posture. I’ve tested it on myself, just something and how I feel right now versus being up and aware. It changes how I feel. This idea of having a positive trigger or a bliss trigger that I can go to not only get me out of the space that I’m in. In my case, I was thinking of wildfires. I was upset over what was happening in Arizona because I have friends there. Bringing back all the stuff that happened to the Bay Area and our families brought me down.

The things I was thinking about were my grandchildren, being with my family, my 60th birthday, the tea and the croquet, all this stuff. I could envision myself, my family, and my granddaughters at that party and how much joy that brought me and bliss. To go back to the wildfires, I did find in my body the differences. When I was thinking about the frustration, sadness, anger and fear, my chest tightens, then we go to happiness and I’m feeling more free. I can breathe better. When you had us come back, my chest didn’t tighten as much. I could feel the sadness again over the wildfires, but it didn’t physically affect me as much as it had after I had been in that state of bliss.

I feel like prophylactically, I should be thinking about these on a regular basis as protection. It’s like a Pepto-Bismol coating on my stomach. If I drink it every day, it’s going to help make it easier for me to not go into that space. That was an interesting experiment for you to have us do. I appreciate that. I want to bring back this thing that you talked about on Hal Elrod’s show that I use all the time. That is similar to your stop, drop and breathe, but to stop and call myself out with, “Anastasia, are these thoughts serving you?” I don’t know about everybody else, but my monkey brain goes down in different directions.

How many of us have had a negative dialogue with somebody? An argument with someone that you are imagining in your head that hasn’t even happened, may not ever happen, but I’ll even go through various iterations of it. It didn’t quite turn out the way I want it so then I’ll change my argument with this person to another argument, and then another argument. The next thing I know, I’m spinning myself and then I have to stop, “This hasn’t even happened.”

I’m all upset, usually in the shower, too. I’m angry at this person. I’m angry at my inability to get them to see things from my viewpoint. What I realized is it is so far from reality. I have to stop myself. I literally would say, “Anastasia, are these thoughts serving you?” It brings me dead in my tracks. I have no choice but to shift. I usually laugh at how ridiculous I am. Sometimes it’s harder to get out of that, but I will say that it serves me. In fact, I’ve got a new monitor now, but I got to do this again. I had a label right at the top of my monitor that said, “Anastasia, are these thoughts serving you?” It is a visual reminder to stop myself.

Viktor Frankl, if there’s one person that I can most understand what he’s talking about when we have a choice, that man has shared with us about choice. It is powerful. I reflect back and I imagine myself in a concentration camp in his situation having a choice as to how I feel. They can take everything away from you, but they cannot take away your choice for how you feel. Your statement that reminds me to stop and are these thoughts serving me brings me back to choice. I want to thank you for that.

 

Thank you. Anatasia made a good point in that our bliss triggers can be primers for your day. They can also be the cure for your fall from bliss. You can use them on the front end and at the back end. I recommend that you do because you always want to start your day blissed out. Your brain is in bliss. You can also use it as a cure later. Thank you for saying that. I meant to say that in my presentation. I’m glad that you caught that, Anastasia.

The other thing that I want to say is that people think that life has to be complicated and if it’s not complicated, it’s not good. If a strategy isn’t complicated, it’s not good enough for me. It’s not scientifically proven, Whatever it is, I like simple strategies because it’s the simple strategies that you can implement immediately in a moment that can change everything. I love the one that you mentioned. I love these simple strategies.

One other thing that I wanted to mention is we just got out of a pandemic and we were dealing with the war in Ukraine. There are all sorts of stuff that we hear about in the news. Those things cause stress in our bodies and our minds. How much stress is going to be determined by us? We can’t change the school system by ourselves. We can’t change what’s going on in politics. We can’t change what’s happening outside of us, but we always have control of what’s going on inside of us so just remember that. I love what you said about choice, Anastasia. They can take everything, but they can’t take your choice. Thank you so much for that. Does anybody else want to give us something that they use to create bliss in their life? Susan, and then we’ll go to Craig.

I don’t know if any of you remember the photographer Anne Geddes who did the baby pictures and she put the babies in the flowers. For all of you who have grandchildren, I love seeing baby pictures. Whatever is happening, if I have a friend who sends me a video of his grandson or granddaughter, I stop and watch it. If they don’t send me, I’ll send them notes going, “I haven’t seen a picture. That’s cruel of you.” It’s Anne Gedddes’s idea of pictures of these babies smiling. I don’t care about pets. Don’t send me anything with the pet, but the little infants doing wonderful things.

I would jump on what Anastasia said. I do the same thing. I have these great conversations in my head. I was told there’s a psychological term for it. It’s called catastrophizing. One friend, when she asked me why I didn’t write fiction, I said, “I don’t have that great imagination.” She said, “Are you kidding? That story you told me, you have more imagination than anyone I know.”

We make things up, but also nature. As I am sitting here, I look out across the mountains. I see trees. That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time in my formal office. Bliss is something that is a choice. Certainly, Viktor Frankl and many survivors of many horrible things have said that they make choices. They also make some other kinds of payments. I thank you for this because it’s a good reminder that if I know I need to start my day with humor, not to shortchange myself on seeing things that live. Thank you.

People can take everything, but they can't take your choice. Share on X

I love that, Susan. Thank you. Craig, and then Christine.

I was going to say something about choice. Similar to Anastasia, I finished reading Viktor Frankl’s book. It’s all about the choices we make. It’s always good to have a bag of tricks. What am I grateful for? If feel a little anxious or something, I feel what I’m grateful for. It’s important to have a daily trigger. A great example of this is seeing Randal Reeder in his truck with his farm hat and his shirt. That gives me great joy. I’m going to retain this image for the rest of my day. Thank you, Randal. Also, the posture thing. Our wellness and hope expert has so much to say about that. If all else fails, in my kitchen, I have a red box with a glass cover on it and a piece of bacon in there. It says, “If all else fails, go for it.” That’s all I have for you.

That was awesome, Craig. Thank you. Christine, what would you like to share?

Everyone is mentioning Viktor Frankl. He was one of my professors in a couple of classes. I had a unique experience when I was en route to my Master’s and Doctorate in Psychology. It’s an inspiration. I’ve had some amazing professors. He was one of them. I appreciate your learning from what he has written as well, but being there in person with him was truly a learning experience as well. You being here in person is also a very special experience. It also makes me fall to mind things that have made my life special. Music has certainly been one of them. I’ve learned and performed music all over the world in many languages, not always or not typically in my case. At one time, it was for money when I was a student. A lot of times, it’s sharing.

I found that music in people’s lives and hearts can be a trigger to good memories and positive things, not so much as performance, but if shared back with them with the correct pronunciation of their languages and things they learned as children, things that are not children’s or baby songs, but messages and things that mattered to them. That has been one of the things that I’ve been able to get back, and it goes back and forth, to watch the joy and the specialness of things that were music to people, to learn in a positive context if shared back with them in a way that is respectful of the languages and the cultures, not destroying them by not properly saying them or understanding what the message is. That has been one of the things I have found that has been effective to interchange and reciprocate.

Christine, thank you for that. You bring to mind this idea of the givers high and being of service. Even in enjoying music, the way you talked about it was in service to the audience that’s hearing it, not mutilating their language. Service is another one of the chapters of my book. It’s a huge pillar of bliss because when we get out of ourselves and we’re taking into account somebody else, we now have something so much bigger than ourselves to be paying attention to and being of service to others in all different ways, whether it’s speaking their language correctly, whether it’s smiling at them, holding a door for them, or contributing financially or with our time. Those things all give us a server’s high.

 

I could talk about that for 2,000 years. I love that. There are so many things that prove that we can go and do things in service. Music has been clinically proven to improve people’s moods. It can be a trigger and an anchor as it is a sound. Adding in that, Christine, this attitude of service was beautiful. I’ve never quite heard it that way. Thank you.

One additional thing that I have found. I was a parent. I can repeat things correctly, but it’s the context also, the message of people’s music, the special things that they started out with. Something special and it’s respectful and it’s something that they appreciate.

Thank you. Does anybody else have anything they would like to add or any questions they got?

I want to go off of Susan’s thing about babies. The one thing that no matter where you’re at or whatever, baby giggles and babies laughing bring a smile to my face. It’s pure joy.

I love that, Tony. At night, I have my Instagram account up on my phone. My husband laughs at me. Everything on Instagram for me is about animals. I love elephants. I love the majesty of lions, and I love ducks. I scroll and I see all these reels about all these animals. It sends me off into this blissful sleep. You’re not supposed to have screen time before you go to sleep. For me, this works to send me into my sleep smiling. I wake up much more naturally on the right side of the bed. I’m much happier when I wake up usually if I do that. I love that. It’s children’s giggles for you. For me, it’s animals. I hope you guys found this talk valuable and that you enjoyed it.

It was excellent. Thank you for joining us, Moneeka and for your talk.

 

Important Links

• Choose Bliss
• CoreBlissLife.com/survey

 

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