In this episode, Jennifer Dunham (aka The Happiness Architect) shares with us how to go from burnout to enjoying the process of making profits. Jennifer also shares how to start and end your day with happiness, the keys to creating good habits that stick, and how to improve your creativity and productivity.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:36 – Introduction.
• 5:41 – Jennifer was hit by a drunk driver, went through a divorce and had cancer all in the same summer and she calls that her crappy summer. But she did not completely change her life after that. Jennifer is a workaholic and she was working all the time and got married again and one day she and her husband were having a conversation about when they are going to retire in  the future, they were sitting outside their house and the dogs next door were barking and that irritated her husband and they would have frequent arguments so she thought was on the path to another divorce and so she went inside and said to her husband we’ve got to make a change and they decided that night to move because they always wanted to live away from the suburbs and seven days later they bought a house they absolutely loved and within thirty days they moved and few weeks after that her friends and family noticed that she looked much happier.
• 7:22 – Jennifer tells people she learned more about happiness and how to elevate her happiness on a daily basis from drinking coffee with her chickens than she did from that bad crappy summer.  Jennifer’s five steps have to do with the tiny power and leveraging the tiny power of what Jennifer calls happiness habits to really rekindle and rewire those neuro pathways in your brain, they exist but we just all get so busy in our day to day life that it takes three times as many positive experiences to outweigh the negative things in our brain and as human beings we are flight or fight so those are very stressful anxious things and we easily let that go in to our brains but the positive stuff takes work and so she tells people learning to be happier and infusing that into your business takes practice and a conscious effort.
• 9:41 – Jennifer tells people to start their day happy and end their day happy.  She does a lot of habit training about how to create habits that stick for your personality and this is a technique that works for most people, it’s called habit stacking. Habit stacking involves people stacking a new habit next to a habit they already have because it’s easier to make a routine that way. For example, when you brush your teeth in the morning or you are getting dressed you should insert the habit of starting your day happy.
• 12:10 – If you choose something to start happy likewise end your day with appreciation because you can probably appreciate something about the day even if it’s the blue sky.  Starting your day happy takes 30 seconds and ending your day happy takes another 30 seconds.
• 14:02 – Her next tip is to embrace silence. While she is driving, Jennifer doesn’t turn the radio on and enjoys the sights and the sounds around her. Also you could go for a walk without your phone or leave it your pocket.
• 16:22 – Jennifer’s next tip is to make contact. Nowadays you see people they are walking and texting at the same time. So you should make a conscious effort to make eye contact and it could even be with strangers.
• 18:05 – The next tip involves reframing negative self-talk. So at breakfast you can think if there was anything leading up to breakfast that started to weigh on your shoulder, start writing it down and after a week when you start figuring out what those negative patterns are and then reframe it into positive language. For example, Jennifer used to say ‘my time is so limited’ so she started to tell herself ‘my time is precious’ and when she says it like that it makes it so that she is more accepting of how she is choosing to spend her time.
• 19:30 – All five of these exercises are meant to elevate you because you become more mindful and more present but by doing these five exercises when you elevate your personal happiness, many studies show that you become healthier and it also improves your relationships and you are more productive and more focused.
• 20:08 – When you can elevate your focus, your productivity, your creativity, eventually what you are ultimately raising is your success. Everybody wants to be successful and make more money but sometimes they forget to go back and look at that foundation and it takes only five minutes a day to elevate your happiness.

Resources Mentioned:

• You can find Jennifer Dunham at HappinessMatters.com
• Jennifer is also having a summit called ‘Dodge the Dark Side of Success’ where 22 top influencers are going to throw light on how to enjoy the moment on the messy path to making millions.  You can register to join the telesummit at SuccessDarkSide.com