Episode 153: How the Conventional Happiness Formula Keeps Us Stuck
In this episode, I’m talking with Kim Strobel a happiness and empowerment coach about the conventional happiness formula.
Frequently we will ask ourselves—why am I unhappy?
But the key component is the question underneath the question.
What is making you unhappy?
Or better yet, how would you know if you were happy?
A friend, former guest, and storytelling expert, Hillary Rea, shared that it might come down to asking a more beautiful question—a question that helps you get to the heart of the question to uncover the answer. Often, Hillary uses the phrase—ask a more beautiful question—to prompt her to get to the heart of an issue.
Throughout my own experiences, I’ve found that the beautiful question is usually underneath the question that’s important and so today’s episode is a study into the question underneath the question concept.
I’m talking with Kim Strobel, a happiness and empowerment coach and the founder of Strobel Education. As a leadership consultant and happiness coach, Kim helps businesses, organizations, and high-achievers prioritize their health and well-being so they can reach new levels in their business and their life. And as a result, businesses and organizations take massive actions and create positive change in every area.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
The conventional happiness formula and how it keeps us stuck
Adding gratitude and affirmations into your life in a helpful way (you know I have some opinions about these 2 concepts so Kim and I break it down for you!)
How Kim’s panic disorder affected her life, how she overcame it, and what happened when it reared its ugly head again
How the process of learning to live with her panic disorder helped bring her happiness
Resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
Kim: What happens is you are so focused and you've tied your happiness to that goal, that you're letting it still, all the happiness that is available to you right now. So even when things are really tough, I tell people, find your happy in the now while also reaching for your big, bold vision.
Nancy:: Ask a more beautiful question.
Recently, a friend and former guests, Hillary Rea shared that idea with me. It's from a David White quote. “Solace is the art of asking the beautiful question of ourselves, of our world or of one another in fiercely difficult and beautiful moments” said, David. From his book Constellations. I like to think of it as the question underneath the question that is important.
And Hillary uses the phrase to ask a more beautiful question to prompt herself, to get to the heart of the issue frequently. We will ask ourselves, why am I unhappy? But the key component is the question underneath the question. What is making you unhappy? Or better. What would you do, if you were happy? Today's podcast episode is a study in the question underneath the question concept,
You're listening to the happier approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. Nancy: Jane Smith.
On today's episode, I'm talking with Kim Strobel, a happiness and empowerment coach and the founder of Strobel Education.
The topic of our conversation and the starting point was the question, what is the conventional happiness formula and how does it keep us stuck? And Kim and I discussed that and then there's a wonderful juicy conversation. But for me, the meat of the interview is the question beneath the question, which came out through our discussion, which is how can Kim continue to be happy when she deals with panic disorder?
How does she live with something so debilitating and surprising when you meet Kim, you will see what I mean and how the process of learning to live is what helped bring her real happiness, Kim and I talk about the conventional happiness formula and how it keeps us stuck adding gratitude and affirmations into your life in a helpful way.
And I have some opinions about these two concepts. So Kim and I break it down for you. Kim's panic disorder and how it affected her life, how she overcame it and what happened when it reared its ugly head.
Nancy:: Kim. I am so excited to have you here today to chat with you.
Kim: Thank you. I'm honored to be here with you.
Nancy:: So we're just going to dive right in. S I was so intrigued when you reached out to me to via email and you were talking about the conventional happiness for me. Such a great phrase and why it keeps us stuck. Tell me more about that
Kim: The traditional formula for happiness, that we've all been fed and has been ingrained in us from previous generations and.
We see it all around us from social media to the way our neighbors are living. But the conventional formula for happiness is basically work really hard in school. Go to college, choose a degree where you make a lot of money. Definitely don't choose teaching because you're not going to make a lot of money (being former teacher) get out into the world, get a job.
Work really hard climb the corporate ladder, get a better job working, even harder, get an even better job, make more money. And then eventually you can have the nice cars and you can have the nice, big, beautiful home. And once you've been able to accomplish all of these things and work your way up the ladder on the other side of that, you have achieved.
You have finally gotten there. And what we now know from Sean Acres course, positive psychology and very vetted research from Harvard university, as well as research from Samuel Luber Misskey and and also Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania is the formula for happiness is broken.
And in fact, It's completely backwards. What we now know is that when you bring your happiness to the forefront, first, it changes every single outcome in your life. So if you want to create more abundance in your life, don't chase the abundance first. Chase your happiness create your happiness, puts your well-being at the forefront first because when you have a mind at positive, you're able to come up with creative solutions to problems you couldn't come up with before or solutions.
When your brain is at positive, you're able to have a different perspective and see other opportunities that before you could not see. And so this whole idea of, Hey, our happiness m y wellbeing needs to be at the forefront first. That is a game changer.
Nancy:: So when you say I like, I love that you're saying my wellbeing and happiness using those words together, because happiness is a loaded term for sure.
What would you say is the definition of happiness in this. Scenario,
Kim: In the broken formula scenario or in both, I think happiness is my wife and I live in this nice, really big home. And we drive really nice vehicles and we both make a lot of money and we are high society folks, so to speak.
And because of all of that I am going to feel this great sense of fulfillment and happiness inside of me. And what we actually know is. Like we want to have, it's important to have big, bold visions for our life. And I would be the first to tell you Nancy:. I live in a big, beautiful home and I love it and I'm super thankful for it.
But I also know that if I lived in a thousand square foot home, My longterm happiness would not be affected by the size of my home. And so if I could just dive into the happiness research, this might be a good time to do that so that we can put these things into perspective..
What we know is that every one of us. We all have, what's called a default happiness level. So maybe my default happiness level is here. And maybe your default happiness level is a little bit higher than mine. So what happens is you and I go out and we buy a new purse or a new pair of shoes, or we get a new car or we purchase a new home or we get a new job.
And our happiness level does elevate, but it elevates for a very short time. What happens is it comes right back to default after a period of time. Yes, I'm walking around with my new Kate spade purse. It just came in the mail. I love it. I'm excited. I'm happy. Two days later, I'm back to default.
Or whatever it might be. Now what's interesting about the brain research and hard to wrap our mind around is that we also know this to be true. Of enduring really terrible things in our life. We know that you can encounter tragedy, loss, grief, disease, divorce, all of these things, and that our happiness level will drop.
But the brain has this kind of uncanny ability to reset itself after a period of time. And I have trouble wrapping my head around that because I'm not going to lie. Something's Nancy: I think could happen to me. And I feel like I would never get my happiness back, but if we, if I pose that question to people who are listening, I'm going to guess that we can all come up.
A handful of people who have had terrible atrocities done to them. And somehow they go on to live this very joyful, meaningful life. And so what we know from the brain research is that most of the time, our brain will return to default after a period of time. So now the question becomes where's our happiness come from where's our default from.
So I want you to picture your happiness as a pie chart. And so what we know is that 50% of your long-term happiness is genetic. It comes from your mom or your dad, or a mixture of both. Sometimes when I tell people this, they completely hang their heads
There is a genetic tendency to this. Like some of us were born into this world or we like lolly gap. The world is all bright and shiny and yeah we get a little stressed sometimes. But for the most part, we just constantly see the good in the world. And then there's others of us who have to work harder at it. Our brain is programmed more towards the negative.
And we work with people. We have friends like this, we have the negative Nellie, so to speak that have to work harder at being positive. And then we have the bright, shiny uniforms that just seem to automatically be able to do it.
Kim: If 50% is genetic.
Let me tell you a shocking statistic of that pie chart. Only about 10% of your long-term happiness comes from your external circumstances. So here's an external circumstance. What kind of car? What kind of home you live in, what kind of money you make? If you're married, single, divorced, or widowed.
If you have kids, if you don't have kids, if you need to lose 20 pounds or you need to lose 60 pounds, those are all external circumstances, but we let those external circumstances eat up way more of that pie than 10%. But the brain research will tell you the research is very strong. That those things only account for about 10%, but we have a mistaken belief we say to ourselves, when I can make this kind of money, I'll finally be happy when I can lose the 20 pounds.
I’ll finally be happy when I can find a partner that truly loves me all. Be happy. What's happening is your letting those external circumstances eat up way more of the pie and that's on you. My friend. And that's the hardcore truth of it. I know I do it sometimes. There's something that happens and three weeks later I'm still ruminating on it. And that's me saying, I'm letting this steal way more than 10% of the pie and it's time for me to stop letting it steal more than 10% of the pie. Now I want to make a clarification, Nancy:, because yeah. If your spouse, all of a sudden leaves you, you are going to be unhappy. It, it might take you six months or a year or two years, but the problem is it four and five and six years later, you're still unhappy because your husband left you.
That's on you, my friend, because you have you have to do the work right. And so I think that's, when we're thinking about the conventional formula, we put all of our eggs over here saying if I can achieve this, I can accomplish this. If I can simply buy this bigger home, it will bring my family so much more happiness.
And. I know this research I've lived here for 20 years and I still think that having the lake house is going to bring me more happiness.
Nancy:: It might bring you more joy.
Kim: Yeah! I can justify it to know end. And my husband, he's always really good. And he's Kim, you preach this happiness research to people, but then you tell me why you have 78 pairs of shoes in our class. (laughter)
I am anomaly to the research (Laughter) those shoes bring me more than 10% happiness,
Nancy:: but the cool thing about it, that it, is the idea that there's a lot of cool things about that research, but the cool thing about it is a, the back to the returning to default, I think that There to me, it takes off some of the pressure that that even when, and I can attest that, like after my dad died and I was like, I can't imagine a life without him in it.
And it was completely devastating to me. And I was just thinking this the other day as they always say, you never. Stop grieving, but it just, takes on a different form. And it has, like we have new memories with we're dad isn't there and, we've returned to somewhat of that homeostasis spot you were talking about.
And I think that sometimes we try to hold on so tight to the happiness that I need to be happy all the time, or I need to be. Returning to this certain spot that may not even be our default.. And then if it and we may be going through something traumatic where we just can't attain that happiness and that's okay.
Yeah.
Kim: I feel like we have created a culture where we have misconstrued this idea of positivity and yeah. It's like a culture of positivity. So we tell people. If they complain where like now listen, just focus on the positive, just focus on your blessings. Just be positive. And that does not work because what we're saying is, Hey, you're not allowed to have any negative feelings, just turn it off and switch to positive things.
And let me just tell you that does not work. We have to feel the negative feelings, but we also have to crawl out of the gutter a lot quicker if we're still there. Seven, seven days later. I want to work towards crawling out of the gutter, but like we have to be allowed to have these feelings. My mom who loves me dearly, I was having a stressful moment a few months ago and I was getting riled up and she goes, she said, wow, you are the happiness coach.
Mary Jo does not mean I'm not allowed to have negative feelings. Like sunshine, unicorns and butterflies. I'm a practitioner of happiness.
Nancy:: Yes. Yeah. That's an impossible standard that you're going to be happy all the time, which is, that's what I felt when you were explaining the defaults like, oh, some of this is just how I'm wired.
Yeah.
Kim: There are things we can do to change that. And we'll talk about that, but not beating ourselves up so much. The other thing that plays into this is this term called hedonic adaptation. And the brain is this very complex. Part of our body that comes from archaic times and the brain has the ability to adapt quickly to new circumstances in order to protect us and keep us out of danger.
That's why, back in the caveman days, our brains we're able to adapt quickly to harsh conditions so that we could endure that while we still have hedonic adaptation that goes on today. So for example, if it's 17 degrees outside and you're freezing, freezing, and you walk in, you know how good the fire feels at first. You will sit by the fireplace and it's so good. And it's so warm. And then after three minutes, you're like, okay, I'm done with it. That's hedonic adaptation. It's the same reason that people can walk in your house and they go, do you smell that? And you're like, I don't smell it hedonic adaptation.
So hedonic adaptation plays itself out in you get the new home and it feels really good for a few months. And then you get used to. And then you need an even bigger home to be happier, or you need to make more money to be happier. I'll be the first to tell you. I love beautiful things. I love my big, beautiful home.
I pull in the driveway and I have a lot of gratitude. So that's one of the ways that I keep it from getting stagnant is I'm constantly appreciating the flexibility and the freedom. And I have nothing against people acquiring wealth. I am a woman who's working to acquire wealth, but not because I think the big house brings me longterm happiness, but because of the other things that it can do for me, like freedom and flexibility, and to support causes that are endearing to my heart.
And so I don't want your audience to think, like we shouldn't want money or we shouldn't buy the big home. That's not it at all. Just don't count on those things to be super fulfilling.
Nancy:: And it's the same reason for like why when you go on vacation and you're like sitting there and, and then the fifth day of sitting there, you don't respond to it.
You're just like, ah, here we are by the ocean. And the first day you get there, you're like, this is amazing. I'm going to be here all the time, and then we, no matter how much you try to soak it in you can't because of the hedonic adaptation.
Kim: Yeah. And so we have to stop chasing the wrong things that are actually.
Taking so much of our happiness wellbeing and fulfillment away from us because we have attached happiness to this desired outcome. And I'm going to talk to you about that in a minute, but I think before I do that, I better explain the other 40% of the right.
Nancy:: Yes. Before you do that, though, I wanted to give an example of that.
That came up for me years ago before I was, I got married later. So I was in my late thirties when I got married and for much of mine. Late twenties, early thirties. It was, my mantra was if only I could find someone, if only I could find someone, everything will be happy and anything that went wrong, I blamed it on that.
No matter what was wrong, if I was overweight, if I was feeling crappy, it was just because I didn't have a partner. So I find my amazing husband. We get married we're in our first year of marriage and. I'm driving somewhere and something comes up where I'm not feeling happy and I'm, my monger steps in to beat me up.
And I thought if only I had a spouse and I was like, no, you have that is no longer the excuse anymore that is out the window. And it just really was amazing to me to see how we get these messages that we just keep on repeating. Even when they're not true anymore. And it was holding me back, I have said so many times.
I wish I could go back to that 30 year old and just say, dude, it'll be fine. Stop worrying about it.
Kim: Yeah, no, because you were letting It still the happiness that was available to you right now in the now. So we're going to go ahead and go there because we'll have to come back to the pie chart, because what you're talking about is I always tell people there's two things that, that you need, want to have big, bold dreams. I want to serve a hundred coaching clients next year, and I want my husband and I to buy a lake home. And I want to have an amazing African experience with my son on a trip. I have all of these visions and goals, but what happens is when you tie your happiness to the achievement of that goal, we play the.
If I find a partner, I'll be happy. That's what you were doing, if I lose 30 pounds, I'll be happy. If I can get this breast in, whatever, I'll be happy if I can get these wrinkles taken care of, I'll be happy. So what happens is you are so focused and you've tied your happiness to that goal, that you're letting it still, all the happiness that is available to you right now.
So even when things are really tough, I tell people. Find your happy in the now while also reaching for your big, bold vision. And sometimes I have to look around and go, wow. The only thing I can come up with right now is I'm happy. I took a breath and I'm happy the grass is green, so be real careful. And I do this too, but be careful of tying your happiness level to the outcome of a goal that you have.
Nancy:: As you said, we've been trained to do that. That's just like an unconscious thing that we get stuck in and really trying to build awareness of that, to recognize.
I'm still going to be me when I'm there.
Kim: Yeah. Hedonic adaptation plays out there. Like personally for me, I was like, oh, when I can finally charge $5,000 for my one hour keynote, I will know I have arrived now the 5,000 gain. And then next year it was like, Ooh, now I need 6,000, 8,000 when I, now I'm working on it.
And so it's again, Understanding that once you do reach your goal, you're just going to create another goal. And you're going to say now I need this to be happy. So just understanding that, but when we're looking at the pie chart and 50% is genetics of your long-term happiness, 10% is your external circumstances.
That leaves 40% of the pie left. And what I love Nancy: is that every human being, regardless of their genetics, regardless of their external circumstances, we all have the ability to increase our happiness levels by up to 40%. So who doesn't want to do that? Exactly. So this would be a whole training day for me to teach you all of these.
I want your audience to walk away with one of the top five ways they can increase their baseline happiness. Okay. So one of the top ways, and it's a very simple practice. It takes two minutes a day, and I promise you, it is a game changer and it's simply called gratitude.
Here's what we know. So I'm going to go back to the human brain in a minute. The brain has what's called the reptilian part of the brain. And the reptilian part of the brain is the part of the brain that was available back in the caveman days. And so the reptilian part of the brain's function was to constantly scan it's environment.
For everything negative in order to protect itself so that people in the archaic age had to scan for weather patterns and dark clouds and clans coming in, who might murder them and the food shortage and they have to pay attention to danger all of the time. And that's what kept them safe.
The issue is that in to days, age in 2020, We still have the reptilian part of the brain, even though we don't need it in that capacity. So the research says that the average human being has 70,000 thoughts a day. Wow. And the reason
Nancy:: I can believe that I'm like, that might be a little low. (laughter)
Kim: If you are really stressed you have 120,000 or so
Wow. Yeah. So we also know that the average human being for them, 80% of their thoughts are negative. So that if we take the 70,000, what we're saying is that most of them. If we're the average human being, most of us are having 56,000 negative thoughts in one day. And if you're like, oh, not me. Let me tell you a sister friend, let me take you back to this morning when your alarm went off.
The first thing you said is I didn't get enough sleep. And then you browsed to yourself about how bad your back hurt. And then you got up out of bed and you said, oh my gosh, I don't want to go to work to get today. And then you walk to the bathroom and your knees were hurting. And then you looked in the mirror and you had a fever blister, and then you put your pants on and thought how your belly was like, this happens. This is natural. It is the reptilian part of the brain. So what we know we have to do is we have to retrain the brain. And gratitude is one of the top ways you can do that. And you only need to write down three different things every day that you are thankful for 21 days.
And what we know happens is you have, what's called these neural feedback loops in your brain. So they're like roads and you have hundreds and thousands of roads running through your brain. These are thought processes. You had a road Nancy: that said I'm not happy because I don't have a spouse. And you have that road so deeply ingrained that it even popped up when you did have a spouse.
And so whatever road is traveled the most is the one that gets the deepest ruts in your brain. And so in order to create a new road, if we begin a gratitude practice, and that means you actually physically write down three things every day, that you're thankful for. And after 21 days, you actually begin to create a new neural feedback loop in your brain.
And so of course we want you to continue this practice above and beyond the 21 days, but that's how long it takes to get the new loop running. And what happens is the lens through which you view the world begins to change because now all of a sudden, every thing that is right with the world is starting to pop out more.
When I'm taking a run and a beautiful leaf is falling from a tree. I'm noticing it now where, before I didn't and these don't have to be profound gratitudes, they don't have to be big. And we actually, if your audience wants that, I think I did. I sent you the gratitude tracker.
So I actually have a product. Learning and gratitude practices hard for people at first. And I have a little freebie download if you want it. That actually helps them start to think about where they can look for gratitude in their life. So it could be in nature, it could be within their family.
And then we have a 21 day gratitude tracker so that they can begin to write their three things down every single day. So if you think your audience would benefit from that
Nancy:: we'll stick that in the show notes, for sure. Okay. So as people who have listened to my listeners know I have some I always have some caveats when it comes to gratitude because.
I feel like sometimes we, and I'm sure you do too. So I'm interested on your take on this. I'm sometimes we can, and I've been guilty of this as well. And I know my clients are of switching gratitude to positive thinking. And they use it as a way to ignore the negatives in their life. So I want you to talk on that a little bit because people have heard me talk about, I want to hear your take on that.
Kim: I gut check everything. Like I'm somebody who feels how things feel in my body. And so I actually know what you're talking about. So I don't do that normally, but I will say there's been a time or two that I have found myself writing something that I wish was true. Okay. But there's like a cognitive dissonance in me when I do that, because it's actually not a feeling it's not a good feeling of lacking.
Or of wishing it was like that. And so it's really going back to your integrity and saying, Hey, I have to write things that feel true to me. Now, if we want to write affirmations, that's a whole totally different thing. We can talk on that at some point too, cause I'm really a big believer in those, but these need to be things that spark joy right now in your heart.
And they need to feel true and genuine. It can be really small things. I have roses blooming outside my window. My house cleaner came today and cleaned the floor. I got to work outside on my deck today. My dogs were playing my fingers in there fur. We don't have to come up with big, positive, or like big things.
Things need to be true of what our brain actually sees views feels and understands.
Nancy:: Yes. Thank you. I love that. I love that because I always talk about the specificity and the and the truth, the integrity piece. I, I don't know. That's such a powerful thing, because I did a presentation once where I talked about gratitude and how we, and my message of sometimes if we're we can bastardize it.
And and a woman came up to me and she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she was practicing gratitude. So she just kept saying, at least I don't have this. And so many people have it worse than me and I should be grateful. And she started with tears in her eyes was saying, this is the first time I've really.
It faced the breast cancer and that's where gratitude we can. It pulls us. It can pull us into this wishful thinking, or I should be, we use it as a way to beat ourselves up rather than the beautiful way you're talking about it. The specificity and the retraining of the brain and
Kim: like what you were teaching, which is you're allowed to feel your feelings. Yeah. And that's exactly around call this. We do this crazy thing called comparative suffering, and we say I'm not allowed to feel bad or sad about this thing here, because it's small compared to this. So I'm not allowed to have my feelings. Yeah.
Yeah. So we have to stop doing that. Like pain is pain. Suffering is suffering hard as hard and you, and I don't have to compare them to be allowed to feel them. Huh.
Nancy:: And so that's where I think what you're speaking of is the process of mindfully looking at your life and reprogramming those neural pathways and being able to see a new perspective in how your life is going, as opposed to sometimes gratitude is taught.
And this is what I rail against the idea of, if you're having a negative thought, be grateful. You can always find something to be grateful about. So find something to be grateful about, to pull yourself out of that negative thought. Instead of being both can be true. I can be, you can be super mad at your husband right now and angry about something and enjoying the beautiful flowers.
Kim: Yeah. Yeah, you're making me laugh because sometimes I'm a little bit like squirrel off of that movie up and made me laugh because I'm thinking about my affirmations and affirmations are very different than gratitude. So like, when I am frustrated with my husband, I am not going to be like, I am so thankful for my super caring husband yelling like that.
Like one of my affirmations and I kind of giggle, like one of my affirmations that I write every day is I am an exceptional wife, too. But even then, if I'm like ticked at him, i, out of integrity have to write in parentheses, even though this is going to be really hard today (laughter)
Nancy:: I love that. I love that. Yes. I think that is because I do think affirmations can sometimes pull us out of integrity.
Kim: I totally agree.
Nancy:: So talk to me about affirmations. I have I haven't, I want to hear it because you love them. I have a negative response to affirmations for that reason that you just said.
So tell me, tell us about affirmations because you may change my mind.
Kim: No I really I teach the law of attraction. I in my coaching program and I teach that whatever you focus on grows and that you have the ability to streamline your thoughts and reach a certain vibrational level where you begin attracting.
Other things that are of the same vibrational level. So for example I always tell people before I launched my business, I told myself three years before I want to become a motivational speaker and I had never spoken on a stage. I was certainly not a motivational speaker, but for every run that I took for 30 years, or for three years, I ran 30 miles a week.
I. Saw myself on the stage. I saw the people in the crowd. I saw the change happening. I saw them getting results. I saw them needing to hear my message. I saw me being of service. And I always tell people I saw and felt the vision of it. And because of that, I created an inner belief. In myself that this would happen.
And within one year of launching my business, I became a nationally recognized speaker. So what I know Nancy: is that our thoughts create our beliefs about ourselves. So if I'm constantly having thoughts of and I'm going to give you guys an example of this, so your thoughts create your beliefs, create your action.
Your actions create your habits and your habits create your reality. So for example, I had, I'm a runner. I run all these miles, like 35 miles a week. I bike 30 miles a week. I do all of this stuff, but like I am the girl who ate 4 hostess cupcakes. Every single night at 10:00 PM. From the time I was 20, till two years ago, 44.
So like I have had this inner belief that I am never going to be able to eat healthy. All of my friends can eat healthy. All of my friends had some kind of stupid app and they journaled and they kept their food calories. I downloaded the app and within two hours and hit my limit. So I deleted that all something is wrong with you.
Everybody else can do this. Kim is a 44 year old woman who still eats tons of sugar every day. I am flawed. I am broken, I can't do this. I have no willpower. So the way that played out is that became an inner belief. That was an inner belief that Kim simply did not have what it took. And so my thoughts created my belief and my belief created my actions, which meant every night at 10 o'clock.
I would go get my hostess cupcakes out and pour my milk. Yeah, that was a habit. My body mind was trained to do that, to go do that. And it created the reality, which is Kim is still not a healthy eater. She's still, and so what I had to do was first of all, I had to quit beating myself up so much, that I couldn't lie to myself. So I couldn't go around being like. Kim's a healthy eater. I'm a healthy eater. I'm a healthy eater. I couldn't write an affirmation. That was like, I'm a healthy eater. I'm a health cause. That's right.
Nancy:: And that is where many of them go wrong. Yes. Yeah. That has been great clarification
Kim: because they don't really believe it.
They don't because it's a total lie. So like I couldn't write in my affirmation journal every day. I am a healthy eater. Cause I'm like bullshit right here. I added one teeny tiny word. I'm not a healthy eater yet, but I'm working on it. So like my affirmations, what I know is that the more you say something to yourself, And the more you can envision it.
And the more you can attach emotion and feel that inner shift happening, then you have the ability to really create miracles in your life. So I'm not going to lie. One of my affirmations right now is I am a New York times best selling author, and that's a big goal i. And I have major stuckness around it because every time I go to write my book, I scare myself right out of it.
But there is something even deeper inside of me that does feel like this is book is supposed to come to fruition. And so I, I have 12 affirmations that I write every single day and I write the same ones over and I don't just write them, but I see them on my vision board. I envision them on my run.
When I am in an argument with my husband over something and I wrote, I am an exceptional wife today, it does sometimes make me think, how can I show up for him? Exceptional. Even though he seems being a shit right. Or whatever. My husband is an amazing man. He really is. Pretend like he's not, but he is pretty exceptional.
Nancy:: So so take the New York times one, for example, does that. Limit you in some ways. And this is a pure curiosity question, because does that limit you from doing it? Because until you, till you get to the point where it's a New York times, then you're not going to take the steps to do it. So walk me through that.
Kim: I guess for me, I, it, I don't have to be like, I would my biggest goal is to be a New York times. Best-selling author, but honestly, I just want to write my book and get my ideas out there. But my biggest vision that I hold for that, because I guess I believe in gaudy goals so if I fail, I'm going to fell a lot higher than I would without the gaudy goal.
That being said, your affirmation still needs to, if you somewhat need to believe in it, you have to have that resonance of, I don't know how it's going to happen. I don't have to work out all of the details. I just have to train my thoughts, action, effort and energy towards this goal, but also not get so tied up on it that I can't surrender some of it.
Nancy:: Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, but you can vision that. The difference is you can envision the New York times thing and that feels doable. It feels doable
Kim: . And it doesn't feel like a game changer if I never did.. I'm not going to be less happy if I don't achieve that, that I'm reaching for it because that idea and that dream is birthed in my soul in some form or fashion.
Nancy:: And that's in knowing yourself and knowing that integrity to be able to pull that forth and just cause that goal to me, I like that's I should, if I want to write a book, it needs to be a New York times bestseller. I need to aim high. What you're saying is no, I really. Want this this is important to me.
Kim: Right. And again, it can manifest in different ways. I just, it feels good for me to see it that way. It feels good for me to look on my vision board and see like a book that I put up there. And then the little New York times bestselling author, like I, for whatever reason, feel like what I have to teach and say needs to be bad.
Yeah. Got it. This idea of oh, I'm going to ride on my ceiling. I will make $10 million right here. It's okay. That's like crazy shit, right?
Nancy:: Yes. Yeah. It's way more nuanced. And it also then is, as I'm sure in, you would teach is then you're taking action. Towards doing that.
It's not just throwing it up there and thinking about it on your run, but
Kim: I'm going to bring up my mom, Mary Jo, again, she was like, Kim, you've been using vision boards for 20 years and they work, I see them working like, can you teach me how to make a vision board? So Mary Jo and I sat down and she made a vision board and three months later.
Stepped into the house and said none of that's working, Kim, none of those things are coming true. And I'm like, really? So what have you been doing? Action-wise to work, like manifest, like you cannot just have a desire. You have to have action that backs up your desire. So I'm at the slap a pretty picture on a vision board or a pretty little quote and say, oh, I'm just slap it up there.
And it's magically going to happen. Yeah. There's intention. There's action. There's dream building, all of this stuff goes in to the manifestation of that particular bowl or level of achievement or core desired feeling that you want to feel. I want to write that book because I feel like I have.
Stories to tell that people need to hear. So they don't feel so alone. And you can remember Nancy:, I'm the girl who struggled for years from panic disorder, right? Young adult couldn't walk to my mailbox, couldn't drive my car to Walmart. Couldn't walk into Walmart. Heck I had a relapse two years ago and I went back to some of that, but I'm also the bad-ass that steps on a stage with 2000 people.
And I'm allowed to be both of those.
Nancy:: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I forgot about the panic because where everything, it's not just the one or the other,
Kim: I think, for your listeners to be listening to me and this is what happens to me when I step on a stage and I'm in the $500 dress and I'm in the Hills and the makeup, and I've got this contagious energy for life.
And I can just see the people's faces. They're thinking. This woman has it together. And I haven't feel like your listeners could be thinking like this woman is a total.. This woman, two years ago had the worst relapse in 20 years of panic disorder and struggled to leave her house again.
And so understanding that we can have. Both sides that we don't have to beat ourselves up to. I can be, to be honest, I am both. I am Kim who struggles sometimes and has some issues that other people don't have. And I am Kim, who is this, motivational speaker who has this amazing life. But I also have shitty things in my life too.
It's just important for people to hear that. Cause they can hear the voice behind the microphone and think this woman must have it all together.
Nancy:: totally. And I appreciate that's so true because I think that I, everything you're talking about, I think we really want everything to be easy and simple.
And it's, I'm just going to write, I'm going to do my vision board. I'm going to pull it up out there on the wall and I'm going to do my gratitude practice. Thing's going to be great and forget about the integrity piece. We forget about checking in with the self loyalty and the self-love. And does this fit with me?
Is this serve me moving forward and how am I going to go after this with little tiny baby steps? It's not like someone's going to call you tomorrow. They may, we never know, but they're going to call you tomorrow and be like, Hey, I'm a publisher. Let's do your big. Vision.
Kim: I always feel like I have to justify, like why I'm a happiness coach, because some people do they think oh, she must be full of sunshine, glitter and unicorns.
And I'm like, no, you know why I'm a happiness coach because I suffered greatly for years in my life. I went through extreme trauma and darkness and out of all of that, I birthed the happiness coach. She, as a result, From the trauma that I went through and how I now want to help others not have to endure the darkness for as long as I did.
Nancy:: So I know this is probably a whole other episode, but I just, if you can give, this is going to be hard question. How did you after the relapse with the panic disorder, how did regroup?
Kim: Oh my goodness. So to go back, like I started, I was always an anxious little girl. And then like in high school I started having.
Really traumatic episodes. And we didn't know what they were. I would feel like I was going to faint. I would have feelings of unreality. I had disassociated I didn't know who I was, but I did know who I was. My body trembled. I was sweating, shaking. And so for about seven years, this went undiagnosed because back in the eighties, we didn't know what anxiety disorders were.
And so I was having I had full blown panic disorder with a war phobia that didn't get diagnosed until. I want to say 23 or 24 years old. Wow. So I finally get a diagnosis. I get cognitive behavioral therapy from a therapist. I get on Zoloft, which I will tell you. I still take today and my life got a lot easier and I dove into the self-help world and I started like creating my life from the inside out.
And let me tell you. I am a worker bee when it comes to my life and personal growth, like I will work really hard and I will do the hard stuff to re-emerge as a better version of myself, but even in my thirties. And I've always two steps forward and one and a half steps back, here I'm feeling funny again.
Or, having some episodes they're not huge, but they're significant enough to where I'm concerned. But in 2018 when I was creating, how funny is this? So I, I run Strobel education, which is my education consulting business. And then I run kimstrobel.com, which is my happiness coaching business.
And I was creating my first online coaching program for women in the fall of 2018. And I was running struggle, ed full-time as well. And I had the worst panic attack driving home an hour away. It was the worst attack I've had in 20, 25 years.. That, that set off a chain of events where I just got worse.
I all of a sudden didn't want to go anywhere by myself. I didn't want to go drive five minutes. I didn't want my husband to leave the house. And let me just tell you, I. was mad. I was like, you know what? That lived through years where every five minutes of my day was pure hell, because I felt so bad and incompetent and I couldn't function adults.
And why would you possibly make me endure this? Because I now use my tragedy to help others. I'm doing good work with my mission. And what I did is I went right back to cognitive behavioral therapy. I ordered a bunch of books. I started listening to Dr. Claire Weekes, who had these great videos on anxiety.
I ordered that book that I had told you about, which is rewire the anxious brain. And I literally had to reeducate myself and begin to use all of my tools again. Now I wasn't down for seven years. Like I was the first time I was down for a couple of months still functioning, but it was hard. And I came out of it a lot quicker because I know what this is.
And I just had to revisit and do the work. The other thing that I think has come out of this is I have despised. The part of Kim that has this struggle. I hate her. She is weak. She has derailed my life more times than I can count. And so the way that I have dealt with her over the last probably 15 years is by being this overly ambitious, overly driven achiever personality.
Because that way I could squash that weak part of Kim and keep her in her place. So when I started to come through this relapse, I thought to myself, what is the new level of healing or learning that needed to take place? And what really emerged for me was. I need to practice as you use the term self loyalty, I need to practice self loyalty self-love and self-compassion for all parts of Kim that I don't have to push this struggle a way that it is part of who I am.
And so when I get ready to walk on a stage, now I tell myself, yeah, I'm taking the big, bold, brave Kim up to that stage, but also comes the Kim that sometimes struggles. And one of my affirmations is actually, I am honoring my fierceness while also loving and accepting my vulnerability. Because I have not been good to those parts of Kim who, even though she struggles, she deserves love and kindness and patience and all of those things.
And I don't have to push her way.
Nancy:: Ah, Kim, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that story, because I think we can all relate to that even with maybe, not the level of panic disorder, but just, I wrote down the quote, I wanted to squash her and keep her in her place. And that is, that's what we do to ourselves.
Nancy:: That's just brutal. And yet I can relate to that idea of, any flaw I have. I want to squash it and move past it and get over it. And when we can befriend it and bring it in. Ah so I don't know that it's easier, but there's less struggle.
Kim: There's less struggle and you're allowed to cry.
She deserves space.
Nancy:: Yes. Yes.
Kim: Yeah. Whatever you resist persists. And so she is a big part of who I am now. Listen, I hope she keeps herself in check for the next few years. (laughter)
Nancy:: We got big goals. We got to go after,
but I do think that I love them. I love your message. That you're that it's the big, bold goal. And this self acceptance, self love piece. Like we don't see that often in this world of self-help and personal development and coaching and all that stuff, but those are working together, usually one or the other.
It's the warm, fuzzy self-love person and the big, bold goal person. Binding them, I think is truly where the magic is. Yeah.
Kim: I'm working on it girlfriend, but
Nancy:: It's a amazing message. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your vulnerability in sharing that and sharing the happiness formula and. And helping us feel less out of control with this default happiness thing.
Kim: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I think we just have to embrace the shit show that we are.
Nancy:: I think there's so much power in that, that, that needs to be a podcast.
Kim: I was thinking, I don't know if I've named my Facebook, I have a free Facebook group for women.
Called Finds Joy, which is the name of my podcast. And I was thinking the other day, because somebody was telling me about this new co this little committee of friends that meet every other day, they're called the itty bitty shitty committee. And I'm like, they meet me for just 15 minutes to just process and get some of those.
, feelings out. And I was like, wouldn't that be a great name for a Facebook group or a puff?
Nancy:: Yeah, that would be, that'd be awesome. beause that's where we need that, that raw honesty of here's the shit show. And here's the other cool stuff is we need more of that. Nah, Kim, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and chat with us.
And I am, we're going to put the gratitude work in the show notes. I'm also going to link to the rewire, the anxious brain, in the show notes, because that I bought the book and it's really powerful and I think it will help. You guys think about anxiety in a different way than we've been taught?
Kim: Definitely like my social links, if they want to join the Facebook group for free, where I show up and do mini little happiness trainings and we just do real talk in there. And then I'll send you like my Instagram handle, which is Kim struggle, joy. So you can have some of those, if they wish to embrace the messiness of who they are, but actually, we're all just one daring day at a time we're trying to do better.
And so we have to just be who we are while also. Acknowledging that sometimes life is hard.
Nancy:: Exactly. What's your website?
Kim: so it's Kim strobel.com and then if they happen to be a school teacher, I have struggle education.com.
Nancy:: Awesome. Great. Just in case, people are like listening.
Yeah, they're listening to it in the kitchen while they're cooking dinner and they don't have time to go to the show notes. So I feel that people okay. Thank you, Kim. It was great chatting with you.
Kim: You're so welcome. I appreciate you having me on your show.
Nancy:: This interview really showed me the power of the question underneath the question.
We spend so much time and energy answering the surface questions. When the insight and power comes from asking a better question, this better question concept also gets us out of that black and white thinking that many of our questions put us in. And many of us have strong opinions about gratitude and affirmations.
Some might even argue they can be a bit blackened. But through our conversation and asking a deeper question, I was able to add a little gray to my black and white thinking this week. I challenge you to ask yourself a better question. When you find yourself spinning on one of your standard questions, dig a little deeper.
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing work I have ever done. My clients are consistently blown away by how these daily check-ins combined with the monthly face-to-face video meetings create slow, lasting changes that reprogram their High Functioning Anxiety tendencies over time.
Over the course of the three-month program, we meet once a month for a face-to-face session via a secure video chat, and then throughout the entire three months, you have access to me anytime you are feeling anxious, having a Monger attack, celebrating a win, or just need to check-in, and I will respond to you during my office hours (Monday through Friday, 9 am - 6 pm EST).