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Season 2, Episode 3: Raising Your Resilience Set-Point with Marci Shimoff

By Jodi Cohen

An advertisement for a podcast episode titled "raising your resilience set-point with marci shimoff" from "essential alchemy: the ancient art of healing," featuring hosts jodi cohen, ntp, and guest marci shimoff, presented with their portraits on a purple background.

With Marci Shimoff, you’ll learn how to discover your happiness set-point, assess your foundations of happiness, and simple and effective ways to enhance resilience in your life. You will also find out about the myths that have been sabotaging your happiness and learn live a life of freedom, joy and ease.

  • Discover Your Happiness Set-Point
  • Assess Your Foundations of Happiness
  • Simple and effective ways to enhance resilience
  • Find out about the myths that have been sabotaging your happiness.
  • Discover a new approach to experiencing lasting happiness.
  • Learn live a life of freedom, joy and ease.

About Marci Shimoff

Marci Shimoff is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a world-renowned transformational teacher and an expert on happiness, success, and unconditional love. With total book sales of more than 15 million copies worldwide in 33 languages, Marci is one of the bestselling female nonfiction authors of all time.

Marci earned her MBA from UCLA and holds an advanced certificate as a stress management consultant. She is a founding member and on the board of directors of the Transformational Leadership Council, a group of 100 top transformational leaders. Through her books and her presentations, Marci’s message has touched the hearts and rekindled the spirits of millions of people throughout the world. She is dedicated to helping people live more empowered and joy-filled lives.

If you’re enjoying the Essential Alchemy podcast, please leave Jodi a review on iTunes.

 

Jodi: Hi, I’m Jodi Cohen, and I’m very honored to be joined by someone who has really helped me in my personal journey, Marci Shimoff. She is the number one New York Times bestselling author, a world renowned transformational teacher, and an expert on happiness, success, and unconditional love. Marci has inspired millions of people around the world and is dedicated to helping people live more miraculously empowered and joy filled lives. Welcome, Marci.

Marci: Oh, thank you, Jodi, I am really delighted to get to be here with you.

Jodi: I’m so excited for what you’re going to share. But the first question I ask everyone is how do you define resilience?

Marci: I define resilience as having an inner state of peace and wellbeing that allows you to come back from challenges in a way that uses that challenge for your greater growth in life. So being resilient, while I understand it, to many people, it’s bouncing back. I think it’s actually bouncing back to a higher level of integration and understanding and wisdom, and peace.

And I know that’s a big statement to make in terms of the deep, deep challenges that people have in their lives. But I think that life is here as a learning journey, and resilience means learning what it is each situation has to bring us, to experience the deeper truth of who we are.

Jodi: I love that. And I’d really love you to talk about a happiness set point, which is kind of, the set point is presumably what you bounce back to, and how you can enhance that. Can you share a little bit about that and the research around it?

Marci: I can. So the work that I do has been around… I wrote a book called Happy for no Reason. And let me clarify what I mean by that, because people think it means that you walk around 24/7 with a silly grin on your face. That is not what I mean. Happy for no reason means that you have this inner state of peace and wellbeing that I was just talking about, in terms of resilience that allows you to be the backdrop to everything in your life.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have emotions. Tragedy happens, like, what your experience has been in life and you’re going to experience grief, but you have an inner backdrop of peace and wellbeing that allows you to… it’s like a resource center that allows you to make the most of that. And so to me, this whole work is predicated on this idea that we have what you’d call a happiness set point.

And a happiness set point… to me, this was like, such a huge aha, a happiness set point is like a thermostat setting. And no matter what happens to you, whether it’s good or bad, you will return to your original thermostat setting or set point, unless you do something consciously, to change it. And what this means is that people who win the lottery, you think, “All I have to do is win the lottery, and I’ll be happier.” You would be for a few months but within about a year or so you tend to return to your original happiness set point. And similarly, with crises or tragedies.

So it’s the set point that’s the key to everything. And here’s how the set point is determined. It’s 50% genetic, you’re born with it. It’s 10% your circumstances, only 10%. Notice that that’s the thing that everybody’s running around trying to change. “I’ll change my circumstances to be happier.” Okay, good. Great, good luck. It only impacts 10% of your happiness. The other 40% is your habits of thoughts and behavior. Now, that’s where we’ve got the real power and control.

But I’m going to take it one step further and talk about that 50% that’s genetic. You think, “Oh, well, I can’t do anything about that.” Well, researchers in the field of epigenetics like Dr. Bruce Lipton, have found that even our DNA can be influenced or changed by our habits of thoughts and behavior. And what that says is that 90% of our happiness set point can be influenced by our thoughts, our actions, our habits, our behaviors. To me, this should be headline news. I mean, hallelujah!

I don’t have to spend all of my time and energy rushing around to control life to make my circumstances look a particular way so I can be happy, only 10% of it. I can work on the 90% of it that I can change. And I think this should be taught in every school, because there’s nothing that people want more on the planet than happiness. You think you want this or that, you want this or that because you think it’ll make you happier. Well, we can cut to the chase and raise our happiness set point.

Jodi: I love that. It’s even better than the 80/20 rule. It’s the 90/10 rule.

Marci: That’s right, exactly.

Jodi: So let’s delve into some of these habits and some really actionable things that people could do right now.

Marci: Great. Can I just spend a couple of minutes sharing a little bit of my story, so people…?

Jodi: Oh, of course, yes.

Marci: Marci: And I’ll tell you why I do this, Jodi, people go, “Oh, well that’s easy for you to say, Marci, you were always happy.” And I just want to tell everybody, I was not always happy. I was born depressed, I came out of the womb with existential angst. I had a great family, everything was good. But I felt like I carried this heavy weight, this burden around, this like dark cloud around me, that I had from the time I was a little girl.

And I believe we also carry ancestral burdens, ancestral traumas. And I think I came in with a lot of ancestral gunk. Anyway, for whatever reason, I was unhappy. My solution as a young girl growing up was sugar; that was going to make me feel better. And it did for 30 minutes. And then the sugar crash, and I became a sugar addict. By the time I was in high school, I was 40 pounds overweight.

So when I was in my 20s, I thought, “I’m going to get happy, I’m going to do this, I am tired of being unhappy,” and I did what most people do. I went after the goals, and I had five of them. I wanted a great career helping people, I wanted a wonderful husband or life partner, fabulous friends, a comfortable home, and the equivalent of Halle Berry’s body.

Jodi: I think we all want to be Halle Berry.

Marci: I got four out of the five. I don’t have Halle Berry’s body, but I have a healthy body for which I’m grateful. And Jodi, I worked so hard to get all those ducks in a row. And I’m sharing this because I think a lot of people feel that way. And I had a turning point moment. It was in 1998, I had all those things working; I had three books in the top five on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.

And I had just given a speech to 8,000 people, and I had autographed 5,432 books. I felt in one sense, like an author rock star. But after signing that last book, I went up to my hotel room, which was the penthouse suite that my client had gotten for me, and I walked over to the windows, took in this huge, beautiful top of the world view of Lake Michigan, I was in Chicago.

And I turned around, and I collapsed onto the bed and I burst into tears. And I burst into tears because I realized that emptiness that I had when I was a kid all my life, that is still there. And I can no longer continue to fool myself into thinking that just that next thing is going to do it.

Jodi: We’ve been taught that external validation is what to seek and we check all our boxes, and we’re still not…

Marci: And it is not your fault. I want to make sure everybody hears this. It’s not your fault for going after those things. It’s as you said, Jodi, it’s what we’ve been taught. It’s this insidious myth, the myth of, “I’ll be happier when…” And it’s a myth. So let’s break the myth together because no matter what good is happening for you, or no matter what challenges you’re dealing with.

And I know people are dealing with a lot of challenges, this is why I’m loving that you’re doing this resilience, dealing with resilience. Especially as we’ve been through the pandemic, there’s a lot, we need resilience, but what I want to share with you is that it doesn’t matter what you are experiencing. Of course it does, I’m not negating what everybody’s experiencing.

Jodi: That doesn’t limit your potential.

Marci: That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, exactly it. And it doesn’t limit how you can reset your happiness set point. Jodi, what I love about you and your work is that you love being practical and I love being practical. So let’s go into some practical things that people can do to raise their happiness set point.

Jodi: Love that.

Marci: Yeah? Can we start?

Jodi: Yes.

Marci: Okay. So what I found is that there are 21 main happiness habits that everyone can practice, anyone can practice to raise their set point, and I found that they fell into seven main areas. So I want to go into these seven areas and I want everyone who’s listening to think about where are you the weakest? Because wherever you’re the weakest, that’s your Achilles heel, and that’s where you’re going to get the most bang for your buck in terms of shifting your happiness set point.

So here are the seven areas and I know it’s hard for people to remember seven of anything, so I created a metaphor to make it easier to remember. I call it building your inner home for happiness.

Now, a house for a home has seven main areas. It’s got a foundation. It’s got four corner pillars. It’s got a roof, and it’s got a garden. And here’s how this relates to the seven main areas, and I want everybody to write down where you’re the weakest. So you can write down all seven of these, if you want. You don’t have to write them down, I’ve got a fabulous guide that gives you all of this, but you can write this down.

The first area is the foundation and that has to do with taking responsibility for your life and your happiness. It’s about not being a victim in life. It’s about being a victor in life and going, “You know what, I can take responsibility for my happiness. Those other things might have happened, but I can control or take responsibility for how I respond.” And here’s how you know you’re a victim, when you’re playing the blame, shame, or complain game. Anytime you’re in those behaviors, you are in a victim mode. So that’s the foundation.

Then you’ve got the four pillars, and you’ve got the pillar of the mind, your thoughts. Are they contributing your happiness or your own happiness? Your heart, do you live with an open heart? I have never met a happy person who had a closed heart. So that means, do you have generosity, kindness, forgiveness, and care and self-love, self-love. Then there’s the pillar of the body, the body has to do with your biochemistry. And Jodi, I know that you love this.

Jodi: I do.

Marci: You have a biohack on this. Do you have the right serotonin and endorphins and dopamine, and oxytocin? And that, by the way, is the area where I was the weakest, and that’s where I got the most help the most immediately. And then there’s the pillar of the soul. Do you feel connected to a greater energy of life? I don’t care what you call it, God’s spirit, the divine, nature, it doesn’t matter. But do you feel a connection to a bigger energy?

Then there’s the roof, the roof has to do with your purpose, or your passion in life. Are you living an inspired life? I don’t believe it’s an accident that we are all here. I believe that we are here for a purpose and each of us has the things that we are here on the planet to be doing.

And then finally, there’s the garden. And the garden is, who are you surrounded with? Do you have a lot of weeds in your garden, people that are dragging down your happiness? Or do you have a lot of roses and gardenias, the people who are helping you raise your happiness set point and supporting your life? So Jodi, I’m going to put you on the spot. Those seven areas, which of those do you feel like you’re the weakest in?

Jodi: Oh, totally the heart. It’s really, really hard. Like, my favorite sub practice is, “What’s the most loving thing I can do?” because I was always last on my checklist.

Marci: Self-love, I love that practice. That is one of my favorite practices. I think that many of us, especially I’m going to say women, grew up with taking care of everybody else and that was our worth. Our value came from how much value could we give to other people’s lives? That is a myth too. And what we’ve done is we’ve forgotten ourselves. And the reality is, is how we treat ourselves is ultimately, on some level, how we’re going to treat others.

So if we put ourselves last and then we’re putting everybody else first, we’re going to end up with resentment. We’re going to end up feeling some kind of shut down or hardness. So I love that you started with, for you, love and selflove was really a key. I tell people to write on a Post-it, this phrase, “What’s the most loving thing I could do for myself right now?” and then do it twice a day.

It could be something as simple as I could go get a glass of water or I could go call a friend, I could go get a little exercise. What’s important is that you stop on a regular basis to listen to what your needs are, and you start caring for them because you will retrain yourself by doing that.

Jodi: I mean, it’s funny because I always felt selfish if I was doing anything for myself.

Marci: I know and here’s the reality, I teach a program on living a miraculous life. And what I found is that one of the biggest barriers to people letting the miracles into their life is their own self-love, their own limitations of worthiness and self-love.

There’s the saying that nobody can give to you more than you’re willing to receive. Same with the universe, I believe there’s miracles everywhere and what happens is we just don’t open to them because we push love away. We push goodness away. In fact, I’ve got a little quiz that people can do. I want you to answer these questions. This is an openness to receiving quiz because when we know ourselves, we’re open to receive.

Jodi: Very hard for me, yes.

Marci: Here are the five questions. Number one, do you have a hard time receiving gifts from other people or acts of service from other people, and you feel that you have to do twice as much as what they’ve given you?

Jodi: Oh, even compliments. Yes.

Marci: Well, that’s number two. Do you have a hard time receiving compliments?

Jodi: Oh, yeah. I feel like I have to diminish, to self-deprecate.

Marci: That’s right. Number three, do you have a hard time asking for help?

Jodi: Yes.

Marci: Okay. Number four, do you have a hard time acknowledging the good in your life, receiving the good because you don’t want others around you to feel bad?

Jodi: I’ve worked very hard on that. I cannot set myself on fire to keep others warm. That one I’ve worked on.

Marci: I love that phrase! I can’t set myself on fire to keep others warm. Great. So yeah, you also can’t diminish your good, exactly, to not make others feel bad.

Jodi: I used to lie about my grades. I dated someone who wasn’t as smart as I was, he’d get like a 60 on a test that I got 100 and I’d be like, “Oh, yeah, me too,” just so he wouldn’t feel bad.

Marci: Wow. Okay, good. And then number five is, do you think that things should come with struggle only and if they come easily, then you kind of think it’s not okay, it’s like cheating?

Jodi: That’s another one. Like, my grandparents were all depression survivors. So I’ve worked very hard on that too. Like the last two, I’ve actually worked on and I feel like I’m in a better place but I used to.

Marci: Good job. Well, the last one is my hardest one; that I believe that if it doesn’t come with struggle, it’s not fair. So I’m working on the ease one; that it’s okay for it to come with ease. And here’s the thing, if you said yes to any of those, then there is some blocked… your ability to receive in the area of selflove. So what I want everybody to do is notice, just start noticing. It’s the, “How do I push away my good game?”

Every time during the day, when you start pushing away your good, somebody offers to open the door for you and you go, “No, no, I can do it,” no, they’ve offered. Let them do it. It’s a gift. Just notice where you tend to push away your good. And then ask yourself in that moment, if you notice it, “What can I do right now to open to receiving?” Just being aware of receiving is a really, really good thing.

Jodi: And that’s that?

Marci: Yeah. I mean, I’ll tell a short little story. Years ago, it was in like, 1995 or ‘96, I was at a workshop, a retreat with one of my then mentors and idols, now a dear friend of mine, Marianne Williamson. And Marianne said, “If you make a lot of money but you haven’t raised your consciousness or worthiness around that, you will inevitably lose it.” And I thought to myself, “There is no way, no way, if I made a lot of money that I’d lose it.”

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the next year, my first Chicken Soup for the Soul book came out, and I started making way more money than I was ever used to. And I started losing it, the money started flowing away, flowing away, flowing away. Fortunately, I caught myself and I remembered what Marianne said, and I started working on that worthiness. And that’s to be able to receive. So I think that’s a really important thing.

Jodi: I love that.

Marci: So look at how you don’t receive. Now, Jodi, if we can, let’s look at a couple of these that are the most common for people. Okay, so, the mind, our thoughts. The average person has 60,000 thoughts a day and for the average person, 80% of those are negative. Now, do not get down on yourself if that’s you, because you’re just then adding insult to injury. It’s called the negativity bias. We inherited this bias from our caveman ancestors. And that is the tendency to think of the negative, remember the negative.

My friend, Rick Hanson, calls it the Velcro Teflon syndrome. We Velcro the negative to us and we Teflon the positives. The positives just slide away and the negatives just stick.

If you get 10 compliments in a day and one criticism, what do you remember at the end of the day? You remember the criticism. So, here’s what we need to do, we need to reverse this Velcro Teflon syndrome.

And science has found that there are three steps to creating new neural pathways in the brain, because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, we have the grooves, the neural pathways of negativity in the brain. And we need to create new positive neural pathways in the brain. Three simple steps to do it. Number one, be on the lookout for the good. And Jodi, I know you’ve done this, pretend that you are the Academy Awards committee. And your job is to find five good things a day to give Academy Awards to.

Because you could be on the lookout for the negative and it’s so easy to find, but you can be on the lookout for the positive, the good stuff, and it’s also easy to find when you train yourself to do it. So you want to be on the lookout for these five Academy Awards. It could be, “Oh, there’s a beautiful sunset,” or there’s a wonderful act of kindness that somebody did. And Jodi, I know that you had this experience.

Jodi: Oh yeah, we would go around and be like, “Let’s see the prettiest flower. Let’s see the cutest dog. Let’s see the person who has the nicest smile when we walk by.” My daughter and I do that every day.

Marci: This is a great practice to do with children, with kids, teenagers, it’s a brilliant practice. So that’s number one, be on the lookout for the good. But number two is we have to savor the good. So it’s not enough to just notice it, you actually have to savor it for at least 20 seconds for it to have enough of an impact to create the new neural pathway in your brain. So that means sit with it, be with it, ingest it, imagine that it’s a food, and you’re taking it in and digesting it, rather than gobbling it.

So if there’s a cute dog, say, “Oh my God, that dog is so cute,” walk over to the owner and go, “Your dog gets the cutest dog of the day award,” because that digestion of it, for at least having your attention on it for 20 seconds, will create the new neural pathway. This is why gratitude journals tend to work because you’re writing the thing down, you’re taking the time to really be with it. If it’s a sunset, take it in for 20 seconds and really, count 20 seconds in the beginning so you know what that means.

And then the third thing is go for the three to one ratio, which means three positives to every one negative to reverse, to create the new neural pathways. Now that may sound like a lot but just notice the next time, something’s really overtaking you with the negative, and look for three positives to replace it. So that’s three positives of 20 seconds each. That’s one minute, one minute of replacement.

Jodi: I love that. That’s a great pivot strategy.

Marci: It really makes all the difference. And then what happens is because of the reticular activating system in the brain, which tends to notice whatever it is we’re in the habit of looking for, you’re looking to buy a new car and you’re interested in his make of car and all of a sudden, every car you see is that car. That’s the reticular activating system that’s seeing what it’s looking for. When we start creating these new neural pathways, you start seeing the good out there much more easily. It becomes kind of one of those spiral effects.

Jodi: It’s really funny, I lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan for 10 years and then I had children, and I came back, same neighborhood. And all of a sudden I saw children’s stores everywhere. I saw playgrounds everywhere, things that were there the whole time but they were never in my reticular activating system, because I wasn’t in the kid mindset. It was such a profound shift. I was like, “Wow, how did I never know this was here before?”

Marci: Absolutely. And this shift of the mind can really be, it sounds like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that before.” We’ve heard all of this before. What I’m going to ask you to do at the end of our time together is I’m going to ask you to pick one thing out of the many things we’ve talked about, and focus on that because that may not be the one for you. You might need to open your heart more. You might need to have more of an open heart. Can we do a simple practice for people that feel like the heart is the thing?

Jodi: Absolutely. I just want to make sure we touch on forgiveness, which I know is correlated with the heart.

Marci: A big one. Okay, we’ll talk about that. First, let’s do a simple practice. This I learned from the Institute of Now HeartMath. HeartMath are the world’s leading researchers on the heart and happiness, and how it affects us. They’ve actually found that when we are angry for five minutes, that it will suppress our immune system for up to six hours.

Jodi: And Rollin is speaking on this event as well.

Marci: Oh, well, then Rollin will probably do this practice.

Jodi: Which one were you going to do?

Marci: The Inner Ease technique.

Jodi: Well, let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Marci: They’ve also found that when you’re happy or when you’re grateful, or filled with love for five minutes, that it can strengthen your immune system for six hours.

Jodi: Wow.

Marci: Alright, so this is a practice from the Institute of HeartMath, Inner ease practice. So, what we’re going to do is we are going to do a minute, very quick. And I just want everybody to do it along with me and notice if you feel any different, after a minute or so of doing this. And Jodi, I’m going to ask you to be my guinea pig.

Jodi: Absolutely.

Marci: So you’re going to be my guinea pig on this. So it’s three simple steps. You can do it with your eyes open but we’re going to close our eyes and just make it a little simpler. So with your eyes closed, the first step is to simply place the palm of your hand on your heart. And that simple act starts the flow of a chemical called oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone. When we feel bonded with each other, we have more oxytocin. But just putting your own hand on your heart like this is increasing the flow of oxytocin in your body.

Now, the second step is imagine that you’re breathing in and out through the center of your heart. It’s called heart focused breathing. So imagine that you’re breathing into your heart and exhaling out of your heart. You can do this at your own pace. Just imagining that on an inhale, you’re breathing into your heart. You can bring the breath down all the way to the belly if you want, but breathe it in through the heart. And exhale out through the heart.

And then finally, the third step is on each in breath, I want you to just imagine or feel breathing in love, ease, and compassion. You’re going to breathe in with each inhale, love, ease, and compassion. On the exhale, you’re just going to imagine breathing out through your heart, but each inhale, breathe in as though you’re taking in love, ease, and compassion.

Now, you can remember a time when you felt that way. You can think of somebody or a beloved four legged that makes you feel that way, or you can just silently say the words, love, ease, and compassion. Then one more time on the in breath, breathing in love, ease, and compassion.

And on the next exhale, you can take your hand away, and when you feel ready, you can slowly open your eyes. So that was just a minute or so. Jodi, how do you feel? It was probably more like two minutes but how do you feel after doing just that simple practice? Any different than you felt before you close your eyes?

Jodi: Yeah. Sometimes I take power naps. It feels like a power nap.

Marci: It’s a reset. A lot of times people say that they just feel calmer, more balanced, more grounded, more centered. All of those are signs of what’s called the love response. It’s actually a physiological state, when our heart rhythms go into heart rhythm coherence, and our biochemistry changes. So doing that once is no big deal but you could do this a couple of times a day and within a week, you would notice a shift. So that’s one of the simple practices, one of my 21 happiness habits.

Jodi: Also, when my kids were little, there were times when mommy would go in timeout. Like, it’s a good thing if you can just go in a different room and do that. It’s a really nice way to reset yourself so you’re more present with your kids.

Marci: Yes. Then you wanted me to speak for a moment about forgiveness.

Jodi: Yes.

Marci: Well, so people ask me, “What’s the fast track to greater happiness?” and I think there are two fast tracks. I think of them as two little angels on each shoulder. One is gratitude and the other is forgiveness. Forgiveness is for sure the fast track. And forgiveness does not mean you’re condoning something. It doesn’t mean that you ever even have to interact with the person. It could be somebody who’s already gone, it doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is a way that you free yourself from the burden of whatever it is you’ve been holding on to as a resentment.

There’s a beautiful story of Nelson Mandela. He was in jail for 27 years. And at about year 10, he realized that if he did not feel forgiveness, it was going to kill him, and so he did a conscious practice of forgiveness. So much so that the guards, they could no longer beat him. I mean, they became so endeared to him.

In fact, when he became President of South Africa, it was one of his prison guards who had formerly not treated him well, then had his own turn around. Anyway, his guard became his main bodyguard and was sitting in the front row at the inauguration. So, forgiveness is a really important, important practice. There are many forgiveness practices, I speak about them in my work, in my books, and in my guide. I particularly like a simple one called Ho’oponopono.

Jodi: I love that. I love all the Hawaiian traditions, but that’s my favorite.

Marci: It’s just a simple practice of thinking about the person or situation and sending these four statements, “I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you,” and doing that on a regular basis. And I’ve had amazing shifts happen from doing that.

Jodi: I read you wrote that forgiveness translates to unbinding the heart, and it’s a gift you can give yourself that allows your heart to stop being contracted. For some reason, putting it that way, I was like, “Oh, that makes so much sense. It’s really not about the other person. It’s about letting go.” So you’re almost like spring cleaning your heart so there’s more space.

Marci: Absolutely. I love the expression, it is spring cleaning for your heart. It absolutely is. Do we have time for me to do one more?

Jodi: Absolutely.

Marci: Okay because I want to get to the one on the body. Our bodies are designed to be happy. We have all the brain chemistry and neuro chemistry that is there but many people are missing some of the right brain chemistry, I was, and the right biochemistry. And so there are all the standards, the sleeping and the eating, and the exercise and all of that, and I’m 100% for that, but I want to share with you one that is a little bit different that has helped me a lot in terms of serotonin.

Serotonin is one of the main happiness biochemicals. This is called a sunning meditation to produce more serotonin. I learned it from a Chi Nei Tsang master named Gilles Marin. It’s a form of Qigong and it’s a simple practice. All you do is you go outside, ideally, and you face the sun, and I’m going to tell you in a minute what to do if you’re not in sun. I know you live in Washington, so I’m going to tell you what you can do if there’s not sun there.

But you go outside and face the sun, and here’s the important thing, you close your eyes, it has to be eyes closed. And through your closed eyelids, you allow the beams of the sun to come through your closed eyelids and hit your pineal gland in the center of your head. And what that does is it stimulates serotonin. You do that for a couple of minutes. Just allow the sun in, to imagine it washing into you and stimulating that pineal gland.

You do it for a couple minutes and it resets your serotonin. And when your serotonin gets reset, it helps reset your melatonin which helps you sleep better, when you sleep better, you reset your serotonin. It’s the cycle that happens. Do this twice a day for a week and you will find an amazing shift in your serotonin levels. So, twice a day for about two minutes, two to three minutes.

What to do if there’s no sun? If there’s clouds and there’s sun, you can feel where it’s coming from behind the clouds, you can still do it because the sun’s rays are coming in but it may not just be as strong. If there’s no sun at all, it’s a rainy day, you can stay inside, and you can look at anything in nature that’s beautiful. Nature will also create serotonin for you. So you could look outside at some trees or you could look at some flowers, just something that’s of nature, and that will help create serotonin.

Jodi: I love that. I love that. This has been exceptional. You’ve shared so much. Is there anything else related to raising your happiness set point to boost resilience that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?

Marci: Well, I’ve got these 21 habits. So, really, there’s so many in there, and here’s what I tell people to do. Pick the one that speaks to you the most and do that. Don’t try to do it all. We work in baby steps, baby steps. What happens is our brain has this fear radar that goes off when we try to do too much. So you want to come in under your brain’s fear radar by taking these baby steps.

And just make a commitment to yourself. Use your own life as an experiment and I’ll just pick something of all the things that we talked about today. I think we picked five or six. And just say, “Okay, I’ll do that for a week,” and maybe find a buddy to do it with, it makes it more fun.

Jodi: I love that. And can you share where people can find out more about you and more about your 21 habits?

Marci: Yes, yes. So the website is happyfornoreason.com. And Jodi, I will say this, the thing that people often say to me is, “Isn’t this selfish?” To be happier, like we talked about earlier. And what I say is, it’s the least selfish thing you can do because when you’re happier, you’re impacting all the people around you. And ultimately, I believe it’s one of the best ways we can help the world.

There’s a beautiful Chinese proverb that I love, in Happy for no Reason, it goes like this. It says, when there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. When there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. When there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. And when there is order in the nation, there will be peace in this world. And that is my prayer and my wish for all of us. That we know that light and love in our own hearts and souls and through that, we create more peace here on this planet of ours.

Jodi: I love that. Thank you so much for your time, for your brilliance, and for everything, from your heart. I love it.

Marci: Thank you, Jodi. Thank you for all that you’re doing and how you are making a difference on this planet with your life and this Resilience Summit. I’m really, really just so impressed and inspired by all that you’re doing.

Jodi: Thank you.

Jodi Cohen

Jodi Sternoff Cohen is the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. An author, speaker, nutritional therapist, and a leading international authority on essential oils, Jodi has helped over 50,000 individuals support their health with essential oils.