Let's Talk Wellness Now

What is the secret to happiness? Happiness is a state of mind or a state of being. We cannot chase happiness and expect to find it somewhere. Happiness starts within us! Learn 3 tips to create happiness from any difficult situation. My guest Alice Inoue shares the secrets to being happy. After years of unhappiness herself she finally unlocked the code and it is not a difficult as you think. 

Do not miss these highlights:

02:06 The result of having an unhappy childhood

06:20 Alice’s story of how she got into happiness.

09:34 What is Happiness? 

11:16 We have to accept the bad stuff and see it as an opportunity to grow.

12:32 How to get from negativity to that positive perspective. 

15:08 Take the situation and create a story about how lucky you are.

18:17 How do we move from unhappy childhood stories and not be trapped in the past.

24:37 How can people get to know themselves better so that they can recognize the things that other people see on the outside? 

28:35 Your thoughts will always lie to you. They’re always there to protect you.

34:32 What’s another way to look at a bad situation? 

37:36  How can we make positive go dormant?

40:31 The purpose of life.

Resources Mentioned

Whether you are recovering from an illness or just looking to maintain your current overall health, schedule a consult with us at Serenity Health Care  by calling  (262)522-8640 or visit https://www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com 

About our Guest:

Nationally award-winning author and life expert Alice Inoue has dedicated her life to helping others find answers to life’s challenges. 

As Hawaii’s thought leader and celebrated expert, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have found clarity over the past 20+ years through her work. Her unique brand of life wisdom is featured in her eight books on self-growth and happiness, as well as in her long-running column in MidWeek, Hawaii’s largest publication. 

Combining her vast set of skills and talents with her entrepreneurial drive, she opened Happiness U, a business with a purpose to help both organizations and individuals find unprecedented clarity.

Website (main): https://yourhappinessu.com/

Extra websites, optional: https://aliceinoue.com/  ; https://masteryoursuperpowers.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceinoue/

Facebook Business: https://www.facebook.com/YourHappinessU

Facebook Speaker: https://www.facebook.com/aliceinouelifeguidance/

Instagram Business: https://www.instagram.com/happiness.university/

Instagram Speaker: https://www.instagram.com/alice_inoue/

Transcript of Episode 189

Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb, this is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. Welcome back to Let’s Talk on this show. I’m your host, Dr. Deb, and I want to talk to you about happiness. You know, there’s a lot of craziness that’s going on in the world today. And finding true happiness can be such a challenge for so many of us, let alone maintaining it, as one goes on. And I think we don’t talk enough about happiness and how to embrace it and keep it going. And what is it all taken? And certainly, what does happiness mean? Right? Happy news to one person can mean something completely different to another person, and understanding where happiness comes from and how do we grab onto it? How do we hold on to it? You know, I’ve watched many people over the years of being in practice, who have been chronically ill, because of an unhappy situation that they were living in, or they had growing up as a child, and they weren’t able to release that. And it embeds into our core and cells in who we are. And it can make us sick. And we don’t know that until we can get out of that situation that’s making us unhappy, and then all of a sudden, we become Well, the problem I find with that, though, is, once that happens, it’s so easy to get trapped into that unhappy lifestyle again, or you get into a new relationship, that’s not exactly the way you want it to be. And our body and our minds go back to those old habits and those old ways and, and they just cause us to be sick again, and cause us to struggle. I’ve watched for many years, even my own mother who’s unhappy, reflecting back into her childhood, and how she really didn’t have a childhood. Many, many people of her era, you know, didn’t have the childhood that they would have wanted. I know it was back in an era where you were seen and not heard. Many children were raised as maids and slaves to be honest and be cruel, and talking exactly what it is, you know, they cleaned the house and did the laundry and did the dishes and did the shopping and worked. They didn’t have that playful, wonderful childhood that so many of us have been gifted to have today. And as a result of that, they’re angry as they get older, and they’re resentful, and they’ve missed out on a lot. And they don’t know how to get past that. And I think in having that struggle, and not being able to make peace with that or forgive. For not having that life. It’s it’s hard and it’s painful. And it leads to depression and anxiety and learning how to make peace with those times and learning to forgive for the life that you you have that wasn’t necessarily what you wanted. If so, so important and critical to finding happiness and finding peace and being able to create the life that you want. Today my guest that I’m going to bring to you, Alice Inoue I’m probably saying her name very very wrong. So we’ll give her an opportunity to tell us how she pronounces it is a happiness guru and she is an author, a life expert. She’s the founder of happiness you she’s an astrologer, and I can’t wait to bring you in to meet her so that you guys can hear exactly from her what it’s like to find happiness. So without further ado, I’m going to bring her in right now. Have you seen 20 Plus medical doctors only to be told your symptoms are in your head or you need an antidepressant? We understand your frustrations? Are you tired of feeling sick and tired? Tired of not getting the answers you need to regain your health? Tired of not feeling listened to by your doctor

Debra Muth 4:54
at Serenity Health Care Center, we understand and we will help you find the cause of yours symptoms. Together, we will create a path to health. We specialize in combining the best of conventional and natural medicine to get you back to doing what you love. We have worked with the most complex chronic diseases such as chronic Lyme COVID, long haulers, autoimmune disease, mold toxicity, and hormonal imbalances. But if you’re not sick, that’s fantastic. We will work with you to maintain your health so that you can prevent illness. give our office a call to see how we can help you regain your health and vitality at 262-522-8640. Or check us out at our website at Serenity health care. center.com. So welcome back. Without further ado, I’m going to introduce my guests Alice to today and I’m gonna let her pronounce her last name.

Alice Inoue 5:57
Alice Inoue

Debra Muth 6:00
okay. So Alice, I’m so glad to have you here. We were chatting just before we hit the record button about happiness, and the struggle that so many people have today in our world and the craziness of life that goes on. And you are a happiness experts. So I’m so glad to have you here to talk and give us some tips on how do we find happiness? How do we get over happiness? But before we do that, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into all of this. Yeah,

Alice Inoue 6:33
it’s interesting because the name of our company is Happiness U and it’s the letter you and I kind of thought it would be cool University where we learn happiness to just you and what is happiness? And it’s such an odd thing. You think that how can you have a business where you’re teaching that But going back to how I got into it, I didn’t. I didn’t grow up happy contrary to what many people think many people think, Oh, you were born happy, happy parents, and you just live this wonderful life and so awesome that you just gave birth to this idea of Happiness U know, when the opposite is true. I I think I know that my path was meant to do this simply because I started out so unhappy. I added that a negative default, like I just remember not smiling in any pictures, grumpy all the time, just feeling like life wasn’t the way I want it to be. I wanted better at different parents, different lifestyles, everything I wanted was not available to me. And as a consequence, I focused so much on the reality that I saw, which is the lack of what I wanted, that I ended up really just developing really, emotional disorders, mental disorders, like just by me and I was 40 pounds heavier, I ate two, two for my happiness. But then that made me more unhappy because I just didn’t like how I felt and look. So it was just this quagmire of just achiness. Until one day, it’s kind of like we have these defining moments where I was in I was 21 years old, I was in a college class Close to close to graduation. And back then we didn’t have text messages. It was an early 80s. And somebody wrote a note. Do you? Are you ever happy? Do you even know what happiness is? And it kind of woke me up to thinking like, No, I don’t know what that I don’t even know, it’s possible to be happy. All I knew was I was crying all the time. I was very sad. And I didn’t like life at all. And that started and this is obviously 40 years ago started the path of questioning happiness. And back then, as you you know, and I’m sure most of the people that listen, we didn’t have tools like we didn’t have it was uncool to see a psychologist like a therapist, and we just didn’t have it was thought of as something weird. Or you have to be into this hitting gongs and this hippie era kind of stuff. So anyway, I was just I sort of pieced it together. And I realized that yeah, hey, I actually have some control over my life. So long story short, as you know, maybe 1015 years ago, all of this, the study on happiness came out on positive psychology and how we could actually change our brains by how we look at things. So that was the magic for me. But I could actually marry all of my own self-learning over the years with his science and basically, come come to the table of life and say, you can like it’s not out there. It’s within you, which is the mystical part, right? So people say like, What do you mean happiness is within? I don’t feel happy inside, how am I going to be happy when I don’t even feel it? So my premise really is that you know, what is happiness? I mean, it’s different for everyone. But the way that I started to define it is that it’s the ability to be present in your life with all the negative and all the icky stuff and all the complexities and be okay with that in your life while you are appreciating and searching for and basically affirming of a good thing. So it’s the balance that We’re looking at, it’s not this feeling of butterflies and rainbows and excitement. It’s really just this knowing that even in spite of all of these things that I have that I don’t want in my life, I have space for myself. And for me to be able to affirm that the balance is where I’m at. And so I think of happiness is just feeling balanced. It’s not like a happy feeling of euphoria. It’s just feeling good. Just feeling okay. Like, I would ask you right now, it or anyone that’s listening, is there? Are there things in your life that you wish did not exist? Absolutely right.

Alice Inoue 10:39
There are so many things, people and situations, but then in the same in the same moment, are there also things in your life that you’re grateful that do exist, friends, and people, and memories and experiences? So that is life at any moment? So the acceptance of it, to me is happiness, like, we tend to resist and say, I want to live a one sided relic, I don’t want this to, I don’t want any of this, I want more of this, how can I get more of this good stuff, get the bad stuff away. But I’m saying no, the bad stuff exists. And that feels the good stuff. So we have to accept the bad stuff. And and there’s ways to accept it. But that’s really the basis of it. Like we live in a world of polarity up and down hot and cold left and right, summer, winter. Nice mean everything, Rarity, so life can’t be any different. So it’s the acceptance of the polarity of life that makes it so amazing. Because you can’t you know what I mean, right? You have a life where there’s nothing challenging, and you wouldn’t even want that kind of a life.

Debra Muth 11:43
It’d be very boring, wouldn’t it? Or you certainly we don’t want all these challenges all the time. And it’s we’re like running through cement. And it’s a challenge. But I also think, and I’d love to hear your point on this, because I’ve lived a lot of my life like this. And, you know, you get a challenge. And we grow from every challenge, right? That’s how we grow. We don’t grow from the easy stuff we grow from the hard stuff. But we have an opportunity to see the hard stuff as this really horrible thing that’s happening to us. And it only happens to all of us and life sucks and blah, blah, or we have that opportunity to say okay, this is a challenge in front of me, it’s going to be hard. It is going to take some time it I don’t like it, I don’t want it, but it’s there. And how does somebody get from that negativity of like, oh my God, here we go. Again, it’s terrible. And in our mind, we make it out to be more than what it may be really is. And look at that from that positive perspective. Okay, I can grow, I can change, this won’t be so bad. How do we get to that?

Alice Inoue 12:49
I have an instant way to actually do that. So. So first of all, we start with understanding that every thought I think, creates my reality, right? So every thought I thought every everything I think about my judgments my past, when I’ve learned everything I think about it basically creates my reality. And so if I’m thinking about this particular issue, challenge the key parts of my life, and I keep thinking the same thing over and over, I’m going to keep seeing that same reality, another reality exists, you’ll see a different reality, someone else’s see a different one of my situation, but I see it through the lens of my reality. So we start with the understanding that we can absolutely change our reality, the thing itself won’t change, but how you feel about it can change. And if I feel differently about it, I’m going to start to move through it much more effortlessly than if I focus on how hard it is. So the way that I like to do it, and this is just a great stun to stop to kind of like get ourselves into it is. Well, you know what, let me start with a story. I’ll start with story that we’ll end with because it’s really powerful. So if you were to walk into a bank on a random day, a random time to deposit around, which is just a random day you walked in, and you walked in the bank and there was a robber there and there’s all these other people and one shot gets fired and it happens to hit your right arm just happens to hit your radar. Now you’re fine you go to urgent care you get taken care of how do you describe this event? How do your friends like you will have a story to tell we have a story to tell about all of our challenges. So you would have a story to tell and you would either say oh my god, I am so lucky. Eight inches more it would have hit my it could be dead or it could be brain dead. Hey god, I’m so lucky. Or you could say of all the days of all the times of all the places of all the people why was I the one getting shot. I shouldn’t have gone to the bank in any of you and if we go blender with you told me to go to their fingers when you told me to go to the bank and now look what happened is the two ways that we will look at a situation as either lucky or unlucky. So now I invite you to look at a situation in your life right now, you might be going through a lawsuit, you might be going through a divorce, you might be going through just like a darkness in your life, right? So you take that situation and you create a story about how you are lucky. Now, you would say, and you would say something like,

Alice Inoue 15:17
Oh, I’ll give you a real example. The first time I use this sentence in a session, a gentleman told me that every Sunday he had to go to his in laws house and have dinner and they, they just treated him so poorly. And that he just felt so he hated it. And everything else was fine. But he hated it. It was it was just Sunday, then he started getting dreading it on Saturday, and then Friday, and then all of a sudden, his whole week was about these two hours, where he just felt bullied and felt not good. So I said, let’s create a better story about going to your in laws. And it’s called a counter fact. And I said, let’s create a counter fac, how could it be worse? He says, Oh, it can’t be worse. It’s just bad. You know, let’s specifically how could it be worse? And then so he couldn’t think of one so it’s a close your eyes. And imagine how you feel on Sunday night when the in laws are making you feel bad? You feel it? Yeah, you felt it instead. Now just imagine if they moved in with you. Just imagine if they moved in with you. And that broke it. He’s like, Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, I said morning, noon, and light. They’re like judging you silently making comments. And then now now, after that vision, you realize, oh, it’s only two hours that actually snapped him right out of it. So this is not my theory, this is like a Harvard thing. They did this study to say that if you want to change the reality of a situation that you are not happy with, all you need to do is imagine and this is the key, specifically, how it could be worse. Specifically, you can’t just say, Oh, it could always be worse, be grateful for what you have that does nothing to change your perception or your reality. You have to say, how could it be specific Luer? My friend ran away with $2,000 or never paid me back? Well, how would it feel if it was $4,000? How would it feel if it was three friends? And so yes, to your point of finding the gift and the in the positive in it, but we first have to feel we have to see the reality that it’s not as bad as we think it is. That makes sense. It’s our full thing. We do counter facts at happiness shoe all the time. And it’s not like, and it’s it’s not like, like, it’s facetiously like, oh, it can always be worse. It’s like, seriously, how could it be worse, and if you sit in that, that how it could be worse reality. In your mind, you will feel like you’re you’re out of it. It’s almost like if you fall in a 20 foot hole, and you look up and you’re like, there’s no way I can get out. But if you if you kind of made yourself up to get to 10 feet, you feel like you make progress. So that’s what it is. So as we create a negative scenario or reality, so that we can see where we’re at and have a little more gratitude for it. Because everything in our life could be much, much worse. If we’re never at the bottom, it could be so much. But the key is specific. That’s it, you can’t just say, oh, yeah, I know, I know. It could be worse, you have to sit with it and say specifically, how can it be worse? So that’s the answer to your question.

Debra Muth 18:12
That sounds so simple, right? I mean, just look at what could be worse. And I know there’s people listening, they’re gonna be like, I can’t do that. All this happened to me when I was a child. So how do I think about how could be worse when it’s already over? And I can’t change what happened when I was a child. Before we were on, I shared a story about my own mom, you know, my mom was raised at a time where children should have been seen and not heard, right. And they were more like slaves than children. And she’ll oftentimes even today she’ll say, you know, I really didn’t have a childhood, I had to do all the cooking all the cleaning all the grocery shopping, my brother got away with everything. He didn’t have to do anything. And she really lives in that time still inheritance and carries that with her. How do we move from stories from childhood like that? Even?

Alice Inoue 19:01
So then you say like, okay, so how did me doing all the cooking, cleaning, taking all that responsibility? How did I benefit? What did I gain? I went through a lot of pain, there’s no pain without gain, but we look for the pain, the pain becomes our story, we have to look for the gain. So what did we gain? Did she gain compassion? Did she gain skills, did she and she would say, oh, that’s unimportant. That doesn’t matter. I didn’t get what I really wanted was that. So this is where this is where we talk about life is the presidency. And only she and only you only I can dig ourselves out of our own stories like only we can. So at some point, it’s hopeless, if she won’t if she or anyone won’t really look at it, because they’ll just just discount it. But if you’re listening and you’re saying yeah, I really want to escape this this might the story of crude about the past. It’s simply a story. Now what if we could create a story with instead of that first reality that’s true for her? True there’s another truthful reality videos She learned from it, she might have used it as an excuse to not do other things, she might have been happy that she is always there, there’s a there is always a gain from the pain. And if we ask ourselves that question, you’ll get to see it. I have a perfect like, I grew up abused by a father, emotionally, mentally, you name it, all of that. And I have a story for a long time. I never got to be a child, I had to raise my two kids, my two brother and sister, I had to do everything I couldn’t go out with my friends, I completely remember. And that was part of my story. When I started talking of my unhappiness, I felt like I never got to do anything I wanted to do. And I had to do everything. So I get that. And this is how I got through it is to look back and say, What did I gain from that? You know, what I gained? What are the big gain? I did, I chose not to have children because I my brother and sister were such a pain if I if I had a kid I would never have happiness, you I would never be doing all the things I do. So that actually was a game in my life. Because I gave me space to do things that I choose to do versus that so I gained so much from it, but I had to look at it. So that’s that’s part of it. Because you relieved you realize that everything is to in divine order. Everything happens exactly the way it needs do to get you to where you need to be today. There are no mistakes in life you shouldn’t have been your shouldn’t be farther along. You’re not too behind. You’re exactly where you are, your life brought you to this point. So let’s look at your life and say what did I get from this point? I didn’t get here for no reason. I had this you any all of us have our stories, we have all these regrets. We have these things that we didn’t like, but what what can we gain from that. And if you still have life to live, you’re still alive, you’re still living doesn’t make sense to just say, I never had that. So now I can’t move on with my life. So you are the creator of your life, we are in power, we can look to the past to see where we can gain in the present. And it’s simply allowing ourselves to let our ego go take away the blame of my parents or my society or my culture and just say, What can I do now here today, we can actually wipe the slate clean, if we if we choose to move forward. But we are really stuck in the past and how we move forward is to reconcile the past. And this is how we do it by looking at the past and saying from all this pain, what have I gained? Yeah, all this pain. And then you actually can say, if you have general gains, you have specific gains. And the more you can see how there’s been no mistakes, the more you can live Presently, we get we get trapped in the past a lot. And we see it with older people or my mother included.

Debra Muth 22:41
Yeah, it’s so hard when we’re trapped in that past because so much illness comes from it not just mental illness, but physical illness. I see this all the time. And it’s not until somebody gets out of a bad situation. And they start to work through it that their physical ailments and their mental ailments start to get better. But boy, if we, if we could have this tool while we’re there and make that process easier, a sometimes I think people would get out faster because they would see it. But be if they can’t get out, at least they’re not trapped in that negative place so much that it’s hurting every cell of their being and making them physically sick.

Alice Inoue 23:26
It’s so so people don’t realize like we have trillions of cells, everything we think your cells are the cellular consciousness of our cells are hearing it and feeling it and if you’re just thinking it and emoting it, your cells are feeling it and then of course dis ease, will will come up. I mean, some people say, Oh, it’s not connected, but how can it not if I told you to imagine what it tastes like to suck a lemon and drink sour lemonade, you’re going to salivate our bodies respond to everything we think about? So yes, I’m absolutely on board with that. And I, I can I can say from a personal experience. I’m two years away from 60 right now. And I have not had a cold take any medication for like 12 1314 years now. I haven’t even gotten sick. So it is it’s your mind, your health of your thoughts and your emotions that really propagate through your because your body shows whenever you’re unhappy in here, your body will it’ll show up in your shopping.

Debra Muth 24:28
It shows up everywhere. And it’s it’s so easy for other people to see. It’s so much harder for us to see. So do you have some tips on how people can get to know themselves better so that they can recognize the things that other people see on the outside?

Alice Inoue 24:47
Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s that intention of awareness. So I think that everything starts with an awareness. So if anyone is even listening to us to this point, then there’s probably an interest so if you’re Yeah, I kind of want to If I do want to get on that path, I want to start where do I even start to see these things? First we’re aware, then we say, Okay, what is our intention? My intention is to be aware. So you basically talk to yourself, it’s kind of sounds crazy, we talk to yourself and you say, you know, the next time I am going onto an old story, can you please let me know because we have wise sides of ourselves, but we’ve never listened to our inner self. We just listened to our everything is outer. So it’s just the awareness and the intention. And and you’ll catch yourself, if you ask yourself to show yourself and you are aware, you will catch yourself saying things. Like if I say if I remember when Tim used to say I’m never late, I’m just I’m never late. I’m never late at night. I believe that I was never late, but the evidence shows that I was always late. And so I actually asked that question to myself, I want it to be aware of my blindsides. We all have them no matter how elevated or you are. And I wanted to be aware, and I remember asking it, and I thought it was perfect until until I said to somebody like Yeah, yeah, no, I’m never late. And then as I was saying, Oh, my there’s a part of me that says, haha, really. And then I realized, like, I used to never be late, but now I am. I’m busier. So that’s just that was. And that’s all it takes. So we say how can we become more aware? Let’s call it listening to ourselves. And people say, Well, how do you listen to yourself? That sounds weird. I listened to others. How do you listen to yourself? I want to kind of, like invite you or anybody to just start by closing your eyes for one minute. Even if you’re thinking about 5 million things, just close your eyes for one minute. Because if you’ve never sat down in presence with yourself, you actually don’t know who you are what you want. You’re never gonna become good friends. And we met we felt a connection. I would be like, Let’s have coffee, you know, let’s have tea talk. Tell me what do you like? What colors you like? What are you interested in? What do you like to talk about, I would have interest in you. And then if I wanted to further our relationship, I would, you know, get things for you that’s in line with what you like. But we we don’t we we might have had dreams, hopes and wishes of the Child Life crashed in on us all this crazy stuff happened, we got caught up in life. So now your self has been speaking this whole time. If you’re not listening, it shows up in emotional mental disorders, physical body. So if you are not happy number one, or no, you’re not happy or not feeling like, induced by life, and you’re having a bunch of physical ailments and stuff, then this is a great practice. It’s simply your inner being say, Hey, I’m still here. Because if you’re living inspired by your Spirit, in other words, you’re you’re listening to yourself, and you’re recognizing and you’re working on yourself, you will get answers. And you will have the ability to create a different reality. We just have created so many stories about our life and about ourselves that aren’t true. And living in authentically is one key to not being happy.

Debra Muth 27:54
I think that’s so true. It’s so hard to be quiet, because we’re scared of where our minds go sometimes. You know, sometimes they go to those dark places that we don’t want to go. So if we stay busy, our mind doesn’t go there. So when we invite people to be quiet, how do we not go to those dark places, if somebody’s always going there?

Alice Inoue 28:14
So I think then it’s like, okay, we take a moment of quietness, and all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, my life is horrible and better, it’s just gonna get worse and worse. I’m doing it’s over. Yeah, then you let that go. But you’re still with that intention. I will say physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, we bring ourselves to sit with intention for a minute just to close your eyes in the morning when you wake up doesn’t matter. So now the next thing we deal with thoughts, your thoughts will always lie to you. They’re always they’re there to protect you. But they’re always going to put you into fear. But they lie all the time. So don’t believe everything. yourself. It’s almost like if you keep lying to me, I’m going to be like, Hey, Dr. Ted like, no. Is that really true? Is your is your your child always yelling? 24 hours a day? No, they out yield an hour a day. So we have to catch ourselves. And so you have to ask yourself, is that true? Is that true? Is that just a story? So that occupies your mind for a bit. But I just I think the most important thing is people say, I feel horrible. I feel jealous, I feel angry, I feel whatever. And then other people say, Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way. You shouldn’t feel shy you shouldn’t. But how you feel is how you feel like, how you feel how you feel. If you want to change how you feel, you have to start thinking differently. It’s the thoughts that you can change because the thoughts eventually filter down into your emotion. So it’s the thoughts and so that’s why we sit for a minute to set your mind races. That’s fine. And then you ask yourself, well, what if my mind racing about I’ll never get anything done? Okay, is that true? Is it true that you will never get anything done? Did you do something this morning? Do you almost have to almost like, catch yourself like we just are lazy our thoughts go we let our thoughts go and then we feel horrible and we think our life is horrible. But we start with our thoughts and knowing that our thoughts change your reality. So the more awareness you put on the thought that you’re thinking and catching yourself if they’re true or not, and trying to see is it possible that there’s another reality to this, just that kind of thing, write it out. If it’s easier, then you do it consistently, your brain will know, I can’t just keep thinking these thoughts because she’s going to catch me on it. And that’s how we start to balance. That’s how we start to come back to center. That’s how we start to embrace more of what is that’s to me. That’s the number one thing like my unhappiness is caused by how I think if I keep thinking a certain thing about a certain person, I’m going to start thinking that person is like, horrible. But if I think well, you know what, he’s also nice to his daughter. Oh, you know what, he also does good stuff for the community. Oh, you know, and I started looking for the good, he’s both bad and good. And that’s how we are we vote, there’s two sides to everything, there’s a million different realities of any given moment of any situation, if we allow ourselves to drop our ego a little bit sit with ourselves and kind of say like, is that thought true? That’s the first that’s one. And then the other thing is when you take time for yourself, even just sitting for a minute, that’s like, building a relationship, you don’t build relationships with people by not communicating with them, not listening. And so that’s kind of my thing. I love that

Debra Muth 31:17
because I think it’s so easy for us to just stay in that negative space. And I’ve done this for a long time, I learned this in the Mind Valley program, and learning to speak and learning to say your truth. And it’s so hard for us sometimes to speak. And it was an exercise where you look in the mirror at yourself, and you have to say five things that you like about yourself every single day. And I’ll tell you, it’s really hard when you first start doing it, you maybe can do it when you’re not looking directly at yourself. And you’re looking right in the eyes of the mirror looking right at yourself and saying those things. And sometimes, I mean, you can’t come up with things, right. There’s days where you’re just like, I don’t like myself at all, I can’t come up with it. But as you start to do it, you really start to put that power in that truth back into yourself. So all those negative things you’ve heard people say about you, or you’ve said about yourself over the years that you think somebody says about you become on truth because they truly are untruthful, just a story. And so you can start doing that every single day. And it’s it, it’s hard in the beginning, it’s easier towards the end. But if you do it every day for 30 days, it’s amazing how you feel at the end of that 30 days about yourself.

Alice Inoue 32:31
You know, that’s such a good point. Another note, I do so many things. And I love everything to do with a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, anything and I just love it all. But the one thing that happened over the pandemic was my clientele. I might have started my business when I was in my 30s and 40s. And now I’m in you know, 50s and 60s, My people are like 60s 70s and 80s sometimes, and I started this youth of phi class and it was just a way to just to have certain thoughts, right and to do things like what you said to bring some consciousness and mindfulness to what we’re doing what we’re thinking. And I always we always joke because nobody looks in the mirror in the morning, go, Oh my God, you look so great. I love that lip. So we look in the mirror like oh my god, another bag, another wrinkle. And I like Oh, my gray hair. So. So I got into a face show, but it’s just a it’s just a way to exercise your face. And I have a little face club. But the reason I tell you is because when you consciously exercise and work on your face, then when you look in the mirror, you’re looking for improvement, because every time you look in the mirror and you say something not positive about yourself, you’re really breaking down yourself, right? It’s just, it’s just, it’s like, I don’t do that to you. But we do that to ourselves, right? So anyway, so we what I noticed is you’re inputting positive energy. So now you start to accept your face. Yes, there’s good things about it. But there’s also not so good things about it versus mold bad. Yeah, especially as we get older. There’s just this thing about how we show up.

Debra Muth 33:57
Yeah, it’s it’s so easy to just be so hard on ourselves. And we most of the time, would never say those things to somebody else out loud. We might think that but we would never say them. But we think them to ourselves 10,000 times a day, you know, I don’t like this. I don’t like that, oh, my hair looks terrible. Oh, I’ve got this wrinkle. Oh, I’ve got this, you know, my boobs are too big. My son was too fat. My butt’s too small. You know, there’s just so many things. And I love the stories because if we tell ourselves those other stories, oh my gosh, we’re just giving ourselves grace.

Alice Inoue 34:32
It changes. So this is what I suggest you write down on you just write down in your journal, if you journal just a paragraph of of a situation that you’re not happy with. Right? Then you ask yourself, What’s another way to look at it? What’s another reality with another male? And then once you did that, you know say what’s another reality because so you start uncovering the things that aren’t seeing because the negative is three times stronger, it’ll always rise to the top, but we have to kind of peel away and ask the deeper as the deeper because there’s always another reality. I remember doing this with, I was really stressed out when I first opened my business it wasn’t it didn’t do as well as I had thought I thought I’d open the business and people would flock in and I just thought we would have this great happy University where all these people would be taking classes and, and it just nobody knew what it was like what happy school so there’s all this resistance. Meanwhile, I’m paying rent and overhead and salaries, right? So I was in the state of oh my god, I own a company called happiness shoe. I can’t like oh my gosh, I just didn’t know how to get through this kind of stress. And it was really, I’d never been in that type of financial stretch. Before I hadn’t. I was so uncomfortable. And so I did this, I learned this exercise. And I did it was fantastic. What was my problem? Not enough money. I’m having to do this, that this all my challenges of financial, what’s another story? Couldn’t think of what’s another story? What’s the other story was how I didn’t know that people were willing to help me. I mean, so many people came out of the woodwork to help me, I developed so much creativity on how to network and social media create so that we could do I met new people. Like, because of my challenging situation, there was an underlying amazing thing that I wasn’t giving value to that was helping me. And then when I wrote again, what’s another reality? It was like, hey, at least I’m living my dream, you know, at least I got my dream out in real life, versus someday I want to open a Happiness University someday, right? So there’s all these levels that are that go almost go dormant, if we’re only focusing on the negative. So you write a story and ask yourself, What’s another reality? What’s another reality? And you can actually keep going? Because there’s so many realities that we don’t see, we just focus on the one that makes us feel the worst?

Debra Muth 36:47
It is, isn’t it? We want to focus on what makes us feel the worst, but yet, we want everything to be positive and wonderful. And we want more of that.

Alice Inoue 36:56
It just so this is so the silly. Let’s tell people right now, think of the most challenging thing in your life right now. We all have something that you it’s something the in laws, the money, the the whatever schedule, the most challenging thing right now. Okay, now, think of one of the most positive things in your life right now, people come up with dogs and grandchildren. And that’s about it. Nobody says like husbands. Anyway, the most positive thing you have right now, okay, if the world is a polarity, there is positive and negative and everything I can get rid of this big problem for you, are you willing to get rid of this great joy, because you’re always going to have a series of opposites. But because the negative is does draw our attention three times stronger, it has to because we need to protect ourselves, then the positive goes dormant. And so that’s why we have to keep looking, and looking and looking. And that’s the balance. So you almost have to find three units of positivity for every unit of negativity that you perceive is happening to you in order to feel balanced. And once you develop this, catch your thought, ask yourself if it’s true, right, and then just see what else is going on that is good. That’s how we build strength, you can’t expect to like take a dumbbell and curl like 100 pounds unless you work it up from 10, wanting 30. So it’s that same thing, mindset is the muscle. And it’s it’s we’re just living in a world where everything’s so instant, that you just want happiness. Now just give it to me now. But you can this is something cultivated, this is part of being human, I will say the purpose of life is not for happiness, the purpose of life is so that we can grow. And if you understand and except that the purpose of life is for us to grow, then you recognize that we grow on the edge of challenge and support. Support is always there for always focusing on focusing on the challenges, we won’t even see the support. So our job is to change the story. And looking for more of this specific support that we get from every level of our challenge. It’s hard work. But once you do the work, and you’re stronger, it becomes natural. It’s like a habit.

Debra Muth 39:03
No, I love that. I can still relate to that right now in my practice, we’re bringing a ton of new things in and it’s really exciting. But it’s also very challenging. And one of my girls and I were having conversation about this the other day, and we said, oh my gosh, we feel so stupid right now, because this is all new. We’ve never done this before. It’s new. It’s challenging. And we’re excited about it. But we’re also feeling so insecure about not knowing everything about it. And we know at moments we’re sitting there going, Oh my God, why did we do this? We were so dumb. This was so stupid. We’re never going to learn this right? And then the other moments were like, Oh my gosh, we get to do this. And it’s so much fun. And it’s so exciting. And it’s so uplifting, and it’s like at every moment, it’s a polar opposite at any given part of the day. It’s like thank goodness we have this lift up here to say this is fun, and it’s exciting and it’s new. And I love learning Get, and then you’ve got the down moment. And then we say, okay, but do we remember when we started with this service, and we felt exactly the same way, seven years ago with this service. And now we do this in our sleep, and we don’t even think about it. A couple of years from now, we’re going to be the same way over here with this new thing. And then we’re going to be like we did now we were bored. That’s why we brought a new thing. And we were bored, we needed a challenge. And it’s like, it’s just so right there. It’s really interesting to be able to pull that out as you’re sharing this with us.

Alice Inoue 40:30
Yeah, exactly. So I always say this, you’re in hell, struggling to reach heaven, the moment you reach heaven, another level of hell comes to greet you. And that is exactly life. And if we get life, then we can appreciate the good moments, and recognize the challenges are there so that we can grow? That is the purpose of life. People say, I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. And that’s just like, yeah, who doesn’t? But how do you get there? It’s it’s by how you are looking at and if life is our learning ground, if life is our school, then I actually want to call it happiness you The School of Life, but everyone’s like, nobody would go school of life. Life is hard. I’m, like, Y’all know, like, like, you know, the school I just wanted, like, life is gonna bring you these things. And how do we how we look at them will make all the difference in how we transcend them. If you and I have are going to do the exact same thing. And you and I have the exact same tools, exact same physical body strength, everything is exactly the same. And we both have to go climb a mountain, let’s say an obstacle. The way we think will make all the difference if I’m thinking, oh my god, that’s so big mountain. So huge. Oh my god, I’m so scrawny, I don’t have the skills that I will have a hard time getting up that mountain. But if you’re like, you know what I prepared for this, I’m as strong as I can be. I climb that other mountain before and I it was hard, but I need it. I think I can do this, and you have that mindset, you’re gonna get to the top and feel exhilarated, I’ll get some fuel exhausted. So how we look at things makes all the difference. The stories we tell ourselves, the focus that we have the thoughts, we believe, it’s a big mess to manage. But if you don’t manage it, guess what your life is the way you are the one that fuels your life, and you’re the one that will feel all the effects of your faulty thinking. So I get it. And it’s not that easy. We make it sound easy. But we start somewhere you start somewhere and you keep doing it. You don’t just give up on yourself. That’s to me. That’s the secret. Like, how do you be? How do you be happy you work on yourself. And it takes time, and it might take your whole life. But we get to increments we just want to in that those successes, if you look, where are you better now, like you said in your practice, like some of the things, you know that you’re gonna look back and say, thank goodness, we struggled through it. And that’s the joy.

Debra Muth 42:54
Yeah, absolutely. Alex, this is such a great conversation. And I know people are going to want to reach out to you and learn more from you. How do they get in touch with you? How do they follow you?

Alice Inoue 43:06
Oh, thank you so much. So well, we I’m very, very active on Facebook and Instagram. And I can always give you those links later. Just type in my name and you can find it just type in Happiness U. That’s number one. But number two is like if there’s a more intimate like this kind of conversation. In fact, as soon as I get up with you, I go on to our live we have a Hui and I live in Hawaii and in Hawaii. Hui means a group of like minded people, people that gather together for a purpose. So we have something called that Happiness U Hui and it’s $30 a month, and I come on every Thursday talk about all these different topics, we record them, I have expert guests kind of like you. And it’s it’s just with different people that might bring insight into life. And it’s it’s it’s one of those things where you have a community that can support you versus like, tell you why you can’t it’s like there’s that sometimes it’s fresh, we need people to support us, that don’t know us, because people that know you, sometimes they have the best intentions, but they drag you down in a certain sense. Sometimes they’re not always truly supportive because they care about you. So it what we do is we just have a little group there, and we get together once in a while.

Debra Muth 44:14
I love that that is great. And I you know, I I love that idea. Because people need people that are going through the same things that they are and trying to get to the same result. They need their tribe of people that understand that this is what they want. And this is what they’re working towards. Because there are going to be people in our lives that are going to look at us, like, why are you doing that. And you want to surround yourself with like minded people to support you and grow and to just be there for you and make new friends and learn new things. And so that is awesome. I love that you’re doing that. Thank you so much. We do have your social media links. We will put them in the show notes and they will be all over social so that they can connect with you as well. So yeah,

Alice Inoue 44:58
that’s right. We’ll give this little gift link where you can actually come on and see what the hui looks like. Because I have all these, we just showed some videos in there of how it looks. But it’s just exactly like how I’m talking to you. We just everyone, it’s not we’re not big, it’s like we are not it’s a, there’s a lot of members, but very few people actually show up to chat. So it’s a really great intimate kind of time that we get there. But thank you for all you’re doing. I mean, I just heard just reading about all the things that you are able to offer to people with your expertise. And I get to come on and talk to your listeners. So thank you.

Debra Muth 45:30
Thank you. You’re so welcome. I will let you get to that meeting. And thank you again, so much for being with us.

Alice Inoue 45:37
My pleasure. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You too.

Debra Muth 45:42
Oh my gosh, you guys, this was such a wonderful show. I love that she gave us so many tips, and so many tricks into how to be happy and how to change your life. You guys have heard from Alice, who is an expert in life, she has dedicated her life to helping others and answering life’s challenges. She’s a thought leader, she’s a celebrity. She’s been part of hundreds of organizations, and she has helped 1000s of individuals find clarity over the last 20 years. And truly the tips that she has given us are priceless. And I can’t wait to use more of what she shared with us. It just brings it all back to the front of our minds to say, hey, you know what, I have to take a moment to quiet my mind when those negative thoughts come in, change the story, change the narrative, so that it doesn’t have to be the way I want it to be. And I will say I’ve struggled with a lot of this over my lifespan, too, it’s so easy to go to that dark, negative place when something happens and immediately say, oh, that person meant to do this. They’re out to get me they, they don’t want me to do whatever X, Y and Z. And I think taking that step back and thinking and going okay, is this true? Would this person really want to hurt me? If they were standing in front of me? Would they really say this to my face? Or is this just me? How have I seen them act or respond to other people? How will I do this? You know, it’s so important for us to take that step back before we react and before we put ourselves in a place that we’re going to regret. So really take what she is offering and put it to good use. Share it with your friends and family. Check her out is your happiness you.com. And check her out on Facebook at your happiness you and connect with her. And really, you know, just start living your life in a more fulfilled way. So that you can leave that negativity behind. I think you’ll find that in today’s day and age that will go a long way. And we’ll all be in a better place because of it. So thank you again for joining us here at Let’s talk wellness. Now. I love doing these shows I learned so much. I get so excited to share these topics with you. And I implement every one of them myself. So. So I’m learning right there along with you. Things that I’ve learned that I’ve forgotten I bring back to the forefront. And so thank you again for joining us. Like share, subscribe, it really helps us get that out to everybody and be well in the world and be happy. Bye everyone. Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review. Share this podcast and if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest