Happy Habits

We are exploring a quote by Gabor Mate, a Canadian physician who works a lot with addiction as a cause of trauma: "We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world."

We share our personal understanding and life experiences as we became aware of how the world around us shaped our minds. Following those sometimes funny, sometimes painful realizations, lies the opportunity to create a life on one's own values, unpacking, layer by layer one's true authentic self. ❤️

What unconscious concept came to your (now conscious) mind when listening?

Unpacking and creating our world. Listen to this episode from Happy Hour on Spotify. We are exploring a quote by Gabor Mate, a Canadian physician who works a lot with addiction as a cause of trauma: "We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our w...

Do you show pride? No? Don’t wanna seem too full of yourself?

You know the emotion of pride is widely misconceived! A long time I thought there is a fine line between “still ok to be proud” and “too much pride”. We all know the saying “Pride comes before the fall.” Pride is considered as one of the deadly sins... However according to research we need to be a bit more distinct. There are actually two forms of pride:

1. Pride that has the intention to elevate yourself over others (we don’t need that one). This is when you take pride in your person. You believe that your achievements are a result of your overall greatness.

2. Pride as a motivator for oneself and others (we need that one) 😃. This is when you take pride in your actions because you can acknowledge that our efforts and skills and possibly the support of others helped us to succeed.

The latter one is referred to as authentic pride - it is the purest form of acknowledging what went right in opposition of what went wrong (we mostly are experts in seeing the negative). It is considered a positive emotions as it propels us forward, step by step, to live a purposeful life where we can even be of service to others. Pride or the anticipation of it impacts our perseverance specifically in tasks that might not feel as pleasant as we do them. Finishing a project or exercising might not be considered pleasurable however the anticipation of the final achievement keeps us going. It feeds into our self-worth and self-image.

Focusing on the positive will further navigate us to experience other positive emotions. As I cultivate authentic pride I might find gratitude and awe ❤️.

Do so by checking in with your self every night or at the end of the week. What went well? What did I accomplish? Dwell in those memories and acknowledge your contribution! 😃

From Love,
Antje

What makes you happy? 🙂

For me, it’s time spent with my family.

I love being around my children, hearing their opinions on things, seeing them laugh and smile and watching them in awe as they grow and navigate the world.

I love spending time with my husband, sharing our views on the world... and then our debates😂

I love when I’m able to go back to Canada and reconnect with family there. Seeing my nieces and nephews, my sister, brothers, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents.. I cherish this time and the memories bring a smile to my face in between visits.❤️🥰

I love spending time with friends. I am so lucky to know so many amazing, inspiring, funny people and appreciate the times I get with each one.💕

I love learning..I love discovering new concepts and ideas.

I love working towards everyday becoming a better version of myself and the thought of helping others do the same!

“It’s not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.”
-Charles Spurgeon

With Love,
Lori

Enjoy 20 minutes of light-hearted conversation about our approach to mental wellbeing and happiness in our first podcast episode ❤️

Happy Hour Listen to Happy Hour on Spotify. This is us, Lori and Antje, two friends and therapists based in Dubai. We have different backgrounds but one common vision: promoting the fact that our mind - same as our body - needs training as well to stay healthy and inspired. Join us as we normalize all human ex...

I think this word describes perfectly how a lot of us have been feeling lately.
It definitely describes how I’ve been feeling the past couple of weeks.

I haven’t been back home to Canada since December 2019.

I miss my kids and all my extended family. 😢
I’ve been struggling with motivation and feel like I’m working so hard to maintain a level of feeling just ‘okay’.
I recognize this is normal.. after all, we are in a pandemic!
We have, and still are, faced with so much uncertainty!

So, let’s give each other a break.. There’s a lot going on right now. Let’s practice kindness and compassion for ourselves and for others.

Today is about resilience but tomorrow will be our time to thrive!

With Love,
Lori

At Happy Habits we are life long learners. But what’s the purpose? 🤔

Lori and me have studied various modalities to apply and integrate into the work with our clients. Coming from NLP, going through Hypno- and Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Sound Therapy and diving into various concepts of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing... we sometimes would stop and ponder: with everything we have studied and keep consuming, how - from all of this - will we find the one or many things that are specifically helpful for exactly this client? 😲

And we found the following answer:

❤️ When being with a client we tune in. We are present. Fully. With unconditional positive regard and the knowledge that everything that is needed he/ she will find within. We only have the privilege to be trusted enough to guide the way to access this power! So clients can become their own experts.

💪 The right tools, the right way comes to us as we shift and thus broaden our own awareness, getting in touch with our own intuitive self, our own inner spirit, reaching out and touching the inner spirit of the other... transcending ✨ and by that we get a feeling for how to speak, how to address and for the methodologies that we assume work best to heal, to empower and grow

🎯 So by consuming and engaging continuously with ancient ideas and the latest research we keep broadening our map of possibilities, expanding our repertoire of tools to draw from for a greater good. For an empowered community that is able to be aware, cope and thrive to experience the best life possible.

From Love,
Antje

Do you confront your shortcomings? Or do you create a world where there are none?

This is the difference between having a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset.

A fixed mindset means there is a belief that your intelligence and talent are fixed. You are either good at something or you’re not. Good performance comes naturally and if you have to work for it then you are not that smart or talented anyway. People with a fixed mindset avoid the possibility of failure as it is seen as a deficiency on their part.

A growth mindset focuses on the learning as opposed to the outcome. People with a growth mindset embrace challenges as they believe that effort fosters success and failures are merely setbacks that create an opportunity to learn from.

For years, I fell into the category of a fixed mindset. I wouldn’t try something new unless I was alone because I feared others judgement or if I knew there was a chance I would be good at it. If something didn’t come naturally to me or I was unable to pick it up quickly then I would stop doing it. I did not want to fail. Back then, I imagined failing at something equated to every part of me being a failure.

Over the years I have learnt how to adopt more of a growth mindset.

I became aware of my inner voice and how I talked to myself. I learnt the power of the word ‘yet’... it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it instead I changed it to I couldn’t do it YET.

I changed my attitude towards failing, it doesn’t mean not succeeding anymore now it means a first attempt in learning.

I work regularly on being present, learning to value the process over the final result. I still struggle with this one but that’s ok... repetition creates habit!

What do you do to create a growth mindset?

With love,
Lori

Today is the UN International Day of Happiness. ☝️

They suggest to honor that day by

✅ doing something for yourself that makes you feel good - I enjoyed cleaning the house to get ready for our Iranian New Years celebration!

✅ being kind and doing something nice for another person - I believe No. 1 was also beneficial for the rest of the family 😂

✅ spreading awareness for mental wellbeing! - This is the intention of today’s post but not something I do only today but also all the other days of the year because this relates to the mission of happy habits:

We want to move past therapy into prevention. As a result we designed a bunch of classes that cover what we believe are the core ingredients to happiness: awareness, coping and thriving. In order to be prepared, to be as resilient as needed, to bounce back from challenges or difficult experiences one needs to cultivate happy habits ❤️ By putting our mind and heart into that work we are proud to be part of a movement that we believe is long needed: We promote the fact that our mind - same as our body - needs training, too, to stay healthy and inspired. We believe it is time for a paradigm shift. Taking care of your mental wellbeing shall be as common and accepted as taking care of your physical body.

And let’s keep in mind: happiness has many faces... ☺️😲😍 it’s not only about being cheerful and joyful all the time... happiness can be serenity, awe, inspiration... all those quiet moments too! ❤️

Happy Happiness Day,
From Love,
Antje

How about this: we are wired for negativity! 😳

There is no other way to explain why just hours ago I’d still be upset about a person cutting my way on the highway while my daughter sung the cutest song on the backseat of the car which I wasn’t even able to pay attention to, as I was dwelling in my negative emotions...

😤 It’s the same thing that keeps us ruminating over passive aggressive comments, that instills and feeds unreasonable fears and makes us focus on our and other people’s failures rather than our character strengths.

🦴 And it is the same thing that helped our ancestors narrow their focus to the problem to survive as they assumed the sable tooth tiger behind the next bush. It helped them see possible dangers to life and thus protect themselves, their tribe and consequently generation after generation.

➖ It is called ‘negativity bias’. It makes us experience ‘bad sh*t’ more intensely, it weighs more than positivity. That’s why focusing on the ‘good sh*t’ needs a bit more awareness☝️

➕ To raise positivity we have to become aware of the fact that it is those little fluctuating moments of positive emotions that add up to it: movements of joy, gratitude, serenity, pride, fun, love, awe and inspiration... we have to consciously increase and savor those moments to balance out the negativity we might experience throughout the day.

❤️ and as we do so: we don’t narrow our focus anymore, we broaden it 😃 making us see others possibilities to life’s challenges, being creative, playful, learning faster... and by that we build our internal resources and become more resilient to just the problem we decided to take the attention from because we chose to cultivate positive emotions ❤️

My favorite is ‘awe’ 🤩 as I experience the vastness of space - be it in nature 🌳 or by studying 📚 I know ‘awe’ is my joker. Whatever negativity I am experiencing, ‘awe’ has enough power to stand up to it 💪

Which one will you focus your attention on today?

From Love,
Antje

This years theme for International Woman’s Day is .

A challenged world is an alert world, from challenge comes change.

One of the best ways to create lasting change in the world is to start by creating change within yourself.

A great way to start is to become aware of our own thoughts and beliefs.

Researchers in Positive Psychology have found that it is not necessarily reality that shapes us, it’s the lens through which your brain views the world.

By increasing our happiness, we change the way we see the world.
One of the ways to do this is to practice gratitude.

One of the ways I practice gratitude is by keeping a gratitude journal. Everyday I sit down in the evening and write down three things I am grateful for that day.

Today I am grateful for all strong, courageous, inspiring woman I am surrounded by.

💕I am grateful for my gramma.
She led by example. She didn’t finish high school because she had to go to work at a young age, I saw her complete her education once her kids were grown up. She always wanted to learn to ski and took her first lesson at 75 and then hiked up a mountain the next year. She taught me that you can do anything you put your mind to.
💕I am grateful for my daughters.
I am in awe of them everyday. They are both beautiful, kind souls who when they leave a room they leave it a better place. Their laugh and smiles are infectious. I am so proud of who they are and the women they are becoming.
💕I am grateful for my friends.
I love the support we provide each other.
I am so lucky to be surrounded by woman who empower each other!

What are you grateful for?

With Love,
Lori

When was the last time you did something like that? 😃 When you were savoring the present moment... ✨

When you were not only celebrating the good things in your life but also the mundane things and you would consciously extend those positive emotions by intensifying or prolonging your enjoyment of them?

To savor means to slow things down and honor what it is that you have and experience. It is worshipping the present moments rather than allowing your mind to race into the future and all the things that need to be done next.

As I train myself to do just that I find awe in watching the shadow on my living room floor that is produced by the soft light of the afternoon sun ☀️. I find opportunities of savoring in stopping the world as my daughter vividly explains why she believes there injustice in getting into the shower before her brother 👫. I savor those moments when I am dancing 💃, losing my sense of self as I enter flow, connecting to music and rhythm and the group of women that also decided to learn something new.

It is those little moments that up the level of my quality of life as I increase the amount and intensity of positive emotions ❤️ It is our ability to become aware and train our mind to stay and take in. From there the magic happens. ✨ How do you savor? 😃

From Love,
Antje

What if I told you that you have a super power?

Would you believe me?

In fact, we all have this amazing power, we just need to figure out how to use it.

In the past I, like many others, have struggled with my mental health.

I spent years battling panic attacks, felt extreme anxiety, low confidence and self worth.

I was looking for someone to “fix” me, to make me feel better.

I read self help books hoping that by the time I finished the book everything would be solved.

I went to therapy with the expectation that they could fix me.

I discovered that the only thing that could change how I felt was ME.

It was great that I had all this knowledge, training and support but those were only tools for me to do the work.

I had to put in the effort. I found my power by showing up for myself everyday.

Everything in life can be seen as either a tool or an obstacle.

It’s up to you, find the power that you have within and live the life you were to live.
With Love,
Lori