Choose Happiness With Rachel Cole

Sometimes choosing happiness can be hard. It's so much easier to allow ourselves to be bogged down in the misery of regrets from the past, worries about the future, or the state of the world that we're in at any given moment. But among the difficulties of life we do have the choice to focus on what's good and the reality of what's going well instead of leaning into despair.  For the past few years...

Join me for a fun and fascinating interview with The Okayest Magician, also known as Gary Hernberg. Learn about his journey toward fulfilling his dream of becoming a professional magician post-retirement and finding tremendous success along the way. We'll also learn a magic trick to impress our friends and family! Gary shares some great advice about how to make a favorite hobby into a profession a...

Competing with others is rooted in human nature as a deeply ingrained evolutionary strategy for securing scarce resources—such as food, mates, and shelter - to ensure survival and reproduction. However, in  today's society when we're not competing for basic survival, the innate, inherent drive system of competition has evolved, as things do, into modern competition for status, power, and achieveme...

I learned to become an expert knitter by being persistent, being tenacious, and being willing to make mistakes. Which also applies to life. -Ellen Rubin Ellen Rubin is one the most inspiring people I have ever met. Her main goal in life has always been to help others. First as an immunologist working with cancer patients and then transitioning into owning and running a magnificent full-service yar...

"I don't want to live through people, I want people to live through my life." -Sam Butler Join me for an uplifting and fascinating conversation with Sam Butler, proprietor of The Hermitage Bookshop, Denver's oldest independent bookstore. I encourage you to watch the video of this one because he gives us a tour of the beautiful store as well as gives us on-camera insights into some of the rarest an...

In this age of everyone being able to be reached at every minute of every day, I have found a certain degree of freedom in allowing myself to be unreachable at times. Let me be clear - I love my phone and I really appreciate the fact that I can communicate with people quickly and efficiently. But the stress of having to respond to every text immediately or the burden to have to pick up the phone w...

Welcome to Season 4 of the Choose Happiness podcast! I am thrilled to kick off this new season with an interview with a truly remarkable individual. Jud Turner is a gifted artist whose work speaks magnificently not just to the eye, but to the soul. Known for his breathtaking sculptures and beautifully unique creative vision, he has carved a space for himself in the art world that offers not only e...

I have long espoused the importance of trying new things when choosing happiness. But a lot of us have found that when we try something new we're faced with self-judgement, self-criticism, and a lot of self-doubt. In this podcast I share my own experience with trying a new activity (that I have always wanted to try), and how I came up against not only my own insecurities, but also a cranky sewing...

Join me for a fascinating conversation in my Powerful Women series with CEO and all-around extraordinary person Erin Guard. She shares how in her role as decades-long business owner she has built her extremely successful company on the bedrock of staying true to herself and her own core values and integrity. She embraces an "abundance over scarcity" mindset, which encourages her employees and clie...

We're so into checking our phones all the time now that we rarely have the inclination to look up and smile at one another. I recently had an experience of sharing a smile that was very profound and meaningful and it made me realize just how easy it is to turn a bad day around with something as simple as a smile. A smile makes us all feel accepted and seen, and it releases chemicals in the brain t...

Get ready to find your calm. Join me for an enlightening and beautifully informative interview with the amazing yoga and mindfulness instructor Amy Rollins. She shares some truly life-changing tips for relaxation, how to mindfully begin each day, how to easily fall asleep, and how to go about our life with less self-judgment and more serenity overall. She explains how important our breath can be t...

If self-loathing was a requirement for achievement, we all would have accomplished everything we wanted to do in life and more. It seems that we tend to put ourselves down in the hopes that our own criticism and self-deprecation will spur us into action. I have found the opposite to be true - and the only thing that berating myself does is make me feel badly about myself and curbs my enthusiasm fo...

We tend to put a lot of value on things like awards and accolades in our society. But while it's wonderful to be acknowledged for our work, prizes and trophies are fleeting, and we can sometimes feel like if we are not highly recognized for what we do that it's not worthwhile. I believe that what is most important in life is who we are and  not simply what we do, and always seeking outside approva...

Join me for a fun and fantastic interview with health coach, women's health advocate, meditation specialist, and recent MBA grad Sarah Dubow. She shares how she helps her clients to live life according to their own terms, her specialty meditations that encourage play and imagination, and to be gentle with ourselves, no matter what we're going through. Learn about her "Well-Being Non-Negotiables" l...

I have been learning a lot as I've been traveling around recently, and I've found that the more places I go and the more people I meet, the more of what I thought were my core beliefs have been turned on their heads and I've realized they aren't actually true. I encourage you to open yourself up to new perspectives and different points of view to recognize what old ideals may no longer align with...

Our comfort zones are comfy, and can bring us a certain amount of joy, but I believe that staying for too long in one's comfort zone is not a good practice for choosing happiness. Trying new things and having new and different experiences are what bring color and sparkle and excitement to our lives. And if that seems scary, it's important to remember that every single thing that we are comfortable...

I talk about the power of thoughts very often and how if we're able to change our inner narrative, we can change our whole outlook on a situation. One reason why this is so important is because our brains can't tell the difference between real and imagined scenarios, so whatever event we are playing or replaying in our mind, the brain is actually living it as if it were really happening. So it is...

Join me for an illuminating and extraordinarily inspiring conversation with ICF Professional Certified Coach Nicole Trincia. Through her work she inspires high-achieving, independent women to slay self-doubt, confidently claim their true calling, and thrive in their purpose. In our time together she shares the importance of aligning our decisions with our core values, to exercise our own freedom a...

We all have people in our lives that we'd rather not deal with. And yet, we can't banish them from our lives for a variety of reasons. So here are a few tools for our Choose Happiness Toolbox to protect our psyches when the tough people try to infiltrate our defenses and steal our joy away. 

Join me for a captivating and thought-provoking interview with Professor, Lecturer, and Film Historian Courtney Spikes. She provides a fascinating look at how we can successfully teach kids discernment between all of the information they are bombarded with on a daily basis, and provides insights on how we can use history to create a more positive and caring present-day and future society. 

Unfortunately most of us will not go through life unscathed by hurtful experiences from the words and actions of other people. Things like betrayals, break-ups, and the loss of relationships that we thought were safe and "for forever," happen, and can leave us feeling deep, seemingly insurmountable emotional pain and grief. Having been there myself, here are some concrete things to do to help pull...

When we look at what determines "success" or "failure" in our lives, it's so important to realize that these judgments are usually being measured by someone else's criteria. What success looks like to us professionally as well as personally, depends on where we are in our lives and changes throughout our journey. No one ever has the right to call us a failure for any reason, regardless of what we...

Join me as we kick off Season 3 of The Choose Happiness Podcast! We are starting off with a dynamic interview with Carole Miller, the founder of Miller Happy and Healthy, LLC. Carole shares her inspiring journey of self-discovery, as she made the choice to take control of all aspects of her life: her mental health, physical health, financial health, and spiritual health; and created an existence o...

As the Buddhist saying goes, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." It's very easy to get mired down in negative thoughts and have those thoughts take control and make our difficult situation worse. When we make the choice to change our thoughts, we consciously take control of our emotions and our attitude, resulting in a fresh perspective and a happier outlook overall.  

We all exist in the center of our own universe and our world view is determined by how things outside of ourselves affect us. Oftentimes we tend to live in our own heads and apply our own viewpoints and baggage to situations, making them personal, when they actually have nothing to do with us at all! Making the choice to question the authenticity of a perceived offense or insult can help us to liv...