Choose Happiness With Rachel Cole

It's so important to pay attention and be aware of the opportunities that life presents to us. When we find ourselves with a brass ring within reach, we need to grab it and make the most of whatever opportunity it is. Life is short - and if you get to be on tv for some reason, take the curlers out of your head! 

Hope is a necessary thing for a happy life. However, there are some rare times when we need to assess what we've been hoping for, and make the decision to possibly deflate a balloon of hope in one area, to make room to inflate a different hope balloon that will ultimately be better and more satisfying for ourselves. 

Too often we can get stuck in a place of not asking for what we need because we don't have the courage or we believe that our needs aren't as important as someone else's. That is simply not true! No one else's dreams or desires are more valuable than our own, and we deserve to stand up for ourselves and demand respect from others. Always. 

So often we feel like we have to put ourselves down in order to get something done. But that doesn't work! What works for lasting success is encouragement and optimism, and if we change the voices in our heads to positive ones, there's no limit to what we can accomplish and how great we can feel while we're achieving our goals. 

When we worry, we are tricked into believing that we are actually doing something productive to help the worrisome situation. But the reality is, worrying has never changed the outcome of anything, nor has it ever prevented something bad from happening. It's hard to train our brains to not worry about things, but here are some ideas to help preserve our happiness when worry comes knocking at the d...

People we encounter in our lives will often say or do things in an attempt to take our happiness away. Unhappy people can't stand to see other people experience joy and it makes them feel better to try to steal it. In these times we need to not allow that to happen, and here are some tools to have in our toolbox for those unfortunate - but often common - situations. 

We all hit metaphorical speed bumps on the road of life, but we have to make the choice to not turn them into stop signs or U-turns. Sometimes it can be good to slow down and take the opportunity to assess a situation before continuing forward, always recognizing that we are in control and at the wheel for where we want to go next. 

Join me for the latest episode of the Choose Happiness Powerful Women Interview Series, where I had the privilege to talk with Dr. Jerry Anderson, principal of Bloom High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois. She shares some secrets of her phenomenal success including beginning each day focused on possibility, the importance of taking time to stop and breathe when we need to, and how we should neve...

"When you help someone up a hill, you find yourself closer to the top." -Brownie Wise. When we purposefully encourage someone else, it lifts our own spirits as well, and shared joy is double joy. Couldn't we all use some more exponential happiness in our lives? 

Having the right people around us on our life's journey can often be the most crucial thing in determining our happiness. It's up to us to curate people who make up our "Cabinet Community" as well as to consciously refuse to settle for less than we deserve from people we choose to call our friends. 

When we're choosing happiness that means doing what is right for US, not what someone else thinks is best for us or what we've been told we "should" do. It's so important to remember that we do not have to justify our life choices or our actions to anyone else, for any reason. 

Panic attacks - they are real, they are terrifying, and if we are prone to them, we need to have tools in our toolbox at the ready for the situations when they might arise. 

When we stay in the same place for a long time, and keep doing the same things over and over - much like we did during 2020 - we can get into a rut. This is dangerous, because as our minds and what we're exposed to gets smaller and smaller, which usually results in our own problems getting bigger and bigger. When we're consciously choosing happiness in our lives, it's important to take steps to st...

Living with chronic pain can be horrible. But like with most difficult things in life, if we can reframe our attitude toward it, it can have some unexpected outcomes, not all of which are bad. It's all about retraining our brains to see it in a different light, and while it's definitely not an easy thing to do, it can be vital if we want to live a happy life, where we're not consumed by daily phys...

In this episode I share something life-changing I learned when I was faced with something extremely difficult that I had no other choice but to do. As my nervous system was primed for a severe "fight or flight" response, I was able to tune into the most instinctual, survivalist, coping strategy I could find within myself: the gratitude for the opportunity to do this hard thing, because it meant I...

In this episode we explore the dangers of comparing ourselves to other people's carefully curated "highlight reels" that they put out on social media. When we're choosing happiness in our lives it's vitally important to remember that what we're seeing isn't even close to reality, and sometimes they are even blatant falsehoods. 

So often, choosing happiness means giving ourselves the permission we need to be happy. Sounds simple, but when we've been taught otherwise, we have to consciously tune in to our gut and our instincts to allow ourselves to feel joy. 

Seeking other people's approval for how we choose to live our lives takes our power away and puts our validation where it doesn't belong - in the hands and minds of others. This is a roadblock to true happiness and we need to learn to put far less emphasis on other people's opinions and to stop constantly seeking "likes" and "thumbs ups" from elsewhere. 

If we can coat ourselves in metaphorical "Happiness Teflon," then the unkind things that people say to us will bounce off, instead of sticking, where they can burn and cause damage. Learning how to repel the harm aimed directly at us is a key component in choosing happiness. 

When we compare ourselves to others, we usually end up feeling dissatisfied with our own lives in many ways.  This is a surefire way to sabotage our own happiness, so take a listen to find some ways to stop the comparison game and live our happiest lives possible. 

What is enough when it comes to how we feel about ourselves? This episode explores how feeling like we are 100% enough, without having to change a thing about ourselves, is vital to choosing happiness in our lives. 

This episode examines the the postive aspects of grief and how allowing ourselves to take the time we need go through hard times can be important step to finding our happiness waiting for us on the other side. 

This episode is about exerting our own power over the voices in our heads and determining if those voices are telling us the truth, or if we're just clinging to an outdated belief system that needs to be banished forever from our psyches. 

This episode delves into how examining our regrets (but not wallowing in them) can help us to make different choices as we move forward in our happiness journey. 

This episode talks about how our life and happiness are enhanced when we stay open to new experiences and embrace the unexpected.