Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

Rediscovering Happiness

Jana and Jason Shelfer Season 8 Episode 91

Rediscover Your Happiness (Living Lucky® Podcast)

Ever felt disconnected from what truly makes your soul sing? You're not alone! In this episode, Jason and Jana Banana reveal a powerful, often overlooked tool for rediscovering happiness: your own photo gallery!

Forget endlessly scrolling through others' highlight reels. This episode shares groundbreaking insights for personal development and self-help:

  • The "Lucky Lens" Technique: Learn how viewing your own photos with a "lucky lens" of gratitude uncovers undeniable patterns of genuine happiness and abundance in your life.
  • Beyond Comparison: Discover why looking at others' pictures fosters scarcity, while your own photos reveal the wealth of joy you already possess. This simple shift in mindset is a game-changer!
  • Soul Signposts: Identify moments where you radiate an undeniable energy or "aura." These aren't just memories; they're direct signposts to what truly fulfills your soul and can guide your future.
  • Embrace All Emotions: Even photos that stir uncomfortable emotions like envy or disappointment are valuable! These feelings are your soul communicating its deepest desires and limiting beliefs that may be holding you back.
  • Sprinkle That Joy Spice: Once you identify your joy patterns, learn how to proactively schedule those happiness-sparking activities into your daily and weekly life, creating more authentic joy.

This episode offers a refreshing perspective on reconnecting with your authentic self. It's about cultivating positive thinking, understanding how perspective shapes your experience, and reclaiming the invincibility and excitement you may have felt in earlier decades.

Ready to unlock your own personal roadmap to joy and Living Lucky®? Tune in, then take our powerful challenge to explore your photo timeline with fresh, discerning eyes! Your happiest self is waiting to guide your next chapter.

How to find happiness again. Rediscovering authentic joy in life. Gratitude practice with personal photos. Mindset shifts for happiness. Emotional well-being through memory review. Connecting with your soul's desires. How to create more joy daily. Benefits of a positive perspective on memories. How can I find what makes me truly happy? Can old photos help you discover happiness? How do personal photos reveal joy pat

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®. Good morning. I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are Living Lucky®. You are too. Do you ever question yourself I don't know what makes me happy. Where's happiness? Where do I go? I don't even know what I like. I don't know what makes me happy. Where's happiness?

Jana Shelfer:

Where do I go? I don't even know what I like. I don't even know me anymore.

Jason Shelfer:

Oh, I've been through that. Yeah, yes, yes, I've been there.

Jana Shelfer:

Where I, you know, I'll even reach out to someone to get their professional help and they'll say you know what, Janna, do, what you love? And I'm like I don't know what that is, I don't remember. I'm trying to please people my whole life. I'm trying to make everyone else happy. I don't even remember what lights me up, except laying on the couch and taking a big fat nap.

Jason Shelfer:

I had convinced myself that work made me happy. Like working so much.

Jana Shelfer:

I do think work makes you happy though.

Jason Shelfer:

Work does Work made me happy. This is so. This is the thing I would. I convinced myself that giving everything to the job made me happy. What I didn't realize was that there's life outside of work Like I was giving a commitment to something that didn't necessarily have a commitment to me. It provided and I was really good at it, and I think that's where the misnomer comes in is that I was. I was so good at it that I I didn't have a lot of failure in it. So there was comfort, there was knowing that I could continue in that and there would be a filling of my cup in some way.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, well, today we're talking about. Jason's been looking through old pictures and our pictures tell a story. So if there is, one thing that social media, or Instagram, or Facebook, or even our iPhones themselves have lent us to it's looking back at our patterns.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and our cell phones are such a big tool, and this is the thing for me.

Jana Shelfer:

But here's the thing. It depends on how you perceive that how you use it, how you use that Because Jason looks at his photos from you know an old photo will pop up and he just gets all misty eyed, I get giddy. And he literally gets into this state of. I am just so proud.

Jason Shelfer:

Grateful, grateful, all these good feelings. You get into a lucky seat.

Jana Shelfer:

I really do you really do you get into? I am so blessed, I am so lucky.

Jason Shelfer:

And I think that's where I was talking about with that. I tricked myself into believing that I loved work, because what I'm looking for right now is where does your soul feel happiest? Soul feel happiest Like? What is? What is that feeling in your soul? Where you're like? I know me and this is the real. This is the me that wants to exist in the world.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, but that's. That's a really great point, because I don't think most people are intimate enough with their soul to know when it is really beaming. I feel like people are just kind of going through the motions we're busy, being busy and we have lost touch with that soul connection. In fact, I believe if you talk to a little kid, that's what makes them so great sometimes. Yes, absolutely, because they are very in touch with their soul, their dreams they're like the world is my oyster.

Jason Shelfer:

All this and I think I almost believe I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I almost believe that it's because we spend so much time looking at other people's pictures and telling ourselves what we don't have Right don't have Right. So we look at other people's pictures and we say I want that which subconsciously says I don't have it? Yes, but if we go through our own pictures, we get to look back and experience all the abundance and joy and we see these little moments in our lives in our own history.

Jana Shelfer:

It's if you look at those pictures with, look at all I have, look at those opportunities, look at those experiences, look at those wonderful people that have shared those experiences with me or have come into my life.

Jason Shelfer:

If you scroll through enough pictures, I submit that you will ultimately get to a picture or a time frame in your life where you will say that's it. That was a time when I feel like there was energy, there was spark, there was this happiness about me.

Jana Shelfer:

And I think that's a you thing, do you? Yeah, because I have pictures that. So in the last month I've had to get out a lot of those pictures for the Hall of Fame and for-.

Jason Shelfer:

Going through your mom and dad stuff pictures for the hall of fame and for going through your mom and dad stuff.

Jana Shelfer:

So I have been going through pictures, pictures, pictures for me.

Jason Shelfer:

It is emotionally exhausting, really. Yes Wow.

Jana Shelfer:

And even even so. And that's, that's pictures from childhood. Now, if I go back and look, even at pictures from the last five years, I still feel something. That's not necessarily a it's not the feeling I want to feel.

Jason Shelfer:

Is that because?

Jana Shelfer:

I go back and I look at this career we've been creating.

Jason Shelfer:

Is this high achiever syndrome?

Jana Shelfer:

It might be, but I look at you and I almost envy sometimes the way you get I mean, jason and I can get in a fight and he just goes to his phone and starts scrolling through photos and is like I love my wife, I love everything about her. I don't always do that.

Jason Shelfer:

Well, in my mind, we can get into an argument. We can have this moment of disconnection right. It's that argument where we both planted our feet and it's usually me planting my feet. Actually, I would say it's probably 50-50. Sometimes you'll plant your feet in a direction which puts me in a position to plant my feet because it's natural.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, I feel like it's natural for people to do this no, in fact, I almost feel I want to be right too and it's almost a way of evolving right and it's and it is a form of connection.

Jason Shelfer:

If you look at it like it's a form of engagement, like arguing is a form of engagement, not always the best.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, you're right Right. But, you're right, but no, there's sometimes when I'm just looking for an argument and I'm like I don't know why I'm provoking this.

Jason Shelfer:

Let's get those juices flowing.

Jana Shelfer:

I literally feel myself provoking this and I could choose something different. I could choose to just laugh or put a banana up in my face or nibble on his ear and smile. Yeah, like I could totally choose other options right now, but I am choosing to light you up somehow. Let's get his testosterone up Right, yeah, and there's something that inside me is like now we're talking, now you're in the game, now you hear me.

Jason Shelfer:

There's my man, and now he's pissed. So then there's that, and what I'll do is I'll, so then I could walk away and start getting angry at us, right.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, which is exactly what I do.

Jason Shelfer:

I don't believe you.

Jana Shelfer:

I walk away and I'm like I don't know, I don't say that. But I say why? Why is this happening?

Jason Shelfer:

Why is he like that? And I'll go look at pictures of us or just think about, um, all the the amazing parts of our you literally look at at we get in a fight.

Jana Shelfer:

You look at our pictures and you go. That's why we're so connected. That is why we just get each other on every realm. We are just. We are like Legos and all four little cylinders are plugged in.

Jason Shelfer:

We might have one piece hanging over every now and then, but it's all right, that's just something else to build on.

Jana Shelfer:

Which is why you're so great. I will say that, like when people say, jano, what is the secret to a happy marriage? Jason and I have been married for 20 years, I literally say it's being married to Jason Shelfer. That is the secret.

Jason Shelfer:

I don't know about that. I think it's the willingness to play together.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes and okay. So, that being said, let's tie this up, because when I do look back at our pictures, in fact, sometimes the thought that's really been going through my head right now is we're just playing house, and we are playing house unlike anyone else in the world.

Jason Shelfer:

And it's, and it looks like. I go back to our pictures and it almost looks like make believe to me, like the where we've gone, the things that we've done, the, the experiences that we've had, the, I think, the joy that I see in myself when I'm with you, when I'm doing things with you. So there's a piece of me that says, okay, look at everything that we've been through. Yes, now what do we want to go through or go to? And I get to set these little mile markers on the next part of our journey and say, okay, well, let's start aiming the boat or the car towards that, and that's a fun experience. And we're going to have these little detours, we're going to have these little pit stops or engine failures, whatever it is, and recognize that it's not where we need to focus.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm going to step in here. So today's call to action is to look through 50 photographs.

Jason Shelfer:

I would say, look through five years of photographs.

Jana Shelfer:

Look through five years of photographs and you can either spend two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you want to do. Scroll through your old photographs for the last five years and then what is the next step? There, it's ask yourself how lucky am I?

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, and where are those little moments of happiness, joy, excitement, and then start putting little pieces of that in today and tomorrow and to next week, schedule it?

Jana Shelfer:

So recognize what feelings, emotions are coming up when I look at these photos, because our feelings, our emotions are, literally, they are just guardrails that are sending us directly to our destiny and sometimes, like I had I won't mention the name came up to me and said you know, when I look back at my photos, I actually feel almost jealousy, or envy, or disappointment, or maybe a feeling that's not so high frequency.

Jana Shelfer:

And I say lean into that feeling. Lean into that because sometimes it's not only looking through those photos and finding the ones that literally made us laugh and bring us joy and we looked extremely happy, but also the ones that bring those, that stir those emotions that we might perceive as negative emotions, because sometimes that is our soul saying that's what I want.

Jana Shelfer:

But that's my biggest fear.

Jana Shelfer:

There's something that's fearful in that.

Jason Shelfer:

And that's exciting, like if we can just change that energy slightly, transmute it slightly, you'll realize. Oh wait, would have to scroll all the way back to my 20s, right, it's uh to be happy well, yeah, to find that excitement, that exuberance, because in your 20s you think I'm gonna conquer the world what is that there is?

Jana Shelfer:

there was something in my 20s like I can do anything I can.

Jason Shelfer:

I'm reckless, you know.

Jana Shelfer:

It's like there was an excitement there of unfolding what is my reality.

Jason Shelfer:

You don't feel like you can be hurt by life or by people.

Jana Shelfer:

There's that invincibility.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, so this is the thing as we grow through the decades, we're really if, if we look at it realistically and holistically, we get more experience to learn from, so we can actually get better and more fulfilling through the decades.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

But a lot of times we want to put a pin in it and say well, I was unaware in my 20s, so I felt invincible.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

And I was able to act accordingly, which created these amazing experiences. And then I started letting go of that, because I built these prison walls around myself through responsibility and choices of, of surrounding myself with comfort and and security, not saying throw everything away and caution to the wind, but I am saying look for the joy and sprinkle that spice. Sprinkle that joy spice in today, tomorrow and next week.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay. So what you're looking for is what you're going to find. So the challenge today is to look through-.

Jason Shelfer:

Your own photos.

Jana Shelfer:

Your own photos and don't look through them with a lens of speculation, judgment, critical eye and this isn't like we are looking through those photos, microscopic on each picture.

Jason Shelfer:

This is just like kind of scrolling quickly through the months and the weeks Through the photos through the lucky lens.

Jana Shelfer:

Through the lucky lens, through the. I feel lucky and when you do that, you'll start seeing. Okay, wait a minute, I have like an aura about me in this photo. There is an energy there. I am putting out some sort of vibe. I want to experience that. So let's do whatever I'm doing in that photo, whether it's cleaning otter poop off of the dock. Because, it's my brand new dock, because that made me laugh.

Jason Shelfer:

Why is there otter poop on my brand new dock?

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, good, I can't wait to do this, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Jason Shelfer:

I'm hoping that this will be fun for everyone.

Jana Shelfer:

This is definitely fun for you. It is Because you do this all the time. I know Jason does this like 10 times a day and it puts him in a really great mood.

Jason Shelfer:

It's like my gratitude journal.

Jana Shelfer:

It's an unfightable state of mind because when I try to provoke any kind of confrontation, he's like you know what? I'm just going to look at my photos. Realize how wonderful you are, honey.

Jana Shelfer:

Damn it.

Jason Shelfer:

You're right. Thanks for joining us Keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

Bye-bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.

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