Welcome to the More Room For Joy Podcast with your host Christine Baker Marriage where she offers strategies to overcome life’s hurdles, ways to create a life filled with intentional happiness, and ideas on how to find balance in all of the aspects of your personal, home, and business life. Stay tuned so you too can learn how to design a joyful life.
Hi friends! Welcome to the very first episode of More Room For Joy podcast. Today on the show we are talking about what more room for joy is all about, what control you have over your own happiness – it may be different than what you’re thinking – and we’re going to dive into talking about free workshop I am offering this Thursday. May 14th, so please stick around.
Hi friends! I am so excited to be here! It is unbelievable to me that we are launching this podcast, this is episode one I couldn’t be more excited! I wanted to do this for a very long time and I’m thrilled that we finally get to go for it so welcome I’m so glad you’re here. So today we’re going to talk about what more room for joy is all about, who I am, what I do OK then we’re going to talk about how you can control your own happiness and like I said in the intro it might be different than what you’re thinking. I was surprised when I discovered the information around this, and then later on at the end we’re going to talk about a workshop I am offering about how to generate some progress and let me tell you what in times like this that we are dealing with the pandemic, in quarantine and oh by the way just so you know for future reference we are in I believe week nine of the quarantine and so to give some perspective we’ve all been and away from our family and friends and doing work from home and you know some of us are helping the school district teach our children from home which has been very interesting to learn from that wow wow and so a lot of us are feeling stuck. I know I was and so I fell back on this progress generator that I created like 18 years ago and I’m dying to share with you so we’ll talk about that.
So let’s get right into what More Room For Joy is all about. I’m Christine and I am a life balance strategist. I don’t call myself work/life balance strategist because I did, I’ll admit that, I did for a bit but I don’t now because my philosophy is that there’s three parts of my life: personal, home, and work and I don’t want to just manage work in life because I think life is the bigger picture and it’s made up of work and home and your personal aspects. So your personal aspects would be you know your spirituality or your life goals or things like that where your home is much more of your environment and the people you live with the people that you spend your life with and work doesn’t necessarily have to be I-95 job. It doesn’t have to be a paying job. Work for me when we talk about that category and life balance it means much more about how you contribute to society , what you do to leave your mark , what you do to leave your legacy. So that could be volunteering that could be walking dogs that could be a nine to five job that could be C shift that could be an entrepreneur, solopreneur, a travel blogger. I mean it literally could be anything that you’re doing to help contribute to society so I help you manage all that so that you can be productive and happy and balanced.
So that’s a lot about me so I work with individuals, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, and small businesses to optimize strategies holistically. So what I mean by that is that I try to optimize everything that’s going on in their lives will get into the philosophy of that in a couple of episodes down the line but for now I try to treat the whole picture I try to work with the whole picture and not just one aspect because it’s all pieces the pie that fit together and in order for it to flow and have fluidity and balance that you need to kind of have a grip on all of these right. All right I am not a mental health professional but I do help people find out their life’s purpose and brainstorm ideas and offer them strategies on how to optimize even with evergreen strategies in their home and their business and optimize your life so it’s a very fun thing to do. I love what I do and I love how it it’s all unfolding and but we’re going to tak more about this in many more episodes.
So why did I create more room for joy? So when I was growing up I wanted to be a doctor, or a teacher, or an architect and of course I want to be all three. I couldn’t decide which one so I wound up being none of them go figure. Life took me on a much different journey which is fine, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I keep going back to those callings if you will and when I was younger I couldn’t figure out the commonality between them you know like I remember a friend of mine wanted to be either in the Marines or a police officer that to me had a common purpose and they really knew what they wanted to do and when I was growing up the only thing that I could come up with were doctor, teacher, and architect or pretty much anything else I would be open to pretty much anything else to do everything. I even talk about that I wrote a book back in the 2017 and I talk about a story about how my Godfather asked me one day, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I told him everything. I want to be and do everything. So obviously that’s you know, that’s not going to happen because I can’t literally do everything, but I kept going back to those three vocations and what on earth was the common thread between all of them? I discovered that they all dealt with creating or designing a foundation for an individual to live their best life. A doctor obviously creates a physiological foundation and well-being right? The teacher creates an educational foundation, and some might even say an emotional foundation and the architect creates literally a physical representation or physical foundation where you can rest, regenerate your energy where you can regenerate your mind, where you can be creative. That’s when I figured that out these foundations are what we all fall back on when times get tough. It is what we build upon when we evolve and it is what we stand upon when we contribute to our lives and our families lives and to society. It’s those foundations though is our fall back, it is our go-to right and that’s what I love to build upon. It is so important to get the foundation right or to learn how to fix it when it becomes unbalanced because when you have a solid foundation you can do anything, you can build it in any way shape or form your life you can literally do anything and that’s where more room for joy comes in. I’m a life balance strategist and I help clients create strategies to overcome life’s hurdles and to help them find ways to fill their lives with intentional happiness I help you find balance in all aspects of your life that’s why I’m here to help you design a joyful life and that’s why I started the podcast. Very exciting! I’m beyond excited like I’m sorry but when you see the video you’ll see how happy I am to be here. This is why for the podcast those to connect with you in a different way connect with you in a more face to face way to help you realize that you’re worthy of joy and happiness to remind you that there is hope especially in a pandemic especially in quarantine there really is hope I promise you. To remind you that we always have choices and how to live life differently my mother always told me that no matter what we had a choice we always have a choice on how we deal with the situation and how we act in a situation.
Because here’s the thing life happens right. Life always will always continue happening. You probably understand that pretty well if you take a step back and really think about the enormity of that statement it’s overwhelming to me. It’s overwhelming to think that life keeps ticking on life time rather keeps ticking along no matter what we want or what we care for or how we want to stop or whatever I will share with you a personal story right right off the bat wasn’t planning on doing that but why not my first husband passed away when I was 30 just after our fourth child had turned one and it was a surprise I had been sick her whole life our whole marriage and but died very suddenly from an infection and I remember waking up the next day and I was doing dishes and I was so angry at the cars passing by and they I remember thinking that they were going to work or going to the grocery store or going to the bowling alley or going to their child’s dance recital or dropping their kids off at school or to the mailbox or post office or bank or whatever and I was so angry that was happening because my life felt like it had stopped and the time keeps ticking along whether we wanted to or not and it was a hard lesson to learn but life really doesn’t care if we are in crisis or depressed or stuck in a rut life keeps on walking and if you’re lucky occasionally it’ll turn back and go “hey yeah coming or not?” and we have to be prepared to be able to say yeah I’m coming I’m on my way sometimes I get it that we we have to be still and we have to be quiet and figure things out I think it’s also good to be prepared to just keep on trucking.
Sometimes, I know especially after my husband passed away I felt like I was chasing I was trying to keep up I was trying to be better do better wanting a better life on a happier life wanting a simpler life. I was trying to catch up so I’m sure a lot of you do too you know let me know if you do ’cause we can talk about it certainly so that I come to the conclusion I guess I should say that life happens in two ways it controls the pace with without regard to what we want or need or we can take control back and created a pace that suits us suits us sorry. Living life to its fullest has always been a goal of mine but I always feel yanked back into the deep-seated responsibilities. So it was always hard for me to figure out where the balance was and to figure out happiness is going on with you know I’m supposed to be you know raising all these wonderful people and doing good things and living life and showing them how wonderful life can be but yet all of these responsibilities were happening and it was mind-boggling how overwhelmed and unbalanced I was and that’s The thing is everyday life can be very overwhelming and unbalanced and sometimes getting through the next day or even the next hour is extraordinarily difficult. I asked to talk with people that have it all together I heard just like like their life is mundane life is typical and there’s no excitement there’s no happiness there’s no life there just moment a lot and they don’t know what is wrong like you know all the boxes are ticked off as far as balance goes. They are missing like a secret ingredient their life is flatlined nobody wants that So what is that secret ingredient? It’s Joy. It is crazy boundless unbridled pure powerful big joy and joyous way different than happiness it’s way different than you know even being excited it is this feeling that it’s pure I guess is the only way I can describe it it’s sure happiness is momentary. Pure happiness and sustained happiness is joy Webster defines joy as the emotion evoked by well-being success or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. I love that because it speaks to the well-being side of how I practice and when you are in balance joy naturally comes from everything it worked so hard to do it’s a byproduct of everything that you worked for and everything that you wanted to achieve and it comes naturally and it’s an amazing consequence of all your hard work, all your choices, and it also has been known to replace not often but known to replace peoples anxiety peoples uncertainty and it makes life just a little bit more worth living and holy God isn’t that an amazing thing? There is a study that came out of Berkeley in 2015 that said well scientists determined that our happiness levels are a result of a complex integration of genes, behaviors and life circumstances and we how we spend our time in our thoughts the thoughts that we mull over and whatever else really impact the amount of long-term joy and happiness that we experienced. All that aside we are then responsible for 40 percent, 40% of our own joy and happiness. I thought the number when I first read the article it was going to be a lot higher closer to 100%. I get that there are some factors that will always you know factor in circumstances genetics predisposition to diseases you know illness or depression things like that. 40% people! We can do that we can totally you know got this it also makes me realize that not for nothing there’s a lot that goes on in hard lives that does to contribute for the joy that we have no control over so let’s work on the stuff that we do have control over and magnify it and strengthen it and build that foundation so that we can hang up big, pure joy and not a mundane lifeless joyless life. Seeking out life’s big joy doesn’t mean with throw away responsibilities right out the window. Absolutely not. It just means that we contribute to society in a more meaningful and productive way. We come home and are within our homes and contribute to our home life in a meaningful and memorable and productive way. It also means that we evolved to the best person that we can be isn’t that an amazing successful byproduct of all your work? I think so!
Helen Keller once said, “Your success and happiness lies within you resolve to keep happy and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” I love that because um when my husband did die the first thing I did was I shared how grateful I was that wasn’t in pain and in future episodes I will explain how gratitude totally feeds into joy and while it’s hard and it’s a practice I believe is to practice much like meditation or yoga or a prayer or anything however you know deal with things in your life I think it’s a practice and gratitude certainly helped me put the entire experience into perspective and I was able to feel of course I was heartbroken and devastated but I was able to feel gratitude at that moment and felt joy that he was no longer in pain no longer suffering. It’s not easy and again we will get into that in other episodes but I really do believe that we can learn from life trials. I really do believe that we can choose differently to promote our evolution instead of remain steeped in our stagnation. I wholeheartedly believe that there is always more room for joy.
Honestly, I cannot wait to help you design a life filled with boundless amounts of it.
For those of you watching the podcast via my YouTube channel, there is a beautiful art piece that my sister Susan did for this very episode. I think she is an incredible artist and even more incredible human she has a great heart and a great message and I’m going to do a shameless plug for her she doesn’t even know that I’m doing this so don’t tell her. Or tell her either one. Actually I want to tell her, I want to go visit her. You can find her at a CreateArt4Good.org. Her name is Susan Carmen Duffy. She’s an amazing person. I will include her contact info in the show notes, so please go visit her often. She also has a card company, greeting card company which I’ve utilized many a time during this pandemic. It was a wonderful way to still let people know that I was thinking about them without going to the store. I would call her up and she gladly hooked me up and saved my butt many times. She’s awesome so I highly recommend that you go and see her at CreateArt4Good.org. I’ll leave it in the show notes and check her out.
All right before we go I wanted to talk to you about a workshop I’m offering this Thursday, May 14, 6:30 I believe. It’s a zoom call, it’s a live zoom call and it’s a workshop about the progress generator that I created 18 years ago when I was a single mom with four kids and needed to see progress needed to not see the same thing like Groundhog Day day in and day out I needed to create sizeable chunks progress in my day that I felt good about that were manageable and I did feel guilty about if I didn’t you know like solve world hunger and one day you know I’m something that would benefit my anxiety um or ease my anxiety I should say and also provide a way for me to feel successful and productive in crisis.
I’m bringing this back now because even though we are slowly moving into opening up the world again as we’re moving through this pandemic we’re still in crisis. This is still unprecedented time and it’s unusual and there so many emotions going on locking our minds down it really is. Our bodies are not as shut down but our minds are shut down and understandably. This is hard stuff. I’m not going to discount that whatsoever so with that being said this this workshop is not about being productive or fine-tuning any sort of processes, it’s about falling back on your foundation about falling back on things that you know to be true and getting things done that you feel good about so you can feel successful, so you can stop feeling guilty and you cand top feeling like you have failed as a human. You are doing amazing things and it’s OK to not know how to deal with this. None of us do. It’s a free workshop it’s going to be about an hour and I’m going to try to keep a little bit less than an hour but as you can tell I can kind of ramble sorry. It’s you know we still have to function as an individual, and as a person that contributes to home and to work right? We still have to live, we sell to move forward. I’m going to show you how to do that in bite-size chunks. You can register on my website more room for joy.com. Also you can find the registration page event I think it is actually on Facebook and if you want to follow me on all of the fun a social media stuff it’s all more room for joy that come it is free and if you were listening to his podcast after after May 14th I’m going to put up the workshop as a downloadable course after May 25th so after May 25th it will be a downloadable course and what you get in the course on May 14th and May 25th is uh my free ebook that I wrote very small but it it gives you an example of the the purpose the purpose generator the and then you know how to use it to advantage so so include that in the course too I hope you can join me and you know we look forward to helping now this was so much fun you guys I am so excited to have been able to be here this is really cool I think I think we’re going to we’re going to become friends we’re going to we’re going to experience a lot of interesting fun things together and I can’t wait to be with you on this journey so that is all for today thank you for listening I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode first episode of more words for joy podcast you certainly has made my day by being here with me you can catch the full video and audio of this podcast channel please like subscribe comment things that they tell you to do every other one and I hope you can join us again next Tuesday where we’re going to talk about is Life Balance and if it is even really possible there’s two answers to that I’m going to give you both of them next week OK make sure you subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify so you never miss an episode For more information or to check out future episodes or cats blogs or a feeling that you can visit more room for joy dekada block for you to do that you’ll also find events there that I’m having or my book my focus also there or other services that I offered I if I can help in anyway please let me know I would love to be there for you and help you to create more room for joy don’t hesitate ask and I’m around alright I’m so excited that you’re here have a great night and I’ll talk to you soon alright be well my friend thank you.
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