Google mid-life and happiness and you’ll be bombarded with article after article about how our happiness dips tremendously in our 40s. Couple this with being a Gen X woman, where we’ve been brought up to believe we can have-it-all, and yet, even when we do, we are completely exhausted and not sure any of it is what you really wanted in the first place.
This week’s episode is the second in the Get Happy series which is all about understanding what reference points are and how they tend to be the undercurrent of our unhappiness not just in middle age but at any age.
Reference Points are the situations, statistics, data, and people with which we surround ourselves and compare ourselves to in our minds. The reference points literally change the way we view the world and alter how we feel.
A reference point is something that confirms a person’s identity, feeling of sanity, and sense of stability, safety, and normalcy. Your mind, is your most important intangible reference point. It is how you interpret the physical world and make sense of it and yourself through your beliefs.
Your computer, phone, home, car friends, family and other familiar things are all reference points. The way you wake, fall asleep, weather, route to work, stores, buildings anything you encounter regularly. These reference points confirm where you are and who you are.
How to Manage Your Reference Points:
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Join Our Facebook Group Just Gen x — The Resting Mind
The Today Show with Hoda & Jenna
The Big Leap (book)
Articles + Podcasts:
Get Happy: What is Happy? (podcast)
How Color Can Change Your Life (article)
Free Resources
Get Happy! Download this FREE guide to learn how to use the PERMA model to add more happiness to your everyday life. Download it here
New Course!
Are you living a life of quiet desperation? Get out of your own way and Get Unstuck.
Get Unstuck is a self-led, digital workshop where you'll learn:
All of this means you get the tools for true, life-long, and life-changing transformation for $29—the cost of a t-shirt! Enroll here.
Chat About Make Your Life Magnificent with Jackie + Mimi
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
The Daily
This is what the news should sound like. The biggest stories of our time, told by the best journalists in the world. Hosted by Michael Barbaro. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week, ready by 6 a.m.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.