Burnout, Success, and the Missing Piece of Happiness with Marci Shimoff

[00:00:00] Is it selfish to want to be happier? It's the least selfish thing you can do because when you're happier, you are impacting everybody around you. Marci Shimoff, number one New York Times bestselling author whose books have impacted millions of people, guiding people into a life of true miracles. I was born depressed and I tried so many things to become happier and that emptiness in my heart was still there. I interviewed a hundred unconditionally happy people. I started doing what they were doing and it worked.

[00:00:30] There are certain habits that happy people have that other people don't have. Practice those. You can raise your happiness. I thought there was something wrong with me if I wasn't happy all the time. That is not what happy for no reason means. You're going to feel sad, angry, but you have that backdrop of peace and well-being. That allows you to bounce back more quickly. You moved from happiness to miracles. I didn't consciously do that. Here's what happened. So my sacred no turned into my sacred yes.

[00:01:00] Marci, so good to have you here. And one of the things that we're going to bring up in your relaunch journey is the actual book that I didn't even mention that most people are going to be like, Oh my God, that whole thing. So, so good to have you here. So great to get to be here with you, Hilary. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

[00:01:22] Well, you have such an incredible story, an incredible journey, a relaunch, as we call it, around how it all really fell into place for you. And I'd love to take you back to when you were at that silent retreat. Something happened that was like mind-blowing and it really was the relaunch. So let's hear, let's hear from you about. Yeah. Well, I've actually had a number of relaunches.

[00:01:51] I feel like my, my career has been a series of relaunches. So the first thing that you're referring to is I, uh, back in the, I was a professional speaker. I, um, when I was 13, I saw Zig Ziglar speaking. I don't know how that happened. Some friends, parents took us and I, I saw him walking across the stage and inspiring people. And I said, that's what I'm supposed to do with my life.

[00:02:18] And I saw a vision of myself traveling around the world, speaking and inspiring big audiences. Well, I started my career, not with big audiences. I started, uh, doing corporate training and fortune 500 companies speaking to, you know, 20 people at a time. And, uh, and, uh, and I, I wanted to, uh, teach self-esteem. And so I asked around who's the expert in self-esteem. I want to learn from the master. And it kept coming back the name Jack Canfield.

[00:02:47] This was in the late eighties before he'd even conceived of the chicken soup for the soul books. And so I studied self-esteem with them and I started teaching self-esteem. And I, I, I was, I, I, I was a road warrior. I would go from city to city, speak for eight hours a day in high heels, then get on a, then get in a car and drive another four hours to my next city and do the whole thing all over again. And I was burned out after about five years of doing this.

[00:03:15] A friend of mine came to me and said, Marcy, you are burned out. She didn't say that. She said, you look terrible. Those are good friends. Yeah. Exactly. The good friend. And she said, I'm going to take you away with me on a silent seven day meditation retreat. And I said, are you crazy silence for seven days? I don't think I've done silence for more than two hours, but she was very persuasive. And off we went. And on the fourth day of silence in the middle of one of my meditations, a light bulb went

[00:03:44] off in my head and I saw the words chicken soup for the woman's soul. And at the time, the only, the only book that was out there was the original chicken soup for the soul book. And nobody had thought of any specialty books in the series. And I knew as soon as I had that idea that that was what was going to take me to those world stages that I had seen in my early vision. There was only one problem, Hillary, with the whole scenario. And that is I had the big epiphany of my life and I still had three more days of silence.

[00:04:13] I couldn't tell anybody. Well, and you still had to go and talk to Jack. I couldn't do anything. But as soon as the seven days was over, I ran to the closest pay phone. It was in the early, in 1995. There weren't cell phones. And I called up Jack. I said, I've got it. Chicken soup for the woman's soul. He said, oh my God, I can't believe nobody's thought of it. He called the publisher who said, oh my God, I can't believe nobody's thought of that. And a year and a half later, my first chicken soup for the soul.

[00:04:41] And I do love the part of this story where he said, you know, well, why do I need to do this with you? Yes. Okay. Tell us that because I thought it was just so perfect. Yes. So I actually flew out to LA to meet with Jack after this great idea. I get off the retreat. I fly out to meet with him and talk to him about the whole thing. He said, you know, it's such a great idea, but why do I need you to do it? And I said, well, you don't.

[00:05:11] Except that I'm a great, a really good writer. I speak to women's audiences. That was who I spoke to. And I'm a woman. And he said, okay, you got me on the last one. And so my business partner, Jennifer Hawthorne and I co-authored that book with him and with Mark Victor Hanson. And it was a real, it was the life. It was a life changer for me. That my first book came out in September of 1996 and went to number one on the New York

[00:05:41] Times list that week. And it was really what launched that whole side. I had never thought I was going to be a writer. And I've since written nine books. So, okay. When I heard that story, I was, I said, okay, this is such a fantastic relaunch story because one, it truly changed the trajectory of your life.

[00:06:02] But also you asked, you went forward and you went for the, if I don't ask, I'll never know. And you did. And he said, yes. And then multiple books. And as you said, nine books now. And then the secret. Can you share with us? Because there are so many relaunched that I was going to be like, okay, which one? And let's just kind of carry you through where you are today. And you know, the thing, I just want to comment on what you said about that I asked.

[00:06:32] And that is, you know, certainly one of Jack's principles is that you have to ask. I would, I would actually say I pretty much told rather than asked. I didn't, I didn't so much ask him as I said, hey, chicken soup with a woman's soul. And I'm going to do it with you. But so the secret was, was really interesting because I, Jack had formed a group called the Transformational Leadership Council, which is a hundred of the top transformational leaders gathering together a couple of times a year.

[00:07:00] And during one of our meetings, this woman who nobody had really heard of, Rhonda Byrne, came and interviewed a number of us for this little project she was doing called The Secret. Now I had been interviewed a gazillion times. And so I didn't really think much of it. And we did the, I did the interview and a year later, The Secret comes out and just completely takes off.

[00:07:26] And at the time I was also writing, I had done seven chicken soup for the soul books and I was burned out of chicken soup. I just, there was still more chicken soup books to be written, but I just knew in my soul, this was not for me. And I walked away and I started working on my book, Happy for No Reason. And so it just so happened that The Secret came out at around the same time that, that

[00:07:55] my newest book, that that book, Happy for No Reason was coming out. So there was a tremendous amount of synchronicity. You know, there's a great quote. I'm not quite sure if it was Ogmandino who said this, but I, I, I really believe it. And it's, it's that luck is when preparedness meets opportunity and it really paid my dues and been prepared.

[00:08:18] And certainly I felt that I was very much taken care of by, by these beautiful forces that got me in The Secret. Before we go on and before I ask any additional questions around that, there's one that just keeps coming up. You've now said there were a couple main points in your life where you experienced burnout, where you're like, I just, I need to make a change.

[00:08:45] Something has to give, something has to like, we've got to switch my path here. Do you feel like for those that are listening, do you feel like you allowed things to just come to you and new opportunities? Or did you put out some form of like, I know your friend said, Hey, you look like, you're coming with me for seven days. But, but burnout is so prevalent right now.

[00:09:13] What are you, what are you recommending to people out there that are going through it? I love that question. Because when I look back at all of the relaunches that I've done or the pivots that I've done in my life, they have always come out of me listening inside to it's time to make some kind of a change.

[00:09:38] And it's always involved for me, some kind of going inward, pulling back, saying no, a sacred no to what's no longer right. Even when you don't necessarily know what the next direction is, but it's been saying this, this, you know, this is not right any longer. I am done with chicken soup for the soul, even though I'm leaving money on the table here and there's more books that could be written.

[00:10:06] It's not what's right for me. So it's first of all, saying no to what's no longer in alignment anymore, I would say. And then, and then going inward. And, you know, I didn't do seven days. I haven't done seven days of a silent retreat since then, but I've done four days before Happy for No Reason came out and I wanted to come up with what's the title, what's the theme of that. I went on a four-day retreat for that.

[00:10:34] So, and it doesn't have to be even any kind of a silent retreat. It can just be really whatever it does that allows you to go inside to find whatever, for me, whatever that voice was that said, here's the next direction. That's where the guidance has come. So what I'm really hearing from you and the takeaway is that you got to give yourself a little bit of space to have that connection. And we're so busy being busy these days.

[00:11:03] Our to-do lists are so long. We have so many different projects we're working on that there, we don't give ourselves that. We don't allow ourselves to have that, that moment, that pause. I call it the pause principle. We're just like, stop, stop, pause, right? Pause right now. It is definitely the pause. I love the pause principle. And it can be, the pause can be 15 minutes in your day.

[00:11:26] It's that place I find for me of silence where I can really hear what it is that is deeper than what you can hear when the noise is going on. So when you were in that moment where you're being interviewed, you're really, you know, for the secret, you're just like, okay, this is, I've been doing this, been there, done that. And then I'll just do another one. A year later, it comes out. And a dear friend of mine is Marie Diamond.

[00:11:56] And she has told her story on this podcast about, you know, she just said, hey, I'll do it. I don't have too many of these. I'll just, you know, I'll raise my hand. And when it finally came out and you saw the craziness of what it really, like the world embraced it. You were already very much deep into this, you know, concept of self-esteem.

[00:12:25] And now your book about happiness, happy for no reason. How did you take what was going on in the secret and then leverage it for your business? Another great question. To be honest, for me, it happened. I didn't take it.

[00:12:49] I just said yes to the opportunities that just showed up that felt aligned for me. So it was really just being responsive to the invitations that I was getting. And what is your, I'm going to ask, what does your intuition sound like to you? I am not a, I'm not a hearing person.

[00:13:16] You know, there's kinesthetic, there's visuals, and there's auditory. I'm not auditory. So I don't hear it. I see feel. So sometimes I see, like I saw the words chicken soup for the woman's soul. Or when I was young, I saw a vision of myself traveling around the world on stages. But more than anything, it's more of a feel. I'm in the heart kind of a, just a knowing, a feel knowing. Yeah, I kind of have that too.

[00:13:42] I get these, I get tingles like from my head to my toe when I know I'm on to something. It's like, oh, we got to be doing this. But you then went and spent years teaching millions of people how to be happy. And I want to know what was the real underlying message to be happy. But then again, you had another relaunch where you kind of shifted into what you call the miracle, the miracles now.

[00:14:10] So I want to know first and foremost, what was like your last breath, you got one last thing to say about happiness. What would you say? I would say it's our nature. It is what we're on the planet to experience. A deep state of happiness, not happy joy, like, oh, I feel good because. I define happy for no reason as an inner state of peace and well-being that doesn't depend on your circumstances.

[00:14:36] And the reason I did that and the reason that I do everything that I've done is because it's what's mattered to me. You know, I was not a happy camper growing up. I was born depressed and I tried so many things to become happier, including the thing that most people in our society are taught to do, which is you set goals, you reach those goals and then you'll be happy. And I had done that, been there, done that.

[00:15:05] I'd set five goals. I'll just quickly tell this piece because I think a lot of people can relate to this. You know, when I was in my 20s, I thought, I am just going to set these goals. And once I have these goals, then I'll be happy. And I had five of them. They were to have a successful career helping people, to have a wonderful husband or life partner, fabulous friends, a comfortable home, and the equivalent of Halle Berry's body. That's so great. I got four out of the five.

[00:15:34] I don't have Halle Berry's body, but I have a healthy body for which I'm grateful. And I worked really hard, Hillary, to get all my ducks in a row so that I could have that. And I found myself, one day I had three books in the top five on the New York Times bestseller list all at the same time. And I had just given a speech to 8,000 people. I had autographed 5,432 books. And I felt on one hand like an author rock star, but I went up to my hotel room after signing that last book.

[00:16:04] And I walked over to these huge windows overlooking Lake Michigan. I was in Chicago, big penthouse view. And I turned around and I collapsed onto the bed and burst into tears. And I burst into tears because I realized I had everything I thought I needed to be happy. And that emptiness in my heart was still there. And I decided in that moment, I was going to figure out what it takes to truly be happy,

[00:16:32] have that inner state of peace and well-being. And I interviewed all of the researchers and I interviewed 100 unconditionally happy people. And I started doing what they were doing and it worked. And I thought, this is amazing because if I can be happy, then anybody can be. And that's why I wrote Happy for No Reason. If there's just one message of it, it's that there are certain habits that happy people have that other people don't have.

[00:17:00] And once you practice those happiness habits, I call them, you can raise your happiness. Okay. I need to hear at least one. Give us one if it's your top that you love. Well, I'll give you two quick ones. Good. Because for me, there are seven main areas of happiness. It's not just one area and everybody has their Achilles heel. So it has to do with taking responsibility for your life. It has to do with your mind, your heart, your body, your soul, your purpose in life,

[00:17:29] and your friends who you surround yourself with. And I was weak in the area of the body and I needed more serotonin. And there are certain simple things that anybody can do to raise their serotonin levels if you're low in serotonin naturally. And one of them is, I'm going to share with you, it's the simplest thing and it really works. And that is, it's called a sunning exercise, sunning meditation. I learned it from a Qigong master.

[00:17:59] And you go out in the sun and you face the sun with your eyes closed. Really important to hear that instruction. Eyes closed, facing the sun. Allow the sun's rays to come in through your closed eyelids and reach in. Imagine it going into the pineal gland in the center of your head and it just bathing your pineal gland in this sunlight and it's showering down your body. You do that for two minutes twice a day for a week and you will reset your serotonin levels. That's so great.

[00:18:28] I mean, it's stressful. I love that. I do. I listen to music. Like I'll dance around. Dance around. And that's kind of my vibrational like kick up. It's like my kickstart. Yeah. And you're going to give us a second one. Well, the second one has to do with our thoughts. You know, this is where a lot of people, you know, the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. And for the average person, 80% of our thoughts are negative. It's called the negativity bias.

[00:18:56] And we actually inherited it from our caveman ancestors where we remember the negatives way more than the positives. Well, happy people have reversed that tendency. A friend of mine, Rick Hansen, calls it the Velcro Teflon syndrome. They Velcro the, we Velcro the negatives to us. You know, you get 10 compliments in a day and one criticism. And what do you remember? The criticism. You're Velcroing the negative. Happy people Velcro the positives.

[00:19:26] So one very simple thing to do to, this is brain science to, to create more neural pathways in the brain for the positive. It's three steps. Number one, notice the positive more. So be on the lookout for it. One of the women I interviewed for happy for no reason says she pretends she's the Academy Awards Committee. And her job is to go out and give out five Academy Awards a day. Uh, so she's, she's a cute little dog walking by and she goes, that dog gets the cutest

[00:19:56] dog of the day award. So it's, it's just about being on the lookout for the good. So five things a day. The second thing is savor it for at least 20 seconds. So just noticing something great doesn't actually create new neural pathways in the brain. You have to savor it in your whole being for 20 seconds. So if there's a great sunset, don't go, oh, that's a pretty sunset. Stand there and take it in as though you're eating this most delicious dessert and you're

[00:20:26] taking it, truly letting it land in your body. And then the third thing is to go for a three to one ratio. So the negatives are going to happen just naturally. Don't beat yourself up for them. That's just adding, you know, insult to injury. So you, you recognize, oh, there was one of those old habitual thoughts. You replace it with three other things. Um, and that these three steps have been shown to, uh, change the neural pathways in your brain.

[00:20:55] So being on the lookout for the good and savoring it for 20 seconds and going for a three to one ratio. That is so, you know what I love about what you just said? I have a process called tune in and my listeners, they know about it, but the second step is music and it's listening to your favorite song that lights you up energetically brings you to a higher vibrational level for 20 seconds. Cause that's the neuroscience behind it to really get things to change your state. Yeah.

[00:21:24] So amazing. And I, I want to go back because this was really an interesting comment that growing up until I was literally like probably mid teens, I thought there was something wrong with me. If I wasn't happy all the time, nobody would ever told me like, you know, you're going to have the highs and the lows. You're going to be like, there's you, it's okay to be sad when something happens. It's okay to be mad if something happens.

[00:21:52] Like that's totally normal. And the way I had been wired is put on a happy face. You know, why would you be sad when we have so much? Well, you know, you got to look at the, the other side of this, that this is a beautiful thing. And so I really beat myself up growing up about like, I need to be happy. I need to be happy. And let me tell you, that was exhausting until I finally figured out that one, be in the moment and it's okay.

[00:22:21] And there's a, there's a great study out there that like give yourself five minutes to just be like, this sucks. It really sucks. And then you bounce yourself out and then it's okay. But what I did figure out through all of this, you know, painting of like, oh my God, I'm not a happy person a hundred percent of the time and I can, and it's exhausting. What I've learned is when relaunches really hit me and I've been hit recently in the last couple of months with some really big ones, some, some real tragedies.

[00:22:50] And I decided that I was so caught up in like, I'm really going to be in the moment, in the moment, but in the moment was in the hospital for a long period of time with a relative. And I started to like come like really crash, like, oh my gosh. I, and I realized something about myself. I can't stay in that state for long periods of time. It physically was starting to be toxic for me, for me.

[00:23:19] Now other people, you know, there's like, I just got to be there. This is what's happening. And so what I did is I went outside and I didn't, I have, I had melanoma. So looking up at the sun's a little rough for me, unless I'm totally, you know, covered up and everything. But I just observed and you said, notice something for 20 seconds and really look. And there was a gentleman that was taking a picture of a leaf on a tree, really up close. Like I'm like, and I just sat and I watched him and it was about a two minute.

[00:23:48] And I turned around and I'm like, I saw the beauty in what he was doing. So thank you for that because it just tied a lot together for myself. So I really appreciate it. And I, this, I'm so glad you said this, Hillary, because people say, oh, does this mean that you're going to be happy? You know, walking around with a silly grin on your face 24 seven and in some Pollyanna state of denial. And that is, that is not what happy for no reason means. It means that you have an inner backdrop of peace and wellbeing, no matter what's going on.

[00:24:17] But if things are challenging, if somebody's died, you're going to have grief. You know, you're going to feel sad at things. You're going to feel angry, but it's that you, you have that backdrop of peace and wellbeing that, that behind that both can, can exist. I can feel sad and I can still know that all is okay inside. And that allows you to bounce back more quickly from things that are challenging. I think a lot of people needed to hear this.

[00:24:46] I really do, including me. So thank you. Now you moved, you, you are a constant, you're constantly in motion and moving through the next version of yourself, your next identity, your next like best, I call it highest self, where you really connect with you. And you realized it's time for me to move from happiness into miracles. And so what was that transition like? Why? Yeah.

[00:25:14] Why did you feel like, wait a second, I'm going bigger now, not forget about just happiness. I'm going miracles. So this is actually one of those things where I didn't consciously do, do that. Here's what happened. And I think I really love this particular story because I think it's, it really, it really summarizes what it, what it's, what, what has been important for me to make these pivots and relaunches.

[00:25:43] Um, in 2013, I was speaking about happy for no reason. I was teaching it. I was traveling the world, speaking about it. I had at the same time been taking a program with a dear friend of mine, Lynn twist, who I now co-teach with. And I adore Lynn twist. She wrote the book, the soul of money. And it was a program on money.

[00:26:04] And we were, um, and I had just made a commitment in this program to not doing work that I didn't like, you know, I, and so just as soon as I've made that commitment to myself. Two days later, I get an email out of the blue from a client that I'd worked with in China, offering me a half a million dollar contract to come speak in China over the next year or so. There was one problem.

[00:26:34] I really did not like going to China to speak. I just didn't like all that travel. It wasn't a place I resonated with. It's not the food that I liked, you know, it was just not. And I had just made this commitment to myself not to do work that I didn't like. And so I actually did. I think for me, the most courageous thing I've ever done professionally, and that is I turned it down.

[00:26:57] Um, so I turned down this half a million dollar contract thinking I have no idea what would replace that income. About a week after I've turned that down, I'm in my kitchen making lunch with my assistant. That's what we would do every day or most a lot of days. And she said to me, so and so just started a mentoring program. And I hear the word mentoring and I, it's one of those light bulb moments.

[00:27:26] I go, oh my God, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to mentor people. So we sit at lunch. It was just that next, that's the next thing. We sit at lunch and I said, Kim, what am I supposed to mentor people in? And we were talking about it. And I realized, you know, I wake up every morning and I am living a miraculous life. And I believe that there are certain principles that got me here. Just the same way that people can become happier. They can also put themselves in this place of living a miraculous life.

[00:27:56] I call it living in the miracle zone. And I can mentor people in that. And that became, I said, how many people should I mentor? And I thought eight, I'll mentor eight women for a year and how to live a miraculous life. And I put it out there and I had 1100 people apply. I was going to say, sign me up. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So that's how I ended up doing. I did mentor eight women for a year. And then I created the program called Your Year of Miracles.

[00:28:25] We've had now 30,000 to my 12th year of doing it. And we have 30,000 people who have been in a year long program on living a miraculous life from over 100 countries. Now that would not have happened, I believe, had I not said no to the opportunity that was just not aligned with me. And it created the spaciousness for what was a sacred yes. So my sacred no turned into my sacred yes.

[00:28:56] I think we keep hearing from you. You have to listen to yourself. That guidance has been there from when you were in corporate and you're talking leadership and you're like, I don't want to be doing this. I want to be talking about self-esteem way back when. And then when you said about even being, you know, in your childhood, it's like, and then how'd you end up at Zig Ziglar with the front? I mean, who knows? But you've always just listened and taken that next step.

[00:29:23] Marcy, I wish we had a full another segment. It's good. We're going to make it happen. We're going to do this again. But thank you so much for being here. And in a last kind of with everything so crazy in the world right now. Yes. And you're on a stage. It's called the relaunch, relaunch to a rich life stage. Massively, just huge. You're going to get to get every message you've ever wanted out there to the millions of people.

[00:29:53] What message would you give right now? The message I would give right now is that we are all on the planet for a reason. You are here for a reason. And you follow that. You listen to your heart. You live from your heart. And you will be doing the greatest service to yourself and to the world. People often ask me, is it selfish to want to be happier?

[00:30:19] And I say it's the least selfish thing you can do because when you're happier, you are impacting everybody around you. In fact, I always love to share this Chinese proverb that really sums up why I am so passionate about all of this. And it goes like this. It says, when there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. When there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. When there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. And when there is order in the nation, there will be peace in this world.

[00:30:49] And my prayer and my wish for every single one of us is that we know that light in our own souls. And through that, we help create peace here on this planet of ours that certainly needs it. Okay. That was so powerful. And it was the message for my first book, Relaunch, Spark Your Heart to Ignite Your Life. And what you just said is a beautiful continuation that you got to find that. What lights you up?

[00:31:19] And then it's like that feeling of connection to the heart, connection to you. So, Marcy, where can people find you, hear more about your programs? So they can go to happyfornoreason.com. And I have a beautiful gift there for everybody on the 21 happiness habits that they can practice. Or youryearofmiracles.com, which is all about living a miraculous life.

[00:31:45] And I can't thank you enough for being here, for like just bringing the wisdom that comes from your connections, your relaunches that have brought you exactly where you're supposed to be, which is right here, right now. And I really want to encourage each person listening right now, go back, re-listen. I'm going to be re-listening. Take those few tips, those nuggets that Marcy threw out.

[00:32:12] And let's all kind of go in this inward journey and really create not happiness for everyone else, happiness for yourself, the trickle effect. And then the miracles come from there. So, Marcy, thank you again. And as we always say, it's a relaunch. And you got to live now, love now, relaunch now into that best version of you. Take care, everyone.