Thank you for tuning your heart's in for another episode of the Hearts rise up podcast. I'm Carol Chapman your host along with my co host Ann Serrie and Concetta Antonelli. We share our own personal experiences, tips and strategies along with powerful stories and compelling insights from guest interviews. We're here to inspire and empower your conscious evolution, help you tap into your inner wisdom and rise to your heart centered Higher Self Together we can rise to a higher level of consciousness, an elevated state of being and experience more love joy and freedom. Welcome back to the Hearts Rise up podcast. I'm carol chapman your host for this episode and I am delighted to share our featured guest today.

His name is Yasmin Nguyen. Let me tell you a little bit about Jasmine. Three years ago Jasmine found a deeper calling that led him to pack up his car and drive across America on an 18 month journey to discover, document and share stories of real people, beautiful places and heart opening experiences that bring us joy. He created the joyful living project as a way to ignite positive change and remind us all of the good around us on his journey. He connected with people and learned about their lives, their challenges and their unique path to joy. He was invited to teach companies and communities, practical strategies to elevate their culture and performance. He's also inspired communities and organized life giving experiences like generosity, gratitude and self care to activate joy.

In 2022 he and his team will launch a new concept called the Joy Gym to reconnect millions of people every day as joy makers and to practice simple habits that activate joy, strengthen their hearts and minds and create a better world to inspire and reach more joy ambassadors. He's also writing a book on his own personal life journey and challenges fleeing communist. Vietnam being rescued at sea growing up as an immigrant in America. His experience with corporate life, entrepreneurship, deep depression and burnout and he's found purpose and joy in his own life. He's also starting a podcast to help others activate joy in their lives. Yasmin. Welcome to the show. I'm really excited for you to share your personal story and to just tell us about what you're involved in right now.

I love the living joy Project and the Joy Gym. I want to start obviously with your personal story because you're no stranger to upheaval and trauma in your life, especially starting out very early in life as a young child. How about we start there and then we'll just kind of fast forward. Thank you so much Carol for the opportunity to be here to have this conversation with you and to connect with your audience and share some life experiences. I'm so grateful for this opportunity. My journey started back in 1975 when the communists had come in and taken over the southern part of Vietnam, That's where my family and I are from and I was about five years old at that time. And a couple of years earlier when the Americans had already withdrawn from the country, My parents realized that it was a place that was going to be very difficult to raise a family and raise their children couple of reasons.

First, my father had studied engineering in Australia and my mom, she was a french teacher. So both of them had backgrounds and ideas that were more geared towards Western culture. That was a threat to I believe the communist regime at that point in time And their worst fear was perhaps coming home from work one day or coming home from the market that they'd be abducted and put in these reeducation camps and their Children eventually being orphans. And so they had to make plans for us to leave the country and at that time we couldn't just buy a plane ticket and leave. And so they had to make some plans and arrangements for us to sneak out during the middle of the night. And then that's exactly what we did is one night my mom gathered everything that she could carry with us along with her three infant Children. Myself being the eldest at five, my sister at three and my brother, just a year old and my grandmother, we quietly left our home and snuck out during the middle of the night into the jungle and my dad had to go separately with us because our fear was that if we were all detected as a family, we'd all be detained.

And so he was going to meet us at the mouth of the river. And so my mom and the darkness of the night courageously led us through the jungle and we were meeting up with a stranger that was going to put us on a small boat called a SaiPan and paddle our way out to the mouth of the river where we would meet up with the rest of the families and my dad to board a boat. And as we got there, my mom was looking all over for my dad, she had asked everyone if they had seen him and to her worst fear, no one had seen him and it was time to board the ship and it was, I wouldn't say it was really a ship. It was a fishing boat And they piled about 40 of us into the hole where they had stored the fish. And I remember her sharing that the Children were all drugged with sleeping medicine so they wouldn't cry out. And so my mom had to make the decision that we were going to have to continue because with or without my dad it was, she was now the head of the family.

And so the boat started to make its way out towards the waterways and into international waters. And and that was the big plan was that hopefully as we reached international waters, we would get rescued and that was the best case scenario. So over the course of the next 48 hours we were down there in the dark with you know, the stench of the fish and there there was no food, no water, no barely any air. And if you had to go to the bathroom then you just had to go right there. And just when we were feeling like our life was just things were going to end, we finally heard the hatch for the boat open and we just felt this rush of fresh air and and we were finally in international waters and people were just leaping into the water, just splashing themselves and reviving themselves just just clean up again. And we were sitting there waiting for ships to pass. And as they would we would wave our arms hoping to get their attention all day long, they would just continue to pass this by.

And as we're starting to lose hope, finally we see this big oil tanker in the distance and it gradually got closer and closer and closer Until it was literally right next to us like a six story building. And as we looked up there, we realized that it was a french oil tanker. And you know, one of the blessings that we realized was one of the few people on their boat who could speak french with my mom because she was a french teacher and so she was able to help communicate with the captain and the crew and asked them if they would pick us up and the captain as much as he wanted to. He was restricted by certain international laws that prevented him from doing so. So he instructed his crew to bring down creates of food and supplies and things to help us along our way. And as they were doing that all of a sudden we hear this scream from below that there's water, there's water coming in, we're sinking and it became this emergency situation. And so the captain quickly radioed in and and he did get authorization to rescue us now and they threw these rope ladders down for the adults to climb.

And so my mom and my elderly grandmother basically scaling the side of a six story building to get to the top and for the Children, they had these big potato sacks that they would toss down and Toss each of us in and haul us up one x 1. Finally, as my mom was able to get on top of the deck, she could see that our boat started to drift and sink below. So the water levels and into the ocean. Unfortunately everyone was rescued And so over the course of the next couple of weeks as the tanker was making its way back to South Korea, we developed an incredible friendship with the captain and the crew just cooking and cleaning and just really, you know, sharing our appreciation for rescuing us. And as we got to South Korea with the help of an international nonprofit organization called the I. R. C. Which is the International Rescue Committee. They helped place families into new countries and homes. And since my dad wasn't there, my my mom didn't know where to go. So she elected to go to France, which is where her sister lived. And we went to France and stayed there with my aunt.

And during that period of time my mom was able to correspond with my other grandmother back in Vietnam to find out what happened to my dad. And as he tried to meet up with us, he was captured and put in jail and questioned and interrogated and slept in these concrete troughs the size of you know a human body for months and months. And finally he was able to get released and he tried to leave a couple more times and ended up in a refugee camp in Malaysia. We were able to get in contact with him and he told us to go ahead and go to America and specifically try to get to Houston. And the reason why is because back in Vietnam he used to work for S. A. Which is a part of Exxon and he had met someone through a meeting or conference that lived in Houston and he thought if he could get to Houston not knowing that there would be there are millions of people there. That if we could find this person, he could get him a job and we could start our life, that's what we did. And we got our paperwork done, we got through through to new york and then down to Houston and got some support And then it took another six months for my dad to get all this paperwork done to finally come over and we got reunited in 1980.

It was about two years when we were separated. And you know, as I think about this journey and the courage and the commitment and the sacrifices that my parents went through now, I realized that there is a purpose in there, There's a gift in, you know why I'm here and the greater calling for the things that I'm meant to do and share. And so I think about that a lot as that's where this journey really started. What is one thing that you learned as part of that experience that you have taken with you, you know, into your life and integrated into your life. I think the one thing is just to not take for granted the things that have happened in order for me to be where I'm at. I think that it's so easy to get caught up in the frustrations, the things in life right now, but if I take a moment and think about holy cow, this is an extraordinary experience that has happened and what a gift. There were so many people that weren't as lucky to have made it. My uncle's family, they tried to make a similar journey and their boat capsized and he lost his four Children and wife and so coming to America, it was just him, you know, by himself.

And so I feel very fortunate and I used that as an anchor to get some perspective during times when I might get a bit frustrated. It is so easy to take things in life for granted. And that is a huge learning experience for you. And I know that you've gone through many challenges growing up as an immigrant in America and probably having to become a high achiever because you had so many things that you had to deal with being an immigrant. What was the major thing that you learned as part of being an immigrant? What were the biggest challenges for you and how did you overcome them? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the journey of an immigrant, like a journey of just anyone who's different or even new to a school or a neighborhood or community. I think we always feel like we're an outsider and I think that the challenge that we face is the sense of how do I belong, How do I, you know, connect and how do I adapt and for me like you mentioned, I think my initial discovery of achievement was my crutch and and all through grade school and high school, I really leaned on that crutch to be, accept it in many ways.

So I was class valedictorian, I was president of the band, the math club, the science club fire, I mean you name it, I was involved but it was my way of feeling value from an external source and it was my way of belonging. And so I carried that with me on my journey to my professional career and was successful in college and graduated close to the top of my class and and was recruited to work for one of the top consulting and accounting firms. As I got to the top of the hill of success, I started to realize that I have been doing all this for the wrong reasons and I don't even know who I am and why I'm here and it was just an eye opening experience of, wow, I climbed the wrong tree in life here and what am I going to do. And so that was a pivotal realization of, okay, this got me this far, but it's not taking me where I want to go. And then from there you jump ship right from corporate and then you dove right into entrepreneurship and spent, I think the better part of your adult life, more of your adult life, many, many years in entrepreneurship and then you hit a big wall, tell us about what happened there, you know, when I finally made the decision to take the big leap from corporate world, which I know that you've shared a similar journey yourself.

I thought, okay, finally I can work for myself and I am going to do what I want and all that. But I had no idea that two decades later that my road would lead to just Chasing one opportunity after the next. And it was interesting because I never grew up in an entrepreneurial family or had much entrepreneur friends. So it was a journey where I had to discover my own path and in doing so my guidance was, oh, there's this opportunity, this opportunity and this opportunity and I suffered from a major case of what we call fomo fear of missing out, right. And and so at one point in time I had three rental properties and had 10 tenants and I had partners in a social club and I had a food business I was developing and I had an e commerce store and and probably a couple more things and I was doing all these things because I thought that if I did these things and the more things I did, the more success I would have not realizing that the thing that I was missing was myself and I remember one day as I was walking to work and I was just so tired, I was really depressed, I really felt like I was at my wit's end.

And I remember standing there waiting for the light to change and I saw a bus coming from up the street and I thought to myself, gosh, I'm in so much pain right now inside and, and I wonder what it would be like if I just stepped in front of this bus and I closed my eyes and I took a deep breath and in that moment I just heard this voice that says one more day, just give yourself one more day. And so I went to my office, I sat down and as much as I tried to work, I just felt completely consumed with just this pain. And so I just made a decision, I was going to drop everything, go back home, hop in my car at that time I was living in Portland Oregon and I decided to drive as far west as I could. And I drove and drove and drove and about an hour and a half later I couldn't go any further because I essentially hit the coast and I got out of my car, I went onto the beach, I took off my shoes, took off my socks and I just buried my toes in the sand and I looked across the horizon and I closed my eyes and and took a deep breath and in that moment I just felt piece for the very first time that I could remember and it was in that moment that I realized that this moment was for me, not for the opportunities, not for anybody else, but it was finally for me.

And it gave me the idea to make a commitment to experience that again the following week and the following week in the following week, over the course of the next year and a half, I had been to the coast over 100 times like weekly and it was my sanctuary. It was my place to reconnect with myself. But it also was a place for me to get some clarity. And I eventually coined that practice, my retirement date practice because I was thinking that, you know, this period of time as my friends are sitting in cubicles and in meetings, I'm sitting here on the beach and even though I wasn't in a financial situation to retire, at least I could take this one day And over the course of a year, it would have had 52 days of retirement to figure out what was most important, that was the catalyst for the next steps in this journey. That is so inspiring.

If each of us could do that, just take a day a week for the next year and go somewhere somewhere special and just be with ourselves, we would get so much clarity. So obviously there was a lot rolling around in your head over time. But that got you to the point of getting more clarity. What happened from there from there, I realized that I needed to say no to more things. And so I closed down all my other businesses and commitments and just focused on my video business. And then also I wanted to teach people and share with them this new discovery. So I started taking people out to the coast and helping them with their retirement days and started to speak to different audiences about this concept and really help those overworked givers, the people that are really committed to helping others and oftentimes forget to give to themselves.

And so during that journey, I was working with my business coach and we were planning out the entire year and planning out what to do to grow and serve more people and on a retreat coming back from Canada. We were just sitting there and on that day we were just having a random conversation about friends who are traveling and living abroad and living this nomadic life. And I thought, well why can't I do that? And it was in that moment that I had basically a panic attack that this could be real. And the idea of giving up my apartment and my home and being nomadic was just frightening and exciting at the same time. So quickly over the next three months, I made all the necessary plans and I was reflecting on my body of work up until that point, I realized that they all fell under the umbrella of joy. And so I started to think about, well what if I were to go learn more about this and meet and explore other opportunities?

What I also realized was even though when I started doing my retirement day practice and consistently went out to the coast and created the space, I realized that that was only the first step creating the space to the container for life is important, but the other part that was missing was what to fill that space with. And so there were times when I would just go out there and I would just either get bored or just feel like okay now what? And so I think that that was what led to the next step of the journey which was creating this Joyful Living project and discovering what do I fill this space now with what is Joy? Because you know, Joy is such an abstract concept. That's what led me to discover what I call my seven principles of Joyful living. Okay, well why don't we cover those? But what I would like to know is what was the Joyful Living project? What exactly happened with that? Because I know you you went out and you met a lot of people, You documented a lot of stories and just tell me briefly what that taught you.

And what was your biggest heart opening experience from that project? Mm hmm. The Joyful Living project was the idea that I would pack up my car and drive across the country with a general route map, avoiding the snow and avoiding the heat And making my way in a counterclockwise route for 18 months and hopefully surviving that was 18 months and not knowing where I'll be staying. And so in many ways it was my leap of faith into this world And it was as it was an act of surrender and releasing attachment to what was familiar and what was safe. And I tell you what that journey Where I visited. I think over 40 different cities I slept in probably 110 different beds. I cooked meals at various different homes and I call it kitchen surfing instead of couch surfing as a way to show appreciation.

But also to have my Hosts invite friends over and have conversation. I felt like in that 18 months I lived like a full three years And during that time I documented every moment as much as I could. Every moment of that. And to try to stay present in those moments as well. But from that journey it gave me a lot of clarity as to what joy is and what Joyful living is. And the things that I thought weren't necessarily the case and the things that I discovered were just I mean mind blowing. So that was the experience. And I think that joyful living continues regardless if I'm on the road traveling. But it's it's just a part of life moving forward. That's amazing. And I do want to I just want to backtrack a little bit because I think you started out knowing that you were going to do this nomadic experience and it turned into this Joyful living project. And I'm curious, I do want to get into the Seven Principles, but what is it that holds people back from experiencing joy?

Hmm, that's a really great question. And and actually that's that's principle number five, I'll dive right in right now. I think part of what holds people back and what I've discovered is is what I call enjoy. What I like to say is that we have to enjoy before we can enjoy. And the enjoying is the process of unlearning some of these beliefs that often block us from experiencing joy. And these beliefs can be things like comparison guilt and shame around deserving joy, There's judgment. Sometimes it's waiting for joy to happen to us. I mean, I think of that as you can have a beautiful day with the sun out. But if you have a whole layer of clouds, all you see is the cloud and the darkness and the sun is still there. It's just were behind that cloud and that the lens in which we're seeing things. So one of the examples of I call a joy, you know and enjoy or are joy blocker is attachment to the way that things have to be. Oh, that reminds me of a story when I was in charlotte north Carolina and I was supposed to go to Washington D.

C. The next week And that was my plan. I was attached to it. And the friends that I was supposed to stay with got sick and I couldn't stay with them. And people are always supposed to meet with their schedule didn't work out. And I just got really frustrated. And because I was attached to that and I just so happened to be on a phone call with my friend who lives in Miami. And this is one of my favorite friends and she brings me so much joy and she says why don't you just come down to Miami and hang out with us. And if you've ever looked at the map charlotte to Miami is like 14 hours. So I decided okay why not? I'm just gonna go the opposite direction. And I drove. And I finally got down to Miami at probably around nine o'clock at night. I'm sitting there we're having a late dinner and my friend goes so what do you want to do here? And I said to be honest I have no idea. I mean I didn't even plan on going to Florida at all in this 18 months but here we are. And I hear that there's Great Cuban food and culture and love to experience some of that. And so we made plans to do to go out to little Havana there and have some food and music some nights later.

I was sitting there in her office one day and and she has a travel agency where she's able to help people take trips to different destinations in the world. I was helping her with some marketing and talking about videos and for some reason she said you want to go to CUBA this weekend. And I said what she's like yeah really cuba. And like what? And so she quickly hopped online, checked flights, checked all her contacts. And literally three days later we were on the plane to Havana cuba where we spent an incredible four days there where I was helping document and capture the joy and and also some content for her business. And it was the most extraordinary unexpected experience. But that came about from releasing the attachment that I had to be in Washington D. C. That week. And I think that when we go back to the question of what blocks us from joy, there are a number of things that get in the way.

And I think that we have an opportunity to explore them and then also to release some of them in order to allow the sun to come through the clouds. That's amazing. What a beautiful story and beautiful way of unfold mint to learn more about yourself and more about joy in the moment. I would love for you to go through the other steps. So when we start with the first principle. okay, well the first principle and I think we covered this through the retirement date practices is that you have to make space for joy in your life. You know, it's too often. We're so consumed with distractions, with dizziness, with responsibilities, that there's really no space for joy. And for me, when I reached that point of Burnett, when I didn't have space in my life and I started to go to the coast, that was my act of creating that space. And that also reminded me, I was at a conference a few years back and one of my friends, she had a tattoo on her wrist and there were a couple of vertical lines on there and her name is Sheila and I said, hey Sheila, What are those lines on your wrists?

Or is that an 11? And she's like, no, it's like, is that an equal sign? And she's like no. And it's like, well what is that? She's like, it's my pause button. I was like, wow, She's like, yeah, it's my pause button. If when life starts getting hectic and everything, I press my pause button and give myself some time. I thought that was so brilliant. I was speaking at a sales conference one summer and I was thinking of a gift to share with the audience and I wanted to give them this pause button because these were high achieving sales people who and we're on the verge of burnout. And so I thought, well maybe I could get them a similar tattoo and like, no, that's not practical, and I thought maybe if I got a mystic er it wasn't practical. I finally thought, well what if I gave them a wristband that was yellow and had a little pause button that they could press any time that they needed a little space for themselves. And and so it's like, well, you know what, While I'm at it, I also have some space for a joy button. So the button to start to notice Joy and then a play button to actually spend time, you know, experiencing that joy.

So the most important first step is really needing to create that space in our lives and creating that pause to give us that space. So that's the first principle, I love that. Alright, # two, What's The Second Principle? The second principle is that Joy is very abstract concept. I went through and asked people what is joy for you, what brings you joy? And it was all over the place. And if you do a search for joy on Youtube or google a lot of times, it's connected with various different religious beliefs around joy. And so it was very abstract. And the other part is I realized is that Joy is abstract and a personal concept. So, I like to use the metaphor of the idea of a salad bar or a buffet if you've ever been to one of these places where you go up there with your plate, you get to pick and choose the things that you put on your plate and it may be a helping of broccoli or maybe that big piece of prime river or whatever it is. But these are things that maybe your favorite things and there may be some things that you try as well.

And so in many ways I think of joy as the various different ingredients that are on that buffet or that solid bar that we put on our plate and that you know these ingredients may represent mindfulness or meditation or gratitude or kindness or a number of different things and I think the challenge that exists out there in our personal growth and development world is there are times when we feel like someone says oh you need to just do meditation, that's the thing and that's fine because meditation is amazing. But it's like saying oh you need to eat kale all the time or you need to drink celery juice which are all great. But the concept of joy is very personal and for each person, different quantities different mouth, different times on that plate really make a difference. And so honoring that difference in that variety is a key component to understanding an element of joy that's very, very deep there, but simple at the same time.

So that's the second principle of Joyful living. The third one is that joy lies dormant within all of us. And it's just waiting to be activated. We hear people go out there and say, oh I need to go find joy or it needs to be external or I'll be happy when happy or successful when I have it or I find it. And and I think that the reality is that, you know, there are a variety of joy activating ingredients similar to the buffet example, where the solid bar example is that there are things out there, things that you can buy, things that that you love and and sometimes you might love something so much that you have so much of it that you don't love it anymore. And then you're like, well what's wrong with this? This is always bring me joy? Well, there's an opportunity to experience something else. And so many ways, you know, joy is within us, it's just waiting to wake up. And the things that wake us up and activate it are things like kindness or gratitude or empathy or vulnerability, creativity, movement, humor, adventure.

The joy of completion, right? The joy of rest. And so there's lots of all these different things that waken our joy from within and we need to be conscious of it because the more we're conscious of it, the more we're going to make it happen within us, we're going to tap into it. What's the next principle? The 4th 1 is that Joyful Living doesn't just happen. It's a daily practice. And I actually wrote a poem. If I could share a short poem that talks about a joyful day. And how do you have more joy in your world? And towards the conclusion of my journey, it was a way of summarizing the things that I learned. It's called a Joyful Day. Would you like to have more joy today? If so, don't hope for joy as joy is waiting for you. Don't search for joy for joy will find you don't chase joy as joy will follow you. Joy is not what we lack. Joy is what we notice. Joy is not what we earn. Joy is what we practice. Joyful living is a daily practice of life.

In a way that invites joy into each moment. So practice gratitude. Practice kindness. Practice empathy. Practice connection, practice movement, Practice adventure practice generosity. Practice receiving practice wonder. Practice, creativity, Practice vulnerability. Practice forgiveness. Practice rest. Practice, reflection. Practice adversity practice savoring practice. Discovery Practice, Teaching practice, Faith practice loving practice presence. Practice playfulness each time we practice, we remind ourselves of possibilities. These possibilities activate hope and remind us that no matter how stressful or challenging our day, maybe we can have a moment of joy. And in each moment we deposit joy into our hearts so that by the end of the day we see that we've had a joyful day.

Well, that poem is just a beautiful reminder to each of us. We can find it each and every day and so many different aspects of what we're doing that we just don't even realize it because we're, you know, we're not paying attention to it. So, again, it goes back to that Conscious focus or conscious awareness. What's the 5th principle talked about that one. The 5th principle was you have to enjoy before we can enjoy. And again, it's about releasing these beliefs, these experiences that may have been imprinted in our life that block us and prevent us from joy. And there's a number of different joy blockers that play a role in that The 6th principle is that joy is contagious and has the ability to multiply personal relationship and community well being. And the way that I think about this is there's three different Tears. There's Joy 1.0 which is about being joyful. This is where we seek and we discover and we practice joy so that we become healthier, kinder, more resilient.

Were more loving, more opportunities that come to us where more energetic and other things like that. And when we do, we aligned with an energy that shows up through synchronicities in our life that we would have expected. And that just reminded me when I was in um I believe charlotte as well too with some friends named Mary and Todd and they were sharing with me a beautiful dinner at this place where the olympic team trains for their whitewater rafting course and it was a gorgeous afternoon. We had an amazing dinner. Just joy all over the place and on the way out my friend Todd says you know we live just a few miles from here. I don't understand why we don't have a membership here and come here more often and a kid you not within five seconds this car drives up and this guy rolls down his window and says, hey do you guys come here often? They were like no, but we'd like to was like great, well you know what I am on my way to California, this is my last day here. I got this past for the rest of the year, I'm not using it, do you guys want it?

And they were just like what? And it's these unbelievable miracles or synchronicity that happened, that when we align with joy that these things happen and it just happened time and time again. And so that's that's joy 1.0 Joy 2.0 is really about helping others and being what I call a joy maker. This is where we deepen relationships we share through kindness and generosity and the things that that really enhance our connection with others and then there's Joy three point which is really about being a joy ambassador and that's where you inspire others by living and sharing joyful life experiences and you really elevate community with hope and and you know you sometimes you see these viral videos of kindness that just really warms your heart and gets you wanting to, you know participate and that's the joy three point level, so six again is about joy being contagious and that being a multiplier of all these different elements of our, our lives, Oh that's beautiful.

I love that the last but not least, yes and the final one is that if you want joy to, to grow in your life, you must notice track and share it. And there's a great quote by Robin Sharma that says what we focus on grows what we concentrate on is what we see more in life and it's really about noticing the joy that's everywhere and, and on my website, I've tracked all the places where I've noticed the word joy and it's I call it joy sightings and, and and I think that when you start to open your eyes to what's out there, you see that red sports car everywhere now or you see that thing, it's so same with joy and that throughout my journey, I made a conscious effort to document and share and connect with people on my experiences and in doing so, I got a chance to relive those every single time and as a result anchored those experiences in and that's why a day literally felt like I lived a full week and each week felt like I lived an entire month, two more quotes that I love is one from Tony Robbins, progress equals happiness and as we see the progress in our growth and our joy we, that translates into happiness for ourselves and Seth Godin has one.

If you measure it, it will improve and so if you measure your joy it will improve as well. Beautiful. Three really wonderful people that we've learned so much from. Thank you for sharing the principles because I think that there principles that we all can very easily apply in our life, it really is just having that focused attention and when we focus our attention on something, you know, things grow as a result of it. I would love for you to share just briefly your new initiative, Joy Jim what you hope to accomplish and bring about particularly in this global world of pandemics and stress and anxiety and fear all of us could use more joy in our lives. So tell a little bit more about Joy jim Sure, it's it's an exciting project that I'm really excited to share. And the idea behind the Joy jim is that there's so much that's going on in our world right now with the pandemic and people are like you mentioned feeling stressed, but not only that, but there were feeling alone or feeling isolated, we're dealing with so many different things and as I look at what's out there that's available to help us build our physical well being, you know, physical fitness, there was an opportunity I think to really help people with mental and emotional well being.

And so that's where came up with the idea of the joy jim, an experience where you come together on a regular basis to practice these different habits that activate joy. One of the things that was in the poem, the kindness, the vulnerability, the, you know, forgiveness and creativity, all these things that we know of we've read in books that say you should do this or you should do that. But sometimes it's really hard for us to do this on our own. And if we could be a part of community and feel belonging and in doing so, have a safe place to be able to practice these and to be seen and to be heard and to be valued and to allow our hearts to grow then I believe that this is the vehicle to deliver and to share the incredible wisdom and insights that I've gained from my journey this far. And so we're still working on the details and We're excited to invite new members into the gym as of 2022, but it's a concept that I think can really transform the current state of mental and emotional well being.

I love that and I think that this would give people that avenue, that vehicle to be able to practice these seven principles and we'll just go through them once again, just for our listeners. Just summarizing real quick one is make space for joy. Two is that you are the differences that we have because joy is personal right? And three Joy lies dormant within us. So we have to activate it within us. And then the fourth is that it needs to be a daily practice. So we need to find all the different things that we can do on a daily basis to recognize the joy because it comes from within us. And then five is enjoy. You know, we have a tendency to allow so many limiting beliefs to keep us in this state of enjoy that we need to kind of release those limiting beliefs. I hope I've captured that correctly. Oh, you've got it. Well, it's good for me to repeat it back to make sure I understand it as well.

And then six joy is contagious. It can multiply. So you just have to look for more and more ways to experience it and then you'll see it more in your life. It's just like when you're thinking about buying a car and you see these cars the same car everywhere, that's what happens. You know, So it sort of tends to multiply in our life and we never used to see it before. And then seven is to notice track and share Yeah, notice track and share. It's about tracking that progress doing great. Before we wrap up any messages that you're receiving from the universe right now. Heart centered messages or words of wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners today. Before we wrap up. Oh wow. I think that this moment right now for me is is so much joy being here with you. And it's part of my personal mantra is that you know, in in this moment I have an opportunity to create joy in my life and to have this moment with you and your audience is so full of joy for me.

And so my invitation is to be curious and to discover how can I bring joy into this particular moment right now? Beautiful, thank you for sharing that and thank you for just joining us today. Yes, but this has been a terrific conversation where can others find out more about you and connect with you. Well, the best places, the Joyful Living Project, which is the main website that has the journey, the insights that I've learned and on there there are a number of different fund resources from music to books, to all the other recommendations, things that I've discovered activate joy and then eventually as well to the joy jim dot com and that will be a site where we'll get together and to practice joy. Well, we'll be sure to include all of this in the show notes and all the details and I just want to thank you again for being with us today. Thank you so much carol. It's really a gift to be able to have this opportunity to be here with you and and your, your audience awesome.

Thank you and to all of our listeners. Thank you for joining us. Once again, I know that after today's session here you'll begin focusing on experiencing and seeing more joy in your life. Feel free to reach out to us and reach out to you, jasmine at his websites and the details that we have in our show notes. For now, I have a beautiful heart centered, joyful day. Thanks for being with us. Bye for now. Mm hmm. Yeah, we hope today's show helped to bring a bit more joy and happiness into your heart. We hope it inspired you to unleash your inner power and rise up to your best and loving heart centered, highest self. We'd be grateful if you'd leave us a review on itunes. Those reviews are important to spreading this valuable message. We'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast and share the show with others. Visit hearts rise up dot com for heart centered courses, guided meditations and are popular notes from your higher self until next time.

Keep rising up and may all that you love thrive