Happier Summer Series Part 12: Balancing Doing with Being & Becoming Aware of the Self-Help Trap with Danielle Neufeld

Have we become so focused on improving our lives that we’ve forgotten to actually live them?

In this final episode of the Happier Summer Series, I’m joined by Danielle Neufeld, co-host of The Most Important Thing, for a fascinating conversation about happiness, ambition, parenting, perfectionism—and the very fine line between personal growth and constantly feeling like there’s something about ourselves that needs to be fixed.

We dig into what Danielle calls the difference between a “painkiller” and a “vitamin”: some tools, experts, books, podcasts, and parenting advice can be incredibly valuable when we genuinely need them. But when we start reaching for them constantly, we can accidentally create the belief that every uncomfortable moment is a problem we need to solve.

We also explore what it means to balance striving with softness, why Danielle is intentionally raising her children to be creators rather than just consumers, and how we can get better at asking ourselves, What do I actually need right now?

Danielle also shares one of my favorite happiness practices of this entire series: a simple five-minute nighttime ritual where she “rewinds” her day, hour by hour. Instead of allowing one difficult moment to define the entire day, she gets to see the full picture—the things that went well, the meaningful moments she might have missed, and all the life that happened in between.

In this episode, we explore:

• When self-help becomes another form of pressure
• The “painkiller vs. vitamin” approach to personal growth
• Why happiness can include both striving and simply being
• Perfectionism, rumination, and the stories we replay at night
• Teaching our kids to think critically about what they consume
• Building a life around relationships, community, and connection
• Danielle’s five-minute “rewind your day” happiness practice

Maybe happiness isn’t waiting on the other side of becoming a better version of yourself.

Maybe some of it is already here—and we just need to slow down long enough to notice it.

Connect with Danielle + The Most Important Thing:

🎙️ Listen to The Most Important Thing
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themostimpthing

🪷Rise & Flourish LIVE | Delray Beach, FL | Sat. 9-26 | Learn More & Reserve Your Spot

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Transcript

Ryann 0:00

I'm wondering if you've ever wondered when working on yourself became another thing that we had to get good at, another item on your checklist that you need to mark off. Today we're talking about the fine line between personal growth that expands us and constant self-improvement that leaves us feeling like we are perpetually falling short. I don't know if you've ever felt like you were on the personal development hamster wheel. I know I have, and I made a promise to myself that I was getting off the hamster wheel. That's why I am so glad that today Danielle Newfeld is joining me. Danielle is the co-host of the Most Important Thing podcast. If you've not checked it out, I will put a link in the description so you can go over there, follow them on YouTube, follow them on your favorite podcast player. Danielle and her husband, Greg, are talking all about family culture, how to build an intentional family, and so much more. Also, Danielle was the stand-in host of the Raising Wild Hearts podcast last year at Rise and Flourish. And spoiler alert, she's going to be at Rise and Flourish 2026 in Delray Beach, Florida, on September 26th, helping out, volunteering, um, and supporting. I just love so much how the women in my community and Ashley's community, Ashley is my co-founder, um, have come together to really support us through this. One of the things last year after Rise and Flourish that we reflected on was like, oh my gosh, we wouldn't have been able to do this without our incredible community of sisters. And that includes the speakers, the sponsors, the volunteers, the attendees. Everybody just came together and um the love was absolutely palpable in that room last year, as it's going to be this year. Ashley and I are getting really, really excited and it's getting really close. The room is over half full at this point. I think we're gonna sell out. Um, if you think you want to be there, it's a good time to get your ticket now. You can head over to weriseandflourish.com and check it out. So we will not be going down the personal development rabbit hole at Rise and Flourish. We will be lifting each other up and we will be experiencing true nervous system safety and connection. In Delray Beach, Florida, at the Seagate Country Club on September 26th. Cannot wait to see you there. Now, without further ado, let's jump into my conversation with Danielle Newfeld on the Happier Summer Series part 12. Danielle Newfeld, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. Of course, it's fun you being on this side of the mic. My people here know you and love you from the Rise and Flourish series. So thanks for being back and be willing being willing to be in the hot seat today. Absolutely. Yeah. Love, love being here with you. Love being here with you too. And actually, that's how I want to start is when you come to mind, I think of Sunflower, where our kids went to preschool, where you and I connected face to face during various like programs there. And when I think about where my community started, the beginning of my community was at that little preschool in Delray Beach, Florida. And I think this is a really important piece that everybody out there listening needs to understand because people are like, Where's my community? It's so lonely. And yes, yes, yes, yes. And also like community happens one very small step at a time. So I'm curious for you, what part have your social connections played in your happiness, yes, but also in your success.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

I mean, social connections have been everything to me. And especially to my, I can tell you, in my career success. Um, and even the way I met my husband, which was like we were both in a place that we weren't really supposed to be, but we met through friends of friends. And had we not both been there, we probably never would have overlapped otherwise. Um, so social connections are so important, but I love what you said about, you know, kind of gathering them one at a time. Because for me growing up, my parents had a gang, and they all had girls born within like four months of each other. And they met when we were in first grade, and the husbands would go running on the weekends, and they would meet at the swim club, and they would have dinner parties. And it was great for them and for me as a kid. But I also saw some of the, I'll call it like shadow sides of that, where everyone wasn't necessarily super, you know, us, Ryan. Like we like to be really vulnerable and talk about our mistakes and hold ourselves accountable and grow, right? And I think sometimes when you have a group like that, or maybe it was just the 90s, but whatever it is, meeting and having this like instant kind of larger click is not something that Greg and I, my husband and I, wanted from the get-go. Like so much so that we we moved out of New York City and we planted ourselves in Delray Beach, which is not Boca and it's not Palm Beach, and we sent our kids to an alternative school where, you know, it doesn't have the the brand and the culture of some of the more traditional private schools around here. And I think that's for that's great for a lot of people. Us, my husband's a rebel and he's like a terminally unique number four, as we've talked about. And I'm a little, I'm a little scared of those things. Like I feel do as what's the opposite of immune? I'm as um able to feel scared of status things as the next person, if not more. I'm very sensitive to it. And so I like intentionally opted out in an effort to build my own community one step at a time.

Ryann 6:14

That's so interesting. And the reason I think this relates to happiness is because we know from the largest study ever conducted on happiness and fulfillment of life, the relationships are what matter the most. Very early on in my motherhood years, very early on in my business journey, even early on in this podcast, the first iteration of this podcast, I would, yes, like do the virtual networking and I'd like, you know, try and like send emails and do intro things, but there was nothing really bolstering me from that social relationship side. There were there was no depth. There was no depth, right? You and I are in a book club. We meet monthly. Usually we don't even read a book, and we just kind of sit and chat and we go through the nitty-gritty of like, what's going on in your life? What's going well? What are we celebrating? What's really hard? Um, you know, yeah, how are the kids doing? All of that. And it's not something we get paid for. It's not something we pay to do. It's not this like high um stakes thing, but it's so meaningful in my life. And I see it on the calendar, and some days I'm like, oh, I'm too busy to do that. But I know that I need to do it because it's something that fills me up, it bolsters me up. I'm around women who are cheering me on from the sidelines and knowing, you know, some of the more intimate details of my life that I don't necessarily share on a networking call or on this podcast. So, how can you speak to becoming vulnerable or were you always that way with others?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

I don't think I was always vulnerable. I mean, growing up, um, so I, you know, just to be totally vulnerable and honest, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. I grew up in a home uh with active alcoholism where there was a lot of stuff swept under the rug and a lot of like emotional, some abuse and a lot of emotional neglect. And so I did not have any blueprint, which still comes up today in my marriage with my husband, who had a very typical family of origin, which he would, you know, he will happily admit. And so, but what changed for me is really Al-Anon. Like, and you and I have talked briefly about this before, Ryan. But I would say before I got myself into Al-Anon, uh, which was my gosh, almost 20 years now, I was much less vulnerable and much more passive aggressive. I played things close to the vest and you know, never, I remember even never admitting like a boy that I liked in high school or college, right? And then I think that the pendulum swung too far, honestly. I started to see every space as an Al-Anon room. And it's not. And so so much of my journey over the past few years have has been really about calibrating and reading the room, if you will, and knowing when I'm in a safe space and with whom to share when and why. So good.

Ryann 9:21

So good. One of the things I'm discerning as of late is that anything of value in life, pretty much from where I'm standing, feels like walking a tightrope because we're not we're, you know, no thank you to this extreme over here, and we're no thank you to that extreme over there. And here we are in the middle, balancing on this very courageous and um, you know, fine line, so to speak, of what is true, authentic, and kind of the I don't want to say the right way. Maybe I could say the most important thing. How does that land for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

For sure. I love it. I love the tightrope analogy. I about a year ago now got a slack line in our front yard, um, ostensibly for the children, but no, really for me. And I practice it almost every day. And I, you know, I fall off constantly, constantly. And it's a great reminder to me as a recovering perfectionist, perpetually recovering perfectionist, that it's okay. That, you know, I can make mistakes most of the time and still I see myself progressing. Like after a year, I don't know, maybe I have like a 40% hit ratio and getting across that slack line. It's not good. Like I am, I am no expert by any means. And I don't know if I ever will be, but that's kind of the point, right? Is that we're constantly calibrating and that's okay. That's okay. If I know my my true north in something, that's that's probably the best I'm gonna get. I'm not necessarily always going to be there, but just having that true north and and knowing where I am in relationship to it can be well, that's all I can ask for right now. Yeah.

Ryann 12:01

So I don't know if you knew that we had this book, The Happiness Advantage, in common. I'm not sure if I knew. If I did, then I forgot. But we are like book soul sisters. And so often when I pull up an audible book that I'm like, it's been in my library for however long. I just started one the other day. I'm like, I think Danielle might have uh recommended this. So your favorite definition, you say, of happiness comes from Sean Accor, who wrote The Happiness Advantage, who was my first, he was my gateway drug into the work that I do today. And he says, happiness is the joy you feel while striving towards your potential. You say happiness isn't like a steady state or it's not this arrival or a mountaintop moment. It has movement and it's a very personal pursuit. So, will you tell us how that unfolded for you in real time and how you landed on that as your definition of happiness?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so little secret. I don't think I read the book. I think I just listened to him on a podcast. And I want to say it was like Shane Parrish's Knowledge Project or something like that. Anyway, we also go deep on podcasts, right? But when I heard it, I remember exactly where I was on Madison Avenue, walking home to my New York City apartment, and I was like, oh, like angels sang from above. Because I was like, yes, that's absolutely right. It is the joy I feel striving towards my potential. And so I don't know when that book came out. You probably do, Ryan, but it was a it was a while ago. And after I wrote that to you when we were dialoguing, I started to reflect upon it and I still so resonate with that definition. And yet I am kind of laughing at myself because I'm thinking about how, in my words, masculine it is, and how that is so me and was so me in particular a decade ago, striving towards my potential. Like that, that is dopamine, essentially, right? The pleasure of pursuit. And so while I do resonate with that definition, I love that you asked me this because I've been kind of sitting and reflecting upon it over the past week or so and really thinking about like, okay, that feels like half of me and like a really natural half of me that like loves to strive. But so much of me, especially since becoming a mom, has wanted and yearned for a more feminine definition of happiness. Oh one that is really softer, more grounded, more based on my vibe today, which is allowing more and controlling less. So good. And so I, you know, I we could define happiness, I guess, a whole lot of ways. But for me, it's really that blend. It's like I definitely need to have seasons and parts of my cycle and even parts of my day where I'm striving towards my potential. But I ultimately think that the payoff is around this feeling of I think of like the Scandinavian Hyaga, like this like soft contentment coziness that I have in my nest with my family today. Wow.

Ryann 15:23

So I'm hearing you say that there's this integration piece and that we can kind of marry one aspect, the being, with the doing. And that soft place, again, if we want to go with the tightrope in the middle, is that that's what's feeling like happiness to you these days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of silly. You might think I'm a little strict, mom, when I say this, but on the weekends, the kids like to watch full house. That's like our new thing on Sunday afternoons. And I have a requirement, which is I'm happy to watch full house on Sunday afternoon, but I need you to have worked your mind, worked your body, and been of service to somebody else before we do that. And so I say that not because I'm some type of drill sergeant, but because I experience in my life those cozy moments, those full house on the couch moments, really feel so much more full and more whole when I have done those three things prior.

Ryann 16:24

Love that. You don't sound like strict mom at all. You sound like mom who is building up executive functioning and uh proper dopamine amounts and teaching kids to have balance in their lives. That's what that sounds like to me. And it sounds doable, honestly. It doesn't sound so outrageous at all.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah, and you'd be surprised the moments that we find to help someone else, whether it's like giving, well, right now we're fostering three puppies. Um again. Yes, again. Yes, they're adorable. They're like napping outside right now. Um, but the other day, like there was a dog that came was running into the street and we we found his home. Like the opportunity, if we just kind of open ourselves to the universe, to being of service, it always comes to fruition. Cool.

Ryann 17:10

I love that. Okay, so what originally drew me to Shauna Corps' work is the idea, interestingly enough, of success. And I thought, hmm, I like I want success. Don't know what that looks and feels like for me. And I don't know if I've ever had up until this point, and the book did come out in 2010, by the way. So I don't know if up until this point, I read it in probably it was like 2017, 2018. And um, I don't know if I've experienced this true version of success for myself. And so that's what drew me to his work, where I realized, spoiler alert, that happiness is actually the prerequisite for success. And so it's interesting that we came to this conversation from from two different ways, ultimately still kind of the same spot. And to speak to this masculine-feminine marriage for this um more integrated happiness, for me, that's why I include feeling the full range of emotions in my definition for happiness, because there is, you know, this opportunity that presents to us in every single moment of every single day of am I allowing, feeling, and leaning into the reality of this present moment? And a lot of the times for me, you know, the the work there is to express the frustration uh healthily, you know, to get out the rage, to move through the sadness, to be able to celebrate or be blissful with my kids or laugh and be silly. And so I think what you talk about with marrying the both, I think like for me, that's one of the key pieces.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

I love that. No, it's it's so true. And allowing myself to be silly, have fun, let it all hang out is not something that comes naturally to me at all. Tell me more. Well, you know, growing up, you know, the joke my husband and I always talk about is that like I wasn't allowed to stay in my pajamas past like 9 30 in the morning. You know, if there, if I if I was that something like I I felt shame. Like I felt true shame. And, you know, it was not, it was a house full of love. And it was not a house for much silliness, like at all. And not even, not even, I'll call it performative silliness. Like I remember wanting to be in drama and my parents not thinking that that was worth it, right? It was like tennis is the thing to do, you know. And we were, we as a family, we were we were striving, right? We were there were things that my parents wanted to achieve that I think I'm so grateful that they did achieve. And I now a lot of because I can stand on the shoulders of giants, have the benefit of unraveling all of that and being with my children and really seeing who they are and saying, I don't, I don't really care what you do. I'm very interested in what you do, but I want to support what, you know, what comes what what your passions are. Love that.

Ryann 20:30

I think that's how this idea of happiness gets passed down, perhaps, right? And you felt that that version of it in your house, but it wasn't quite what your soul was calling for. So how do you, how do you find that plays out for your kids, these changes that you've made generationally? Like how are you seeing your kids express in ways that you weren't allowed to, or wearing their PJs till noon, or whatever it is?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

It's hard, you know, because on the one hand, I really want to allow what they what they want. On the other hand, my eldest daughter, who is very academically inclined, when she says that she wants to be Taylor Swift, I cringe. I'm like, oh gosh, like I don't want that for you. Um and and I know that I, you know, going back to this idea of success, like I truly had what I'll call masculine success in the first decade of my career. I reached for me, the definition, the pinnacle of my own mountain in finance in the hedge fund world when I was 30 years old. I got the job, I got the title, I got the the salary, I got the mandate, I got all the power. And then I stepped away from it to have kids. And so part of me sees that as like a checked box, if you will. And of course, I absolutely still have more career aspirations, but they look different. They're not nearly as masculine as those were, right? But, you know, from a confidence perspective, from a financial perspective, those things allowed me to have the life that I have today. So it's really hard for me to sit back and say to my children, like, you can do anything you want, especially because I have friends who took different paths and struggle financially today, or are challenged still by that definition of success. And I feel very grateful for having had the experiences that I did.

Ryann 22:33

Yeah. Yeah. You, somebody who comes to mind when I think organization, getting things done, high executive functioning is you, Danielle. Like first and foremost. You're just, you know, at the Rise and Flourish event during the interviews, like you just like you should. Shine when the moment calls for, you know, this. I don't know why domineering was the word. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but you're very just with it and you're very like action-oriented. But I know you, and I know that you're saying yes, and there's also room for the being. So thank you for bringing that up. I don't think we have the answer to that for our kids. I feel like this is all like an experiment playing out in front of our eyes. Sure. And it's gonna be so interesting to see, like as they grow, as they get inclined to do certain things and and be, you know, who they are in this world. It will be fun to see. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

I keep going back to this idea, this quote, I don't even know who said it. Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child. And that really, when we talk about our true north for parenting, that's mine. And so I really just I'm trying to prepare them for everything, honestly, because who knows, especially, you know, tangent, but like not the world of AI, you know, the skills that even I thought around like computer science were going to be really intriguing and a surefire career track for my children are, you know, are changing, right? So right now, and this is a lot of the stuff that we talk about on our podcast, is just making the implicit explicit and naming the skills that we're building right now in our family, right? And those today happen to be running and breathing while you run and singing and breathing while you sing. And so all I can really do is try to give them a tool set that incorporates both the masculine, masculine and the feminine that includes what I think are surefire financially successful endeavors and what I think are totally solely creative personal fun things. And hopefully spending enough time under tension, skill building, all of those things will lead them to have their create their own mosaic of a mountain. Yeah, that's beautiful.

Ryann 25:54

So when we were in conversation about what this conversation would be like, you sent me a link to a I mean, would you call it a blog post?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yes. A long form article.

Ryann 26:06

I like to read those these days. A long form article because we have stretched our cognitive patience. Thank you very much. Good, Ryan. Ding ding ding. Yes. So I enjoyed this article so much. It's called The Self-Help Trap. And I'll link it down below if you want to read it. And what 20 plus years of optimizing, in quotes, has taught me. And it was it's on the Tim Ferris blog. And um I love that you brought this point up because I've felt kind of on this hamster wheel of the self-help trap before and became aware of it after spending, let's call it tens of thousands of dollars on people to tell me what I should do, could do, you know, uh the five-point process, how to do this, how to do that. And then realized, like, what the fuck am I doing? First of all, because I really believe that we have all the answers inside of us. Is there room for learning? Of course. Is there room for knowledge that can be played out as wisdom? Like, yes, yes, we need to learn, we need to read, we need to educate ourselves, but also it's like this dangling of the carrot with this self-improvement, you know, kind of industry now that it really is. Yes, that you're almost there, but not quite. But after you buy this book or do this course or do my signature program or, you know, go into this funnel and opt into that, then maybe you will be okay. And so what comes to mind for me is like this preparing to live a good life versus actually living a good life, actually going out and attending the book club and having the hard conversations and being in the trenches, so to speak, with parenting and building those foundations for lifelong healthy relationships, like actually doing those versus theorizing how to optimally do those. So, what are your thoughts on all of this?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, I, you know, back to my finance nature. I think of it in, you know, in software terms, we have this is your software a painkiller or is it a vitamin? And when you invest in software, a lot of times you want to invest in the painkiller because that's the one with the acute problem that needs to be solved. You have a pain point solution, right, for your customer. And I think that in today's, whether it's in the self-help world or in the parenting world, which I see very analogous, we have created so many. We have take we've started to take painkillers and use them as daily vitamins. So I think about whether it's reading the next self-help book, buying the next course, listening to Dr. Becky's podcast about every single bedtime struggle or tantrum just because you can. Like truly in our brains, right, at the availability heuristic, as Daniel Kahneman will tell us, like when we when we hear about these things, they suddenly become more available to us. We see them more frequently. We think that they are more of a problem to solve. And so whether it's self-help or parenting, I think we can get into this cycle where we feel like we're constantly being tested and like, oh, this is a performance opportunity. Am I gonna pass or am I gonna fail? Am I gonna remember this script? Am I gonna remember that acronym? What tool do I need to go meditate right now, or do I need to journal? Like, which, you know, and there's this, like you said, the hamster wheel, where I think so many of these solutions truly can be painkillers. Like I love to take Motrin once every two to three months when I have a backache, right? I'm not taking it every day. And so I think that whether it's things like raising wild hearts or the most important thing, I see us as vitamin solutions coming from a place of competence. No, I'm gonna first to tell you, nobody needs to listen to the most important thing. We come from a place of competence and we get to. And when you feel like leaning in from that place of competence to set vision for your family and feel connected, that is where we come in, right? And so, and when you want to be on your journey inside yourself and with your children, that is where raising wild hearts come in. And I would say that selling a course, selling a script, selling a membership, they have to come up or selling a book, they have to come up with a reason why you need to buy this now and create that sense of urgency. But my heart goes back to things like Starbucks or Lululemon that are lifestyle brands that have done very well and have been very successful, but you don't need them, right? It is the vibe, it is the culture, it is that feeling of contentment that you feel drinking them in them, listening to them that make them worthwhile. You're just it's brilliant.

Ryann 31:08

Like sometimes 150 plus episodes in, I still have this ooh, how do I talk about this thing that I do? And just the painkiller versus the vitamin, that makes so much sense. And then also, one of the things I say to my kids a lot, if we happen to have the TV on because my husband is watching golf, which is normally the only scenario that the TV is on in our house, but commercials will come on and you know, they're like, look, because they're noisy and shiny and they're designed to get kids' attention. And my kids don't watch that much TV really. So they're working for these kids. I will ask them, what are they trying to sell you? And it's really fun to have them guess of like what these commercials are trying to sell. Normally they're not right. Like nor like Especially when you're watching golf. Yeah, totally, totally. It's like, you know, a commercial for like a bank, but they're showing like, you know, really happy people that are, you know, possibly playing golf or at some social situation. And they're like, you know, it's fun to watch them reach for like, what are they selling? But the point is, I'm not quizzing them to get it right or like really like pushing them, not yet, but I am trying to get them to think about the things that they see and why somebody behind that screen, behind that ledger, behind that, you know, campaign might want to sell them something. So I want them to always be thinking, what am I trying to be sold? One of the amazing ideas that I got from you and a way to phrase it are we creators in this house or are we consumers? Are we creating more than we're consuming? And so, yes, the way you talk about what you do at the most important thing, the fact that you come from competence, that is a wildly unique way of coming into this conversation right now. And from where I'm standing, wildly needed because we don't need to be told again and again and again how much this sucks, how hard this is, because how under equipped you are.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

How underequipped we are underequipped, yeah.

Ryann 33:34

For sure. How our childhood trauma has conditioned us to believe this way, and that's why we're continuing.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Well, if you don't do this, your child will end up in therapy for the rest of their lives, which by the way, let's normalize therapy, it's fine.

Ryann 33:46

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

But yeah, it's that it's the it's those scare tactics, right? And that sells. Like that sells. And I think that the more we can be informed consumers, to your point, about is this creating something in me, is this spurring uh me to feel less than so that I reach for X product, that's powerful. And so knowing who, you know, being you speak to executive functioning, being the true arbiter of what I need in this moment is something that I think is really valuable to teach our children. And something that for what it's worth, like so far, I can tell you I have two daughters. One really struggles to identify her needs, and the other is a complete marvel. And she's showing us all how to do it. She does it eloquently, she does it from a place of grounded confidence. She's not trying to control, she's not trying to influence power over, and it's beautiful. So I think that there's also some like nature aspect to that. I didn't, I didn't get it. I didn't get it for sure. So I'm learning from her. But I hope it sticks. I hope it sticks. But I do think that that is a worthwhile skill to build at any age to really know what I need in this moment versus what external influences are telling me that I need. Correct.

Ryann 35:05

Correct. I think the majority of the answers are in here and we're looking out there, and it's, you know, that's what gets us on that hamster wheel. And so this invitation for everybody here with us is what if you looked inside, you know, 20% more than you always do? What if instead of, you know, following that urge to pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram, you put it down and wrote something down on a piece of paper. I don't know. Like there's these really small, tiny shifts that become available when we start thinking about it in the way that we've discussed today. So I'm so curious what your favorite happiness habit is these days and how it might help us to be just a bit happier in our lives.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Sure. So just like you said, I have a million, right? So figuring out which one to talk about was not easy because whether it's, you know, morning prayers or dry brushing in the shower, I try I really do stack my day with a lot of moments and they and they shift. They shift. But one that has that I have had pretty consistently for the past, gosh, as long as I've been pregnant. So like maybe nine years has been around at the end of the day when I get into bed before I read. I rewind my day. And I think from a true Yoga Nidra meditation perspective, you're supposed to do it every half hour and think about your day on the half hour, but I don't have time for that. So I do every hour. Um, but basically it's a way to unwind my subconscious and really think about. So if I'm going to bed, which for me is usually around eight o'clock, I check in with how I feel in that moment. And then I think back to what was I doing at seven and just pause. And for me, I'm a very visual person. So I just kind of take a snapshot of the of what it looked like, what I was doing, what the vibe was momentarily at seven and at six, and then all the way down throughout the day. And as I understand it, this is a this is a beautiful way to prepare your body for sleep and for deep rest. And as someone who tends to wake up at three o'clock in the morning with high cortisol and a lot of crazy thoughts, this process has saved me an incredible amount of angst. That 3 a.m. angst. Um, because sometimes those, you know, crazy thoughts are still there. But what I can tell you is that I am I'm a ruminator. I'm not necessarily I'm a little bit of a worrier, but I'm mostly my real jam is reflecting, ruminating on what I could have done differently that day, what I could have said differently, how it could have gone better if I had only said this or remembered this point. Um, and that, you know, I've been told that perfectionism is a process addiction. And that is really resonates for me because that's what I found myself doing and still can catch myself doing in the middle of the night, in particular, ruminating on my day. And what I find this practice really helps me to provide some very well-needed and well-deserved perspective before heading off to sleep. That even if something didn't go quite so well around three o'clock, there were, you know, 14 other hours in the day that I did important things, you know, or that I did nourishing things, or that things went well. And it really helps me with that feeling of pervasiveness, really fight that feeling of pervasiveness. And so it's a, it's a key, it's a key point, it's a key tool in my happiness kit. And so even though it's maybe it not, it doesn't necessarily feel like sometimes it does, but it doesn't necessarily spark joy in the moment. I think it's one of the most defensible things that I can do against my unhappiness on the daily.

Ryann 39:08

Yes. And how long does it take you start to finish? Like it's like five minutes, three minutes, five minutes or less.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Like the whole point is not to spend much time on each moment. It's to crystallize it and move through it. Crystallize and move through. So I don't want to say I speed through it, but the point is to allow a space, a fluidity in your re in your reflection, in your recalling, not to dwell on any one moment.

Ryann 39:36

I love that. I'm also a ruminator that resonates with me. Any ruminators here, let's give it a try. You know, be the N of one, the experiment, see how it feels for a week. Um, I like this. I like that it's a little more outside of the box. It, you know, this isn't like take a bath or go for a walk, or, you know, this is uh this is a little unique. And so I think this is really helpful to me and to everyone here with us. Danielle Neufeld, co-host of The Most Important Thing. You are brilliant. Your podcast is brilliant, your newsletter is amazing. I'm gonna put your link tree in the description below so everybody can find you and follow the amazing work you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Thank you so much for being you and for being here. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you for having me. Thank you for this beautiful conversation, as always. And I look forward to book club on Monday.

Ryann 40:26

Me too.