Topics: How to Find Happiness, Happiness vs. Joy, Growth Mindset, Burnout Recovery

 

How to find happiness…don’t. Try this instead…

 

What if we’re all chasing happiness when what we really need is something deeper and more sustaining?

If you’re tired of counting down the minutes or feeling your good vibes slip away as soon as the next stressor hits, this episode is for you.

I recently soaked up the energy of Rio’s Carnaval—where music, movement, and a massive sense of shared purpose create one giant “dopamine menu” of fun—and it made me realize how much we overlook genuine joy.

In this solo episode, I’m breaking down why a focus on joy can be the key to true fulfillment, rather than constantly hunting for those fleeting bursts of happiness.

Here’s a taste of what we’ll explore:

 

• Why Joy Beats Happiness – Discover the difference between quick-fix emotional highs and a deeper sense of contentment that actually fuels your long-term well-being.

 

• Reframing Your Perspective – Learn how to shift your mindset, open up to new possibilities (Carnaval-style!), and find those spark moments in your everyday life.

 

• Owning Your Time (and Your Dopamine!) – Feeling “time-poor”? We’ll talk about transforming your schedule into a personalized “dopamine menu” filled with purposeful actions that keep you energized and genuinely fulfilled.

 

This episode is all about helping you experience more joy, less burnout, and to feel more fulfilled in your life. So you actually feel like you’re experiencing it, savoring it vs. feeling it slip away.

 

Get ready to feel more alive and present!

 

 

 

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Episode 293: Flipping Autopilot

 

RESOURCES

7 Steps to Feel Good Nakd book
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CONNECT
Instagram: @itschardet

 

 

MORE ABOUT THIS HAPPINESS AND MINDSET PODCAST EPISODE

 

“Think about happiness as a short, short little clip in a film strip. And then joy is one that keeps going long past when the credits are rolling.” – Chardét Ryel

 

•  What is a dopamine menu and how can it boost my mood?
• Why is finding happiness not enough?
• What practical steps can I take for burnout recovery
• What are simple ways to create more joy daily?
• How can I find purpose and fulfilllment?

 

What if everything you’ve been chasing—accolades, that next “big win,” or even pure rest—still leaves you feeling strangely unfulfilled? We’ve all been there, counting down the minutes until the weekend, longing for a spark of excitement to break up the daily grind. Yet so often, those little bursts of bliss fade almost as soon as they appear. In a recent conversation, I was reminded that maybe we’re seeking something beyond quick hits of pleasure. Perhaps it’s time to rethink our approach to living fully—starting with reimagining the difference between joy vs happiness.

 

Are We Asking the Wrong Questions?

“Am I happy?” is a common question. But what if we turned that on its head: “Am I joyful?” Joy, unlike happiness, seems to come from a deeper well within us. It can sustain our spirits even when circumstances shift, because it’s often tied to a sense of connection, purpose, or meaning. This concept of joy vs happiness is less about ignoring life’s stresses and more about noticing how fulfillment can show up in the smallest daily moments—if we give it space to thrive.

What might that space look like? During a recent trip, I noticed a vibrant energy that transformed crowded streets into playgrounds of laughter and dance. This experience made me wonder: Could the joy I felt there be replicated in my everyday routine? And the answer didn’t lie in ignoring responsibilities or running away from real life. It was about consciously choosing how to lift my mood in a sustainable, nourishing way.

 

Enter the “Dopamine Menu”

One tool that came up in our discussion was the Dopamine Menu, which involves creating a personal list of small, meaningful activities that give you a constructive lift. Instead of depending on empty thrills—like endlessly scrolling social media or indulging in snacks that satisfy you only for a moment—you intentionally select mini “doses” of delight. Think of it as a personalized playlist for your brain chemistry.

If you’re skeptical, consider this: the right Dopamine Menu might feature things like a five-minute dance break to your favorite track, chatting with an old friend who always makes you laugh, or stepping outside for a midday walk with no phone in hand. Each is a positive, energizing move that reminds you life is more than checklists and deadlines. And because you’re choosing these moments of delight, they can become part of a healthy routine rather than a sporadic treat.

 

Finding More than Happiness

Of course, it’s one thing to create a Dopamine Menu and another thing entirely to follow it, especially when you’re in the thick of stress or feeling disconnected from your surroundings. This is where cultivating a growth mindset can make all the difference. A growth mindset encourages us to see obstacles not as brick walls, but as invitations to adapt and learn. Instead of labeling ourselves as “too busy” or “not creative enough” to find joy, a growth mindset nudges us to ask, “How could I make this work?”

That shift in perspective can be subtle—maybe you decide to look at your daily commute as an opportunity to catch up on a feel-good podcast, or you transform your lunch break into a micro-adventure by trying a new café each week. The point is recognizing that every roadblock might hold hidden potential. Embracing a growth mindset doesn’t magically erase challenges; it simply reframes them in a way that keeps your creativity and curiosity alive, leaving more room for the kind of joy that goes beyond quick highs.

 

Addressing Burnout Before It’s Too Late

In a fast-paced world, many of us don’t realize how close we are to emotional or physical exhaustion. We push ourselves to keep going, hoping that next vacation or promotion will restore our spark. But true burnout recovery starts sooner—when we slow down enough to notice the signs and actively integrate rest and rejuvenation into daily life.

For some, burnout recovery might mean carving out non-negotiable moments of play—whether that’s singing along to a guilty-pleasure song, doodling in a sketchbook, or spontaneously texting a friend who makes you feel grounded. Others might find therapy sessions or mindfulness practices indispensable. The key is giving yourself permission to pause, reflect, and say “no” where you need to, so you can say “yes” to the things that actually light you up.

 

Creating Space for Joy in Everyday Life

Imagine walking into your home after a long day, setting your phone aside, and immersing yourself in a simple, soul-filling ritual—like listening to music that stirs old memories or reading a chapter of a book you’ve been neglecting. These aren’t luxury items; they’re small but profound steps toward reclaiming a sense of wonder. If you want more joy vs happiness in your routine, you must invite it in intentionally.

Consider sprinkling tiny bursts of celebration throughout your day. It might sound trivial, but it’s a game-changer. Celebrate finishing a task you’ve been putting off by taking a five-minute break for a favorite hobby. Celebrate the end of your workday by walking to a nearby park. When you approach life this way, even mundane tasks can feel a bit more vibrant because you know a positive pick-me-up is coming soon.

 

The Ripple Effect of Joy

Why does any of this matter? When we nourish our inner world, we become more resilient, focused, and open-hearted in all that we do—whether that’s parenting, leading a team at work, or pursuing creative projects. The joy we cultivate isn’t just for ourselves. It spills over into our relationships, our communities, and our ability to be kind and empathetic. And that, in turn, creates a feedback loop of positivity and support.

This is the stark contrast between joy and happiness. One is fleeting—a lovely but brief spark—while the other, if nurtured, can become a steady glow lighting up both our personal journeys and the paths of those around us. When you start approaching each day with a sense of curiosity about where joy might pop up, you’ll notice it in more places than you ever expected.

 

A Simple Invitation – Go Beyond Happiness

If you’re ready to explore how a Dopamine Menu can elevate your life, or you want to shift from a scarcity mindset to a growth mindset, there’s plenty more to uncover. Maybe you’re eager to learn the nuts and bolts of burnout recovery—or simply need a little inspiration to break out of autopilot mode. The full story goes deeper into practical steps, real-life anecdotes, and mindset-shifting tips that could transform your outlook on what it means to live fully.

Sound intriguing? Let’s keep this journey going. Tune in to the full interview for insights on boosting your day-to-day energy, turning stressors into opportunities, and weaving carnival-like joy into everything you do. Because once you catch a glimpse of how joy can be intentionally cultivated—far beyond fleeting moments of happiness—it’s hard to go back to business as usual.

Ready to open that door? Jump in, learn more, and see how just a few inspired ideas can bring more color, depth, and yes, real joy into your everyday world. It’s about time we stopped waiting for the “perfect moment” to feel truly alive—and started creating it ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

Transcript on Joy, Finding Happiness and Mindset

 

Chardet Ryel (00:21.93)
up.

What if we’re all chasing happiness when what we really need is something else entirely to feel better in our lives? This episode is all about helping you experience more joy, less burnout, and to feel more fulfilled in your life. So you actually feel like you’re experiencing it, savoring it, rather than counting down minutes or moments or

planning for the future or just feeling it slip away. This is about how to really feel all of those amazing moments in life.

Chardet Ryel (01:42.242)
We’ll be talking about three big areas here. The first is going to be joy versus happiness. Why we get stuck in a loop for one, continually chasing it instead of experiencing the other, the one that we actually need that keeps us going. We’ll also be talking about how we reframe your perspective so you have more moments of purpose and fulfillment and just that excitement of being there.

and truly experiencing it instead of always worrying about the past or obsessing about the future. And then lastly, we’re gonna talk about small actions to really help you build this joy into your life. So this is the feel good episode of probably this year. You wanna get comfortable whether you are running, walking, cleaning, whatever it is that you’re doing as you listen to my voice.

Let’s get you into a feeling of really savoring life.

The idea for this episode came about because I’m currently in Rio, in Brazil, and Carnival has just wrapped up. And Carnival is this time where people are completely free. You see them dancing in the streets. There’s tons of music, lots of colors and costumes. And it has this air of just celebration. It’s an incredible energy. You feel like

I guess it’s the opposite of, know, if you walk into a room and everyone is stressed and anxious and you can feel that energy, you know how it brings you down? This is the opposite. It is the ultimate high to be in this kind of energy and setting. And it got me thinking, is there a way to capture this joy in our everyday lives? What would that look like?

Chardet Ryel (03:38.988)
And I found that there’s actually quite a few ways that we can do this that actually can help us to feel a little bit more of these moments.

Here are some of the elements, the ingredients, let’s say. Now you might have heard of the dopamine menu. It’s this concept of when you have different things that bring you dopamine, that feel good energy, that feel good hormone, how do you create them? Now you might have heard of the idea dopamine menu. And this is the concept of

When you’re in your life, think about the things that make you feel really good. For some people, it’s running, some people it’s meditation, some people it’s a walk in nature, some people it’s a conversation with someone, whatever it is, you have your own individual dopamine menu. And if you really want to have your days more balanced and not feel so overworked or burnt out, it’s important to pull items from that dopamine menu into your

day. And I would argue that Carnival is kind of the ultimate dopamine menu. Everything served. We won’t live that way always, but there are certain elements that you can incorporate. And here are some of the ones from Carnival that I find to be so uplifting. The first one is the saying that you’ll hear again and again here. During Carnival, there is no tomorrow. There’s only right now.

Chardet Ryel (05:17.44)
There’s a lot of music and movement. When you have movement and music, it reduces stress, it stimulates the brain, and there’s this special kind of magic that happens when you are actually doing movement and music together communally. It creates this amazing rush of feel-good endorphins. You’re already probably thinking about, you know, your favorite workout class or when you used to or still go to the club.

whatever is that makes you feel really good when you hear your song, what that’s like when you hear everybody singing it around with you. Community and shared purpose, feeling this deep satisfaction of a really deep human need we have, which is to belong, to feel a sense of belonging, to be with your people. And when you look around Carnival and you see everyone…

acting silly and wearing costumes and singing the music. Most of the Brazilians here know the songs. It has this feeling of belonging even if you’re not actually from that culture. It taps deeper than language. It taps deeper than nationality.

Chardet Ryel (06:32.13)
The fourth element of Carnival, which we could definitely incorporate is playfulness and costumes. I mean, you don’t genuinely need to have costumes, but it’s this idea of getting into that creative play mindset that we have as kids, where you feel just like, me unleash my inner spark. And I have seen some wild costumes during Carnival, everything from Marge from the Simpsons to…

There were like hula dancers and I’ve seen some very questionable leotards. But you see everything and it’s fine. It’s playfulness. It’s unleashing that creativity. And I think one of the most enjoyable parts of a carnival, for me at least, was choosing those outfits and being able to have those moments, which in adult life we have so few.

Chardet Ryel (07:27.202)
And then the last thing is this massive, massive collection of fulfilled energy. And then the last thing is this massive communal, everybody, energy of contentment. Everybody is there and they are enjoying, they are celebrating life. And that has such a physical feeling, like you can actually feel your mood elevate when you go into the middle of these street parties, these blocos.

And it also has the emotional effects where you just can’t stop smiling. It’s hard to smile when you see all these playful costumes and people drumming and it just creates this really big air of festivities and festivals and feeling that knowing that everyone around you in that moment is content. It’s like your nervous system calms down and we have definitely felt the opposite of that. Usually, know, commuting to work, stressful meeting.

You know what I’m talking about, how that feels physically different from this.

Chardet Ryel (08:32.568)
So let’s go into the three ways that we can really start to bring this joy in. The first one is understanding the difference between joy and happiness. These two are confused so much, but happiness is a fleeting moment and joy is more sustained. It impacts your wellbeing for a little bit longer. They can overlap, of course.

Well, what we’re often caught doing is chasing these fleeting moments of happiness, these short-term goals, instead of creating this underlying experience of just joy.

Chardet Ryel (10:26.094)
still going. So let’s put it.

An example of the difference between happiness and joy would be this. A fleeting moment of happiness would be you got the promotion. It’s great. You feel good. And then you figure out what the heck you’re going to do. A moment of joy would be actually creating the career that you want. Or let’s say me creating my own business after all this time. That’s more sustained because I have this deep sense of

purpose and fulfillment, is going to continue long after that initial, has happened event. So think about happiness, a short, short little clip in a film strip. And then joy is one that keeps going long past when the credits are rolling. That’s how you think about them a little bit differently. And so you can naturally see how joy would be one that is more sustaining for us and better for our wellbeing.

And they talk about this in positive psychology. They talk about hedonic, which is pleasure-based versus eudaemonic, eudaemonic, fulfillment. And they talk about this in positive psychology. It’s this idea of hedonic, which is pleasure-based versus eudaemonic, which is more fulfillment. It’s more this.

deep well-being. Those two things are very different. And so you can think of hedonic pleasure-based as happiness, which we often chase, versus eudaemonic is more, how do we get a sense of fulfillment and just almost a sense of knowing and feeling calm.

Chardet Ryel (12:18.892)
You can also think about happiness as more immediate gratification. I have got this, I had this chocolate, moment of happiness versus something that’s a little bit longer and steadier. You could also think about it as something that’s externally triggered for happiness. I got this promotion, therefore I am happy. This person finally called me, therefore I am happy. They answered my messages.

Or you could be more, if we’re talking about joy, it’s this longer term one, and it can be more internal. I feel like I am doing the work and the impact that I always wanted to. That is internal to me and the external does not matter. And it’s also something without necessarily an end.

Chardet Ryel (13:24.598)
Now, much as I’ve talked about the dopamine menu and creating this idea of these small little bursts of excitement in your day, really, when we look at it, another huge difference between joy and happiness that kind of trips us up and confuses us is that happiness is all about that dopamine. We’re creating a reward sense, getting a short burst, short-term high.

When you look at joy, it actually has a different mix of neurotransmitters, of which serotonin is one, and that is a lot more linked to our overall regulation of our emotions and our wellbeing.

Chardet Ryel (14:12.024)
So when we have practices in our day that really bring joy, then we are cultivating longer states of emotional wellbeing.

So when we have sustained practices that we do regularly that cultivate joy, we are creating a longer foundation and a longer sense of contentment and we’ll activate more sustained positive brain states.

Chardet Ryel (14:46.51)
So when we do regular practices that cultivate joy, we are creating longer lasting positive states in the brain. And when you think about that, it’s just mind blowing to…

really break down how much we chase happiness instead. And joy is kind of like a byproduct that we notice later. You know, get this burst of happiness because you had the great date. But then what about the joy of, I don’t know, like pursuing something you really love like dance or art? That is what is really going to push you through. It’s not to say don’t have happiness. We like that.

But as someone said so clearly, and I always think about this, is you can’t have happiness all the time, just like you can’t always have grief or anger.

What we’re really looking for is more this calm, this regulation, this joy.

Chardet Ryel (16:01.76)
And if you are a Brene Brown fan at all, then you know that she often talks about this idea of opening up vulnerability and connection. When you have those moments, you really have this joy. It’s when someone sees you for who you are. It’s when you feel really accepted, when you feel aligned with your community. I think during Carnival, this is a big part of it because even though it’s only a few days,

really a week in Rio, but only a few days. You have this sense of just being and belonging and being accepted. And that creates such a sense of peace within that you’re not stuck in scarcity mode, you’re not stuck in survival, you are just pursuing the happiness. You’re not stuck in survival. Happiness on the other hand is a lot more solitary. It’s just about you.

which joy can be as well, but it’s just about you. And it is often transactional. I got a promotion, therefore I’m happy. I won the lottery, therefore I’m happy. Now, of course, you could argue, well, if I won the lottery and I invested it in my lifelong dream and I’m doing that, that gives me joy, sure.

You see the difference here. You can kind of see how we get stuck in one, but we really need to pursue the other. So I’m going to bring this to you right now. I want you to think to make this actionable here. First little experience. Think of an event that has made you happy. So this is a fleeting external transactional thing that made you happy.

Then I want you to think about a moment you would describe as joyful. So this is more sustained. It probably involves some sort of connection with something deeper than yourself. Sense of meaning or purpose.

Chardet Ryel (17:59.478)
And for each of these, think about first, how do they feel differently emotionally? What do you notice in terms of how you feel when you think of that joyful moment versus that happy moment? Do you notice any differences in how you think about them physically in your body?

Chardet Ryel (18:22.24)
I often think of for happiness, it’s almost like this spike, like this euphoria, like this tummy roll. And the joy is more calm. Like I don’t have to worry about anything. And the emotion is more relaxed, but still feels good. So think about that, because it really kind of feeling in your body the difference, as you know, semantically.

is what makes the difference and it will help you figure out later in life too as you go on each day, how do I bring more joy in? Which is of course our action task here today. So for this part, I’m gonna give you a journaling prompt but you don’t have to actually write this down. You can also just think about it for a moment, pause me or come back here.

For today and for the next four days ideally, five days total, write down one quick note answering this question. What moment felt like joy today?

Chardet Ryel (19:27.746)
Because your joy is different from my joy. I love dancing. Not everybody does. I love painting. Not everybody does. I really enjoy being an entrepreneur. Enjoy, right? Enjoy. Obviously spelled E-N, but you see the sense here.

For you, think about today now, one moment, or yesterday if it’s early for you right now, of real joy, and then do this practice the next four days in the morning. So now that you understand, we’ve talked about the differences, external versus internal, connection versus solitary, transactional versus deeper, you understand the difference between the two.

Chardet Ryel (20:21.55)
So we can start to become more intentional about you creating that joy. That’s the whole purpose of the journal exercise is if I can recognize what gives me joy, then I can create more of it. Where we move on to now is reframing your perspective, creating more purpose fulfillment despite what happens to you or if you’re not where you want to be in life, which again, you know, if you’re doing what you want and you’re happy with where you are, relationship, et cetera, it’s a bit easier.

to cultivate the joy, but if you’re not there yet, it can be harder. So we want to help you in this section. So I am going to give you two quick little stories to contrast the difference here, or rather two images, let’s say.

Part of our, and this comes back to part of our perspective problem is that we have these two deepest fears as human beings, not being accepted, not being enough, and judgment. And if I think about the judgment piece, I remember as a kid, I couldn’t stand recess, you know, that 45 minutes to an hour when they threw all of us kids out to play, and there’s no structured time of you do this, you interact with these people, I felt.

very shy and very lost and I had a lot of fear of judgment that I wouldn’t be able to connect. So I hid in the bathroom every recess for years. I don’t think anybody knew. Now they do. Just hid there because I had such a fear. And you can imagine that feeling of not being accepted. My perspective there of the judgment kept me so paralyzed and the way I saw the world and people was very limited.

If I contrast this with Carnival, where people let go of self-consciousness, they let go and they just collectively celebrate their let go of judgment. You could see the wildest outfit. I can’t tell you how many outrageous things I saw from furry ears to tails to whatever. I met someone who dressed as a box.

Chardet Ryel (22:32.778)
You see these things, but there’s no judgment. There’s just like a kind of funny thing with it that this is a safe space. And the feeling that I had that people around me felt was so different when I contrast that to me hiding as a little kid in the bathroom, scared to connect.

Your perspective, the stories you tell, they influence how you see the world and how you act. And this gets into direct contrast with joy. Because I can still have happiness even when my perspective on life is not great, because happiness is external. Something great can happen to me and I can have that happiness. Joy is harder to have when you don’t shift your perspective.

Chardet Ryel (24:21.602)
Richie, can you shut that window?

Chardet Ryel (24:34.208)
A lot of this goes back to something which many of you might already have heard about, which is Carol Dweck’s fixed mindset versus growth mindset. The idea that the way I see things is the way they are, so I am this way and I’m not going to change. That would be like me, the little kid hiding at recess, never ever changing. When we have more of this growth mindset, we can have these moments of joy because we’re able to see that even though just as fleeting moments of happiness happen,

fleeting moments of grief and anger happen too. And we have that experience and we dwell on it versus moving through it. How we frame a situation determines what we think is possible in the contentment we feel. So there’s also this idea of this broadened build theory. It’s the idea that

If you have a more optimistic and curious perspective, you will naturally have more experiences, connections, and experiences fulfillment. Because if I go into a situation where I’m scared and I just hide, which sometimes, you know, we got to do, I’m not going to actually experience the connections, the fulfillment, the purpose. And a lot of times we fall into that because something’s scary or different or we don’t know how to proceed.

But being able to kind of in some ways move forward, even though you’re scared, you know, we’ve heard it so many times, is what allows joy to happen.

is what allows these deeper moments of really connecting to what you want and need. Here is a little exercise to help you with that. So as an example, I will often say that when I’m in Brazil, Rio specifically, there’s always something that someone does that makes me smile or laugh because it’s just so outrageous or so resourceful or so creative.

Chardet Ryel (26:35.744)
Another person could look at those same situations and think, this is so annoying. This is so wild. Why did this person do this? And focus on that. And both of us are going to have a very different moment and probably a different day based on what our trains of thought are. So the exercise for you is this. Think of something that recently frustrated you. It was so frustrating. You couldn’t deal with it. Now,

rewrite, reframe that situation with a more curious or more humorous lens. How would you think about it?

I know this can be really hard because it’s difficult to see past the frustration, but it could be anything. It could be something that someone said that frustrated you, not that hurt you, but that frustrated you. It could be something that, you know, you’re just not getting. It could be something with like a car situation, whatever it is, think about that. And I want you to notice there’s a subtle boost actually of dopamine here.

There’s a subtle boost in relief, in amusement and optimism. And I understand we can’t do this for everything all the time, but some situations, if you can bring the curious lens, if you can bring the, not necessarily optimistic, but just curious, right? Just curious and open and humorous, you can find a lot of things here. We see this all the time when…

People will do satires, know, Saturday Night Live or something else. They’ll take a situation which is so frustrating and so maddening and they will take the funny part of it. That’s what I encourage you to do. I know it’s not easy, but it helps. So one assignment for you related to this is pick one stressor that you have every day. It could be your commute.

Chardet Ryel (28:43.968)
your meetings, could be when you have to wake up your kids, it could be dreading a workout. Think about one stressor you have almost every day and rewrite this narrative as what’s another way to think of this? You the classic example, this is not a recurring stressor, but in Carnival, it is mad. There are tons of people and there are moments where you get stuck in the center of them.

which can be really scary sometimes, it can be, right? And you can keep pushing and pushing and pushing, but it’s actually easier sometimes to flow with the people, to embrace the music for a moment. This is what I mean with thinking the stressor is a little bit differently. And related to that, because if we reduce the stressor, we help your day.

Cultivate more joy. But also, let’s infuse a little bit of enjoyment into your day as well, around that stressor. So an example is this. When I would commute to work, I would take sometimes an hour on the subway. And I used to do it where I’d have, I don’t know, just maybe a few minutes right before I needed to leave. And I was rushing and I was tired. And then I saw all these people and I couldn’t, you I’m short, so I was always in someone’s armpit.

And I remember the day I was thinking, you know what, let’s just add five minutes to my morning. I will wake up five minutes earlier. And having just those five minutes for me made the rest of the day easier because I didn’t rush as much. And I didn’t feel like my whole day was contributed just to me working or doing stuff for other people. So sometimes it’s about infusing a little bit of moments.

that disrupt the stressors as well or offset them slightly.

Chardet Ryel (30:47.382)
And the whole point of this, the whole point of why I’ve talked about reframing the situation, having moments for purpose and flow and all of this is because when you do that, you create space for joy. If there’s no space for joy to enter, because it’s often internally driven, then it doesn’t. And you will feel that absence. You can be happy when you’re sad, but having joy is really what is going to maintain you through.

So this is where we get into the final part of this episode, all about one of the biggest parts of joy, getting it in your life, the small tiny actions you can do to do that. And I think one of the biggest things we can do is own our time. Because when we feel like time is ours and we are creating it, we’re not bound to someone else’s time, is when we are the most free to enter flow, to do the things we want. I recognize

A lot of us work a lot. don’t have so much of this, but creating a sense of the time is yours will shift the way that you feel about your obligations and your day. I remember when I was little, kindergarten, five years old, I remember sitting in the back of the room and we had the little fake clock, circular clock with the little two hands. And our teacher was trying to teach us how to tell time.

And I could not, for the life of me, I think it took me a year, a year and a half, I could not tell time.

It didn’t make sense to me. And what I recognize now is that I didn’t want to. Right? It was me rebelling about this concept of you have to frame time and you have to know the hours and we have to fall within this. I didn’t like that because already at five years old, I was falling into a schedule. We go to school at 8 a.m. We have nap time at noon. Lunchtime is now like already my little body was not happy with this. And I recognize that

Chardet Ryel (32:52.546)
Routine is important, a lot of us have it, but having these moments where we don’t have to do that because it’s naturally not something we like. It’s not natural, you might like order and structure, but having set time that is not yours is not anything that anyone likes, whether you’re type A or B. And this is like Carnaval, time dissolves. Things are supposed to start at a certain time and they don’t. They’re supposed to end and they don’t.

And the funny story was, I remember speaking to someone who went to a party and they asked the DJ, when is this party ending? And the DJ said, I don’t know. And the guy asked, well, how long are you working till? And he said, until everybody leaves. Different sense of time here, right? So this is something really interesting because a lot of…

This is interesting because a lot of psychologists talk about this with time about if you have more autonomy and sense of control over how your time is spent, you have a higher level of life satisfaction. If, however, you have time scarcity, that often triggers unhappiness, the opposite of happiness. It makes you feel powerless and it drains your creativity.

So if you can instead create time affluence, if you can instead create time affluence, your overall life satisfaction rises.

Chardet Ryel (34:29.29)
It’s really honestly fascinating to see the studies on this where people who have time affluence, which they probably wouldn’t describe it that way, but you know, they’re looking at how people define this. They report higher life satisfaction and better emotional wellbeing than people who are time poor. And time poor people are often rushed and they are over scheduled, which undermines their mental health. It blocks opportunities for joy. So this is where.

There’s so much behind even small things like how we structure our time. And a question I would ask you, I’ve done this with clients a lot is what did you do for fun before you worked every daylight hour?

Chardet Ryel (35:17.452)
That’s something you wanna bring back because when you have more control over how you spend your time, even if it’s just a couple minutes, I know a lot of us work really hard. It means deeper fulfillment. It means more space for joy. If you’re not feeling a lot of joy, it’s because there might not be a lot of space for it. So let’s bring in a little experience for you. This is creating a mini play moment. Think about a hobby.

or a playful activity that you really loved as a kid. For example, drawing.

Now, think about what would a 60-minute to a 5-minute version of this, what would it be now? So if you used to love to sing, this could be humming a tune, right? Just like singing a little bit, singing a verse. If you liked to dance all the time, just a little shake of the hips. This sounds silly, I know, but if you haven’t tried it…

What do you have to lose? Now think about this 60 second thing. And if it’s something you can do now, like for example, the little shake of the hips, do it. I’m doing it right now. And notice how your mood shifts, your energy shifts. I can even feel like a little bit more lightness from doing that.

Chardet Ryel (36:45.846)
The big task though for you in this final section is this.

One of the hardest things you’re going to find when you try to bring in joy, when you try to reclaim your time is that you have an overfilled schedule and you are constantly connected. You don’t have real rest. You don’t have real recovery. You don’t have moments of play. That is all essential to sustainable joy. So finding ways where you can just sign off, intentional breaks helps you to reset your mental energy.

and it helps you to increase your sense of fulfillment. This is a small thing, like something that I do, and I want you to be thinking about what you could do. I will often leave my phone when I go out for just a quick walk in the day. I won’t take it with me or go to the grocery store, leave my phone. Because in those moments then I am fully present. I might not feel joy when I’m stuck in the line at the grocery store, but I also don’t feel hyper stressed because I have my phone that I’m also checking messages I can’t respond to that.

So think about what it would be for you because the main idea with all of this is having everyday playful moments will fuel you. It will help you perform better, have better connections with people, see life in a more uplifting way. And by reclaiming your time, you are investing in joy.

that doesn’t depend on external circumstances of me saying, when I have this time, I will go do this. What can I do now?

Chardet Ryel (38:26.432)
All of this is the whole episode here was just about helping you find this joy. How can we create kind of that dopamine menu, but a little longer term sustained joy? How can I bring a bit of carnival into your life? An invitation for you to live more joyfully, for you to be present and for you to engage with a world in healthier way. So final little challenge here is

I invite you to share on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever you use, maybe Instagram stories is probably best here. What is one playful, joyful thing you really used to do that you love that you want to do again? Share it. Tag me, Charity Royale. I’m always curious to see what other people come up with for their ideas. And I am sending you so much joy, well beyond Carnival. And I will see you.

in the next episode.