It is easy to get caught up in the hustle of daily life and lose sight of what truly makes us happy.

Whether you are feeling stuck, curious, or simply looking to deepen your self-awareness, this episode provides you with coaching questions to reflect on your overall life satisfaction and gain insights into your day-to-day happiness.

Grab a pen, get comfortable, and join Klaudia on this journey to better understand and nurture your happiness.

First of all, why is it worth asking these questions? I mean, life gets very hectic, very busy. We not necessarily have lots of time to be posing and self -reflecting.

But studies actually show that self -reflection is very important to our happiness, because only by self -reflecting and asking questions, we can gain insights to who we are,

how we feel, what matters to us, where we want to be in the future. It's not surprising to see that those of us who are naturally more self -reflective also report being happier.

Because again, that moment of self -reflection invites us to look deeper into our happiness and move towards a positive change. But before I share with you my six coaching questions,

a few ideas. don't really like journaling.

It's not really me sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and try to write some thoughts down. You can be self -reflecting in a more active way. So for example,

you could choose a specific question and incorporate it into your yoga, meditation, exercise routine. You could be self -reflecting on it and walking,

you could be discussing that specific question with your family members or your loved ones. So whatever you decide to do, that's okay in terms of that active component. But it's always very good to always come back and have some kind of record and write down some of the reflections you're having.

So you can always come back to those insights. A little bit about myself reflective practice. First of all, I have created a journal for myself because it really semened my positive memories.

And I also try to reflect on one question, which could be about any aspect of my life. And these questions come from books I'm reading,

podcasts I'm listening to. Sometimes they even cuts out from magazines, like Happy Full Magazine has a great reflective section. And I always found it so interesting. So it doesn't matter whether even the questions are similar to each other.

It's always giving me a little bit of the insights. I'm always learning something new about myself and my happiness. This may sound quite complex, but actually it takes 10 minutes before I go to bed,

jotting down a few answers, and it is really something positive, insightful, and a lovely way to finish a day. And at work, my reflective practice,

which I again love very much doing, is on Fridays, morning or afternoon, I try to write down three wins for the week for me and my team. I simply have a calendar invite in my Outlook calendar and I just open it and I jot down three specific wins because again,

I find it really great to see the progress of the week, really understand what has been happening during very hectic schedule. So I also love that as a very simple few minutes of reflection at the end of the week.

And then I always love chatting about different questions with my husband. Sometimes I share the questions I'm reflecting on to get his insights and his perspective on.

And sometimes I pull a card of reflective questions. There is lots of interesting cards out there by School of Life or Huga cards.

And it's just having a nice discussion over dinner. We recently had my teenage nephew staying with us. And he absolutely loved these cards. We spent one morning like three hours It refers to debating different questions.

So here we go, a little bit of hopefully an inspiration for you, of what the self -reflective practice could look like. Okay, so let's get into these questions. So I have six questions for you.

The first three questions allow you to gain wider perspective on your happiness. There can be a catalyst for life changes because they allow you to identify the discrepancy between where you want to be in life and where you currently are so that you can make any necessary choices and changes to get to the desire destination.

And the idea behind those questions is to improve your overall life satisfaction. And the last three questions are helping you to reflect on moment -to -moment happiness.

So they encourage you to prioritize positive experiences and focus on solutions in day -to -day life. So let's crack on. The first question is,

when it comes to your happiness, what do you want to be true in six months' time that isn't true today? And of course,

Very scary, but here we go. We're almost at the end of 2024. So this question is very important to our life's things they want to try,

learn, complete. And that means that their happiness goes up because they are ultimately developing new skills. They'll build their confidence. They create new connections.

And again, personally, I love this question because it always fuels me with lots of energy and motivation like, okay, great. There's all these exciting things on the horizon.

The second question about long -term happiness, which is fantastic to reflect on, is what impact do you want to make in line with your strengths?

Again, studies show that by using our strengths, we can create more purpose in life and therefore more happiness. For example, when we are using our strengths,

we can decrease low mood and depression. and are asked to spend time on activities that utilize their strengths,

not only experience more meaning, but also show a reduction in loneliness and disconnection. So these are just a few examples of fascinating studies that confirm that understanding what are our strengths and using them to have the positive impact in the world really creates more meaning and life satisfaction.

When we do that, when we use our strengths, when we utilize our strengths, we generally feel good about ourselves and our place in the world.

And I really often think that, yay, this question really helps me to show up in the world in a positive way and give me this sense that,

yes, I'm contributing something valuable to the world, to the places, to people that I'm with. And the third and final question to reflect on the long -term happiness is what people in your life fuel you and in return are fueled by you.

So the connections that we have with others are, of course, very important to our happiness. They actually at the center of our happiness. Studies confirm that people with strong and diverse social connections are happier,

healthier, and actually live longer. And that's because happiness is catching. There is lots of studies where researchers tracked people's well -being and their health for many,

many, many years. And they found that All sorts of things that we wouldn't necessarily think about are very important to their overall well -being.

And people around them, their social network are absolutely crucial. So you are more likely to take up smoking if your friend of a friend of a friend takes up smoking.

If everyone around you is blue and complaining and really negative, unsurprisingly, you will be also feeling quite negative and you'll be prone to complaining.

So the connections around us are very important to our happiness. And in addition to that, Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at University of Oxford,

showed that the single best predictor of our psychological health, our physical health and our emotional well -being. And even again,

how long we're going to live is the number and the quality of close friends that we have around us. So this is why this question is so important because it really help us to understand which relationships fuel our happiness.

And then it's really encouraging us to spending time or strengthening those right connections. with people,

how are we appreciating people around us and what are we contributing to those important relationships? Okay,

so now let's move to three questions that can help you to reflect on day -to -day or moment -to -moment happiness. The first question is what activities,

habits, and ordinary moments give you energy and joy. Because all of these positive activities, habits, simple ordinary moments that we love,

they acting like cues that help our nervous system to feel safe, calm, content. So it could be anything, it could be seeing a colorful sky.

It could be eating a favorite cake. It could be spending time with loved ones. It could be listening to the favorite music. And that question can be really nicely extended in an exercise called an energy audit.

I really love this exercise. So for example, every Monday, take 10 minutes to reflect on the last week and identify the habits, activities,

and ordinary moments that gave you the most energy, really, really gave you that kick of positive energy of joy. And at the end of the month,

use this insight to think about how can you actively design your week to increase your energy and joy in life? Because understanding actually what brings us joy day to day has very interesting effect on our brain called the Tetris effect.

That is, once we know what brings us happiness day to day, we tend to stop and appreciate those moments more often and therefore we're experiencing more happiness in life.

So we have this nice cycle of energy and joy. The much well known to you.

They might be relaxing, but they're not necessary changing you in a way and you definitely not learning. So it could be going for a meal in a favorite restaurant. It could be simply stinking front of belly watching your favorite show.

Then we have a find and seek. That involves exploring new placings and trying something unfamiliar. It could be a mini adventure that generate new stories.

It could be that you are going on a walking tour around new city or you're visiting a museum in your era. And the final one is go and become.

And that very much offers a chance to learn new skills, meet new people, try something different. So it could be that you engage in learning how to paint or you run a half a marathon with others to raise money for a good cause and what the researchers suggested here is that since personal growth development and learning new skills are very much vital to happiness actually the go and become brings the most joy to our

lives so at the end of very busy week. We can fly and flop in front of TV. We can find and seek and spend some time with a friend to play a sport or we can go and become in a cooking class run by a new neighbor.

And the last one, the last activity takes the most effort, courage, organization, but actually results in the most amount of happiness. So again,

this question, how you spent your free time is very important so that you can create holidays, weekends, breaks that truly fuels your happiness.

And I personally love learning and exploring something new. So this question is always fun for me to answer. And the third and the final question on reflecting on our moment -to -moment happiness is how do you respond when you are unhappy and how do you reset and recover to re -center?

Because again, being happy does not necessarily mean we are not experiencing challenging emotions. We actually really should be accepting them,

inviting them to our life, you know, being with those moments of difficulties because when we're trying to avoid suppress or control difficult feelings.

Unfortunately, our mind spends much more longer to rethinking, to be relieving those specific events repeatedly.

So ironically, even though we're trying to suppress something that is difficult thinking, okay, if I suppress it, then I'll be happier. Long term, that actually means that we'll be experiencing the challenging emotions for much longer.

And that is why understanding how you react when you are unhappy and how can you reset and recover is so important. So for example, for me, in addition to my classic to -do list,

with lots of different life admin, work things I need to do, I have my rest list. And on my rest list, I have lots of different activities that helps me to chatting with my sisters.

But I found that rest list really, really good because when I have a very hectic week, it's really important for me to understand when and how I'm going to recover.

So it's almost like I have my really clear times of that self -care, which is really important to me. And understanding that I have those moments is very important for me also in the sense that I then don't get overwhelmed with lots of different aspects and external aspects that are happening in my life.

So thank you so much for listening. Just as a recap, we have three questions to reflect on your long -term happiness. are fueled by you.

And the three questions that can help you to reflect on your moment -to -moment happiness are what activities, habits and ordinary moments give you energy and joy.

How do you spend free time to learn, grow and create actively more happiness? And how do you respond when you are unhappy and how do you rest and recover to re -center and rebalance.

So I hope this episode will inspire you to look more closely into your happiness and introduce a reflective practice into your well -being routine. I see you at the next episode and I,

as always, dare you to be happy. Bye!