I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. Can you? Believe it or not, that's a great question. And I find it hard to believe that we haven't asked it yet. But believe you me, we're going to ask it today.
Welcome to Happy Life Studios. Have your holidays done. I just can't believe it. We're here to make your holidays happier. I find it hard to believe, but believe you me. And not just a Merry Christmas, but a... Don't forget Jolly. I just can't. Yeah, all those things. Believe it. And more.
Merry Christmas and happier holidays. What's up, happy lifers? Thanks for joining us today. We are so happy you did. Happy, merry, merry, happy, happy, merry, merry, happy Christmas. I hope that your Christmas will be exactly that. Happy and merry. We want to help you make your holidays happier. We want to help your Christmas to be merry. Kind of surprised that I haven't been putting out more episodes for happier holidays because it's one of my favorite times to post podcasts. I absolutely love our happier holidays.
Holidays can be such a stressful time for so many. And yet with just simple little happy hacks, just simple little changes of perspective, we can help people's holidays to be happier. I mean, even you listening to the podcast and sharing it with other people, and thank you for all the people that do that. It really means a lot to us. But even living out these little hacks and these little tips and pointers that we talk about or you hear about from other places, when we live those out, we make the holidays happier for the people around us. So I love the happier holiday season. And I'm even more surprised that I haven't got out more episodes this holiday season because I just finally, after all these years, put out that new introduction. But I have a reason why I haven't put it out, and it's actually a good reason.
I'm actually listening to my own advice. And the reason why I'm not getting out the episode is because I don't have the content. I've got several podcast ideas for the holidays in my head right now. So that isn't the issue. Oftentimes it is when it comes to holidays. You're putting out something every week for the holidays. You know, sometimes it can be a little taxing on your mind. But I have the content. The reason I haven't been putting out more episodes and the reason why some of the episodes have actually been late. The last two weeks have been late. And now we're the week before Christmas.
The reason they've been late is because, like I said, I've been living, I've been trying to live what I've been talking about. And I just have a lot going on with the holidays. I've been enjoying my family. I've been, you know, shopping. I'm the one that does all the shopping. I mean, I'll drive all around the whole Seattle area. I mean, like today, I did that. I drove all the way up to Bellingham, which is like two hours normally. Like right now, it's a little bit before midnight, and I'm driving home from seeing my son.
I went to see him at work, and then we hung out afterwards at a concert at this little dive bar where he lives in Bellingham, and I just had a blast, and I just wanted to see my son. And I was looking at Christmas presents while I was driving up there to see him. I said all that to say that I'm the guy that will drive all over just to try to find the perfect Christmas present. I've been doing a lot of pre-Christmas shopping. I like to shop a lot before I figure out what I'm going to get exactly.
I put a lot of care into giving gifts, and I'm just kind of built that way. Not everyone is built that way, and I wouldn't expect everyone to be built that way, but that's kind of my role. And I had a last-minute speaking engagement, and I could have got the podcast out by then, but if I would have, it would have been pretty hairy, it would have been pretty hectic, and my happier holidays would have turned into crappier holidays. My Merry Christmas would have turned into a hairy Christmas. And I just decided, you know what, I'm just not going to get it out. I am not going to push it. If it comes, it comes, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. And so I've actually been following my own advice that we've been talking about. Christmas is meant to be enjoyed.
And to make it happy and not hairy, sometimes we have to slow down and enjoy the season. And that's why I haven't put out the episodes on time or put out more episodes because I've just really been slowing down and enjoying the season. In fact, right now I'm trying something I've never tried before. Killing two birds with one stone. Actually, that's not very good Christmas imagery, is it? The 12 days of Christmas, the tree is full of all sorts of birds. We don't want to kill any birds on Christmas time. However, I guess if you think about it, killing two birds with one stone, I don't like that analogy, but that's kind of like BOGO, isn't it? Buy one, get one free. You get two birds with one stone, you get two birds for $1, whatever. Maybe I'll say it this way.
I'm kind of wrapping two presents with one bow. I'm recording this as I'm driving home from seeing my son. Like I said, I got a couple-hour drive here, and I'm just in the holiday mood after hanging out with my son. I've been listening to Christmas tunes in the car. I'm a little bummed out that my batteries ran out on my Christmas lights that I have inside of my car just hanging up above me.
But I'm listening to the music. I'm just having a good time. And I thought I want to bring you guys along with me. And I thought I would try recording this episode while I'm driving because I'm afraid if I don't, I'm not going to get it done. There's just so many things that I have on my list to do. So I thought I would try recording this on the way home because, like I said, I'm afraid if I wait until I get home, I might not just sit in front of my computer and do it because there's going to be too many other things in front of me, screaming at me, trying to get my attention, trying to get my time. And right now I'm driving anyway. So I might as well just bring you along with me.
So let's get back to what I have a hard time believing and why it's such a good question to ask the question, can you believe it? This episode is, I don't want to say sponsored, but it was inspired by a podcast I listened to called Literally by Rob Lowe. And in it, they were talking about, Rob used to have a show way back in the day called, I think they called it The Lowe Files. I don't remember all the details that they talked about, but I remember he had a show and he kind of talked about the paranormal. He interviewed people, you know, about the paranormal or maybe they saw Bigfoot or something like that. And the thing that got me was when he talked about his catchphrase, his theme phrase, what they talk about all the time, it was something along the lines of, it's just more fun to believe. I want to live in a world where Loch Ness Monster is possible or something like that. And I thought, that is so cool because Christmas is all about belief.
Believing is what makes Christmas so amazing. Man, I wish you could see this. I'm just passing by a casino right now, and they must have 50 trees, huge trees, and every one of them is lit. Every branch is lit in a different color. It is absolutely gorgeous. It's kind of the scenery of Christmas. Believing is kind of like the lights of Christmas now that I think about it. I wasn't planning on saying that, but that really just—belief is what lights up. Not just Christmas, but it's what lights up life, like Rob Lowe said.
It's just more fun when you believe. I want to live in a world where the Loch Ness Monster is possible. I mean, why not? We can choose to believe or we can choose to doubt. It's the same thing. Doubt is really belief in something negative or belief in nothing, right? Doubt, I guess, is kind of like the opposite of belief. But in other ways, maybe they're more like cousins or stepbrothers or something. Because doubt is belief, but it's just belief in something else. Fear is belief that something bad is going to happen. Faith is belief that something good is going to happen. Doubt is simply belief that it's not going to work out. It's belief.
So if we can believe that something's not going to work out, we can believe that something will work out. And Christmas is all about belief. That's why it's such a holiday for children, because children know how to believe. They just believe. They love Santa Claus. It's like the movie The Polar Express. I was sharing this concept with my wife, and she said, oh, like The Polar Express, where there's a bell and only kids can hear the bell. It's Santa's bell, and when it's rung, adults can't hear it anymore because you can only hear it if you believe. Christmas only works if you believe.
It isn't just going through the season. It's believing while you're going through the season. But at one point, we're told as kids to grow up. You know, when you're a kid, you just imagine. You love to imagine. You love to believe. You believe you're going to do great things. You believe in the Loch Ness Monster. I mean, all these things. Santa Claus is bigger than life for you. And then you grow up and you're told to grow up. I think imagination is what we get our belief from. When we have a vivid imagination, then we can believe that it's going to work out right.
Truth is, we can have a vivid imagination for the negative too, I suppose. I mean, fear in a lot of ways is a very vivid imagination. But there's something about having a positive belief system. And when you're kids, you just tend to believe. You tell a kid they look nice, they say, I know. You tell a kid that they're really good at that, they say, I know. Then we grow up. Well, I really like that outfit. Well, you know, I just paid this for it. It wasn't that much. Or you look great today. Ah, well, you know, you're going to do great things. Well, I sure hope so.
Can you see how we can no longer hear the bells of Christmas anymore? We can no longer hear the music that's being played because our belief has dwindled. It's disappeared. Our imagination went away. But I don't want to grow up. I want to be a Toys R Us kid. I want to be a kid that still believes. I want to be a kid at heart. Think about it. Christmas is so great even for adults. And I was watching it the other night when I was watching some adults watch their children. It was at a movie. And the kids were talking about Christmas and they opened up Christmas presents or something like that. I've seen this movie before, but I never remember watching that part. And I saw the adults looking at their kids. And even though it was a movie.
That's what happens in real life. As adults, we love Christmas when our kids are there. And when they're children, man, the way they just, ah, they get so excited. They see the stockings full and they open up their presents. They can't wait to open up their presents. And then we get older and, you know. But kids know how to believe. And kids make Christmas so magical. It's just something magical. Whatever word you want to use. At Christmas, it's a warm, magical place. And even when we go through difficult times at Christmas, there's still those warm moments when we see the belief of a child or a childlike person. There's a difference between being childish and being childlike. And I want to be childlike.
And I have a very vivid imagination myself. And sometimes it gets the best of me. Sometimes negativity pops in and it can create all sorts of fear and anxiety. But I've really been working on having a positive mindset so that my imagination goes to a good place. Because if I can believe it's not going to happen, it takes the same amount of effort to believe that it will.
If I believe in doubt, if I believe in bad, then I can believe in good. I can believe that it will work out. But most of my life I've been told, and they don't always tell you out loud. Sometimes they roll their eyes at you. Sometimes you hear them whispering with someone else about you. Even when I go to speak places, a lot of times I speak a lot of times in churches. And a lot of churches, they don't like how I speak because I just use imagination. And I don't go through the same, I don't know, a lot of pastors. It's like, well, we did go to school for it. I went to Bible college and they taught me more in Bible college how to preach a sermon than they taught me how to get to know people and help people. And I did learn some of that.
So many churches are a lot alike because the speakers, the preachers, the special speakers that come in, they use the same format when they speak. I don't do that because I'm not built that way. And if they know what I'm going to say before I say it. Sometimes using imagination kind of shocks people. It's like what Batman said to his butler, Alfred, in one of the movies. He talked about sometimes you have to use drama or imagination, something like that, to shock people out of apathy. And that's what I do when I speak. I like to use imagination. Because imagination awakens the brain cells, like Dr. Seuss says. He says, I like nonsense. It awakens the brain cells. And I think as long as we're waking in our brain cells, we're living. We're moving forward. We're kind of getting younger. When our brain cells start shutting down, it's when decay starts creeping in. It's when we start getting older. It's when we stop believing. It's when we stop hearing the music.
of Christmas. We stop hearing the bells. I think it's important that we awaken our imagination. I think it's vital that we awaken the belief. We follow our head a lot when we get older, but when we're kids, we follow our heart a lot. We have a heart for a reason. You can follow your head as long as your heart is in the picture. In the same way that when you follow your heart, the head needs to be in the picture as well. And man, there's so many illustrations and movies and songs that are about belief because that's what Christmas is. Christmas is about belief. The magic of believing.
And I don't want to lose that. I don't think that's maturing when you stop believing in things. I don't think that's maturing at all. I think it's kind of moving backwards. To figure out the art of growing up as an adult and can still continue to believe and to imagine and to dream and to believe that it will be okay. Tap into the child-likeness of Christmas. Sometimes the best way to do that is to watch kids. Pay attention to kids this year.
When you watch the movies, pay attention to kids. Maybe watch some of the old movies, what I love about Christmas. That's the time as adults where we watched Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and those movies that we saw as children. And that's what Christmas does. It reminds us, why it's so warm for a lot of us, it reminds us of our childhood. And if we could go through life reminding ourselves of the good stuff about our childhood, we'd tap into that more at Christmas. And I'd say tap into that this year. Look at kids this year. Pay attention to people that are very creative people. Pay attention to the art. Just look around you.
at the details, at the beauty, you have to try to find something. What you're doing is, and maybe it's easier for some people than others, but when you're trying to find something that's colorful, that's beautiful, that maybe you haven't looked at for a while, you're paying attention to things that you weren't paying attention to before. It might be more difficult for some people, but what it's doing is it's exercising those imagination muscles. And that's what we need to do. If we want to live a happier life, we've got to tap into our imagination. Like Norman Vincent Peale said, believe in yourself, have faith in your abilities.
Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy. Wow, well said. So believe. It's easy to believe at Christmas time. Just watch the kids. Just become like that kid. Awaken that child in you this Christmas season and this year. We may make Christmas last all year. Make it meaningful and make it last all year long. And we will do that when we work on increasing or getting back to our imagination again.
becoming childlike in our belief system. And even in some of our, I mean, go take your shoes off and run around in the grass or in the snow or, you know, I mean, make a snow angel, throw a snowball just up into the air if nothing else. Do something you did as a child to awaken that child inside of you, to awaken that imagination that you may believe. Instead of finding it hard to believe, may we start saying it's easy to believe. Instead of saying, I can't believe it, let's start saying, I can believe it. I can believe that I'm alive. I can believe that I've been blessed. I can believe that there is more to life than me. I can believe that it's going to work out. Speak those words out loud. Let your body hear it. Let your ears hear you say, I do believe. I can believe. Watch some Christmas movies while you're at it because they're going to give you all sorts of stuff on belief.
So don't let people shut down your imagination. Don't let them squelch. Is that a word? Squelch? Squelch? Don't let them squeeze out the life of you by squeezing out your imagination. Because when we squeeze out the belief, I think we squeeze out the life. A life that's worth living is a life that's worth believing. A life that's alive is a life that believes, not that says it can't believe. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.
You're fantastic. You're wonderful. And that, I can believe. And I hope you will, too. Thanks for listening. I hope that helped. Remember, life isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean it can't be happy. Well, there you have it. You're not road tripping with Stevo, but it's kind of close. And I don't know how well it will sound. I hope the sound is going to be okay, but I wanted to get it recorded so I could at least put something out, even if it's a few days late. Because it's important that our holidays be happy. And it's important that we be happy because we are best selves when we're happy. And that comes from belief.
By the way, if you're looking for some end-of-the-year giving, we would love any help or support that you could give. You can go to happylife.studio, click on the support tab. There's all sorts of ways that you can support us there. We even have a link that shows some of our current needs that we have in putting out this podcast and the other things that we do at Happy Life Studios. We don't just do podcasts here. We do all sorts of stuff. And we rely upon the support of generous individuals to keep us doing what we do. We don't make any money off of our podcast. We don't have ads or anything like that.
We just want to get the message out. So if you'd like to be a part of that message and help us spread the happy, just go to happylife.studio. I'll leave a link in the show notes as well. And other ways you can help support us too are to find our content online and like it, share it, share with other people who could use some happy themselves. It's really easy. It's a few clicks of the button. And what happens is when our stuff, I'm not really as concerned about the numbers for myself personally for Happy Life Studios. I don't really care about. I've kind of given up on that. I want to be more like a child. I just want to enjoy putting the content out. But what happens is when our posts, when our podcasts get a lot of action, what it does is it causes the platform that is hosting the podcast and hosting the post, they post it more. They share it more. And it reaches a much wider audience just because the algorithm says, hey, this is getting some attention. So people must like it. So we'll keep sharing it.
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at happylife.studio. Well, I still have a little bit of time before I get home, so it's time to put the Christmas tunes back on and enjoy some Christmas. Have a happy, merry, merry, happy, happy, merry, merry, merry, happy, jolly, holly, holly, jolly, wonderful Christmas. You can tell it's late. I'm starting to get loopy. Better turn off the mic and then save any further embarrassment.