It is a new year and many are looking for ways to make positive changes in their lives.

We look at the science of happiness and get expert tips on how to find your joy.

That and more.

Stay with us as we dive into "Your South Florida."

Hello, and welcome to "Your South Florida."

I'm Arlene Borenstein, filling in for Pam Giganti.

With the start of a new year, many are on the quest for a reset, craving stronger connections and seeking purpose, which experts say can lead you on a path of self-discovery and ultimately happiness.

Aside from just feeling good, bringing happiness into your life has far-reaching health benefits, including a stronger immune system, less risk of cardiovascular disease, faster recovery times after illness, and may even help people live longer lives.

But with many feeling an increase in stress, anxiety, and overall poor mental health, finding true joy in life can seem like an overwhelming uphill climb.

Here with me now to share more about the science of happiness and some tips to finding your joy is Robert Mack, positive psychology practitioner.

Wow, an author of "Happiness from the Inside Out: The Art and Science of Fulfillment."

Robert, thank you for being here.

Thanks so much for having me.

I hope that by the end of this, we're gonna feel so much happier.

I hope so too.

I hope so too.

It's a good start.

It's a good start.

Yes, it is, absolutely.

All right, so positive psychology is something that you see a lot these days on social media, on newscasts, all over the place, and so you are an expert.

Is this something that truly exists, truly works?

Absolutely, it's about a 20-year-old science, and it's the scientific study and science of happiness and success.

Yeah, most of business-as-usual psychology focused on mental illness, and dysfunction, and what's wrong with people.

And so positive psychology sort of came along.

Really, it's a function of the work of Martin Seligman, but it mostly focuses on mental health and wellbeing and what's right with people.

So it really focuses on sort of human strengths.

Wow, and not their challenges.

[Robert] That's right, exactly.

I love that.

So what are some misconceptions?

I know that you hear a lot of, "Always be positive," or, "Keep a positive mindset," and maybe that's not always necessarily the case.

So maybe clear some things up for us in this world of positive psychology.

You nailed it, I feel like you could teach it.

But the first misconception, I think, is the one you just spoke to, which is that most people think of positive psychology as positive thinking, or that it should be mostly or exclusively about positive thinking.

But that's not the case.

Positive psychology includes positive thinking, but it's about so much more.

It's about grit, and gratitude, and resilience, and pleasure, and purpose, and positive emotion.

And so it's about a lot of things in addition to positive thinking.

But it's not only, or mostly, and certainly not exclusively about positive thinking.

So people who may reject this idea that you can have this positive psychology part of your life, perhaps they're having a bad time.

Some simple steps that they can take that may not be like so overwhelming.

Yeah, I think start with low-hanging fruit.

So take care of your body, right?

So sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management.

That's just basic and fundamental.

I'd start there and then I'd say I'd move on as well.

One of the things that positive psychology has shared over the years is that relationships matter.

And so focusing on social support and trying to stay socially connected is a really good thing.

It helps to make your life be better and healthier, but also helps you to live longer.

So certainly, relationships matter.

And then the other piece of it, I'd say for lots of folks, is just gratitude.

We all hear a lot about gratitude it can almost become a cliche, but gratitude does matter.

And focusing on what you most love and appreciate about yourself, others, and like itself is extraordinarily beneficial.

Purpose, living a purposeful life, that's something else you sort of promote with this idea of positive psychology.

Yeah, for sure.

I think a challenge with unhappiness is that when you become unhappy, you often dive deeper into your unhappiness and it makes you increasingly self-absorbed and self-interested.

And that could be a problem because it can make the unhappiness worse and it can make it more difficult to be and feel happy.

And so when you have a purpose or when you can at least set an intention for finding or discovering your purpose or creating your purpose, you get outside of yourself.

And when you get outside of yourself, you make it a lot easier to be happy.

That's such a good point.

Also who you have around you makes a big difference, your support system.

'Cause let's just be honest, sometimes at work, you don't get along with everybody.

Sometimes with family, especially around the holidays.

You have people at the table who you may not agree with, right?

[Robert] Yeah, that's right.

Exactly.

Especially on the holidays, that's right.

Yeah, the support system is so important.

Absolutely.

George Vaillant conducted a study a while ago, but it was the sort of the biggest and largest longitudinal study ever.

And the basic conclusion was like: relationships matter and they matter a great deal.

And so you wanna do what you can to connect with people that you care about.

And also, if there aren't people in your life currently that you feel like you care about or that care about you, try to make new connections.

Openness is good.

You don't have to be extroverted to make that happen.

But connecting with people is extraordinarily beneficial not just for your physical health, but also your psychological and emotional health.

You make so many good points.

Like, not everybody is an extrovert, you know?

And are there sort of tips or a path that you provide with your guidance to help folks who need that sort of push, that help to be more comfortable maybe around people that they don't necessarily... they're not fond of?

Yeah.

Gosh, that's a good question.

Or maybe they're not comfortable with.

Yeah, I was voted most shy of my high school class, so that question really resonates with me.

I was introverted, so the fact that- [Arlene] The shyest.

[Robert] Yes.

[Arlene] Oh, wow.

And so I'd say start where it's easy.

Start with the low-hanging fruit.

Often, that means putting yourself on what I might call like a progressive socialization training program.

That's kind of what I did with myself.

And so it's like maybe the first few days, or maybe the first week, you do the easy thing, which is just say, "Hi," to somebody new.

Every day, you make it a point to say, "Hi," to someone.

You can kinda move on after you've said, "Hi."

And the next week, you might say something like, "How are you?"

And that's it.

And then you can continue to sort of like up the ante with yourself until you become increasingly comfortable and confident saying, "Hi," and introducing yourself or connecting with people that you might not know.

Tell me about being shy.

What was your experience like that inspired you to do what you do?

You were suffering from this depression and having some really tough moments in your own life, and that's what sort of had you wanna help others.

I was deeply depressed for many, many years, and that deep depression, it went beyond sort of basic dysphoria.

It was actually, I think, severe in clinical depression and I got to a place where I was suicidal.

And I remember doing some research around suicidal means and methods.

And I had the most unpredictable, inexplicable experience ever, which is that as I dug the knife in, I felt this limit, and this love and inexpressible peace, and really this unfathomable joy, the kind of and the likes of which I had never experienced before.

And so at that moment I was like, "I'm gonna postpone the suicide for like five minutes, 10 minutes."

So in that five or 10 minutes, I started doing a different kinda research around happiness.

Like, what is happiness, and what is depression, and what is unhappiness, and what's the difference between depression and unhappiness?

And it's been a few decades, but I have to say I'm pretty surprised and inspired that we can all make the kind of changes that I made, at least with respect to happiness.

And you talk to people through what you do every day.

What would you say are some of their biggest challenges and struggles?

What's stopping them from improving their lives in this way?

And what would you say to those who wanna seek help but maybe are nervous or scared to do that?

Yeah, I'd say just a... Two things.

Nature and nurture.

So I'd say that the brain is built for survival, but not necessarily for happiness.

That's not necessarily a bad thing because if you survive in this body, it's increases the odds that you can be happy in this body.

And so I'd say the brain has a number of biases, negativity bias, confirmation bias, all kinds of biases, that serve a very productive and adaptive function, but it can also get in the way of happiness.

So just understanding that alone can be helpful.

And so what we wanna do is we wanna learn how to rewire the brain, right?

We rewire the brain by adopting and practicing very simple practices.

And they don't have to be very many.

It doesn't have to be very many.

[Arlene] Do you know a short one we can do right now?

Of course.

Let's do it.

[Robert] Let's do it.

Yes.

Okay.

It's a micro meditation.

[Arlene] Oh wow.

Okay.

Yeah, so a micro meditation is remembering- [Arlene] Look, I'm getting ready.

I know, I see you getting ready right now.

You changed your posture and everything.

I love it, I love it, a willing participant.

So the idea is to remember in not a morbid way, but remember that hopefully we have 100 years left in these beautiful human flesh costumes, right?

Maybe only a day, maybe only a minute, we don't know.

So no moment is guaranteed, so you remember that.

[Arlene] Oh, that's heavy.

It's heavy, right?

And so the idea is we wanna celebrate this one moment we have right now as deeply as humanly possible.

We can best do that by letting all our thoughts go, breathing into the nose, from the stomach, from the diaphragm.

You let your stomach expand on the inhale, you let it contract on the exhale.

And you do it with only one intention and one intention only, and then it's to enjoy that breath as deeply as humanly possible, to juice it for as much joy as you can without letting thoughts get in the way.

So it's just in through the nose.

Out of the mouth or the nose.

And the idea is you wanna practice that as often as you can throughout the day, simply for the goal or with the goal of feeling good, of enjoying it.

If you try to get good at it, you always suck.

If you try to enjoy it, you'll get good at it, but you also enjoy it, so that's the point.

Absolutely.

We invite everyone out there if they're having a hard time to do that quick meditation with us.

And it felt really good.

Good.

Yeah.

You don't think about anything else except your breath, so.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you're so brave.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and doing good for others because you needed the same.

So, so wonderful to meet you, Robert Mack.

Ah, my pleasure and privilege, thanks for having me.

Of course.

All right, well, recently, the "Your South Florida" crew spent some time with a local photographer to hear how a low point in her life led her on a journey of self-discovery and finding her joy.

I love photographing people in general, and nature, and all the beautiful things 'cause you get to show your perspective.

You get to see if you can capture some emotion.

Normally, you're not just taking a picture from one perspective.

You're walking around and trying to get various viewpoints.

And I like doing that to walk around something and see its depth.

My spiritual awakening was a combination of losing trust in the world.

After the political heat in 2017, accompanied with maybe my kids growing older, not needing me, accompanied with my marriage feeling a little less than it used to, you know?

And just in general, starting to kind of lose my faith in the world, lose my trust in the world, I guess.

And that was became like a fork in the road.

That became just a moment where I had a choice.

I can continue feeling bad about everything or I can throw everything into a different direction.

So I started searching.

I started searching for anything that was like a good representation of a better way to be.

I went through different churches, I went through different spiritual modalities, and I started going to different groups.

And I started watching what I listened to, watching what I watched on TV.

We consume a lot of negativity accidentally, so I started really curating all the things that I listened to.

And I was really surprised at how it started to make a difference.

And I found Lisa McCourt's JOY School Group.

And I wasn't really a group person.

I was kind of a loner, I'm kind of like, "I do my own thing."

I love people, but I was just never one to talk in a group.

I'm kind of an introvert, but she made me feel really comfortable.

And everybody in the group was really raw.

Not at first.

Like, it took us all a while to get warm.

And I can see...

I've never been in any kind of group healing dynamic, but I can see why they work.

And when some people are vulnerable, everybody else listens and really pays attention, and everybody else kind of can feel it, and those emotions start to bubble in themselves, too.

So it was a process of learning to do things differently, learning to meditate, learning to pause before I reacted to things, which is what meditation teaches me.

It was learning to own my own stuff.

Because if I wanted to trust the world again, I needed to find truth.

And if I needed to find truth, I needed to find truth in myself first.

So I needed to be very mindful of my thoughts, because at the end of the day, I really wanna see people fully.

I want all the perspective, like, in a photograph.

And doing that really expanded, expanded like everything.

I have so much more peace and so much more joy now.

It wasn't always comfortable.

I didn't like all the things that I found out about myself.

It was eye-opening because I feel like I was just kind of an average person, and now I have above-average peace.

I'm still an average person and I'm still a work in progress, but I have this above-average peace.

Even when things go wrong, even when things go terribly wrong, I can handle them completely different.

I don't go to my old emotional reactions.

I pause and I kind of try to see the whole perspective and I try to see it from the other person's view.

It didn't happen overnight for me.

I'd like to be like, "Oh, yeah, I took this group and it was great, and in like six weeks, I was amazing."

Or, "I read this book and it was perfect.

And I went to this church, and I saw this service, and I was saved."

And it was work, it was work.

It was like an exercise routine, or changing your diet, or anything like that.

It was just like... My goal was to be out of anxiety and to be in a more peaceful place that I knew existed.

I've felt love before, I've felt peace before, I knew those things existed.

So it was just me working towards that.

A lot of these principles of looking within, and being mindful, and changing your own habits, and seeing the light and the love in each person, even if it's buried by their story and by their past, these are principles that are not new, right?

These are principles that are kind of like the cornerstone of almost every spiritual teaching, right?

They are not really rules, they are just suggestions.

If you want more peace and you want more love, these are kind of steps.

And you don't have to do the steps.

It might take you longer to get there.

When I first fell in love with photography, it was long walks of nature that had me hooked, that I could show people the way the sunlight was on the tree or coming through the moss, and also have that moment, see the beauty in it.

And so I started, once again, going for these long walks that I hadn't gone for for quite some time.

Therefore, falling more in love with nature than I've ever fallen before.

My goal in the future is to do some sort of nature charity.

I've been curating a bunch of nature prints and cards, and I'd love to do something where a proceed of it, like 20% or something, goes back to some sort of conservation.

That's the other reason I photograph nature a lot and throw it up when I can on my social media.

It's not like, "Wow, look at me, I'm amazing."

I just want people to fall in love with it more.

I really want them to look at it and go, "Wow, I haven't picked up my camera in a while.

Like, maybe I should get out and fall in love with it again."

And, "Cool, like, I wanna inspire that.

Let's do that."

'Cause to be honest, I'm probably never gonna be a millionaire as a nature photographer, but maybe I can inspire some people to get out and love it.

And they will start to think differently about maybe some of the things that they are buying or consuming or the way they're moving in the world and to value nature more.

And I feel like that would be a beautiful chain reaction right there.

Joining me now to talk more about finding your joy is Lisa McCourt, founder of JOY School and author of "Free Your Joy: The Twelve Keys to Sustainable Happiness."

Lisa, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Arlene.

It's a pleasure.

Is this really work for you?

I love the concept of this.

Oh my gosh, yes.

Yes, absolutely.

You love what you do.

I love what I do.

Once that veil has been pulled back and you see these principles and tools that hardly anyone is aware of, it just becomes such a passion.

I can't imagine doing anything else remotely meaningful with my life, other than just joining the team of helping to spread word about these ideas and practices.

I love it.

I love it.

Speaking of awakening, we just heard from Sonya, who is one of your students.

Tell us about her.

Yeah, oh my gosh.

And your experience with her.

Sonya's so lovely.

She's been in JOY School for a very long time.

She was part of a in-person group that we used to have.

It's all online now, and she's a valued member of the online community, but just growing together.

And that's what we do.

We're such a supportive, loving community.

I know Rob talked about the importance of that, and there are people in the group who say, "I have golf buddies, I have bridge partners, I have family, but I need to come here to feel truly seen and attuned to and gotten."

And that's what it provides for one another.

And so, it just becomes a really beautiful place to counterbalance a lot of what goes on outside of JOY School.

And these are probably all different cases, all different types of people.

How do you approach sort of teaching joy to any person that may come across?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

And it's true that in our external presentation, we are a pretty diverse group.

We've got older people, younger people, a lot of different cross-section of what appears to separate us externally.

But we're really so focused in JOY School on that underlying peace, that soul, if you're comfortable with that terminology, that inner essence that all of us possess where we are all far more alike than different.

And the vulnerabilities are the same, the challenges are often the same.

So the external kind of fades away.

Well, people might say, "Lisa, you couldn't have always been this joyful and this happy."

Were you always a joyful person?

No, no.

They would be right.

They would be very, very right about that.

And it's all relative because I think a lot of things are only clear in hindsight.

Before I learned the principles and tools that I teach in JOY School, I was a completely different person.

And I was very, very good at inauthentic happiness.

I knew how to wear the smile and make sure everything looked pretty on the surface because part of my early indoctrination is that I need to be pleasing to those around me.

It felt like a matter of survival for me to be pleasing.

And that meant, "Put on a happy face, and play the role that you're prescribed, and don't complain about anything, and don't stand up for yourself or ask for your needs to be met."

And that was very strong conditioning that I had to overcome much, much later in life.

So I think I didn't know that I wasn't happy because it becomes the water you swim in, right?

We don't know until we know.

So I really didn't discover what joy was until I learned to drop all those masks.

Wow.

And is there a difference between joy and happiness?

[Lisa] Yes.

Yes?

Yes, there's a difference.

In JOY School, we define joy as a freedom feeling, and it's a rightness in your own skin.

It's a rightness to feel the whole spectrum of natural, beautiful human emotions that we're here to experience, right?

'Cause we've been conditioned that we have these emotions that we want to feel that are good and desirable, and we have this whole pile of other emotions that are undesirable.

We wanna try to avoid them, they're unattractive, so we spend so much effort and energy trying to stay over here and not be here.

And really, when you're okay with the full spectrum of human emotion, there is an undercurrent of joy in all of them.

You could feel sadness or grief and recognize that there's a poignancy, and a depth, and compassion that you couldn't have reached any other way than through that grief or sadness.

You can feel anger and feel a rightness, and a strengthening of your boundaries, and a strengthening in your ability to defend those around you through anger.

So once we get okay with all of our emotions, we can feel joy all the time.

Whereas happiness, like everybody wants some, nothing wrong with happiness, but we wouldn't even really recognize happiness unless we had the contrast that we use to define it.

So joy is a much more all-encompassing emotion.

A lot of us seek outward approval or things on the outside, "Oh, this Valentine's Day, I wanna date," or, "Oh, if I just get pregnant this one time," or, "Oh, if I find my soulmate," or, "Oh, I gotta finish my master's or PhD, I'm gonna be happy."

But there is this whole idea that that is actually not the case, that it comes from within that you talk about.

Yeah, very much so.

That's one of the top programs that nearly all of us have been programmed with, this idea that our happiness can be sourced outside of us.

And we have this checklist, and I can be happy within myself once I get A, B, C, D, and E checked off out here, and it's a completely backward equation.

We are always in every moment creating our external circumstances based on what's going on inside of us.

It's an inside-out progression.

So cultivating the skills of contentment and inner peace and joy will just change out how you show up in the world, how you talk, how you make your decisions, how you change... Everything in your life changes externally once you've changed what's going on internally.

What was the moment where, "I wanna learn more about joy and happiness," or like you said, sometimes you don't even realize you're not as happy as you probably could be or joyful as you probably could be.

What was that moment for you?

A lot of my teachers and gurus have that pivotal, that moment.

And I think for a lot of us, it comes more in crumbs.

For me, it was definitely a bit-by-bit progression.

A lot of it came through books, which is why I'm passionate about writing books on this topic.

A lot of it came through teachers and trainings, which is what made me inspired to join that team by starting JOY School.

So I think that it was a spiritual understanding for me, and it was pretty gradual.

Wow.

That is incredible.

Over time.

And you've given your gift through books, like you said, and this is the most recent, you have 36.

Quite a few, yeah.

And this is "Free Your Joy: The Twelve Keys to Sustainable Happiness."

Congratulations on this.

Thank you.

And if we go through the pages, what are we gonna learn and read about?

"Free Your Joy" is structured to take you through a full year of tools that you can go apply.

So everybody who's read it has told me, "I read it cover to cover, and now I'm going back and putting in the practices," which is totally fine, that's a beautiful way to do it.

But it's meant to be you read about a skill, a practice, and then you bring it into your life for a week, and then you come back and you get the next one, and then you go bring it into your life for a week.

Because I learned in my journey, I used to think that, "Oh, if I can just distill the most powerful nuggets and wrap it all up in this pretty course package and give it to somebody, they're gonna change their life like that."

And it's really about integration and application.

And that's where the JOY School comes in as well because seeing how other people are applying the principles, seeing the examples that they come with, sometimes that can help our understanding even more than trying to put it into place in our own life.

So the book is structured to be done over a year.

Okay.

So just give it some time, little by little.

I love that.

And there is an exercise that you call Escape the Maya, or maybe it's not what you call, but it's a practice and an exercise you teach.

Yeah, so Maya is a term that one of my friends and a frequent JOY School guest teacher, Miguel Ruiz Jr., talks about a lot.

And it's just this idea that we've all bought into, that happiness is out there.

And anyone who's ever gotten what they wanted knows that that lasts how long, a hot minute, and then you want something else.

It's always gonna be morphing and changing because the only reason we want these things is that we believe that they will bring us happiness.

[Arlene] Absolutely.

And until we've learned the skill of happiness, nothing is really gonna be able to do that.

So this is the Maya that Miguel talks about.

And yeah, there are so many practices, but one of the most simple quick ones that we could do for your- [Arlene] I'm ready for another one.

For your viewers.

Are you ready?

[Arlene] Yeah, let's do this.

Okay.

This is cool, let's do this together.

So you wanna raise your hand.

Back, outside your field of vision.

So you can't see your hand.

This is an Eckhart Tolle tool that- I'm not flexible For like 20 years.

No, you're good, that's fine.

Just so you can't see it.

No, I can't see it.

Yeah.

So without looking at your hand.

[Arlene] Okay.

Without moving your hand.

[Arlene] Okay.

Can you know that your hand is there?

[Arlene] Yes.

[Lisa] How?

'Cause I'm raising it.

[Lisa] Can you feel anything inside your hand?

I don't know the answer to this question.

Yeah, no, no, it's okay.

If you're directing all of your attention there, and normally we wouldn't be on TV doing it.

It'd be like in a very quiet, introspective place.

And just by directing your attention into the experience of your right hand, you'll feel like a little tingling, almost like a mild version of when someone says like a body part falls asleep, right?

It's almost like that.

So that's going on all the time.

And you can put your hand down now, but once you've tuned into it, like, maybe you can feel it in your thighs or your feet.

[Arlene] Yeah, it's there.

The top of your scalp.

Right?

[Arlene] Yeah.

So this is always going on.

Very interesting.

We don't recognize it typically, but this is what's been called prana, chi.

It's your life force.

It's called soul in some traditions.

I love that.

And just putting all our attention there, it requires some concentration.

And that, for that moment, pulls you out of the Maya.

It's similar to the exercise that my beautiful friend Rob expressed with the micro meditations.

Anything that gives you that moment of pure mindfulness where you're pulled out of that ticker tape, right?

We all have that ticker tape of thoughts scrolling past our minds.

Oh, absolutely.

All the time, and we tend to identify with that and think that that's who we are and our thoughts are not who we are.

So most of the JOY's goal exercises are some form of becoming the observer, the observer of ourselves, particularly the observer of our thoughts and feelings because we are not our thoughts and feelings.

We're something so much bigger.

And Eckhart Tolle, who...

This is a tool from Eckhart Tolle, he says that just doing that practice of tuning into your life force, it's beautiful to do as you're going to sleep at night.

The more you do that, you're actually elevating your consciousness just with that alone.

So that's just a...

Very simple.

We're so much stronger than we think.

Spiritually and in so many ways.

Oh yeah.

So wonderful what you do for folks out there.

Oh, my gosh, Lisa, so nice to meet you.

Oh, it's a pleasure to meet you, Arlene.

All right, well, for more ways to find your joy, follow us on Facebook @yoursouthfl.

I'm Arlene Borenstein, thanks for watching.