111 – Niro Feliciano- Finding Contentment in Your Everyday Life.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Ruthless Compassion is a podcast about how you can turn your emotional shit into fertilizer for success and see your darkest moments as opportunities to transform into a powerful kindness warrior. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review wherever you listen.

Welcome Nero Feliciano to the Ruthless Compassion podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Marcia.

Well, I'm very delighted to have you on, and especially since you have so many interesting things to talk about. But I think before we start, I would just like you to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about who you are and what you do for the listener.

Sure. So I am a cognitive psychotherapist. I've been in private practice for about 17 years now. I have mainly treated anxiety as well as relationship issues. Generally there tends to be relationship issues when someone in the family is struggling with anxiety, so have ended up doing both. I live in Connecticut. I'm a mom of four. I have three girls and a boy, two teenagers, so I'm kind of in the thick of it. My kids range from 15 to eight years old and I've been married for 19 years as of last weekend. So in a nutshell, that's me. And I also am an author. I just released a new book on April 5 called this Book Won't Make You Happy and it's about the difference between happiness and contentment.

What's your training? What's your background?

I actually went to medical school first and then changed careers and decided I wanted to do more therapy work. So I went to graduate school at Columbia in New York City, and got my degree in clinical social work and then did a few internships in the city as well. I worked mainly inpatient outpatient cancer and then went on to do family therapy and then ended up working in a group outpatient psychiatric practice before I went into private practice myself.

So you started out in medical school. Is this something that your parents are saying you need to be a doctor?

Well, it's not a stretch to make that assumption, being that my parents are South Asian or is Sri Lankan and they are both physicians themselves. So I must have internalized that message at some point. And I really, truly did love the medical field. But right before I got into medical school, I met my husband who was on the track to becoming an orthopedic surgeon and I had spent some time doing some other things. So I didn't start medical school until I was about 27 and at that point was really thinking not just about my own career. But what kind of life do I want. What kind of relationship do I want. How's it going to work with my husband beginning that surgical residency and me just starting medical school, we probably weren't going to see each other for the next twelve years of our life. And then I took a year off to really just consider that question and ended up in therapy. Well, doing therapy.

It's funny, a lot of us don't stop and think. We just stay on track, and then afterwards we go, was that a good choice? So good for you that you were able to actually stop and consider and then make a new choice, make a different choice? Because I think that's not the common kind of path for people.

It's not. I think had I been maybe five years younger and I was farther away from that time where you would consider having a family, I would have just been myopically focused. Because you spend a lot of time even just getting ready to get into medical school. But at that point, there was more to consider, being 27, almost 28. But it was certainly a hard decision. And I know one that my parents were very disappointed, and now, 30 years later or 20 years, whatever it is, they can understand why I picked the field that I'm in and are happy about it. But at the time, it was a big decision for everybody to come around to accept.

And I'm sure it was a lot easier to have more kids than you weren't up to your eyeballs in internship and residency.

Yes, for sure. I mean, we still have had a pretty crazy pace of life, and I certainly didn't intend to have four kids. I never thought that would happen. But I cannot imagine I probably would not have the family I have now had I been in that career.

That makes a lot of sense. So speaking of those kinds of issues, I'm very curious to know how you got interested in the topic of happiness versus contentment.

So I live in Fairfield County, which is known to be kind of a pressure cooker in terms of achievement and acquisition. We're around a lot of money, a lot of accomplishment. Some of the best schools in the country are within an hour, an hour to away. And as an anxiety specialist, I have seen the correlation between that type of mentality and culture and the development of anxiety and then other issues, substance, depression, all of these things that people struggle with across the board around the country. But we seem to have such a high incidence in this incident in the area that I live in, and yet at the same time seeing so many books on happiness come out. And at one point I thought about writing a book on how to get happier. But as we went year by year, and even prior to the pandemic, therapists were full. I didn't have people to refer patients to. And my thought was, why is this happening? Why are we getting more anxious and depressed when we have all the information we need to find more peace and calm and happiness? And I really think it's these cultural values that we've internalized that happiness tends to lie in achievement and acquisition.

Essentially, what you do and how well you do it and what you have and how much you have of it. And there is this thought that I will be happier when I find the partner or have the family, or buy the house, or get the car, or find a job. But what we don't consider is that talking about being myopically focused on getting to whatever that goal post is when we get there, there are new challenges that accompany each new level. And unless we're attuned to finding happiness or finding contentment as I talk about it in the book, when we get to that challenge or get to that level, we're going to be constantly searching. And it's a combination of us being inundated with this desire for more through commercial advertising, through social media and comparison, but also our own neurological dopamine circuits that are wired for more and not necessarily finding that place where we can appreciate what we have already. So the book is really about the difference between the two. I define happiness and contentment in a very simple statement. If happiness is having everything you want, then contentment is watching everything you have.

And when we can access that place, no matter what level you're on, you can find that place of happiness, peace, fulfillment and still get to those goals, but in a much more mentally healthy way.

And the name of your book.

It's called This Book Won't Make You Happy: Eeight Keys to Finding True Contentment. So it's kind of a play on the word happy. And what's been so fun is people posting the book and saying, but it did says it's like what makes you happy. But people are actually finding another type of happiness in reading it.

So when you say contentment is wanting what you have, can you elaborate a little bit more about that?

Sure. So we are society, especially with social media, and constantly being brought into this world of comparison, even though we know it's curated and filtered. We are flooded with images of perfection and beauty, whether that means we're holding up our own bodies or our homes or our children or relationships to these curated world. It's always this process of evaluating what we know to be the reality of our lives, which is imperfect to this image of perfection. And with contentment, you're able to see what is already good in your life. It might not be perfect, but it's good. And it's enough to be satisfying if we can actually change the lens in which we look at the world. And the practices that I write about in the book literally help rewire us to change that lens. And I know this because even after I've written it, they say there's a subconscious thought where we write the books that we need ourselves. And I can tell you, Marcia, I needed this book for myself. I didn't even realize it until after the fact. But it has made me literally see the world differently. I appreciate very simple things that they're not perfect, they're not extraordinary, but they're good and they're incredibly satisfying and they help you to feel content in the day to day.

Now, that doesn't mean I've given up my goals. I have a lot of goals. I have four kids, I wrote a book, I have a podcast myself. I have a private practice. I believe in goals. We need to set them in order to achieve them. But there's a much healthier way to do it. While you can still enjoy your life along the path to getting there.

You got to live your life while it's going on.

That's right. Because really, life is lived in the day to day and most of our life is on the journey. It's not at those goal posts that we're looking for when we're thinking about goals.

I wanted you to elaborate a little bit more about the way acquisitiveness and perfectionism become addictive. And you were talking about the dopamine system. So I think that's something that people really need to know more about.

Yeah. So dopamine is a powerful, reward chemical and we get it in a lot of different ways when we are experiencing pleasure. But more specifically, dopamine is around when the pleasure is new, when it's a novel. And once whatever it is that brought it around in the first place is no longer new, we don't see dopamine anymore. But because it is a powerful, reward chemical, our brain is constantly looking to get more of that. So whatever brought it around in the first place, we're searching for that. This is why I talk about in the book on a very simple level. When we're looking to buy something, maybe it's a new dress or a car, shoes or whatever it is, at first that object becomes very exciting. But once we have it around for a while, it doesn't do the same thing for us. It's the same reason why a new relationship with all that excitement, there's tons of dopamine circulating. And then once you're in that relationship for a while, it might be good, but it's not that same level of excitement that you had at the beginning. Hopefully not in the relationship. But especially with material things, we look to find the next thing that's going to make us feel that way.

And that really is the dopamine circuits that we're wired for. Oftentimes we get those dopamine hits from social media. We're constantly flooded with new information, new things that people are doing, new images. It could be something as simple as new likes or new comments. We constantly go back to see what are people seeing or how do they react to things that we're putting out there? But it gets dangerous when your dopamine highs are becoming dependent on what other people are thinking or seeing or material things that you need to acquire. Because then that cycle becomes endless and you lose control of it. We can focus that dopamine on other things that are more in our control, and then we begin to find kind of a healthier way forward that is just as fulfilling, if not more. But we literally have to be intentional and step out of the things that are far easier to get that hit.

Yeah. It's so interesting when I think about addiction, it's really the same for everything that we're addicted to. Right? We just

Absolutely.

We lose control and the thing that we're doing or the thing that we're pursuing or the thing that we're consuming takes over and we're no longer in charge of ourselves in our lives.

That's right. And interesting enough, it was funny. I was reading I don't remember which mental health organization it was, but they were listing the criteria for addiction. And I was thinking about even my social media behavior at one point. Many of the clients and people I know, their behavior in terms of their relationship with their phones or social media, it fits six to seven of the nine criteria for addiction. And it was just so eye opening. I wrote about it on my blog for Psychology Today, but I think they thought it was too strong to apply to social media. And I understand that, so they cut it. But I thought, this is information that people need because you think about adults whose brains are fully formed, but yet constantly malleable, constantly neuroplastic changing and how we relate to social media, but then you think about this with our young people and our youth whose brains are forming around this behavior. It's really scary. And they don't have that same awareness and insight to set those boundaries. So unless we set them for them, they're going to develop in a very different way than we have.

Sure. It's definitely concerning. I actually wanted to segue a little because there's been a very tragic event recently in Texas where all these children and some teachers got murdered by a shooter, a young male shooter. And this young man had a relationship with social media, as have so many of these shooters. And I just maybe thought you could talk a little bit about how these disenfranchised young men are posting things on social media and looking for attention in a kind of negative way.

It's so tragic. And I know you and I talked that I have so much family in Canada. I love Canada. I love Canadians, and my family in Canada, every time something like this happens, they tell us, move to Canada, come here. And many of us Americans, in fact, 80% of us, regardless of political affiliation, want more strict gun laws, more regulations around gun laws, and they're not happening. We're seeing these incidents all the time. And social media certainly is a piece of it. Yes, he posted the weapons that he bought, and people had seen that and no one had said anything the shooter in Buffalo livestreamed what he did there, which is just horrific. So social media certainly plays a part, but I think there's a bigger piece of this. And it's really our disconnect in families. It's our lack of resources when we're dealing with mental health. And when I say disconnect in families, for one, everyone is so busy. And I think part of it is that there is this drive to accomplish and acquire. And many parents, many families are two working parents. They're trying to manage. At the end of the day, people are tired, they're exhausted.

There isn't that time for connection. And if you look at Fairfield County, we're at sports events all the time. Kids are achieving all the time. Everyone is focused on trying to get into college. And at the end of the day, there's a very little family time for connection. And I think that is one piece of this issue. So when you have kids that have issues, how much time are we spending trying to address them? How much time have we tried to connect with these kids? And then the availability of mental health, like I said before, the Pandemic therapists were full. They're still full. Mental health services are expensive, good mental health services in this country. So there's a lot of different pieces of this. And then, of course, the accessibility of guns. There's a lot of different parts to this, and I think there are ways that we can start. But the problem is certainly systemic in our country, and all of it contributes to people developing mental health issues. Social media for kids is a big one. Feeling alone, seeing what other people are doing, seeing how other people are included. And you might not be the bullying that goes on on social media.

It is a different world than the one that I grew up in, Marcia. And these kids are faced with so much, so young. And I think all of it creates a systemic issue that, in the worst case scenario, ends up in what we saw in Texas.

Right? And you add guns to the mix and it's combustible.

It's horrific. And it's hard because there are people in our country who say guns are not the issue. But I think the majority of Americans do feel like things would be better if we have different gun laws.

I was listening to CBC Radio here in Canada, or public radio, and they were saying that they just had a study that there are fewer people who support the NRA, but they are doubling down with their ideology. They're more intense in their beliefs, in their ideology. So there's fewer people who follow it. But the people who do follow it are that much more vehement about their gun ownership.

They're loud voices. They're loud voices. They are people with a lot of money who have power and influence in the NRA, especially over politicians. And I think there's a lot of fear as well. What I've heard from people is, okay, if they take away our gun rights, which our Second Amendment rights were never intended to be used the way they're being used right now, if they take away our gun rights, what other rights are they going to take away? So there's this fear around it, and I don't think any American wants rights taken away, but we're looking at it from two different lenses, and there is that feeling of many people that those rights have become more important than the safety of our children. We're in a sad state. If that's the way people are thinking, it's really tragic.

So what do you tell kids? What do you say to kids who are listening to the stories about what's happened recently? What do you tell the children so that they don't lie in bed at night with anxiety?

So some kids are the kids who had anxiety before certainly are. And I will say for the teenagers that we have, most of them are pretty desensitized to this unless they are dealing with some of their own anxiety. We live about now 30 minutes, but at the time of Sandy Hook, that massacre, we live 15 minutes away. I knew people who lost children in that, and my daughter was in kindergarten. My oldest daughter, who's 15 now, was in kindergarten. So this has been normalized throughout her life in school, as well as my other kids. So many of them are desensitized to it, which in some ways is good, in that they need to resume normalcy in their life and not be prevented from going to school and living a normal life because of fear. But in the ways that we don't want them to be desensitized is not to just bypass saying something if they see something on social media. So that's the message. Those are the talks we had with our older kids or reaching out to the kids who are alone and who seem troubled or depressed or in crisis. We don't want them to be desensitized to that.

So we talked to our teenagers about that. In terms of our younger kids, it was more probing to see, okay, what did they hear? What did they know? Start with that. Give them room to talk about it. Give them room so that we can listen at a time where we're not distracted or running around busy, and then correcting any misinformation, assuring them of the safety protocols that are in existence, reassuring them that we as parents are going to do everything we can to keep them safe. But it's a hard moment for parents in this country because we're asking the same questions that they are. So at the end of the day, we have to do those things for their own mental wellness and stability. But we too are sitting in our own doubts and fears when it comes to this issue here.

So how do parents start having conversations about mental health with their kids? Because obviously that's really important. How does the average parent, who doesn't really know that much about it, what kind of steps do they take to start talking about mental health?

I think one, you start early by normalizing emotions and not trying to kind of parent your kids out of feeling emotions and we see that a lot, especially for sure with boys and males, they're given many different mixed messages. Be tough, be strong, don't cry. So what happens then is you have a child who has internalized their emotions and that can lead to problems later on. With girls, they're more socialized to feel their emotions. Emotions are more acceptable. But I think at the very beginning, we want to be able to normalize it and let all kids know it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be sad. We need to get those emotions out. But how do we do that? How do we channel anger? What are appropriate ways to manage these emotions that sometimes leave us feeling helpless or out of control? And have conversations about that early on with your kids. Notice when they feel stressed and empathize with it. It's hard for parents when we're parenting, when kids have a tantrum, to be empathetic. We want to just get them out of it and moving along. Right? But maybe at some point revisit that.

If you can't do that in the moment when you're at a grocery store, Target, whatever it is, say, you know, I can tell you're really frustrated. What was going on? Did you want something that you didn't get? And I'm sorry that that was hard for you. Let's figure out what to do in that moment. Or maybe you should know that when you're feeling that way, you might not get what you want in that moment, but let's have a talk about it so I know what you're feeling. We have to just have conversations with it, with kids, teenagers, we want to notice when they're stressed out, give them empathy in that moment. I know you have a lot on your plate. Kids are coming up against finals right now. How are you feeling? I've noticed that you seem a little bit more stressed. I know this must be a lot for you. And then encourage them. We want to encourage them out of perfectionism. Right. You can only do your best on a certain given day. It's important that you get some sleep. How can I help you? What can I do for you to make this easier for you?

These are the conversations that we need to be having in our home on a regular basis. And it requires us as parents to be noticing what's going on with our kids and vocalizing it, having the conversations, asking the questions, and then doing a lot of listening. So mental health, we can address mental health in a lot of different ways. I think it's helpful to also share that it's okay if they're fearful, it's okay if they're anxious. Maybe share stories when you've gone through times like that, so they know that it's okay. But there's a lot of pressure on these kids that they internalize that are not coming from in the home. But they still have an impact on the kids. So we have to really be attuned to that and be talking about it.

Absolutely. What kind of signs have you noticed in kids? Or do you think a parent could notice in kids that the kid is in trouble? What would you be looking for if your young child or your teenager is having some real mental health problems?

Yeah, certainly behavioral changes. Is this kid normally very outgoing? Are they withdrawn? We want to pay attention to who they're hanging out with. What are these kids into? What are the families like of these kids? Are there a lot of parental support or not? Those kinds of things are important too, because gear groups are one of their greatest fears of influence, the people who influence them. So we want to be attuned to that. Is there a change in eating behavior? Is there a change in sleeping behavior? Whether more or less any mood changes? Are there more outbursts? Because for kids, depression can manifest as anger. We see that all the time in the psych world. So a kid may appear to be more angry, but that actually is a mask for depression. So we want to be paying attention to that. Have we noticed their grades have changed? Has this kid normally done well or average in school? And are we seeing a big change in that? Those are all signs that something is going on with that child that we certainly need to be having conversations. But what I say is early intervention is the best thing you can do for your child.

So I often have parents say, is it too young to have my kid meet with a counselor when they're in 2nd, 3rd grade? But they're seeing all of these signs. And especially if kids don't feel like going to school anymore when it starts to interfere with their daily life, you want to intervene soon and it may not take very long, but sometimes kids need to hear it from someone other than you. Especially with adolescence, I often say to the parents, I am saying the same things you are, but they're hearing is different because it's coming for me and I'm not their parent. So early intervention is key. The longer you let things go, the more these neural pathways develop around that behavior and thought pattern, the harder it is to undo. So we want to at least check in, even if it's for your own consultation with a professional. If you're seeing these signs and they're consistent and they've been going on for a little bit of time, a few weeks, months, whatever it is maybe get a consult for yourself, a parenting consult with a professional. Sometimes that's all it takes and then you know what to do at home.

But early intervention is really key when it comes to kids and adolescents.

I think sometimes parents become really overwhelmed because they see something like the child is self harming or the child is much more angry and getting into fights with their siblings or the child, they look like they're high, and the parent becomes overwhelmed because they don't feel they have the tools. So if there isn't like, easy access to therapy, what do you do? Or let's say the kid is coming anorexic they're not eating their meals, right? They're pushing their food around on the plate, and then they walk away and they're getting noticeably skinnier. What do you do if you don't have easy access to therapy? How do you handle things like that?

Okay, I'm going to separate out those two issues. Anorexia eating behavior, right away you get therapy, find it, do whatever you can to find it. Because of that, mental illness has the highest morbidity of any mental illness. It's 10% and it can go super fast, especially with kids. So if someone comes into my practice and I'm treating them for anxiety and all of a sudden an eating disorder becomes the predominant issue, I refer them right out to the specialist. We don't mess around with eating issues. Now, anxiety is a little bit different. I do think you have more of a window of time. Get books on it. Do a Google search on Amazon on kids and anxiety. There's so much good information out there that you can take a little bit of time and read about and help point you in that direction while you're waiting to get help. There are YouTube videos on it. There's so much content out there that parents can get help, but you have to be intentional and do the work yourself. But I would say just make the time in your schedule. Devote all right, 30 minutes a day to reading about this.

Get on the mental health website. National Institute of Mental Health is a great one. The APA American Psychological Association is a great website. There's so much information out there that we can become educated on these issues and begin to find a way forward with our kids while we're waiting to access help. But eating disorders, do whatever you can to get that help as soon as you begin to see that behavior, because that one can go fast.

Well, that's really great advice for any parent who's saying, yeah, it's easy to say find a therapist, but I can't afford it, there's nobody in my community, etc. I think these days, as you were saying, it's so hard to access a professional, whether it's due to financial strains or just nobody's taking new people.

Right? It is. It's really difficult. And that's part of the reason I wrote my book as well. And it's been helpful to, I would say, the 18 and up age group, but adults, because I knew that therapists were full. And these are things that I've done with clients for 17 years that work fairly quickly to get them feeling better and make them feel more like themselves, help them to appreciate the things that are good in their life. And for me, as a mom of four and someone who now has pretty much two or three jobs, I knew if I could fit it into my schedule, other people could do who were busy. Because I think that's the problem now with self help books. Every chapter I wrote about in part two of my book, part one is kind of what are the factors that are keeping us unhappy, more anxious, getting us more depressed? And then that was part one. And part two were the things that we could do, the practices that really foster contentment and joy in our life. And they're research based. They're based in neuroscience and in psychology, and they're quick things that don't take a lot of time, because every one of those chapters you could have written a whole other self help book about.

But people don't have time to read whole self help books about each one of those things. So there is a lot of good content out there and books that can help you get started. If therapy is not accessible, either availability or financially.

Like you said, if there's an eating disorder, find help.

Yeah, that's the one area that I encourage. Parents, don't wait. You cannot intervene too early. And the sooner you do, the sooner you can get out of it. I tell people it's easier to pull someone out of a pothole than a ditch, right? So the longer you go on, the harder it is to get out of it.

It's so interesting. I do these assessments for people who are off work these days, these independent psychiatric assessments. And one of the things I see over and over again is that because of stigma, mostly, and because they don't have the vocabulary to talk to their loved ones about how they're feeling, they just tough it out, tough it out, tough it out. And then they dig themselves into a deep ditch, and then they go off work because they can't take care of their children. They can't function in the workplace, they withdraw from their friends, and they just sit on the couch and scroll through their social media, which is great.

And can make them feel worse. Right?

Of course. And they just can't function. And then they beat themselves up because they feel useless, but it's because they're just toughing it out. And I always say that that's not the right approach, because you just give yourself more time to feel worse and worse and worse.

You do. And what happens is our sympathetic nervous system becomes dysregulated, right? And then our body perceives that type of internalized stress as a threat. And it's similar to a threat as if we need a bear in the woods and we have to run from it or freeze or fight it. And some of the strongest triggers for that stress response are loneliness, lack of information, lack of love, and uncertainty. So if you think about what everybody's gone through in the pandemic, I mean, it's many of those things, if not all. So when you're in that constant state, you're constantly in this fight or flight mode and you get to a point where that sympathetic nervous system button gets stuck and it gets disregulated. What we know from the research is often our body is trying to recover from that at the expense of our immune function. So there are mechanisms that shut down in our body that regulate our immunity, and we sacrifice that in order to bring down the level of cortisol and adrenaline in our body that's constantly flowing when we're under that type of stress. So long term, that can result in illness.

It's why every time I'm super stressed and have deadlines, I start getting cold sores in my mouth, I get sick more easily because immune function is being compromised in order to bring down the level of stress in my body. So yes, at a certain point, those people who've internalized that stress for so long can't function. They can't focus, they're not sleeping, they don't feel like themselves anymore, they don't have motivation. And that's all because of that dysregulation.

No, you absolutely got it on the head. And it just makes me really sad because by that point they're really in trouble and it's going to be a steep climb back to feeling like themselves again.

That's right. It takes a while.

The moral of the story is don't tough it out. Seek help sooner versus later.

That's right. And also we're modeling that behavior for our families. So if you're checking in and you're telling them all of these things. I mean kids have a very sensitive BS meter. Right? So if they're saying that this is not true in your life, but you're saying this, I think there was a quote in my book that I wrote about. I think it was Emerson who said, what you do speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you're saying. And kids pick that up. They're looking at how we're modeling the behavior more so than what we're saying to them, so we have to model it as well.

That's totally true. So I wanted to ask you some of the final questions. And the first question is where can people get your book? Because that's your big new project, right?

Yeah. So in Canada, it's on Amazon and it was sold out for a while in Canada, which was really exciting. But I'm pretty sure it's back in stock now. And then if you're in the US. And I'm pretty sure in Canada, has access to these websites. It's on Barnesandnoble.Com, Target.Com and Amazon.Com and it's in Barnes and Nobles stores. I don't think you have Barnes and Nobles. Do you still have Chapters? Yes. Yeah. I don't know if it's in Chapters, but you can request that they order it, which is a great thing, but Amazon is pretty easy to get it. You get it very quickly.

And remind the listener of the title.

It's called This Book Won't Make You Happy: Eeight Keys to Finding True Contentment.

I'm sure people are very curious about those eight keys. We won't give it away. Let the people get the book.

Sure.

Where can people find you if they're interested in learning more about you and what you do?

Sure. I'm on Instagram. I've write a lot about everything that we talked about on Instagram under Niro Feliciano, my name. I write a blog for Psychology Today called The Good Enough Life. If you go on PsychologyToday.com and search my name or the blog, you'll find me there. I have a podcast called All Things Life, and that's really just about emotional, mental, and spiritual wellness. I have an episode that I put out every couple of weeks called Soulful Sundays, and that's more just a little bit about my faith journey and what that's meant to me. But the other episodes are about psychological and emotional wellness. Where else can you find me? I talked about my blog and on my website, NiroFeliciano.com, and I have a newsletter that's free that I send out pretty much twice a month or so. And it has a lot of this content on finding contentment, and certainly tips to help bring wellness to yourself and your family. So all of those places you can find that's wonderful.

So just to end up, I wanted you to offer a call to action, to the listeners, something that they could consider or try doing, based on all the things you've been talking about today.

Yeah, what I would say and what I've learned is contentment is a choice. We have to choose it. And one of the ways you can do that is just make time, whether it's five minutes a day or 30 minutes a week or whatever it might be, to schedule some time for something that you would enjoy in your life. Whether it's going on a walk, or connecting with a friend over coffee, or taking 20 minutes to read a book for fun that you enjoy, whatever it is that can bring you joy that's already accessible in your life, make time for it. And I say make time for it because for most people I know don't have extra time. Whether you have four kids or one child or no child, everyone is busy these days. And unless we're intentional about scheduling time for that, our life is going by fast. And most people aren't enjoying the journey that they're on. But doing something like this helps you to realize that there are things to enjoy. That's why my blog is called The Good Enough Life, and it's not about good enough being mediocre, but there are things in our life that are both good and enough to be satisfying if we're attuned to them.

So I would say start with 15 to 20 minutes this week of scheduling time for something that you would actually love or enjoy or that would bring you some peace or help you to relax and then build on it from there. That would be my CTA.

That's a wonderful call to action, and I think these days, with all the stress everyone's under, it's wonderful to focus our intention on making that time to enjoy.

And it doesn't take that much time to reap the benefits of that, mood wise. You'd be surprised what 20 minutes can do if it's something that we feel like, we love. And it gives us something to look forward to, which that gives us a little bit of dopamine as we're anticipating it. So it's a win win.

That's wonderful. Well, Niro Feliciano. I really appreciate you coming on the Ruthless Compassion podcast today. It's been really great talking to you. Lots of very interesting and important things you've had to say. I hope the listeners really get a lot out of it. I think they will.

Thank you for having me, Marcia. It's a pleasure to be here.

This is Dr. Marcia, Sirota. Thank you for listening. Please leave a review and your comments wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter at marciasorotamd.com where you'll learn about upcoming online events as well. Also, we love getting referrals from our listeners about future podcast guests, so please email us at info@marcisirota.com.