Iesha Delune - The Happiness Recipe: Discover the unique ingredients you need to thrive

What is happiness anyway? This is a question I have asked at the beginning of a lot of my interactive workshops and the answers vary widely. We use the same word to describe everything from joyful glee to contented satisfaction. For some, happiness means feeling delighted and in high spirits and for others it is more the absence of stress, and the presence of peace in mind and body.

Whenever I am asked to define happiness, I prefer to come out of that word, due to the diverse interpretations, and introduce the concept of congruence. When I use this word, I am speaking of the following state of being: your mind, body, heart and soul, thinking, feeling and acting in alignment with the truth of who you are. What I have found is that all human beings have a Happiness Recipe and its unique to them. Genuine, authentic happiness is the natural and effortless by-product of living in this alignment.

When you seek happiness by doing things, most likely things that seem to be making other people happy, you can often be moving further and further away from what is actually right for you, as the unique being that you are.

It is getting more and more common to be stressed out by regular, daily life and to experience anxiety, depression and mood swings. To me, it seems like a mental and emotional epidemic and there are millions of people believing that how they think and feel is the result of forces outside of their own control. I am a passionate advocate of personal empowerment! You do have the ability to change the way you think and feel and therefore produce changes in the chemistry of your body.

So, stress is on the rise, and there are ever-increasing options of the best way to manage this and also huge growth in ways to distract yourself from the core issues. Interestingly, for those already on the path of intentional self-improvement, some of the most popular distractions are promoted as stress management.

Heres the thing: Your stress is not meant to be managed. It is feedback that something, or many things, need to change!

There is a sense of entitlement for some, that great relationships, success and goal-achievement happens for the lucky or the already-wealthy and that it should be freely given out if someone is a nice person. There are also many people who have decided they are somehow so flawed, that the natural process of actions, creating reactions, cannot work for them to create change. I appreciate that there are more challenging circumstances for some, and greater ease for others. That said, both of these perceptions embody total disempowerment. There are also many types of treatment and therapy that perpetuate disempowerment, blame and keep nourishing the idea that ones mental and emotional health is not in our own hands. This, perhaps, cultivates the understanding of why one feels the way they do (your parents, your health, your genes, the the state of the world) but plots no path forward to thinking, feeling or acting differently.

There are immeasurable numbers of people working in jobs that are not a match for their values, that do not utilise their capacity or make use of their potential. There are countless people in relationships that do not honour them, in circumstances that make their heart shrink with the unfelt-joy they are capable of. There are multitudes of people who have settled for dissatisfaction, frustration and lack of meaningful fulfilment and decided that its normal to feel that way. Its not, its completely unnecessary! Our bodies are designed to be living in emotional states that range from neutral to happy. This is how your physical self has the energy for high-quality thinking and action, digestion, fertility and sleep. In neutral to happy states our bodies engage, daily, in the routine healing, maintenance and repair that keeps us healthy, with energy and vitality for life. Ongoing stress compromises the bodys ability to do these things, as its acting in the immediate moment and mobilising all that talent to fight, hide or run from danger. When the danger you perceive is continuing, because youre not winning the fight or successfully escaping, there is no opportunity to completely turn off the stress response.

This is why your whole being is giving you feedback that something needs to change! These are not natural feelings, unless youre being chased by a predator. Its not just the way it is. Its not modern life, but your response to it. All in all, it boils down to two things. Firstly, a disconnect from our authentic selves. So many people are all striving for the exact same thing as everyone else and expecting happiness to be the result, rather than having curiosity about our personal preferences. You have a uniqueness that makes you who you are. When we deny that, its as stressful as a tropical fruit tree trying to grow near the freezing cold poles (thered be feedback that it wasnt thriving!) Secondly, we are lacking in knowledge of what to do with our feelings. Supressing them creates more stress in the long-term. Feeling them in loops with no escape also puts pressure on the body. Whats needed is, what I call Emotional Digestion, acknowledgment, feeling, processing and healthy movement through the experience and out the other side into wisdom. In this book I am going to show you ways of connecting with your truth. Not mine, or anyone elses but your own. This is going to resolve that disconnection and give you tools you can use for the rest of your life, to live wholeheartedly as your magnificent self. Im going to teach you how to listen to the feedback your body is giving you and ways to respond to it that will create life-long, positive transformations. We will also be learning about Emotional Digestion and ways of implementing this into your life. Think of this journey as a deepening and revealing of the truth of Beautiful You, rather than trying to get somewhere. At the time of writing this book, I am 43 years old. I have been on my own journey with the tools for self-awareness, healing and empowerment since I was 19. I began studying and using various modalities of healing and change-work, supporting clients from age 22, and adding tools to my kit of personal empowerment and evolution. This study continues to date because I love to learn and grow and has thus far ranged from massage, Reiki and qi gong, through to holistic counselling, neurolinguistic programming, meditation, mindfulness, to personal and professional coaching. My qualifications and skill-set are broad and have always ranged through the areas of mind, body and energy. After working with and for others in wellbeing centres around full-time work in other areas, I opened my own private practice when I was 28, which was in 2004. I bring it all together now as a Transformational Life Coach, keynote presenter and workshop facilitator. In teaching, speaking and in my one-on-one work, I am supporting people to embrace their uniqueness, listen to their