PODCAST | Lessons from the world's first and only Happyologist!

This week we caught up with the world’s first and only Happyologist - Susanna Halonen

Susanna has made it her life’s work to study happiness and is author of ‘Screw Finding your Passion’ and ‘Happiness is here - a 30 day guide to joy and fulfilment’.

She describes herself as a born pessimist who trained herself to be a happy optimist and now helps others to do the same.

So we joined her in her flat in London with her big cuddly dog to dive deep into the topic of happiness and what it really takes to live a happy and fulfilled life.

We talked about:

• How happiness as a practice (just like love) and not a destination and certainly not a permanent state we can maintain 24/7.
• The importance of allowing ourselves to feel negative emotions and how they in fact play an important role in us cultivating happiness in life.
• How being successful in life is not what brings about happiness, but quite the opposite: cultivating happiness TODAY in your life is what will in fact help you to achieve your dreams.

Plus Susanna shares her top tips on practicing happiness on a day to day basis and even showed us how to make a gratitude practice even more powerful.

So snuggle up and enjoy a deep dive into happiness. We guarantee it will make you smile :)

And if you’re a fan of our podcast then make sure you subscribe over on iTunes aaaaaand we would LOVE it if you would leave us a review - every review helps us to spread the love that little bit further. Plus it makes our day.

x Selina & Vicki

P.S. For any recruitment consultants out there, we laughed at the idea of Selina once having a stint as a recruitment consultant, not to disrespect recruitment consultants, but because the idea of Selina in any office job always makes us laugh (think wild animal in a cage not being able to sit still).

PODCAST: Real Love Story with Luke Montgomery-Smith

If you're looking to have you spirits lifted this week then listen in to this beautiful love story of the gorgeous Luke Montgomery-Smith and his girlfriend Gina. Tune in to hear Luke talk about finding love when he wasn’t expecting it, how relationships can heal and the clarity that can be found when leaning into loneliness.

Luke had seen strong and loving relationships growing up but wasn't convinced this kind of relationship was available to him. It wasn't until he let his guard down and allowed himself to fall in love that things developed. I was so inspired by his openness and level of vulnerability and honesty.  

I hope you enjoy this as much as I loved recording it

V xxx

Write yourself a love letter this Valentine's day

This year, in true Project Love style, we are hijacking Valentine's Day and making it all about self-love. Instead of making this day of love all about romantic love and focusing your attention on others that you love or lust after, we want you to turn all that love right around and in on yourself, starting with the way that you speak to yourself. 

Why? Because learning to speak to yourself like you would your best friend - with love and support - is one of the most powerful things you can do. It is a life changer and key to your happiness and success.

Just imagine what it would be like to spend a day with a voice in your head that was loving and supportive, that was always there for you, that had your back and would remind you that you were loved.

Wouldn’t that feel great?

Imagine all the things you would have the confidence to do. You would make yourself a top priority in life and fill that life with the things that made you happy. You would look after yourself well, follow your dreams and design a life for yourself that you truly loved. A life that would feel as good as it looked.

Now think about the voice that you tend to use on yourself day to day. Often we are our own harshest critics, with a voice in our head that is constantly pointing out what we have done wrong or how we should have done better.

A day of listening to that is exhausting, feels rubbish and has you playing small.

So this Valentine’s Day we are encouraging everyone to turn up the volume on their loving inner voice to hear what it has to say.

How? By writing a letter to you, from your wise older self.

It is a simple exercise that can be surprisingly powerful.

The idea is that you imagine your wise older 80 year old self is sending a message back to the woman you are today. She has the gift of hindsight and knows that everything works out well for you in the end and right now she wants to give you some encouragement, love and support at this point in your life.

You might at first think that you won’t be able to come up with anything, but people are usually surprised at how much this side of them believes in them and loves them.

We invite you to give it a go and share with us how you get on!

Here is what you do:

1. Treat yourself to some special letter writing paper (some lovely sets over at Paperchase)

2. Download 'The Project Love Guide to Writing Yourself a Letter from your Wise, Older Self'

3. Share your favourite line from the letter you wrote to yourself over on Twitter using #selfloveletter and @ProjectLove or why not take a photo of your letter and share it with us on Instagram using #selfloveletter and @loveprojectlove

We will be sharing your love letters during Valentine’s Week <3

Selina & Vicki x

PS for those in London, we will be at Paperchase (Tottenham Court Rd store) on Weds 8th Feb for an evening of self love and letter writing - tickets here - come and write your love letter with us!

Our top 5 favourite articles on love

Over the past year we have been digging and delving deep online to find the best articles and thought leaders when it comes to finding love and making it last and these are our top 5 favourite articles:

1. How to pick your life partner

This article from waitbutwhy.com is so rich in wisdom, it's worth ready over at least 3 times and taking notes. We did!

2. Are you ready for love?

We can become obsessed with wanting to be in a relationship and find that special person but many of us, when we take a closer look, aren't actually ready for love. This article is short and sweet but makes the point well

3. The habits of supremely happy people

While it's not about love, this is all about happiness and one of our key lessons is that if you want to find yourself in a happy relationship with a happy person then you have to learn how to make yourself happy first.

This article is rich and intelligent and a great starting point if you want to learn how happy people stay that way.

4. The Magical Kitchen

This is actually an extract from the book 'Mastery of Love' by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's a wonderful and powerful analogy of why, when we don't love ourselves enough, we are prone to attracting and inviting people into our lives who are looking to use and control us.

5. Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

There is an entire blog post coming soon, dedicated to the book Zen and the Art of Falling in Love by Brenda Shoshanna. We can't recommend it enough. Here she pulls out some of the key messages from the book and some exercises to go with them.

x Selina