Why We Need To Put Happiness First With Barry Shore

Barry Shore (10:27):

And what is a word, right? What a wonderful world. And when you, for me, whenever I hear those words or that tune, I think of Louis Armstrong SMO and that song going viral and touching, not just tens of millions or hundreds of millions, but billions of people around the planet, right? What is wonderful? Well, when you hear the song right away, what do you do? You can't help you smile. Now smile is one of those great words that make a difference in people's lives. Cause smile stands for seeing miracles in life every day. So this is the beginning of the joy part of me seeing miracles in everyday life. Let me tell you a quick story. Imagine the following it's a little bit difficult, but imagine this standing in, up in the morning, hail and Hardy, able to leave tall buildings at a single bound. And that night is in the hospital, totally completely paralyzed. That's me. And it was not for an automobile accident. It was not a spinal injury. It was a rare disease, which I never heard of the day before, that took off my body and rendered me a quadriplegic, which means nothing from my neck down moved totally paralyzed.

Mike Gardon (11:31):

At what age did this occur

Barry Shore (11:33):

To? This is the age of double nickels. I was 55.

Mike Gardon (11:35):

Okay. Okay.

Barry Shore (11:36):

55 years old. And I'm completely paralyzed. Ah, which we'll talk about maybe later called stress. Right? I was 144 days in the hospital. I was two years in a hospital bed in my own home. I couldn't turn over by myself for four years in a wheelchair. I, I had braces on both my legs, my hips to my ankles. And that was progress. Thank God. Today. I'm able to be vertical and ambulatory with help of a seven-foot walking wand. I still can't walk upstairs by myself. I can't walk up a curb by myself and I've helped 12 hours a day, seven days a week. But you hear my voice positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant, all become of that one word or this one-word smile seeing miracles in life every day, no matter what by a good way, I've just gotta tell you one more thing.

Barry Shore (12:21):

A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old niece comes over to me and she says, uncle Barry, uncle Barry, can we spell smile? S M I E L. I thought about smiles sounding the same. Why not? I asked her how come she says C would stand for seeing miracles in everyday life. at the mouth of babes. Mike, you have an eight-year-old. That's exactly the way to look at the world, right? Seeing miracles in everyday life. But what was she doing? She was creating the kind of world she lived and wanted to live in. You used the word before about being creative. Create stands are causing rethinking, enabling all to Excel. That's the mark of an entrepreneur or somebody who wants to transition from wherever they are into another modality. It's about C causing rethinking. It's all about how you think about situations and in my case being paralyzed. Oh, hello. And going on from here from being paralyzed to many other good things, I've built more businesses and doing things, but I wanna urge you to understand these six words. If you learn these six words, it will help you in every situation and they are choices, not chance determines your destiny choice, not chance determines your destiny. You choose how to respond in any situation. And that choice is really gonna help decide your path to success.

Mike Gardon (13:50):

So being hospitalized virtually in the blink of an eye and being quadriplegic, and unable to move was a catalyst. It seems like in your life, down this path, I assume you were scared. I assume you went through phases where maybe it was a why me or being down, how was the evolution to kind of seeing everything in this joy light? And I know you talk about gratitude specifically in the little moments, you know, just being able to, to see right? Like you could see and be grateful for that. Despite having difficulties with virtually everything else. Like just walk us through a little bit of like how that felt personally while you were going through it.

Barry Shore (14:35):

So you are absolutely correct. Guess what? I'm human . I didn't have those thoughts and sort of trepidations about life and what was going on. I wouldn't be a human being that said you asked a great question. How old were you? I was 55. I had been now in training for more than a half-century of walking. The talk was I joyful before this? Absolutely. Now I didn't know this. How should we say the acronym for joy when I was 40 years old came later, but joy is a great acronym. That stands for your journey of you. isn't that wonderful. A really is a journey for you. We're gonna of joy in business, which is the acronym, anybody sales here. But I don't, I mean, say a I L S plus an LS have, and then a GY sale and the GY sale is the one that enables you to really make some turns and things and catches the wind and such like that.

Barry Shore (15:36):

That's what joy in business is. It's not something that gee, it's nice to have. It's an essential element of life. And if you wanna be successful in life and it translates to being successful in business, then you need to have joy as one of the catalysts or else. Why are you doing this? Let's take a look at this amazing word. Mike business. B U S I N E SS. Right? Guess what about the word business? Then you come before the eye. Isn't that? Wonderful. Wait a minute. Let me say that again. Then you come before the eye. Why are you in business? What are you doing in business? Not how do you do business? What do you do? What's yours why? One of the great Ted talks, Ted X talks of all time, was Simon Sinek. What is your, why you wrote a book on it?

Barry Shore (16:25):

Also, wise stands for winners, help wisely, winners help other people help others win when you're in the wind situation. And you can really enjoy the greatest wine on earth wine. W I N E winners inspire never-ending enthusiasm, never-ending encouragement, and never-ending endurance. So the ability for me to find myself totally completely unable to move fully dependent on other people and not be in total complete despair or depression or worry in fear. That's because I've been building up to it. Now I have the opportunity. The good Lord said, okay, sure. I need your attention for a little while he got my attention. how are you gonna walk your talk? You can't walk. You can talk a little bit. I could barely speak above a whisper, but I focused on what I could do. And when I did have, and I was surrounded by prayer therapy and love, and when I had those and they, I was infused with that.

Barry Shore (17:36):

And guess what happened, Mike? It was so wonderful. I learned that I could be happy, and healthy. And when I call wealthy, cause I was alive to celebrate life. What an amazing thing. That's the essence of what I call to joy in business. To be aware that life is a journey to enjoy the journey when you do that, yeah's always gonna be stuff. Hello. I've been through stuff and listen to me now, or look at me now. It's so wonderful just to be able to practice love and gratitude on a regular basis. And it's so easy to do. And when you start doing it, guess what happens to your entire being? You tend to grow and you become more of yourself. Remember, this is all about you. Why owe you? So that's what happened to me the ability for me to be in bed totally completely paralyzed in my own home for years and visualize my goal, which was to sit up and put my feet over the side of the bed.

Mike Gardon (18:48):

Mm-hmm

Barry Shore (18:49):

that was my goal. Took me two years. I did it and every day kept practicing it and kept practicing. The ability to have gratitude to those, especially my wife, without her. I'd just be protoplasm. My son, my friends, and my family. you start thinking, look at all those MES behind you, wonderful mic. You know, you see the map and the pictures and such, okay, those are things. Those are things that make you go, wow. We, what a wonderful way to live. Wow. Wow. It stands for words of wonderful words of wisdom to live with. Wow. What could be better?

Mike Gardon (19:27):

So many places I could go here. I, I love the joy journey of you, cuz we're all on a journey. We're all on one journey. And so I think like where I want to kind of go next is I think a lot of people have, it may be backward. And I certainly did when I was younger that you achieve some level of success or status and then gratitude and happiness and follow. But I learned, and it was really through this process of, of, I guess thinking about my journey, right? And what I really want and don't want in life as a whole, which business and career is a, is a part of that whole thing. Like what I want, what I don't want, how do I want to engineer? This one journey that I'm on later in my life coming to that realization. But I certainly felt like no it's work, work, work, sacrifice, bear down muscle through don't enjoy. So you can get to some Hilltop and then you're happy, right? Why do we get that backward?

Barry Shore (20:28):

The simplest reason I believe. And I have worked with thousands of people. Thank God over the past 20-plus years because of my situation. And I have studied this for decades. One of the reasons I wrote my book called the joy of living, how to slay stress and be happy is to uncover 11 strategies for learning how to live and enjoy daily, no matter the circumstances. And I would say a simple answer to your query is the following family, friends, and self. Those are the three biggest factors in anybody's life. Am I correct? Family, friends, and self. So let's take a look at the most simple. Most people grow up in a family. If they have a family, let's call a father and mother siblings. If you are fortunate to have that, don't know about this, what you just called joy in words, when I have this, then , that's how people were raised in a family.

Barry Shore (21:33):

Just because, Hey, we're a family. What do we know now? An enlightened family says, guess what? We live and enjoy daily. I am telling you I was blessed. One of the reasons I could get through and I'm asked at almost every time I do a presentation, whether it is, uh, 200 people in the audience or just recently, it was 11,000 a hundred and something, how did you get through this? How did you do this? And, and be still just happy and joyful and triumphant. My mother was a great model. So everybody has models in my family. My mother is my model. Imagine the following is a hundred years ago because I'm 73 now. And so my mother had me imagine this. She was born with a red wine stain around three-quarters of her face and a bit park marked. Now we are in the enlightened 21st century.

Barry Shore (22:25):

Nobody does bullying in school and things like that. Right? Da it's a big thing in school bullying. Imagine a hundred years ago, you think kids were any more or less kind to each other. Da it's humans. My mother didn't just get through it. It was this. She didn't have it. It was just another thing. That's all. And how do we know this? Because as kids growing up, I mean saw my mother. She had that, okay. It's my mother's big deal. But she covered it up with pancakes. What do you call it? And anyway was a lot of heavy makeup and such like that. Um, but we met her, her friends from high school said, well, Hey, this is Francis. What do you want? She's always been this way. Happy, fulfilled, loving. She got married, just three kids. this is your mother. And this is the way she was.

Barry Shore (23:16):

But I gotta tell you the great story. She was my model, right? When we were older, we had a great supermarket. Not far from where we lived. Well, we shopped there and such at one time that got really smart years ago. It's hard to think about this Mike. But years ago, stores used to have somebody called the complaint department. Can you imagine how crazy that was? That's sort of backward what you just said, right? Yeah. They went from the complaint department. Somebody woke up in a good sense of woke and said, duh, how about calling a customer service department? well, this door approached my mother and said, Mr. Shore, we're gonna start something called the courtesy booth at the supermarket. Would you think of working in it? So she, we had a family meeting. We said, yeah, yeah, mom's gonna be the courtesy booth person.

Barry Shore (24:00):

Okay. I'm gonna make this story really relevant to everybody here. Cause you gotta hear it. My mother worked at that courtesy booth for seven years and she loved it. And people loved her. There was an increase. They measured an increase in sales, in their supermarket. If you know anything about supermarkets, a 2% increase in sales is a big gig over the course of the year. And they attributed it to direct the courtesy booth and they put courtesy booths in all their other 12 stores. They eventually bought out and such like that. When my mother retired seven years later, they had a big banquet for her. They gave her a big check, thank God, and stupid glassware and silver balls. But the point was, she was the essence of that store. She was the face of part joy in business works. If it's authentic. That was my model for living.

Barry Shore (24:51):

I gotta tell you one other thing though, that happened to me at the age of 14. So it's almost 60-plus years ago. Somebody gave me a book called think and grow rich. Mm-hmm I love to read. Anyway. It was 14. I enjoyed reading. I read it once, twice three. I probably read it six times in the course of three months because it's real. here's everybody. Oh, that book think can grow rich. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Read it again and again and again, because it is really about joy in business. Remember business. Do you come before the eye when you're in business, you're in service and I don't care if you're an employee and a company with a hundred thousand or a million employees or you're an entrepreneur on your own. And you have people that work with you or for you listen to the words, work with you or for you.

Barry Shore (25:41):

You're an entrepreneur, no matter what, you're an entrepreneur. If you're a big corporation, you're an entrepreneur. If you have your own business, you're an entrepreneur. If you have a family entrepreneur, think in the way you just said, like we have to shift perspective. I wanna give you one insight into shifting perspectives. And I've worked with thousands and thousands of people. Most people, when they say the word shift, they drop the F and the other stuff happens. You gotta keep your F in place and shift perspective, not a huge mile, small, small. I use, as I say, you gotta think, think, think stands for it to harness insightful neural connections. And thanks stands for, to harmonize and network kindness, to harmonize and network kindness. You put these things in place and you can do anything you want, everything is available to you, it's called the law of attraction.

Mike Gardon (26:46):

I've seen a law of attraction movie or the secret I've I've read think and grow rich many times. And I, yeah, those both get a stigma, but at the core of what they're telling you, which is actually linked to science is that visualization works. And something that I learned, you know, again later in my career was, was very logical. I still am a very logical person. Right. But when you're trying to think your way through a problem or a change, it's very difficult to see the pathways that can open up once you take one or two steps and that you, the shift happens like from like, what are you actually feeling? It was very difficult for me to understand, but just a couple of examples. Like I would always think about an investment in a business, right? Like, okay, well I'm gonna spend X amount of dollars to do this.

Mike Gardon (27:41):

And I would think through that on a spreadsheet and numbers and everything. And when I started to think about, well, how does that like, does that make me feel energized or not? I started doing things and then saying, okay, if we go in that path, like, am I okay with the worst possible outcome? Does something just need to happen? Right. Instead of saying, well, the ROI on these two things is different. So we're gonna go with a higher like, well, I think when I did that and made that shift, not only did I, you just feel happier right. But you're more energized to continue down the path of doing that. So like I talked to people about not necessarily finding your passion and then going and pursuing that to find joy, but it's like once you're like use that as a guide, like, what are you interested in?

Mike Gardon (28:28):

Because adherence to something is 80, 90% of the battle. And so if you can make it so much easier for you to adhere to something in the long run and become better at a skill, you're more likely to succeed, find other points of leverage, and continue your growth path. So it's a long-winded way of saying people should read those books because all of that is linked back to this visualization, thinking about figuring out, willing having an intention and how that can like sort of really subconsciously set the course for the trajectory that you come on. So I just wanted to kinda pipe in there with a couple of

Barry Shore (29:07):

Those points are something that you just said, cause you mention them twice in visualization. Uh, remember if you would, that I said to you, I'm laying in bed for two years. Cause I can't move my own home. And I visualized myself sitting up, right? I'm putting my feet over the bed. That was it. I spoke about it. It's called visualize verbalize emotionalize. This is what we're working with. It's called VVE things that I work with people regularly verbalize and visualize emotionally. If you knew really in your tummy, how important your words are to yourself. Remember we talked about the three most important influences in somebody's family. So I gave you an example of my mother's friends. I'm gonna give you a word. The word is ya. Y most people never heard of it. Write it down. Y a w Y a w you all know what it stands for.

Barry Shore (30:01):

What I tell you, you are who you associate with. Yaya friends are important. You'll read about it in my book, the joy of living friends be a good friend. It is an essential aspect, a strategy of life of living joyfully and the most important of all relationships is yourself. Self-talk is the most important speech you'll ever hear. Am I right Mike? So there are two levels of self. There's a self that you mentioned earlier of wait, I'll do this. I gotta buckle down and get down. And then that will happen. Then what will is, I'll be happy. I'll be rare. Well, I'll be that. Okay. False. Why? Cause the lower self stands for seeking excitement, losing focus, focus. One of the most important aspects of living successfully, the higher self is recognizing that you, you are a soul experiencing life fully. When you recognize that you're first of all, and foremost, a soul experiencing life fully, then you recognize as a soul, that what you think about what you speak about, and what you act upon, makes a difference in the world.

Barry Shore (31:21):

You are mad. You wanna go mad, cuz you can make a difference. Talk about the law of attraction. People hear the word law and they think of law or do you know the spinning thing? Oh my gosh, the law Garing law is a great word. You learn how to shift your perspective and stand for love and wisdom. That's the law of attraction. When you are living in love and wisdom, then all the bounty that is possible in life comes to you. If you use these aspects, these strategies you'll be happier, healthier, and wealthier. I guarantee it. Or your money back guarantees you said perfectly Mike persistence. And action. Action is the key.

Mike Gardon (32:08):

Let's dive into some of the strategies a little bit, obviously like our culture's high stress and just piggybacking on what we just said, a lot of our stress, at least in my case, for sure. I, I can absolutely say this. A lot of my stress is caused by my self-talk or whatever. Right? So talk to me about a, a few of the strategies that you outlay for your book, like tactical stuff to, to get rid of stress or at least the bad stress to start becoming happier before you hit that success peak like, like how do you become happy in every single.

Barry Shore (32:41):

Day life? So let's dive in with stress and invest. Let's not spend, let's invest a few minutes together on stress and understand how very sure understands the stress and it will help you tremendously. You mention it, Mike, first of all, stress, that's how most people can think of it. The negative is a positive aspect of stress. By the way, everybody knows it. If you go to a health club or you swim, like I do now imagine that I swim. I was a quadriplegic. I now know how to swim. I swim two miles a day, six days a week. I'm a third of the way around the world. I have over 8,651 miles. And my goal is to swim around the world. Hello, big goal. Can I do it? We'll see I'm gonna just keep swimming, but that's good stress. Let's define the word stress. And I'm gonna give you three practical tips and tools that you can use right now to use to your advantage stress S T R E SS.

Barry Shore (33:36):

It's only three sources of stress in the world. Money is too much or too little. You hear both of those, right? Mm-hmm relationships, family, friends, et cetera, and health. That's where stress comes from. So now what do we do with it? Well, let's take a look. Stress is an acronym that stands for stomach-turning reality, enabling self-sabotage do you know what happened? I lost my job. We might lose the house. My cousin committed suicide. The kids are going crazy. They're at school. The country's falling apart. now do that on the outside. They do it inside. But they're thinking all that as you said, that's their self. Oh my gosh. Ah, okay. We're gonna shift perspective. Keep your F and F in place on the other stuff that will happen. Shift your perspective, stress, stomach, turning reality. Yes. All that stuff. You may have lost your job.

Barry Shore (34:36):

You may lose the house. Your cousin did commit suicide. The kids are going crazy. Not schools. The schools, situation, and country falling apart, enabling self-success. Remember those six words we mentioned earlier? Choice, not chance determines your destiny. How you choose to respond in any given situation will determine your path forward. Guys, paralyzed overnight. What are you gonna do? or okay. Hey, tough stuff. What am I gonna do? Will I have a walk again? Live and moving. I don't know. Will I live as if I am the victim? No, no. I'm choosing how to respond so to you. So let's take a look at three practical things that you can do immediately. That will not just relieve stress, but enable you to use it for self-success. Number one, number one, breathe, breathe. Come on. Barry Shore. Of course, I'm breathing. I'm alive. We're talking about deep breathing.

Barry Shore (35:42):

It's di formatic breathing. There are only two issues with Matic breathing, Mike. Most people can't spell it and they don't know where it is in the body. So I call it tummy breathing. It's the ability to breathe deeply through your nose, deep into your tummy area, and let it out slowly through your mouth. And we do. What's called conscious, loving breath? You've gotta say these words to yourself. You're going to allow, not even take, you're gonna allow a conscious, loving breath and do it four times. It'll take you all about 38 seconds, maybe 42 seconds. You breathe slowly. You do this twice a day, 11 days in a row. By the 12th day, you will be feeling conscious, aware, and capable every day, twice a day. Once before noon starts afternoon and all this, by the way, is on my website. Even demonstrated I have videos, you know, YouTubes are, but deep breathing is so critical to your life and so helpful.

Mike Gardon (36:41):

I wanna just butt in real quick. If anybody doesn't believe that if you've ever witnessed a parent, I've done this with my kids. Like kids going crazy. They're all worked up. They're breathing high in their chest. And they're some egregious problems that happened in their life. And, and I tell my kids, I just say, take a deep breath. I want you to see it in your stomach. And I do that with them and I like, they calm down. So like, that's the first step it's calm down. So if you can see that, like, like that's where I really latched onto this was with kids. I was like, oh my God, I see it actually happening. I didn't think that this could work in my life cuz I'm an adult. Right. But you see it happening. And then you're like, okay, that works. So if I'm stressed, like just, just take it down a notch. Go ahead. Continue with number two.

Barry Shore (37:27):

Okay. So validation is nothing better. Thank you.

Mike Gardon (37:31):