If you don’t work on your happiness first, you’ll end up attracting unfulfilling and even abusive relationships in your life. In this episode, we welcome Monique Toonen, the Happiness Guru of HappiGuru International, who helps men reconnect with their true desires and communicate these desires into their relationships. Monique struggled after her divorce until she discovered her masculine drive of providing for and protecting others at the expense of her happiness. Now that she is aware of this drive and succeeded in resolving her patterns of emotional neglect, she coaches men on how they too can overcome their excessive masculine drive and find fulfillment in their own lives.  

In this episode, we discuss: 

•      The ‘soft skills’ that we aren’t typically taught but are essential for happiness,
•      What kind of habits lead to self-sabotage,
•      Why communication is essential for long-lasting relationships,
•      How emotional neglect can block our ability to harmonize and amplify our deepest desires, and
•      Learning how to rise above triggers to tune into happiness

Listeners are invited to book a free Discovery Call with Monique to learn more about her FUN Formula –https://calendly.com/happiguru4u 

Watch the episode here:

The Power Of Putting Happiness First

I am excited to share with you a conversation with a fellow happiness advocate. Monique Toonen is the HappiGuru and in her work with high-achieving men, she helps them tune back into the power of happiness, how that can move them forward and help them get what they truly desire. I know you’re going to love this episode. Enjoy. 

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I am excited to introduce you all to the HappiGuru. Monique Toonen is setting a new standard for how to feel good, be happy and enjoy life. Her commitment to normalize happiness on the planet and unconditionally feeling good on a soul vibration is changing the way we handle true needs and showing people how to choose quality first. As a Founder and CEO at HappiGuru International, she specializes in helping ambitious men in technical-driven industry fields to integrate happiness with their business using the F.U.N. Formula, personal tailored one-on-one coaching, virtual and intimate nature retreats at Victoria Waterfalls and in The Cook Islands. Thank you, Monique, for joining me. I’m excited to have this conversation. 

Thank you for having me. I’m excited as well. 

Let us start off with how you came to this focus because I am a huge happiness advocate. I think that some people think it’s a waste of time and not a good use of our energy. I’m so glad to be having a meeting of the minds with you. I’d love to know how this came to be such a focus for you. 

Soft skills are undermined in our society. We don’t learn them in school. Nobody teaches us how to establish good relationships. We are thrown into life and they ask us to be logical because the more logical you are, the more benefits you have in this society. When it comes to happiness and creating the life you truly want, if you don’t know what makes you happy, how can you amplify it? That’s the initial question. What makes you happy? As we all know from Maslow’s Theory, it says the basic needs, then on the top, you’re going to get happy. 

Having no money is also a big challenge. That’s the first trigger on your wellbeing, but if you are getting attached to that, you do not have a clear mind. If you think, “How do I do this? How I’m going to pay?” You cannot make good choices. If you let that trigger you all the time, you’re not feeling happy. You don’t have a clear mind. You’re panicking all the time. You don’t know what you need at this moment and you don’t know how to amplify it. Even challenges make you create the priorities. What is the first step? Happiness is more or less progress. 

That’s absolutely the basics. I was a workaholic. I wanted to obey society’s rules and many of us did. After the third burnout, divorcing my former husband, and getting into an emotional crisis years ago, I was action-driven. I had a lot of masculine energy. I see that as masculine energy. Whether you’re a man or woman, every human being has masculine and feminine energy. I was a woman with a lot of masculine energy. That’s what I figured out. That’s why I felt more related to men because I see more men in the action-driven energy than women. 

There are also women but I’ve noticed, if I look back to in my life, I’ve always been around technical people. I don’t know why but I attract them as friends and partners. They were all engineers, technical-driven people. That was my avatar because of the attraction. I was like men. I need to bring money to the table. I want to protect other people. I’m a caretaker. I want to give everybody everything but my needs were always on the back burner. I was there at that moment. My husband filed for divorce when I decided to go full-time for my business. We had big plans and creating a new future for myself. That was hard. The dream was over. I had everything. It looked good on the outside. I had a great income, a great house, a lovely husband, a great social environment. 

Everything you thought you were working and striving for. 

This is the point and where the F.U.N. Formula comes from, there was a trauma beneath it. It dictated my life because my trauma was if I don’t work hard, I’m not worthy of love. 

A lot of people can probably resonate with that if they let themselves take a look. It’s hard to look at. 

You always have to work on the relationship, work on this and that. Love is working but it shouldn’t be in a way that you never can relax. We all are people with mistakes and everybody has his own curriculum in that matter because when you are young, the first eight years of your life, that is when your blueprint for the rest of your life is created. All those imprints that people say to you will bring you somewhere. Maybe you are driven until a certain age, then you start to feel and notice in your life that some of those habits and behaviors are starting to get self-sabotaging. 

You’re like, “That’s strange. This is normal for me but that isn’t normal for the other person.” How do you bring that together? Through communication and being authentic. If you think, “I’m not worthy of love because I don’t bring money to the table, I’m not the provider, I’m not the one who can give,” how would you feel if you are in a position where I want to give you something and you refuse to receive it every time? Every time, I try to be there for you. Giving is not only giving you money in the practical thing, but also in emotional thing. It’s like I’m asking you to dance with me. When you meet people, they have an opportunity to ask, “Do you want to dance with me?” Maybe we’re going to date. Maybe we are going to marry. We don’t know. 

Marriage can also be a business joint venture or on a personal level, being my partner. It’s more like a metaphor. The way you dance with each other is how good you know each other. If you put up something fake, they never know that they stepped on your toes unless you say, “Ouch. That was my area.” Otherwise, you cannot create good communication and truly long-lasting, sustainable relationships. I always say, “If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together.” That’s true. When you want to go together, you have to understand what your true needs are and also how to create healthy boundaries. The other person doesn’t know where does it stop or where does the other person hurt you. 

Unless you can tell them. 

If you don’t know what makes you happy or what makes you unhappy, most of the time it starts with, “That makes me unhappy,” after we exactly know what we don’t want. We are focusing on this black spot, “No, not this.” Also, with other people if I’m in a conversation with anyone. When I speak with the bank, they always say, “No that’s not possible.” I then say, “I know now what’s not possible but let’s talk about what is possible.” It’s ingrained to people. They keep focusing on what is not possible. 

That’s all you can see. 

It will amplify what you don’t want. That’s why I’m saying, if you don’t know what makes you happy, you cannot amplify it. What I also said when I talk with clients or new prospects, I know it’s a bold statement, if you don’t know what your emotional neglect is or if you’re not willing to work on your deferred maintenance on your emotional level, you’re never going to get happy. You need to harmonize yourself and amplify what you truly want. A lot of people are driven by the unconscious, with this trauma you created years ago and you don’t know what it is. 

I love that you call it deferred maintenance. I think that’s tangible because there are things in life that we expect we have to maintain like the car that we want to drive around and show our success. We don’t think about maintaining our own emotional balance, support or health. 

Nobody teaches us. Emotional intelligence is something we are thrown at. I believe that it’s the same as being a parent. Some people don’t know how to parent their children on an emotional level, how to stimulate their children. What I hear a lot is, “I gave him money and he or she will figure it out.” That’s not it. Giving money is the easy way. 

Those are not the emotional needs. 

The children want to be stimulated by their parents. People who were stimulated by their parents and the people around them, who are seeing the positive, who had emotional intelligence, they are way more successful than the people who didn’t. They are struggling to close the gap and not doing this deferred maintenance. You have to close the gap first and then you can start to amplify more and more in your life. That’s why I have this F.U.N. Formula. We’re going to talk about your past, what happened and the way you communicate because I can hear where people are. If the language is helping them to reach their goals or not, or they are in the self-sabotaging language, they try and there’s no execution.  

When I ask a man, “Do you love your wife, spouse or partner?” They say, “Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be with her or him.” I said, “How do you show her that you love her? Did you ever asked her, ‘Do you feel my love?’” Let’s say your wife comes home and you start flipping that you didn’t clean the dishwasher or whatever task she had to do. The way you say this, that is maybe a moment for argument. They say, “I love her.” I said, “How does that execute to the other person?” What I’m trying to say is all the beliefs or convictions that people are having when they grow up are all part of this blueprint. If people are not aware of this emotional neglect, they are never going to get happy. I know that’s a bold statement.  

Happiness is all about feeling good about yourself, being healthy physically and emotionally. If your body is healthy but you’re a mess on the emotional level, you’re not healthy. Nobody is going to say, “You need to take care of yourself.” Maybe your mother or your father will if you have a good relationship. Nobody else is going to say this to you. That’s what I expected many years ago. When I was 50, I figured out, “Nobody’s going to ask me. Nobody’s going to take care of me.” I was always like, “If someone cares about you, they give you space.” No, they don’t. You need to take the space with respect. I’m not saying you have to be a jerk. That’s not the purpose because acting like a jerk is going to amplify your unhappiness again. 

It sounds like knowing what we want or changing the focus from what we don’t want to tune in to what we want, which is a powerful point. Many of us, that’s all we can think of is what we don’t want. Getting clarity on what we do, would you say that’s the secret to happiness and all of this inner knowing? 

I believe in self-knowledge in that matter. I invested hugely in myself, knowing myself better and better. Circumstances are seasonal. You never stay in the circumstances forever. They come and they go. It’s the way how you react to those or if you’re panicking or not. Even if it’s challenging, you get an illness or you’re in financial depth or whatever, I get it. It’s hard. If you don’t know how to be effective in knowing what you need, that’s a skill. I’m not saying, especially for men, “I need sex, I need a car.” That’s all on the outside. What do you truly need on the inside? 

It can be such a small thing to say, “Don’t interrupt if I talk to you.” Allowing you to say that to your partner. For some people, that’s huge. They build an image like, “I’m a strong guy. I will always protect you. I will always bring money to the table. You can rely on me.” They grow up with this image that they can’t cry. They have to be strong, be the protector and provider. Men and women, you are responsible for your own happiness. When you are happy, this ripple effect will create your environment because you have good energy. People will say, “You’re so amazing. You have such a good vibe,” because you know how to keep yourself happy and you put healthy boundaries. 

That’s why I say, if you don’t know what your emotional neglect is, you’re never going to be happy because that is the secret to amplifying your happiness in the future. It’s not about shiny objects. It’s not about having such an X amount in the bank because your feeling isn’t for sale. It’s about knowing yourself, knowing how to ask for help, creating healthy boundaries, how to communicate, not feeling triggers. How do you cope with triggers when somebody says to you that you‘re a jerk or whatever? How do you respond to that? 

Especially if that’s triggering some emotional neglects that you haven’t taken the time to look at. 

Those are the ones people talk with me about. If you can reduce it, have the bigger picture, understand where it comes from, and how to release it out of your life, that’s a huge revelation. 

Let it go. 

I wrote a blog, Rise Above It. It’s the same, but how do you do that? A lot of people are afraid to be bold, “Maybe they’ll think I’m arrogant.” So what? If you’re in the gutter, nobody says, “She’s such a nice person.” You need to take care of yourself always. Nobody’s going to help you. The only one who can help you is yourself. 

That’s such an important point because people believe that if they give on their priority of taking care of themselves, other things come up like work demands, taking care of the family. There’s not enough time in the day. There’s not enough bandwidth. They let themselves not be a priority without recognizing that you can’t pour from an empty cup. You have to maintain this priority of your own wellbeing. 

I had a third burnout. My divorce is horrible from an emotional aspect. Whether you initiate it or not, that’s not the point because it’s horrible for both parties. That made me create my business as it is now. I cannot listen to my head anymore. I can only listen to my heart. For a head person, I was very analytical. I was like, “No structure.” Now, If I feel that I am into this rational mode, I take three steps back. I go to the beach. I take distance. Often after 1 or 2 days, I come with an answer or a solution because I let the information to sink in. I feel it in my body, take the next step, and then feeling happy about this progress. 

Giving yourself the space to recognize that you’ve made progress. That’s a trap that a lot of people fall into. Thank you for that point that we try to out-think ourselves. If something isn’t working, we try to think of a solution without giving ourselves the space to tune in and say, “What would make us happy?” How do we switch from that doing more and making ourselves busy in order to be successful or find a solution? How do we get out of that trap? 

That was a big challenge for me because that was my first challenge. I felt unrestless. Doing nothing was like, “What do I do?” Many years ago, I stopped smoking. It is an addiction. I was a workaholic. I had this habit. I created this behavior. That was my first thought, how to be lazy. In the beginning, I was like, “People can say anything about not being lazy.” I was a busy bee. I was the opposite. Now I say to people how to be a lazy bee at the right time. If you say, “How to be a lazy bee,” people think, “I’m in whatever country, smoke weed, have a beer, doing nothing on the beach.” That’s not what I mean. The metaphor for the foundation of my business is the Melipona bee. She lives in a special area in Mexico. She is very picky of which flower to make her honey. The difference between the lazy bee, the Melipona bee and the normal bee is the normal bee produces 75 liters a year. The Melipona bee delivers 17 to a maximum of 25 liters.  

I don’t know if you ever tried the Melipona honey. I bought it in Mexico. When I put one drop on my tongue and you close your eyes, you taste this sea of different flowers. It is a great experience. Try normal honey, it tastes sweet but it’s not special. That is exactly what I teach people. Understand how you understand when you need to be lazy. That is depending on what your emotional neglect is. You maybe have another way of when you need to be lazy than another person. Everybody has another curriculum. Also, in a spiritual way. If you don’t understand what is going on, what you neglected all those years, you need to create and make space for that to amplify your own happiness and still have a business. Maybe you have to tweak it or pivot it, which I did as well, and then create the lifestyle you truly want. That is how I help people. 

It goes so much more of go for quality over quantity. I think that story beautifully illustrates the real difference. How much more impact you can make? It’s not about productivity. It’s about what you can create. I’m going to have to seek out some of that honey in Mexico. 

When I first get it in home, everybody who comes in, I give them a drop. I said, “Close your eyes, put out your tongue. I’ll put special honey on your tongue. Tell me what you taste.” They all are like, “This is wow.” It is truly amazing. I encourage you to look it up and buy it online. It’s not cheap because of its quality. It never expires. Normally, if you buy honey, it expires in X amount of time. This honey never expires, which is also why I say if you learn this with me, this is a lifetime skill. 

You always will create the life you truly want because if you know it, you cannot stop it anymore. After three months, you’re good to go. If you want to go advanced, amplify it in your business, start to pivot and change because when you are changed as a person, you want to change your lifestyle as well. It’s all about the obstacles and not about your vision. Keeping the vision on the horizon. I always say, “Aim for the stars and land on the moon.” That’s your north star. I found that the hardest thing to do after my divorce, creating a new star for myself. 

That’s worthwhile to choose something else, to pull yourself and change that focus. A lot of people will get stuck on that because, “I thought I knew exactly what I was working for. All of my efforts have gone to this thing,” which we thought would make us happy instead of having happiness to the front. I say the same thing about having a new perspective. Once you have this recognition, you don’t have to keep learning it. We might need a reminder because life comes up and other things pull our focus away. That’s great for people to recognize that if we’re willing to let go of the perceptions that we have and put our happiness as a priority, recognize that we can work towards this and this isn’t selfish, it moves us forward. We’ve learned it. We’ve taken that in. It’s not something we have to keep going back and reintegrating it. It isn’t more work. It’s less. 

It’s like riding on a bicycle. Even if you didn’t ride a bicycle for years, when you step on a bicycle, you know how to ride a bicycle. This is the same but you need to know how. I teach people how to fish themselves. It’s a skill. 

I’m glad that we had the opportunity to dig into some of these topics. We didn’t have much time to talk about how people can work with you. 

Look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook. I don’t have a website but if people want to work with me, find me on LinkedIn on @HappiGuru or @MoniqueToonen. 

I’d love to learn more about your nature retreat. I’ll be tuned in myself. Thank you so much for joining me. There are many good insights and gems to take out of this conversation. We might have to schedule a follow-up. 

I’d love to schedule another topic. That’s fine with me. Thank you for having me. It was a great pleasure. I’m very passionate about what I do in helping men to create more happiness in their life, and being a lazy bee at the right time in their business and their life. I’m happy to welcome them. 

Being in the business of happiness is a pretty stimulating game. Thank you so much. You take good care. 

Thank you. 

Important Links:

• HappiGuru International
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/moniquetoonen/
• https://www.Facebook.com/Monique1965Toonen 
• https://Calendly.com/happiguru4u 
• @HappiGuru – LinkedIn 

About Monique Toonen