Quick IQ 14: What Is The Most Important Factor To Cultivating Happiness?

Welcome to Heal Yourself, Change Your Life. My name is Brandy Gillmore, and after recovering from my own life-changing injury, it’s become my mission to share with others the same discoveries I made that changed my health and my entire life. Our minds are truly incredible. The placebo is proof of this.

Each week I will take this simple awareness to a whole new level. I’ll even coach live callers to free themselves of physical pain using only their mind, and then I’ll provide you with a combination of practical and spiritual insights that you can use to master your mind, your emotions, and your energy to help you heal your health, yourself, and your life.

Let’s begin.

Hello and welcome. It is so wonderful to connect with you. Welcome to this week’s quick IQ episode. And I have to say, I just love that you are somebody who is here, who is continuing to look outside of the box for answers and lift your mind and energy and consciousness. I love it — and I love that we get to connect in this way and that we’re on this journey together of unfoldment.

On today’s episode, I’m going to take a question from a listener. Her name is Jamie, and she emailed in and said:

“I have a question. It’s not about health per se, but rather about happiness. So I’m not sure if it’s a good question for the IQ segment or not, but I see so many people struggle with depression, myself included. So I thought this would be a good question to ask.

My question is: What is the number one thing I need to know about happiness? It always feels elusive. I try to do things that make me happy, and yet still I feel empty. I’m constantly looking and chasing this feeling of happiness, and yet it feels elusive or momentary at best.

There must be something I’m missing. I have been working on happiness for over 17 years. I have been on medication. I go to therapy. Yet it’s just not working. I am wondering if it’s genetic. My mother suffered from depression too.

I don’t expect that you can fix it like when you work with volunteers, but I figured I would ask just the number one thing I need to know and maybe I can focus on that.

Thank you.”

Alright, so first off — I have so much compassion for you, Jamie. I get it. I’ve been there. During my injury, my head was definitely not in a great space, and so I know how heavy that can feel. So I get it. And again, I have so much compassion and also excitement to change it, because I see people change it all of the time.

The Number One Thing to Know About Happiness

Your question was, “What is the number one thing I need to know about happiness?” And the number one thing is that there really is more than just one thing. But if I was going to pick just one most important thing, I would say it’s all about your mind programming.

Of course, your actions and behavior also influence your happiness — but that too ultimately ties back to what is programmed in your mind.

So that’s the simple answer. But let’s unpack it, because there are a few really important areas you’ll want to understand.

The Problem With “Chasing Activities That Make You Happy”

You mentioned in your message that you’ve been trying to go do things that make you happy. I see this all the time — people have the belief that to be happy, they need to purposely go find things that bring joy.

Sometimes this works. But other times it can massively backfire.

When your energy is heavy — when you’re depressed, disconnected, or weighed down — nothing really feels fun. Nothing feels deeply joyful. You can go hang out with people, but you don’t really connect. You can go to your favorite place, but you don’t feel the excitement.

For example, imagine someone travels to their dream destination — Hawaii, Fiji, Europe — but right before the trip something painful or heavy happens. How do they typically feel? Usually still heavy, because the emotion on the inside overrides the environment.

So when people try “doing things that should make them happy,” but the inside doesn’t shift, the activities don’t feel good. And that experience can actually make a person feel worse, because they start linking in their mind:

“Nothing is fun.”

And that can deepen depression and disconnection from life.

During my injury, I could be around people I loved — and logically I knew I loved them — but the connection wasn’t there. It didn’t bring joy because my internal emotional state was off.

Now, feeling amazing, I can connect effortlessly. I can laugh, enjoy, be present. And I don’t even need to do anything external. I could literally sit alone in an empty room and feel euphoric — because that feeling is programmed into my being.

Understanding Mind Programming and Happiness

When it comes to happiness, there are several key factors that influence whether or not a person feels happy. Since you asked for the number one thing: it’s mind programming.

But here are the top few pieces within that, because they all connect.

1. Clearing negative emotion is NOT enough

Many people think: “If I get rid of the negative emotions, I’ll automatically be happy.”

But that’s not how the subconscious mind works.

If you delete something from your refrigerator, a new item doesn’t magically appear in its place. If you stop speaking English, you don’t instantly know Japanese.

It’s the same with the mind: removing negative emotion does not automatically install happiness.

You must also program in the positive emotions — like happiness, connection, love, enthusiasm — on purpose.

But in our culture, when people are struggling emotionally, what do they do? They talk about the negative. Think about the negative. Repeat the negative. And that reinforces it into the subconscious mind.

2. Many people “cover up” emotions instead of releasing them

When you truly release something, it’s gone — like removing an item fully from your refrigerator. If you look for it, it’s not there.

But many people “release” emotions by:

• negating them
• pretending they’re not there
• covering them up with forced forgiveness
• or spiritual bypassing

That’s not true release.

True release means the emotion is no longer in your energy system at all.

3. Counterintuitive subconscious blocks

If you’ve been depressed for a long time, chances are there are some counterintuitive subconscious blocks at play — things that don’t make logical sense, but are programmed emotionally.

For example, I’ve worked with:

• a high-level investment professional who subconsciously believed that being happy would make people not take her seriously
• a young man who believed being too happy was dangerous because as a child he was told, “Stop playing around, you’re going to get hit by the bus!”

These programs make the mind feel like happiness is unsafe or unacceptable — and the subconscious will block happiness.

So one key technique you can use is this:

Picture yourself being happy — and that it is safe, accepted, respected, and okay.

This sounds simple, but it is extremely powerful for retraining your subconscious mind.

It sounds simple, and it is — but it’s also profound. And one thing I’ve learned from working with the mind for so many years is that you have to do things differently from what most people are doing if you want different results.

So I’ve compiled many different tools and tricks that create rapid results, and this is one of those small but powerful distinctions. It’s not everything, but it can be a key piece depending on what’s programmed in your mind.

Life Circumstances and the Role of Hope

The second key factor to consider when it comes to happiness — beyond the subconscious mind — is your life circumstances. Because let’s be honest: what’s going on in your life can definitely affect your level of happiness.

But here’s the important distinction:

Your life does not have to be perfect for you to feel happy.

Even if things are not ideal, if you have hope that they will get better, that alone can create a sense of happiness and motivation.

During my injury, on the days when I didn’t feel hope — when I felt like I would never get better and my life was over — those days were dark, heavy, and extremely difficult. I wished I could just fall asleep and let the day pass… but I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. It was a mess.

But on the days I had hope — even though my life had not yet changed — I felt more optimistic, more determined, more uplifted. Hope made a real difference in how I felt, and it helped me keep going long enough to figure it out.

That’s why mindset work is so important, and why I do the volunteer episodes: to help create hope for people who need it.

Is Depression Genetic?

You also mentioned that your mom suffered from depression, and you wondered if yours is genetic. When people feel something is genetic, they often start to feel like change is not possible. And that feeling of hopelessness can deepen depression.

So first and foremost, you won’t want to take on that belief that it’s genetic and unchangeable — because that belief alone can reinforce depression.

Secondly, in many cases when I see someone whose emotional patterns mirror their parents, it’s because they picked up the emotional pattern from them — not because it was inherited through genetics.

And looking at it from a spiritual perspective: if you’ve had many past lives with similar emotional patterns, that energy can carry forward. So you might “match” with a parent who has similar emotional frequencies — not because genetics caused it, but because energetically it aligns.

But the goal is not to dwell on past lives or blame your parents. The goal is to feel empowered to change what you’re experiencing now.

Creating a New Vision and Aligning Your Energy

If you’re wanting to manifest something better in your life, you’ll want to step into your vision and get clear about what that looks like — and begin to align your energy with that vision.

However, if you are in a state of depression, that energy isn’t aligned with your vision. So you’ll want to remind your mind that the depressive energy is not who you are and not what you want to create.

Bring in the feelings that match where you want to go.

Build genuine belief and hope that you can change it.

And begin training the mind to embody the new emotions associated with your future instead of the old emotions from your past.

I use the words “super focused,” but ultimately my real belief is this:

Everybody should know how to program their mind for their life — for happiness, health, love, success, and everything else.

But to keep it simple here, start with aligning your emotions with your new vision and building the hope and desire that fuels transformation.

And by the way, if you are someone who really struggles with depression, beyond mastering your mind (which I recommend for everyone), I also strongly recommend listening to Episode #35.

In that episode, I work with a young man named Corey — such a sweetheart — and the transformation he experiences from heavy depression to being completely in love with life is beautiful. You can feel it radiating from him. It’s uplifting, heartwarming, and inspiring.

Bringing It All Together

Your original question was: What is the number one thing I need to know about happiness?

If I had to give one answer, it would be this:

No matter where you are — even if you’re not depressed — always continue to intentionally elevate your happiness to the next level through conscious mind programming.

If you are depressed, and have not listened to Episode #35, start there — even listen several times — because hope can give you the spark you need to follow through on deeper change.

Hope is not everything…

But it can be the beginning of everything.

It can be the momentum you need to transform your life so you can finally live the happiness you deserve.

And on that note — if you want to help someone else live their life to the fullest, I strongly recommend sharing this episode, or Episode #35, or both. Sharing happiness and hope can make a profound difference.

The more of us who lift our happiness, the better our world becomes.

Alright — it has been such a pleasure connecting with you, and I look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. I’ll see you there.

Thank you for listening to Heal Yourself, Change Your Life. All of the time people reach out and say how much these episodes have given them hope or touched their heart, or helped them stay positive in hard times, or even woken them up to a completely new level of awareness of how amazing we all really are.

If today’s episode touched your heart or expanded your mind in any way, please do me a favor and be sure to share it with those you care about or those you know who really need it. As more and more people become empowered, it really will change our world for the better.

That is the point and the power of these demonstrations — to create a radical shift in our world consciousness by showing everyone what we are all capable of.

And of course, each volunteer will really need to follow through to reinforce their programming, to maintain their results. But the point is for you to see that you really can create rapid results in your health and your life if you really understand how to use your mind.

You are incredible.

I do want to be clear though, that most people will not get results this fast on their own. I make it look very easy because of the discoveries that I made. You’ll want to remember that there’s so much more going on in our minds at a deeper level than people realize.

That said, if you want to send me any questions or comments, come visit me at brandigillmore.com. And if you’re currently experiencing physical pain and would like to be a volunteer on the show, you can sign up there as well.

Lastly, please remember: if you do have any health issues, you won’t want to avoid your doctors. Instead, you’ll want to continue seeing them and make it your goal to blow their minds with what you are capable of with your mind.

Thank you.