Everyone can achieve joy. You just need to make the decision to go for it. For many, this is easier said than done. Allow today’s guest to help you find that knowing and fill your cup with joy. Hayley Foster sits down with Nina Obier. the Founder of Success Simplified, an educational consulting firm that provides action-oriented tools and strategies so that her audiences and clients gain the ability to remove doubt, discouragement, and distraction to replace it with clarity, confidence, and commitment. Together, they discuss how you can fill your life with joy. Learn how Nina’s journey began by leaving her unsatisfying job. Find out how she was able to truly enjoy the journey of life. Learn some of those tools and wisdom by tuning in to this conversation.
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Make The Decision To Fill Your Cup With Joy With Nina Obier
Joy Is An Inside Job
I'm here with the amazing Nina, who is going to fill your Cup of Joy as we talk about her journey, her experiences and all of the things that she does to fill that cup each and every day. She's also going to share with you some nuggets, so I can't wait to dive in. Nina, thank you so much for your time. I'm super excited to have you here.
Thank you, Hayley. What an honor to be able to share with this community that you have built up. The more I get to know about you and what you're about, the more I want to learn more. Now, I get to be a part of that and share my journey, so I'm super excited.
Thank you so much again. I love that you are always wearing these inspirational shirts every time I see you on video or in-person. I want to know, is it because they make you feel better? What's the reasoning behind them?
Thank you for noticing. It is on purpose because I believe words hold whatever weight we put on them. I choose for words to inspire me and lead me into my day. You're going to find out how much I love words. It just started happening. I started to embrace it more because when we do embrace who we genuinely are, and in little ways, you're going to hear that a lot. It's about the little things that can make us be more of who we were designed and created to be. Why not embrace them? The words on the shirt matter.
What did you call them? I'm going to call them Nina-isms, but I'm sure that that is not the word you use for them, but there are so many. What are your favorite top three? I know I'm throwing questions at you right now that we were not even prepared for. All these things are coming to me right now that I want people to know about you because you have these Nina-isms. You don’t call them that?
It's an honor that other people call it those kinds of things. I feel completely blessed about that. I guess it's these divine downloads that come to me and then I trust them. It's so interesting you bring that up because there are actually four groups of words that I was using separately to inspire me. They were brought all together as one power phrase. The funny about it is someone in my sphere whose known me for years wrote a note underneath when I posted it, “When will this be a t-shirt?”
What is it? You have to share.
I don't think the full context will fit on a shirt. Instead, I made a canvas. It's, “Breathe and believe with grace and ease through trust and surrender in the power of prayers and positivity.” It felt so good. I think you know me enough to know what feels good, then I take action on it. Those four concepts are truly ingrained in me and have been for several years. I initially started putting a couple of them on shirts and on mugs separately, but now I see the bigger picture for sure.
You said for several years, so take us through the Nina journey. Where were you before you started on this journey and then how did you pivot into this Cup of Joy world?
Words hold whatever weight you put on them.
I do like to point out when there are no coincidences. You and I met and had a powerful conversation around the twentieth anniversary of September 11th. The journey that you see now did start many years ago, right after September 11th. I was, at the time, in Corporate America. I had my two daughters. I was doing my thing and doing what I do best and other people were raising my babies. My husband also worked a ton.
You had these two go-getters working, all of the things. I knew my husband was never going to entertain the thought of changing careers and I'm glad he didn’t. I also knew after September 11th, because of the work he did, something was going to change in our family. I thought, “I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do what I'm doing.” The reasons weren't in alignment anymore.
After several days of crying on the floor in my bedroom while my daughters were upstairs sleeping, I made a choice. There's so much power in a decision. You'll learn a lot about me and I like to put things out there. I like to marinate on them. I think it's part of my design, yet there's nothing like the power of a decision. At that moment, I decided and took my hobby of creating scrapbooks and built an empire and I will call it an empire in my own right. I built an incredible team. I enjoyed all the perks. It was great for my family, for how I showed up for my kids, my husband. I could go on and on about that, but that was my first journey into entrepreneurship. I know you can probably relate to that.
I certainly can because my journey was about several years ago as well. Many years on the entrepreneurial path and I had two little kids at home, too. I got divorced and I wasn't seeing them as much as I wanted to and they were so little. I made a choice to choose happy. That was my motto for a couple of years. After my official divorce, I made a choice that happiness is my number one priority. If I'm not happy, the world around me doesn't work. Similarly, I knew that after getting divorced, the other unhappy place for me was the other company that I was a founder of. It was a baby to me for many years, but I knew that it was time to set myself and the child free, so I did.
We're not alone. You're not alone. If you're reading this and you're like, “Wait a minute,” there is something, this knowingness may be in your heart and you're scared. You can change that energy. It was funny. I went to my husband to tell him this epiphany and God bless that man and his support and we are still married. I still like him, which is cool.
I was the one who wrote the bills and wrote the checks and he's like, “Can we handle it? We just bought a house and a new car.” In the depths of my soul, not knowing how, but I knew we would. I said, “Everything's good. We're going to be good.” I never looked back. I'm not saying it was easy, but it was a simple decision. Once I made that decision, there was no turning back. I think there is something to be sad about that, too, of having that knowing and then going forward. Not to say there weren't highs and lows and all the things on entrepreneurship, but I knew that I wasn't going to go back to the life I had.
It's so funny, our universe. I had this conversation with a group of women that I'm in a different group with. I talked about you can't change the past. It’s written. What we have done, we have done and it's done. It should stay there. The only thing that we can change is right now, right this second, and everything will come after. We were talking about parenting and the hindsight of 2020. Thinking through like, “Should I have done this differently? Should I have done this better?”
I paused everyone and said, “It doesn't matter. You did what you did. The question is, what can you do better going forward or what can you change going forward?” I'm with you. I never looked back on Corporate America. I never looked back on that life. I don't look back on my divorce and say, “What if or should I have?” It's sort of, “That was that. We're moving on. This is the first day of the rest of our lives. Time to focus on that.” I love your story. How did the scrapbooking turn into the clarity work that you do?
This is the other part of knowing your journey and trusting yourself. It's a big piece of it. As this industry grew and as things changed, that's the one thing we know for sure. We were a very simplistic organization. We had a simple system and then digital cameras came around and then the competition. I love competition, but needless to say, the company was no longer aligned with what I believed in how to share this message. It didn't feel right. I said, “Now, what?” It's interesting. If I get a chance ever to tell everyone all of my stories, it typically is when I'm still at a high, I make a shift.
It's usually not a popular decision. People don't quite understand that, but it's what works for me. Sometimes that might be you. You might say, “Why would I leave this? I have this. I have that. I have all this going for me.” If it's not in alignment, it's going to be so much harder. I'm not saying it won't work. You may still get the results, but I was all about grace and ease.
I dabbled in a few things. I'm not going to lie, but let's jump to when I finally said, “This is what I'm about. I have all these years of experience of training and my own personal development and programs I was certified in because of other jobs that I had. What if I go out and now share that with the world?” I started my own training and development company that very quickly turned into doing coaching.
A few years into it, my mom wore me down. I went and got certified through the John Maxwell organization. I'm telling you this piece of the story because even though 2013 where I started to make my shift, I would say probably not until 2016 is when I was in alignment with the messages I was going to deliver. I stuck with it. I'm not saying it didn't feel good, but it seemed a little disjointed.
The clarity work that I get to do with my clients is my work with myself. Once I had that, now I wanted to share it with the world. After I got that clarity, I was able to publish my second book. In 24 hours, I was able to put it together. It's a workbook. You have to do the work. The fact that again, I had thought about it, but once you have such clarity and competence, you can't help but be committed to your next right step.
I love that because, similarly, I had written the outline for my first book, Foster Your Passion. I hired a book coach. I was like, “I want to do this. Now is the time.” I met this book coach. I came back, I spoke to a bunch of women that live locally and I was like, “Let's write our books.” They were all in. We have this woman come here. We did an intensive weekend of like, “How to self-publish?” I said to her, “I have my outline.” I started to sit with my outline and I hated it. I was like, “I wouldn't even read this book.” It was because she clarified for me all of the things that I wanted to put out there into the world.
My first book is a memoir of my journey to fostering my own passion. I needed to go through that journey in order for me to write it. I think it was nine months later when I started my first twelve-week program and I created this workbook that you now have. It’s like a real book, but I created it myself and gave everybody this book that had all of these amazing quotes in it. The empty journaling pages. I made little stickers and I put them on all the journaling pages. My husband said to me, “Why don't you make this into your own workbook?” I was like, “That's a great idea.”
Literally, in a week, I found a designer to design all the quotes. I gave her all the things and I found a book cover person. I was like, “I am done.” It took me a month, like you, to publish my workbook. It was because I went through the twelve-week journey. Without me going through that journey, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Part of my first twelve-week program was for me to publish my twelve-week workbook.
For the record, that workbook is amazing. I've only just dived into it, but it's beautiful aesthetically. When I started to look at the pages, I was like, “This is no joke.” Thanks, Hayley.
You're welcome. It is a workbook because you got to do the work. I said to you before we started that it's one thing to have the workbook, but it's another thing to actually do the work. You can say like, “I joined this twelve-week program, but I didn't see results.” The question always is, “Did you do the work?” You got to do the work to see the results as we talked about.
Once you have such clarity and competence, you can't help but be committed to your next right step.
I'm super excited and thank you for your kind words about my workbook. I was very excited to get it done. One of the best things was getting my kids involved in that process, which is a whole other story. I'll share it with you another time. Here we are with Nina and your clarity work. Your clarity that you help others come up with. Give us your top three tips to finding our clarity, leading us to live this life of joy.
Let’s start with, first, understanding that joy is an inside job.
Is that on a t-shirt, Nina? I hope so.
I think it needs to be.
It definitely needs to be right now.
Joy is an inside job. Just like you were describing your workbook, it takes the work. Not a lot of people like this word and they're probably like, “How does that bring you joy?” I believe it's in the discipline that actually you can get the joy. If I'm being completely transparent, I have been running from using the word discipline when I talk to others. It was not in alignment, until I started using that word and owning it, did more people want to know about it.
You know that when we were together with our group. Now I'm owning, “I have joy from certain disciplines because I've done the inner work.” That being said, I am going to ask you to get your thoughts out of your head. I'm sure Hayley would agree. Write those suckers out. Just doing brain dumps daily, whatever, not questioning it, not editing it, not anything, just let it out. That can clear your energy.
That can open up the inner work for joy because you've allowed it to be out of your head. When you keep it in your head, you have about 60,000 or more thoughts a day and about 90% of them are the same thoughts as yesterday. Unfortunately, typically the thoughts we're having are not serving us. Tip one is to just let that out.
That's how we started our weekend together in Nashville. You had us get it all out. What was great is that we got it all out and it allowed us to open ourselves up for the rest of the weekend.
In a way that we didn't even know what we were opening up. That’s tip one. Even if you do nothing else, at some point in the day, it could be in the morning, it could be at night or it could be in the middle of the day. It could be all of those. Don't be afraid of putting pen to paper. Along those same lines, now what are you going to feed back into your brain? Now we've let it out. What am I going to feed back in? I, again, am typically going to recommend you do it in writing but saying it is also good or maybe doing both.
That would be now setting intentions for your day or your next right step. Now that you've brain dumped it out, what is the intention I want to set, and/or? Both would be great. What are your power statements? What are your I am statements? What do you want to declare? I have journaling prompts that are intention centers. It's both. It's a yes, and. I'm describing to you my daily clarity system. It's simple but not always easy because it will take discipline to do these things.
Consistency comes along with the discipline side of it, 100%. A quick little share is when I was going through probably one of the hardest times in my life and getting divorced, I was doing a program with my Rabbi called The Happiness Group. We were running it because he's like, “I do all these bereavement groups and mourning groups.” All of these groups are Debbie Downer groups. He's like, “I want to teach people how to bring more happiness into their lives.”
We started this thing called The Happiness Group. During that time, we focused on gratitude. It was one of the biggest things that led us to start this Happiness Group. He talked about a daily gratitude practice, which is not just spiritual, but it's in our Torah. Start your morning with gratitude. I started doing a morning gratitude reminder. I would set it on my phone. I wake up every day and think of something you're grateful for.
It was that discipline and consistency that led me to now. I wake up and the first thing I think of is, “What are three things I'm grateful for now?” It could be the stupidest thing. I'm grateful to be able to look out my window and see the beautiful fence that's up in my yard, even though my yard isn't finished yet. These are little things that we are grateful for. They don't even have to be big. They could be little tiny things, but starting with that practice sets the intention for your day. I'm totally with you.
There's a saying I got to get it down right, but let's just say, “That is where joy comes from when you appreciate what you have, then you're, again, filling your cup more with the joy.” When your cup is full of joy, it's hard to pour anything else into it. One thing we know for sure, life keeps happening. It does. We've talked about this in the Cup of Joy room. We want to celebrate you.
If you came because you're seeking joy, we want to talk about that. I believe joy and sorrow can co-exist. When you have that inner work done for the joy, when life happens, you can walk through it. It doesn't mean you're not going to feel, we want you to feel the feelings. I'm all about feeling the feelings but it's then, how do we transition with grace and ease for the right energy to put out in the world.
When you say your Cup of Joy room, just for clarity purposes, for people that are not on Clubhouse, Nina does a 9:00 AM room called the Cup of Joy on Clubhouse. It is powerful. I was in there where that woman just was sobbing to you, thanking you for changing her life. The things you're doing and the joy you are bringing to people are truly a gift from above. Thank you.
God knew I needed that. If you're reading this, always be open. I like to tell people, “Leave your, ‘I already know that,’ at the door.” I'm doing it as we speak as I get to be a part of what Hayley does. I come with that curiosity into life and openness. There's always something for you in both joy and sorrow. If you have that openness to be observant, to hear it, to all of those things.
Joy is an inside job. It's in the discipline that you can actually get the joy.
This day was one of those days. I trust you're going to have more of those each and every one of you as you look at your daily practices. As you look at one thing, maybe you could do differently. Maybe it's what we said, when your eyes wake up, don't pick up your phone. I say, “Today I am,” and whatever word comes to my mouth, I'm like, “That's what I am.” It's something joyful.
I play a game of, “I'm not going to pick my phone up for how long.” If I do pick my phone up, it's to read a prayer or it's to read an affirmation or it's to bless somebody else. It's not to get caught up in all this other stuff. My favorite thing to say is, "Pick something and little by little, a little will become a lot." Pick one thing and have the discipline to keep doing it.
I say this to people in their businesses, “There are no overnight success stories. You have to work years at your business for it to become an overnight success.” One day, you're like, “Here I am.” Something you said resonated with me and it was, “We should always be open.” There is so much education these days and knowledge at our fingertips.
There are so many communities that we could find and connect ourselves with that it's endless. Coming into Nashville, similarly, I came in and I left like, “I know a lot of this stuff at the door.” I opened myself up. I want to absorb as much as I can in these three days from these amazing women. It was beautiful. It was because I opened myself up to that.
When I met my husband, I remember feeling my cup was full right now. I think my Rabbi had given me a cup that said, “You filled my cup with blessings,” as a thank you for being a part of this group. I forgot what the Hebrew translation is of it, but it was along those lines. “Thank you for filling my cup.” He gave us these little cups. I remember saying to my friends, “I'm good.” If I am single and meant to be with my girls and live this life that I have right now, I'm good. I guess that was me saying like, “I'm ready for whatever gets thrown my way.”
The next day, I met Bryan. When people say to me, “How long did it take? How did you do it?” I said, “I had to feel good for myself first. I had to work on myself and get myself to the point of happiness and joy,” because they are different. I know you know, but I had to get there before I could accept anyone else in my life. I talk to a lot of women getting divorced and share that with them because that's what it's about.
There is a quote in the Daily Clarity Playbook. We'll call it journal or whatever you want to call it. The quote is right before you turn the page to start your first brain dump is, “It's all about The JOY." The JOY stands for The Journey of You.
There are so many Nina-isms. I can't take it. Is there a number three?
I'm going to go back to one of the first parts of clarity because you said give tips for clarity. Are you drinking enough water, people? I know you're probably laughing at me right now, but no. I promise you. Although water was always my drink of choice, I was challenged one day because I have an open mind and open heart and I don't already know that.
When I was challenged to mark down the amount of water I drink, I was far below what is required. Making that shift, not that it was easy, but it's a simple shift, the benefits of water go far beyond your wildest dreams. One of them is clarity, creativity, health, skin, hair, and nails. I could go on and on.
It's all wellness and you might be reading this going, “Is this lady crazy?” or “I've already heard that.” Here's your challenge. Are you truly disciplined to it? I know that I know. People were watching me and I think they know how much water I drink now. I believe some women are challenging themselves already going, “I'm not drinking enough water.”
For everyone that's reading, grab your cup and take a sip because it's scientific. It's not hokey. It's not like, “Drink your water.” Water creates clarity. It clears your brain and flushes your system. My father-in-law has Alzheimer's and dementia. When he is not drinking water, he is confused. We saw this and it was almost like we couldn't believe it, but we knew.
The clarity that happened when we handed him a bottle of water and he started drinking it, because he hadn't drunk anything all day and he was out of sorts, it was a different person. There is scientific evidence. If you don't believe Nina and you don't believe me, google it. Ask the Google machine, “How does water help me?”
You will see that there are a tremendous amount of benefits to drinking water. We've started putting a little bit of pink Himalayan sea salt in our water because you need to add some sodium to it in order for it to do all the things it needs to do. You can drink too much water and dehydrate yourself if you're not adding a little bit of electrolytes or sodium to it. It’s a little tip.
Just like that, I learned something new and I'm going to start doing it. Thank you, Hayley.
Good pink Himalayan sea salt. I want to preface it with that. A little tiny bit in your water goes a long way.
I can't wait. I'm going to do it right now.
Is there anything you want to throw out there before we say goodbye?
We sometimes struggle with taking care of ourselves because we want to take care of everyone else and everything else first. I'm here to let you know that I learned the hard way and I don't want you to learn that the hard way. It doesn't take a lot but definitely, taking care of you and it can be just those simple steps, drinking more water, writing out your thoughts and not thinking about them. Replacing them with thoughts that motivate you, inspire you and make you feel good. Those little things will go a long way.
It's so important to remain focused on yourself. Not in a way that is selfish, in a way that elevates you to the best version of yourself. You're still going to serve. You're still going to give to others. You're still want to give to your business like you never did before. All the things, those multiple hats don't have to go away if you don't want them to, but you can wear them better, I think if you first take care of yourself.
Little by little, a little will become a lot.
I love you. You're amazing. Thank you. This was great. Where can people get your Daily Clarity Journal?
I spend and hang out time on Instagram, so come follow me over on Instagram. Typically, in my link in bio, there will be a link to grab it. It’s not going away. If anything, it's gaining momentum. Let us know if you pick it up and what you think about it.
Nina, thank you so much for filling all of our cups with some joy today and teaching us how to fill them with even more joy tomorrow, the next day and the next day. Thank you. I appreciate you and your time.
Thank you for having me, Hayley. It was an honor.
Thanks for reading. We will talk to you next time.
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About Nina Obier
Nina is the acclaimed author of “Listen.Learn.Love.Lead” and “My Daily Clarity" In her keynotes, seminars, and workshops she brings her positive energy and a unique ability to make the complex simple. As Founder of Success Simplified, Nina’s mission is to provide action-oriented tools and strategies so that her audiences and clients gain the ability to remove doubt, discouragement, and distraction to replace it with clarity, confidence, and commitment.
Nina is passionate about personal development and is known for having the wisdom of a 90-year-old with the energy of a 9 year old.