Ep 23 Randye Kaye – Happier Made Simple

Meet Randye Kaye: 

Randye Kaye is the author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey from the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope, a memoir of her experience with the onset of schizophrenia in one of her children, and the hopeful road to recovery. Randye speaks frequently to groups of families, providers, and legislators regarding the family experience when mental illness hits. She also has traveled all over the US leading workshops on stress reduction, communication skills and happiness – with a sense of humor.

Her next book is Happier Made Simple: Changing Your Life, Three Words at a Time

With years of experience as a radio personality, voice talent, and stage/TV/film actress, Randye knows how to think on her feet and help events run smoothly and happily as host emcee.

Randye also leads workshops in communication, teamwork, potential and motivation, using her experience in radio, improvisational acting, and theatre to teach and inspire in educational and corporate environments.

Show Notes:

ABOUT RANDYE

• The red thread that runs through all the various ways I have made a living to support my family is helping people share positive energy
• Helping people share positive energy is kind of at the heart of everything I have done
• I am a professional theatre actress, I have done morning radio, I am now a radio broadcaster and I make my main living from being a voiceover talent
• I have also taught communication in college and at middle school level
• I have taught acting and writing, and I also raised my children as a single parent
• I wrote a book about it and also use public speaking as a way to share positive energy
• As a professional speaker like you, I like to help and inspire people
• One of the things that I have developed to help myself get through a family crisis is little mantras
• I wondered why the happiness movement seems to be filled with unhappy people
• I have tried meditation several times in my life and I am bored after a minute and a half
• It’s not that I don’t like my own company, I just don’t want to carve out half an hour
• I am too antsy and I am the person with one eye on the clock in the yoga class
• I thought about what is it that helped me get through things, that helps anybody I know get through the hard times
• I found that a few things really help, because in my work, words have power
• Words come to represent things
• The words that you tell someone else, or the words that you tell yourself, can make you happier
• The book that I am working on and going to finish is called “Happier Made Simple. Change Your Life 3 Words at a Time”
• I don’t believe that we are here to just be happy every single second of every single day
• And so, I started to develop seven little phrases to use in the proper situations
• It does not solve everything, but these are the phrases that keep me happier
• It can help in the moment and sometimes that’s all we have
• (disclaimer) These are not phrases that you tell someone else, because if you tell someone else, it becomes advice and it can be taken the wrong way
• This is self-talk. If you use it on yourself, you become your own hero
• With that said, all of these things I have learned from other people
• I think breathing itself is a huge help in moments of stress
• At times, when I want to blow my stack, if I just take one deep breath and immediately it changes your energy
• In the word BREATHE, there is a phrase that I used a lot and I totally stole it and it’s about presence
• It’s Be Here Now
• It’s just a little gentle reminder when I am making the coffee
• I am a very antsy person, that’s why I use it a lot and it helps me
• It just triggers those fleeting thoughts by staying in the moment
• It’s about staying and living in the moment
• As you get used to these 3 words phrases, you’ll find the one you notice that calms you down
• If you go back in time to a happy memory, or if you are going to go forward in time, look forward to something
• Don’t look forward to anxiety
• Too many of us are lost in the anxiety of the future and the past
• Be Here Now, is the way to be present when it’s something that would work for you
• We just need gentle reminders to make our lives just a little bit better
• It’s never going to be a perfect life
  
  
• Less social media and more social gatherings
• If I am on Facebook, I have to put a perspective on it. To me, it’s my water cooler
• So, if I want to go on Facebook and scroll through the feed of people that I am not really sure of who they are, and that entertains me, then it’s okay
• But, if it starts to make me feel bad about my life, I am shutting it down
• I do a workshop called, Toss and Dare
• There’s a phrase that I heard and it says, “Create order and you create space” and I believe that to be true
• The next two I added, “Create space and you create possibility”
• And if you toss things away, you decide what you are going to toss intentionally or what life is making you toss
• You have to have courage to dare, and you dare by making a goal
• But, it does not become a goal unless you take the 4^thstep, which is Take One Step
• If you don’t a step it’s a dream, if you take a step, it can become a goal
• When you toss things, then you focus and you take a step, then these dreams can become a goal that you dare to take a step towards whatever happens in the end
• Sometimes, you can also toss your beliefs
• When my son developed schizophrenia, I had to toss the belief that I am only as happy as my happiest child
• I have to toss the belief of, if one of my kids is unhappy, then I am a bad parent
• That drew me to a place to take more actions to deal with REALITY
• We believe what comforts us
• The R is for Reality, it just is
• Bear in mind that it might take time to get into that place of accepting
• One of the concepts of my book is about processing time
• The bigger the challenge, the more you will need processing time
• Sometimes, even now, although my son has had an illness for 20 years, I am in a pretty good place about it most of the time
• But, sometimes grief will hit you
• I allow myself to process it and move forward
• All of these things are not magical, but they can be, in the right moment
• I have done my workshop locally in Connecticut
• I am thinking of doing an online version, but I think it is more valuable in person
• Dreams can inspire you, but if you don’t take a step it remains a dream
• There’s a difference between dreams and goals
• In Breathe, E is for Empathy and the phrase is, “How about you?”
• The A is for Appreciation
• Words are powerful because we connect so many with them
• Whatever the language, words are created out of the feelings and sounds that we hear
• Word do matter even when we tell them to ourselves
• Just saying, “I love this” will remind you of appreciation
• The T is for trust and also “Take One Step”
• H is for Humor
• As a morning radio personality, you will learn that silly stuff that happened in your life is going to be funny the next day
• And the last E is for Esteem and that is trusting yourself
• The longest phrase that I have used in time of crisis is, “Whatever happens, I’ll handle it somehow”
• The 3-word version of that is, “I’ll manage somehow” or “I’ll always survive”

RANDYE KAYE’S MANTRAS

• B for Being, be here now
• R for Reality, it just is
• E for Empathy, how about you
• A for Appreciation, this is good, I love this or I get to
• T for Trust, things work out or take one step
• H for Humor, isn’t that interesting
• E for Esteem, I’ll always survive or I’ll manage somehow
• My goal in creating this book is to make these things approachable, humorous and simple

WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• Website: randyekaye.com
• Website for the book: benbehindhisvoices.com

To get the Randye Kaye’s book click HERE

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