Ep 92: How to Build a Life That Feels as Good as It Looks
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
We live in a world that often measures success by how our lives look from the outside — the career milestones, the social media highlights, the perfectly curated moments. But what about how life actually feels on the inside?
In this episode of the Feel Better Podcast, I explore the idea of creating a life that feels as good as it looks. Because too often, there’s a gap between the version of ourselves we show to the world and the private experience of how we’re really doing.
Let’s talk about how to close that gap — and what truly contributes to happiness and well-being.
The Success Paradox
We’ve all been sold a version of the success equals happiness story. If your life looks good on paper, surely it must feel good too, right?
Spoiler alert: that’s not how it works.
We can work tirelessly towards outward success — ticking off goals, achieving, acquiring — only to realise that we’ve neglected our inner experience. True happiness doesn’t come from how our life appears to others; it comes from how it feels to live it.
So, the next time you’re chasing that next goal, pause and ask: Does this actually make me feel good inside?
Relationships: The Real Secret to Happiness
Since 1938, the Harvard Adult Development Study has been tracking what truly makes people happy. And after more than eight decades, the results are crystal clear: the quality of our relationships is one of the biggest predictors of both our happiness and our health.
Yet, we invest so little in nurturing them.
Think about it — when you start a new job, you might get training, mentorship, or even a whole degree behind you. But when it comes to relationships, we often just wing it.
What if we treated our relationships like we treat our careers — with intention, effort, and care?
What if we actually set relationship goals?
Whether it’s your partner, your friends, your family, or even your colleagues — the time, energy and kindness you pour into those connections will always pay off in wellbeing.
Living in Alignment with Your Values
Authenticity matters. A lot.
When there’s a mismatch between our values and the life we’re living, we can start to feel disconnected or dissatisfied.
Ask yourself:
Is the way I’m spending my time aligned with what I truly care about?
Do my daily actions reflect my values?
Or have I lost touch with what really matters to me?
If you’re not sure where to start, I have a free Values Resource on my website to help you get clear on what’s most important to you. Because when our outer life reflects our inner values, we naturally feel more grounded, content and whole.
Practising Self-Compassion
One of the most powerful things you can do for your happiness is to learn to be kind to yourself.
We all have times when things don’t go to plan — when we drop the ball, miss the mark, or struggle to keep up. But instead of berating ourselves, what if we spoke to ourselves the way we would to a close friend?
Self-compassion isn’t about lowering your standards. It’s about creating space to be human — to have grey areas, imperfect days, and gentle self-talk. Your inner voice should be a supporter, not a critic.
If your mind doesn’t sound like a kind friend, that’s something worth working on.
Purpose Over Pleasure
It’s easy to get caught chasing what I call candy hits — those quick bursts of pleasure that give us a dopamine rush but fade fast. True satisfaction comes from purpose, not just pleasure.
That doesn’t mean you need to change careers or save the world. Purpose can be found in small, everyday acts of contribution — making someone’s day easier, doing something kind for your community, or even showing up fully for those around you.
For my family, that looks like joining a local group that plants trees and regenerates a section of river near where we live. It’s grounding, meaningful, and deeply satisfying.
Whatever it looks like for you, purpose gives your happiness roots.
Protecting Your Joy from Comparison
You’ve probably heard it before: comparison is the thief of joy.
And yet, in the age of social media, it’s easier than ever to fall into that trap. We scroll through perfectly presented lives and end up feeling inadequate.
Be mindful about what you consume online. Curate your digital space so it’s inspiring, not depleting. Surround yourself — both online and offline — with people who keep it real and remind you that life is both messy and magical.
Moments Over Milestones
Happiness isn’t found in the big milestones; it’s built from the small, ordinary moments of joy that we often overlook.
I’ve long practised writing down three things I’m grateful for at the end of each day — and I try to make them really specific. Like the warm smile from another mum at school drop-off, or a moment of laughter with my son while kicking a ball around.
These micro-moments matter. They fill your emotional tank in a way that big achievements never quite can.
Try asking yourself:
Where did I laugh today?
Where did I pause?
What small thing brought me joy?
Sometimes, happiness is as simple as sitting down with a cup of tea and letting yourself enjoy it while it’s still hot.
Questions to Reflect On
If you’d like to explore how your life feels right now, here are some questions to journal on:
To what extent am I living in alignment with my values?
What am I hoping for in the future?
Do I feel connected — to others, to the earth, to myself?
How do I show up in my relationships?
Am I being as kind to myself as I am to others?
Where am I rushing too much, and what’s my “busyness tax”?
What small moments of joy can I build more of into my days?
You can download these reflection questions as a free worksheet on my website.
If you’ve been feeling that gap between how your life looks and how it feels — this is your reminder that how you feel matters.
Your life matters.
Your experience of your life matters.
Take the time to reflect, reconnect, and realign. Create a life that feels as good as it looks — from the inside out.
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Hello and welcome to the Feel Better podcast. I'm Charlotte the counsellor and I've been a counsellor for the last 20 years. This is a space where I show up and share with you the stories, strategies and ideas that I've gleaned over my time helping people to navigate the things that keep them from feeling their best.
Whether that's to do with your own wellbeing, parenting or relationships, I'm here to help you feel better. Thanks for joining me. Well, hello and welcome along to this episode.
One of the things I love about having this podcast is that I've got a balance of hearing from you the topics that you want me to cover and then also sometimes bringing in my own observations. The things that I see people struggle with, the things I think, gosh, I wish people were doing more reflecting around that. The themes that I hear as a counsellor when I'm working with clients.
So every now and then I throw in an episode that is just a, I really think people need to hear about this and think about this and this is one of those episodes. So today what I want to explore is how do we build a life that actually feels as good as it looks on the outside? How do we make sure there's not this great gap between how we are presenting ourselves to the outside world around us and our lived experience of our own lives. The reality for us is that we show up in the world around us in heaps of different ways.
We show up professionally, at work, in our roles within the community, as a parent, on the sports sidelines, on social media. We have these curated performances of who we are and sometimes there can be this great gap between our reality, how we feel as ourselves and what it is that is portrayed to other people. So often there is a great unhappiness for people behind the scenes that sometimes others are just totally not aware of.
And that's why this topic of noticing how you feel within your life and making sure you're paying attention to that is, in my opinion, so important. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to talk about the concept of happiness and make some key points when it comes to thinking about what makes us happy and where we need to draw our attention around feeling good in our own lives. And then at the end, I've got a whole lot of questions that you can ask yourself that I think are key things to get you reflecting if you're wanting to do a bit of an audit and bring yourself into alignment with those things that I've talked about in the first section around what makes people happy.
And the questions that I raise in this episode are going to be available as a downloadable resource on my website. So go along and check that out if you want the notes. OK, so let's talk about happiness.
One of the things that is really important to say about happiness is that we have this thing called the success paradox, where we think we're lulled into this idea that our outward version of success and how we portray ourselves in our lives is going to somehow magically equate with our inner happiness. And spoiler alert, that is not true. It is not how it works.
And one of the tricks within our lives is that we can be so drawn into working on our outward success, achieving our goals, making our life look a particular way, keeping up with everybody else. And then the reality is there is this gap between what it looks like and how it actually feels. So one of the things to be super mindful of is that there is this success paradox.
How it looks on the outside does not equal how it feels on the inside. We need to pay attention to our inner experience of our lives because that is actually what really matters. That is what you are left with at the end of the day.
That is what you stew in, in the quiet moments in between all the busyness and activity. So keep in mind that whatever is happening, the goals you're achieving, the outward success does not automatically create inner happiness for you. And one of the other big, very well-established things, and I'm sure you knew that this was going to be somewhere in this episode, is the reality that our relationships count for so much when it comes to our happiness.
In 1938, the Harvard Adult Development Study began. It is one of the longest longitudinal studies of adult human development that has ever existed. We've actually got a great another one, the Otago Study in New Zealand that is also quite legendary.
But this one, starting in 1938, considered what it is that makes people happy. And one of the key indicators of our happiness is the quality of our relationships. But when you think about it, how much attention does your relationship get? How much resource do you put into making your relationship feel really great, helping it to function well? It is one of those things that we just expect will automatically flourish with little to no support.
When you think about your relationship versus your job, when you start a job, you get usually some policies, a handover from somebody, you might get professional development, you might have done an entire degree or postgrad study or a whole lot of stuff to set you up for success professionally. But when it comes to relationships, we get bugger all support. And this is something that is really important to draw your attention to.
We know from so many different pieces of research, from so many different angles, countries around the world, periods of time that relationships are a key indicator of our health and our happiness. So not just our experience of being happy, but actually the quality of our health across our lifetime is determined by the quality of our relationships. And it is really important that we don't lose sight of that.
Something I have talked about on the podcast before is how important it is to have goals around your relationship. We set our goals at the beginning of the year often to do with our fitness, to do with professional things we want to achieve. Maybe if we're lucky, we might have a goal on that list, like have a great holiday or something like that.
But actually we need goals when it comes to our relationship. What do you want to feel different within your relationship and how are you going to achieve that? When we know that the quality of our relationships determines our happiness and our health, it is completely mind-blowing that we don't put much attention on how we develop when it comes to our relationships, how we solve the problems, how we make the quality of those relationships really matter in our day-to-day lives. So big reminder in case you needed to hear that today, your relationships and the quality of your relationships really matters.
That is your friendships, your intimate relationship with a partner if you have one, your relationship with family members, your relationships with colleagues. Those connections really count for something when it comes to your experience of your own happiness. One of the other key things that we know is that authenticity really matters and that is that our outward life reflects our inner values.
And sometimes there can become this gap between those two things. So is what you're doing with your time, is where your focus is going and your effort and attention is going, is that in line with your values? One of the things that is a really quick way to become unhappy or to suddenly wake up over time going, oh, I don't even like this life that I'm living, is to get to a place where there is a gap between your values and the life that you're living. So it is really important to consider how authentic does this feel? Is where I'm spending my time and my job something that I even believe in? Are the things that I'm doing with my time making a difference? And do they matter? Do they line up with my values? One of the key things for some people is even what the heck are my values? There is a resource on my website around identifying values if you need some help with this.
But knowing your values and periodically checking how well is my life lining up with those values matters because we know that authenticity, our life matching our values, is something that really contributes when it comes to our happiness and how we feel within our lives. One of the next things that we know makes a great difference to how people feel is being able to be compassionate towards ourselves. One of the things that has developed in therapy over the years is this concept of acceptance of ourselves, our acceptance of our flaws, our failures, the times when things don't quite go our way and developing an attitude where we're okay with that, where we've got tolerance for that, where we're able to allow our lives to unfold with some grey areas, with some times when the ducks aren't all in a row or sometimes the ducks aren't even easily locatable.
But there's that sense that actually you having some margins within your life for the things that don't go well and being able to talk to yourself compassionately about those things, that really matters when it comes to what we know about how people score on the happiness front. So are you able to speak to yourself compassionately? Are you able to be kind and reassuring and give grace to yourself in those times when things don't quite go your way? We know that compassionate talk to ourselves is something that counts for so much when it comes to our happiness. If you're berating yourself, if it doesn't sound very friendly in your mind, that is not a good thing.
Your brain's job is to back and support you and encourage you. And sometimes that means being soft and gentle with yourself and not a super hard task master. If your mind doesn't sound like a really supportive friend, then that is something that needs work.
One of the other things that we need to be aware of when it comes to our lived experience of happiness is that we can get caught in chasing what I call the candy hits. Those things that give us momentary pleasure that are kind of like the shiny objects, the things that we're attracted to pursuing because they make us feel good immediately in the moment. They give us a hit of feeling good right at that time.
They spike the dopamine and that is great, but it is not all that sustainable. And we know that purpose counts for way more than pleasure when it comes to our happiness. We can get drawn into those candy hits, those kind of sugar rush moments within our lives way too easily.
And we need to think about how do we actually create some things that are sustainable in terms of our sense of purpose, how we build things into our week that make us feel purposeful, that give us that sense of deeper satisfaction. They might not be things that are kind of quick and easy to build into our lives, but they might make a real difference. My family and I are part of a group that once a month goes and plants trees and helps regenerate a particular patch of river here in Christchurch where we live.
That is really satisfying to do. That is something that helps bring us a sense of purpose. And it's got a rhythm that exists within the life of our family that every four weeks, this is something that we go off and do.
Now, you feel really good when you've done that. You feel really good as a person when things like that have a place in your life. It is productive.
It is something that connects you to other people, to the world around you, to the earth around you, which is another great thing for our happiness. But having those things in our lives that build a sense of purpose is so important and matters so much more than those sugar hit moments of instant pleasure and instant momentary satisfaction. We've got to pursue those things that build higher purpose.
And sometimes for people, we make that a really, really big deal. And we think that you have to have a job that's all about saving the world or making people's lives better. You have to be a doctor or a firefighter or a therapist or something to have this sense of purposefulness.
Well, no, you don't. You can turn up in your office environment. You can turn up whatever your work is and try and make people's lives better.
Try and contribute to other people. Try and help them have an experience of being supportive. It doesn't matter what your working life looks like.
You don't necessarily have to completely upheave that to have a sense of purpose in your life. Sometimes we get caught in that real black and white thinking, well, I'm not a person who's out to save the world. So, you know, I'll leave that to those other people.
Well, actually, that matters for all of us when it comes to our own experience of happiness. One of the things about happiness, and you absolutely knew that this was going to be in this episode, is that comparison is the thief of joy. The more we compare ourselves to others, the more we find ourselves feeling blah, feeling like we are not good enough, thinking, wow, that other person's life looks like this.
Now I just feel really inadequate. We need to have boundaries around what we look at of other people's lives. Some of that is digital boundaries.
How often are you scrolling on Instagram, looking at people who have these perfectly curated lives, looking at people whose life and job it is to present themselves in a particular way, where they're drawing income from that. So have a think about who's showing up on that Instagram feed. Who is it that you're surrounding yourself with? Do you have those real people in your life where you can talk about the messy, magical bits, not just the magical bits that, you know, appear like they're happening overnight? Think about those digital boundaries if you need them.
The other thing that is really important when it comes to happiness is being aware of the little things that bring us joy, that we can be grateful for. It's a long held practice for me. Something I learned from Oprah years ago was thinking at night about three things that I am grateful for.
So what I try and do here is make these not generic. Make them really micro and specific. So one of my things recently when I was thinking about gratitude was I really enjoyed that moment where I had that nice warm smile with that mum at the school drop off.
There was a moment of understanding, of seeing one another, and I know her now and feel like I can smile at her. That matters for me because I'm new to the community that I'm living in. So my gratitude things are super small and specific.
I loved that time outside kicking a ball around with my son where I heard him laughing and giggling. That filled my cup. That really made me feel good.
And then you'll find if you're doing three things that you're grateful for in the evening, they're actually really different from day to day. The moments matter way more than the milestones. So those everyday things that we do that make us feel good, the little moments of joy that we can appreciate within our day to day lives matter so much more for our happiness than the big things and the achievements that we might have in our lives.
It is really important that you have those little rituals within your day, those moments of time where you pause, where you enjoy your life, where you breathe, where you feel good, where you call to mind the things that you're grateful for, when you enjoy the space that you're in, when you enjoy the people that you're around. Those moments matter so much more than the big achievements and milestones, and we all need to be reminded of that. Sometimes our lives are so busy that we squeeze out those moments and actually thinking about where did I laugh today? Where did I stop today? What is it that I enjoyed today? Where did I give myself something great within this day that wasn't just the tasks and the busyness? That really matters when it comes to how we feel within our lives.
So think about those moments and how important they are and where you're going to build those in. What little rituals and practices might you introduce or reintroduce that help you with that? One of my hacks for this is just sitting down. I find that if I sit down for five minutes a day, make myself a cup of tea and try and have that time and space to allow the tea to cool down and drink it, that's like five, six, seven minutes within my day where I just get to pause.
And those times that we pause are super enjoyable. They're one of those things that build satisfaction within our day that we can feel are just not that important, but actually they really make us feel good. So here are some good questions to consider if you're wanting to make sure that your life feels as good as it looks.
To what extent am I living my values? Do I have hope for the future? What is it that I'm hoping for? What are the moments of enjoyment that I build into even a busy day? Do I understand my purpose and is what I'm doing right now lining up with that? Could it line up even more? Do I feel satisfied that I'm reaching my potential? Am I in right relationship? Who do I need to make peace with? Do I treat the people closest to me as well as I treat others? And the spoiler here is that treating customers or clients or workmates better than you're treating your kids, your friends or your spouse isn't living a congruent life. How do I feel in my body? Am I paying too much tax? So I have this concept of thinking about busyness tax. Now I know that there is this thing that happens for me where if I am rushing, if my life is feeling like super at pace and I'm squeezing a whole lot of stuff into my time, then I can wake up and go, oh my goodness, there's this big pile of stuff that I need to attend to around my life admin or the laundry or something that needs sorting out.
And if you're too busy and life is too crammed, you don't have those times to sort things as you go. You suddenly go, oh my goodness, I've got five handbags that are full of crap that I need to sort out or my workspace just isn't organised or gosh, I'm really needing to overhaul my bedroom or my wardrobe or whatever it is because things have just gotten chaotic. Now, it's not a great way to do life to do that living really busy and then paying tax mode.
So have a think about what is it that you can do to make your life a little bit more sustainable so you're not having to have these periods of time of really playing catch up and paying tax on the life that you've already lived. It is not that satisfying in my experience and maybe not in yours too. How connected do you feel to others? Do you feel you're contributing to other people's lives? How connected do you feel to the earth or the place around you? And how often are you serving other people or the planet? So there we have it, some thoughts on happiness, the success paradox, the importance of relationship, how authenticity really matters, the importance of self-compassion, how purpose matters more than pleasure, the reminder that comparison steals joy and the importance of moments over milestones.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode and that it's got you thinking about how happy you are and whether there is a gap between how things feel in reality for you and how your life might look to other people. If you're needing to draw some attention to this, this is just your little reminder from me to you that how you feel matters. Your life matters and your experience of your life matters, not just what it looks like from the outside.
So if it's time to do a bit of an audit on this, get journaling, get talking to a friend about these topics and issues. And I wish you all the best making a life that feels as good as it looks. Thanks for joining me today on the Feel Better podcast.
I'm super proud of you for spending this time prioritising your well-being and hopefully learning a few things to help you navigate the tough stuff in life. I'd love to stay connected. So come and find me on Instagram at Charlotte the counsellor, on Facebook Charlotte Cummings counselling or head over to my website charlottecummings.nz where there's heaps of free resources waiting for you.
Thanks for hanging out with me today and I look forward to seeing you next time.
