How To Be Happy (Even When Things Feel Tough) with Declan Edwards

Listen to the full episode.

If you’re in a season where life feels heavy — maybe your energy is low, your mood is fragile, your body is doing weird things, and you’re trying to hold it all together — the idea of “being happy” can feel almost offensive. Like… sure, that sounds nice, but how? And is it even realistic when you’re dealing with burnout, chronic symptoms, or the messy middle of healing?

In Episode 162, Chris and Filly are joined by Declan Edwards (aka the “Happiness Guy”) to talk about how to retrain the brain to create more happiness, and why happiness is strongly linked to healing body burnout. Declan is the founder of BU Happiness College and a researcher dedicated to the no-fluff science of human flourishing. He’s helped thousands of students increase their happiness by an average of 57% by focusing on evidence-based skillsets — not surface-level fads.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, this conversation fits beautifully into Burnout Functional Medicine, Holistic Health, and Mind Body Medicine. Because happiness isn’t just a “nice to have”. It’s a nervous system state. It’s a physiological environment. And when your internal environment shifts, your capacity to heal naturally can shift too.

The Trap: “Once I Achieve the Next Thing, Then I’ll Be Happy”

Declan shares that as a younger man, he was chasing the next achievement, the next goal, believing that then he would be happy. Many people can relate to this, especially high-achievers and helpers. You keep moving the finish line:

• “Once I lose the weight…”
• “Once my gut is fixed…”
• “Once my kids are older…”
• “Once I’m less busy…”
• “Once I hit that revenue goal…”
• “Once I finally feel normal again…”

But instead of happiness, Declan found discontent and bouts of depression. That’s an important reality check. Achievement can bring a temporary high, but it doesn’t automatically create a stable inner life.

In health and wellness, this shows up as the constant pursuit of the “perfect protocol”. The perfect diet. The perfect supplement stack. The perfect morning routine. The perfect healing plan. And if you’re in body burnout, that chase can actually keep your nervous system in pressure and urgency — which is not a healing state.

This is where Root Cause Medicine becomes bigger than lab tests. Sometimes the root driver isn’t only physical. Sometimes it’s the internal pattern of chasing, striving, and never arriving.

The Foundation: A Great Relationship With Self

Declan describes the foundation that became his springboard for happiness: creating a great relationship with self.

That sounds simple, but it’s deeply practical — especially when you’re dealing with Ending Body Burnout. Because burnout often involves a breakdown in self-relationship. You stop listening to your body. You override your needs. You push through signals. You judge yourself for symptoms. You treat your body like a problem to solve instead of a system to support.

A healthy relationship with self includes:

• self-respect (honouring limits)
• self-trust (believing your body’s signals matter)
• self-kindness (dropping the harsh inner voice)
• self-awareness (knowing what you need, not what you “should” need)

In Mind Body Medicine, this is regulation. When you feel safe with yourself, your nervous system settles. When your nervous system settles, digestion improves, sleep improves, inflammation can reduce, and energy production becomes more efficient. That’s Whole Body Health — not just mindset, not just physiology, but the relationship between them.

Why We Need to Stop Chasing and “Pursuing” Happiness

A big theme in this episode is why we need to stop chasing happiness like it’s a prize you earn. Declan teaches that happiness is not something you pursue externally. It’s something you build internally through skillsets and habits.

This matters because chasing happiness can create the opposite: pressure, comparison, and the feeling that you’re failing if you’re not happy all the time. That’s not happiness. That’s performance.

In Holistic Wellness, we’re not aiming for constant positivity. We’re aiming for resilience — the ability to experience life fully, including the hard parts, without getting stuck in hopelessness or shutdown.

If life feels tough right now, the goal isn’t to pretend it’s not. The goal is to build the internal capacity to hold it, move through it, and still access moments of meaning, connection, and even joy.

Breaking the Myth: “You’re Either Naturally Happy or You’re Not”

Declan breaks the myth that you’re either naturally happy or not. This is huge for anyone who has ever thought, “Some people are just wired for happiness, and I’m not.”

According to Declan’s work, happiness is an evidence-based skillset. That means it’s learnable. Trainable. Practisable. It’s not reserved for the lucky ones.

This is empowering in a WellnessJourney because it gives you agency. Even if your body is in burnout, even if your life is messy, even if you’re grieving or overwhelmed — you can still build skills that support your emotional baseline.

And in integrative medicine, we know emotional baseline matters. Chronic stress and emotional suppression can affect hormones, gut health, immune function, and inflammation. So building happiness skills isn’t fluffy. It’s preventative health.

Emotions Are the Gateway to Happiness (Not the Enemy)

One of the most grounded ideas Declan shares is that understanding our emotions and working with them is the gateway to happiness.

Many people try to bypass emotions. They try to “think positive” over sadness. They distract from anxiety. They suppress anger. They judge themselves for feeling flat. But emotions are information. They’re signals.

In Mind Body Medicine, emotions are part of the body’s communication system. If you ignore them, the body often turns up the volume — through symptoms, fatigue, pain, gut issues, insomnia, or mood swings.

Working with emotions might include:

• naming what you feel (without judgement)
• allowing the sensation to move through the body
• identifying what the emotion is asking for (rest, boundaries, support, truth)
• learning how to self-regulate when emotions feel big

This is where happiness becomes real. Not a forced smile, but a deeper sense of inner steadiness.

The 3 Steps to Build Happiness (and Why They Support Healing)

Declan outlines three steps to build happiness. They’re simple, but not shallow — and they map beautifully onto healing naturally and Ending Body Burnout.

1. Self-regulation

If your nervous system is dysregulated, everything feels harder. Your brain becomes threat-focused. Your body becomes tense. Your sleep becomes lighter. Your digestion becomes more reactive.

Self-regulation is the foundation. It’s the ability to notice what’s happening inside you and respond with care. It’s also a key part of Burnout Functional Medicine because regulation supports hormones, neurotransmitters, and inflammation.

2. Getting to know what you WANT, like, and desire

Burnout often disconnects you from desire. You become a machine: doing what’s needed, meeting expectations, managing symptoms, surviving the week.

Happiness requires reconnection to what you actually want — what lights you up, what matters to you, what feels meaningful. This isn’t selfish. It’s orienting. When you know what you want, your nervous system has direction. Direction reduces overwhelm.

This is also Personalised Medicine in a broader sense: your healing plan needs to fit your values and your life, not someone else’s.

3. Contributing to others

Contribution is a powerful happiness lever — not from people-pleasing or overgiving, but from meaningful connection and service.

In Holistic Health, contribution can be as simple as checking in on a friend, being present with your kids, sharing your story, or using your experience to support someone else. It reminds the nervous system that you’re connected, not alone — and connection is regulating.

Three Science-Backed Skills to Practise When Life Feels Hard

Declan also shares science-backed skills to start practising if you’re feeling stuck in body burnout and life feels hard. While the specifics can vary, here are three aligned skills that fit the spirit of the episode and support health optimisation:

Skill 1: Build tiny regulation rituals into your day

Not a massive routine. Tiny moments: a slow exhale before you open your phone, a short walk outside, a hand on your chest when you feel activated. These micro-moments teach your nervous system safety.

Skill 2: Practise emotional literacy

Ask: “What am I feeling?” “Where do I feel it?” “What does it need?” This is how you stop fighting yourself and start healing from within.

Skill 3: Choose one meaningful action daily

When you’re burnt out, meaning can feel distant. Choose one small action that aligns with your values: connection, creativity, contribution, learning, rest, or truth. Meaning is a happiness builder, and it supports resilience.

How This Connects to Chris & Filly’s Work in Ending Body Burnout

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, the approach to Ending Body Burnout is always whole-person: body systems and nervous system, functional nutrition and deeper patterning, data and meaning.

That’s why this episode matters. Happiness isn’t separate from healing. It can be part of the medicine — because it changes the internal environment your body is trying to recover in.

If you want a structured approach that blends Root Cause Medicine, Functional Nutrition, and Mind Body Medicine, you can explore the Ending Body Burnout Method.

A Gentle Next Step If You Want Support

If you’re in a tough season and you’d like support connecting the dots between your symptoms, your nervous system, and what your body needs to heal naturally, you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us. It’s a calm, no-pressure way to explore what support could look like for you.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 3,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 30+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.