Founder's Story - Why 95% of People Live Like Victims—And How to Reclaim Your Life | Ep 262 with Dr. Stoyana Natseva Founder of Happy Life Academy

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

We open with the question everyone secretly asks: can a life really change that much? Dr. Stoyana Natseva answers with names and outcomes, not platitudes. Through Happy Life Academy, she’s watched Tatiana Markova move multiple sclerosis into remission, rebuild family bonds, and buy her first home, and Tsetsa Dimitrova outlive a one-month cancer prognosis to become a holistic therapist who now mentors others. Those stories anchor her thesis: when mind, emotion, and habit align, health and circumstance can follow. She dismantles the “I’ll be happy when…” script—more money, more success, more love—and insists that happiness isn’t deferred; it’s practiced now. Social comparison and cultural conditioning (the “matrix,” as she calls it) train us to chase what’s missing; her work re-trains attention toward gratitude, abundance, and authorship. The entrepreneur in her is direct: treat happiness as a skill. Start with awareness and acceptance, then do the reps daily—writing, meditation, loving action, community. Key Discussion Points:The conversation stays close to the real lives behind her frameworks. We explore how labels like “I’m damaged” become convenient autopilots—and how observing thoughts proves we aren’t our thoughts. Dr. Natseva maps the unlearning arc she teaches: notice honestly without shame, choose a creator identity over a victim identity, and rehearse new beliefs through practices that involve mind, feelings, and body. Gratitude is central but not a slogan; it is specific, sensory, and active—thanking the sun, the meal, the breath, the lesson inside the setback—until the nervous system recognizes abundance as home base. She challenges the hidden cost of an unhappy life: illness in the body, erosion of self-worth, fractured families, and years quietly stolen. Even simple physiology supports the shift—a genuine smile feeds back to the brain, making anger hard to sustain. When listeners ask how to begin, she keeps it simple: write what’s true, name three real gratitudes, sit in stillness for a few minutes, and repeat. The point isn’t perfection; it’s momentum. Takeaways:Happiness is not an outcome to acquire later but a discipline to practice today. By choosing the stance of creator—“I am not a victim of circumstances”—and pairing it with small, repeated actions, the story changes from the inside out. Gratitude reframes trauma as curriculum, not identity; attention placed on emptiness multiplies emptiness, while attention placed on abundance multiplies abundance. Community accelerates change because it interrupts isolation and offers models to mirror. Start where you are, feel what you feel without punishment, and move one honest step at a time. Closing Thoughts:Dr. Natseva leaves us with a decision rather than a dare: choose happiness as a daily act. When thoughts, emotions, and actions line up, life follows. If you’re ready to practice, her programs at Happy Life Academy turn the idea into a method—and the method into a life. Closing Thoughts: Dr. Natseva’s message is simple but profound: happiness is not a gift or a circumstance—it’s a choice. And the cost of not choosing it could be your health, your family, and your future. Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's episode is sponsored by Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I'm excited to share more about them later in the episode. So Dr. Stoyana, you've helped over 100,000 people change their lives. I'm sure there's one, two, three different ones that were very shocking where the transformation really stood out to you. Anything that you can share? Yes, I have seen many miracles. But two stories always touch my heart. The first is Tatiana Markova.

She had multiple sclerosis. She was very sick. And her family relationships were broken. Step by step, she worked with me. and she changed her mind, her emotions, her habits. Now she is in remission. She also bought her own house, which was her dream. Today she is healthy, she is rich, close to her family and living with hope again.

and the second is Cetsa Dimitrova doctors gave her only one month to live because of cancer she was full of sadness and very heavy

trauma she worked to heal her emotions and connect with her soul now years later she is alive she is happy She is healthy

and she became holistic therapist in our Academy Happy Life Academy because I have nine MBA programs. She now inspire other peoples to heal and to live

with love. These stories show shows one truth when you change your mind and your emotions and your heart you can change. your life. It's amazing how powerful the mind can be and sometimes we think like our mind is in control of

itself versus we are in control of our mind. I know I've suffered from that myself. What do you think is one false belief about happiness that makes people unhappy? The false belief is I will be happy when I get more. More money, more success, more life, more love. But happiness is not in the future. Happiness is now. Happiness is not when happiness is now. It starts inside.

When you are in peace with yourself, life outsides come back. Do you think that maybe social media can create some of this negativity around unhappiness because it's very easy to compare yourself to others, like you said, about this one. Tell me about what you see with that. And how do you think, you know, how do you see society being able to maybe not fall into that trap? Society is like a matrix. Nobody wants you to be. richer than others.

You know, it's society beliefs. It comes from our family, from the society, from our family stories. I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs, and one of the biggest pain points they share is generating consistent quality leads. Most founders spend hours chasing down prospects, juggling outreach and still end up with missed opportunities. That's why I recommend today's sponsor, PipeDrive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. Top sales teams are using Pipe Drive to close an average of three times more leads per month. My favorite part, Pipe Drive takes messy sales process, turns it into a visual

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Authorities in other lives, our teachers, what other people think. But, you know, the happiness can be learned. It's a skill. And we have to see our limited beliefs and support ourselves with new beliefs, which support us. if you could give maybe two or three suggestions on how happiness can be learned. So obviously not a whole program or everything that somebody needs to know, but maybe just to get maybe one or two things to even just get started on the path to learning how to be happy. Because I do believe that people, when you get into this trap of unhappiness,

in that moment, you really don't think there's any way to come out of it. But it sounds like that's not true. Thank you for this question. Yes, with practice of gratitude, we can change our minds. We can be grateful for the good things in our life, but we can be grateful and for the lessons in our life. With gratitude, with meditation, with love we can grow happiness every day and i have seen many people's learn happiness after pain

and after trauma it is it is not a gift from the bird it's also a choice and a practice every day wow i mean powerful i i want to dedicate myself to practicing those things things because it's like priorities right this is essential because people think about what i have it's a limiting belief i don't have money i don't have enough uh love i'm not enough everybody's enough why do you think then that maybe we don't always prioritize i at least i don't think i don't think a lot of people prioritize happiness they prioritize like you're saying all these other things thinking it leads into happiness, but what you're saying is that happiness, that you don't need all that, that you can gain happiness, you can learn without having a million dollars in your

bank account, for example. When you focus your mind on emptiness, you attract more emptiness. when you focus your mind, your emotions, abundance, you attract more of this. And I think that it is very high cost for this mindset of emptiness. And we have to focus on the gratitude, on the abundance, the love. and the amazing word which we live. You know, it got me thinking I really need to reflect upon myself and make some changes. What do you think is the hidden cost of an unhappy life that most people don't even realize, but then it becomes too late?

You know, 95% of people live like a victim. And I believe that everyone is creator of life. And we can understand the amazing power of the creator in ourselves. The heightened cause is very height. Unhappiness makes body sick. When we focus in emptiness, I'm not enough. this destroys our families, our abundance,

our self-esteem it seals years of our lives of our life and many people do not see this until it's too late like my father. He dies some 65 years And he do not see the beauty of this world. That is why we must choose happiness, prioritize ourselves, today, not tomorrow.

What is one habit that you find when people change, they start to really see some results? And maybe it could even be something, you know, a habit that you do in your life. number one gratitude and decision i make decision i am creator of my life i am not a victim of circumstances i am created and i choose with gratitude to live with love and to prioritize myself and be happy i love that you smile a lot i think you know it's funny how like when you smile it really feels better. It's got to create, you can't be like angry and sad. I feel like it's smiling at the same time, but something is so simple like that. You're very right because it's a neurobiology. You can't smile. It's a face smile. It's a, yes, but the body reflect when you're smiling, you can't be

angry. I think that it's a very nice point. Please smile. because this flows on your body, on your mind, in your mind. So for you, if you could put happiness into one sentence, what would it be? I am not victim of the circumstances. I am creator of my own life. And I choose happiness. I choose abundance. I choose love and gratitude.

This has been a great conversation. You mentioned earlier about practicing gratitude, but I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Can you share more about how does one actually practice gratitude? We can be grateful for everything, for the sun, for the food, for my health, for my family. And when you focus on gratitude, I'm grateful. Then you attract more from this.

And when you focus in emptiness, I'm not enough, I have no money. You attract it's a world of attraction. You choose I am, you are creator of the life. And we create our life with our, our thoughts, with our emotions, and with our actions, because gratitude is not the thought, it's emotion, it's action. I'm very grateful for this conversation to meeting you, and we can focus on our past with gratitude, because it's a lesson.

lesson when you see your past not like a trauma like a lesson then you can change your focus of mind to gratitude to abundance to now i'm a person with too many lessons i'm creator with too many lessons i'm i'm creator i focus my mind on the lessons on the abundance of lessons And I am very grateful for everything, every moment of my life. It's a key of change when you change your mind, then you change your emotions, then you change your actions, you change your life. I'm going to start doing that. I really like that outlook of trauma is a lesson, not a trauma. Yes, because the soul, the soul.

choose lessons. I like to choose lessons, not our experiences in our life are lessons, not traumas that supposedly have to stay with us forever and then negatively manifest into every relationship and us and then never go away. And I have experiences. I have family members that have experiences. I think if we took it more of a lesson, what we learned,

then we can let go. forgive and move forward. But this has been great. Dr. Stoyana, how can people find out more information about what you're doing? Then can fight everything on happylife academy.com. Everything about the gratitude, my MBA programs, books. You can learn everything in this site.

Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I've had some great personal shifts that I'm going to make starting five minutes after we stop here. But I think everyone needs to find happiness in a world that is easily full of things that could drag you down. It's great to have a breath. It's a breath of fresh air to have somebody like yourself talking about how we can be happy and be more positive and live a life of happiness. and all the great things that come along with that. So Dr. Stryana, thank you for impacting the world and dedicating to this and joining us on Founder's Story.

Thank you very much. And the happiness is a choice. Choose wisely. Thank you.