Algorithms For Happiness

In this insightful and exploratory podcast, Dr. Puff delves into how we can create lasting happiness in our lives, through specific steps or algorithms. Dr. Puff gives us insight into experiences from his own life, bringing a relatable component to his teachings.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

My father turned 82 this past year and he lives in Arizona near Phoenix.

And every Christmas holiday we go there to spend some time with him.

But every year new decisions have to be made.

Are we going to fly or are we going to drive?

It's about an 8 hour drive.

And we have to look at how much time do we have to get there and how expensive are the flights?

And then there's a question of where do we stay?

He's older now so it's a little bit harder to stay with him.

And then there's a question of how long do we stay and when do we leave?

There's just a lot of decisions that have to be made.

And every year I work on it,

Come up with those decisions and we go visit my father.

And I'm happy to do that.

And every year I work on it,

Come up with those decisions and we go visit my father.

But if I stand back and look at it,

There's really one decision to be made which is I'm going to go see my father.

And then based upon that decision,

Everything else has to fall in place.

But the main decision of going to see my father is the main thing.

And because I make this decision,

Everything else has to follow so it all fits together and works out well.

So there's the thing I want to solve which is going to see my father at Christmas time.

And then there's all the steps to get there,

The solution of how to do that.

So I don't know if you've heard of this term,

But it's called an algorithm.

And it's a mathematical term.

And what it means is it's a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem solving operations or basically rules to how to solve a problem.

For example,

Let's say we want to know the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius.

And there are ways,

Very effective ways of doing this.

In a similar way,

Every year I have to come up with an algorithm of what I'm going to do in regards to seeing my father at Christmas.

But today I want to talk about algorithms for life and particularly happiness.

But the first assumption I want to start with is the fact that I believe any of us,

No matter what,

Can be happy.

We can find peace in life.

And what we're looking for is to improve on what we have now.

So if today on a scale of one to ten in regards to happiness,

We're at a five,

We'd be working towards becoming a six.

And when we hit a six,

We'd be working towards becoming a seven.

We're improving our level of happiness and peace.

It'd be much like solving for pi.

For thousands of years,

Mathematicians have tried to solve for it.

And sometimes they're pretty good and sometimes they're not so good,

The solutions they come up with.

So they may come up with a 3.

13 and then they have a better algorithm and they come up with 3.

14159.

And then they work at it and they come up with a 3.

22.

So they're going backwards.

And then they work at it some more and they come up with a 3.

141592653.

You know what I mean.

We just keep getting better at coming up with longer digits for pi.

So in life,

What we want to come up with is better and better algorithms for happiness,

For peace in our life.

Because life can be quite challenging at times.

But once we start working at this and truly believe we can come up with better solutions,

What will happen is we'll start having things in place.

So maybe historically we wake up,

Go through our day and we're tired.

We come home and have a few glasses of wine.

And we realize that that algorithm isn't a very good one.

It's causing us to wake up the next day even more tired.

We're starting to put on some weight.

We're just not feeling as good.

So instead,

When we come home,

We go to a yoga class and find,

Oh,

That's a much better algorithm than having a couple glasses of wine.

I'm going to start doing that one instead.

Or let's say we find Mondays tough.

It's the beginning of the week.

It's five days ago and we just wake up and not a very good mood every Monday.

Still instead what we say is,

Okay,

I want to make sure that my Mondays start off well.

So what I'm going to do is create a new algorithm.

I'm going to go to bed early on Sunday,

Get up early on Monday morning,

Meditate,

Go for a little walk outside,

Perhaps sit,

Have some tea,

And then leave a little early for work so I'm not rushed.

And when I get there,

I may just sit,

Take a couple deep breaths,

Maybe even bring some flowers for my desk so I have something pretty to look at throughout the day.

That's a very different algorithm than waking up grumpy and exhausted and tired on Monday.

And that's what we do in life.

It's very much like solving for pie.

We come up with better and better solutions.

First we may be at 3.

14,

Then we come up with 3.

14159,

Then we come up with 3.

1415926535,

Etc.

And I believe it's much like that in regards to our happiness and peace in life.

We can just keep getting better at it.

But here are a few of the key factors in regards to algorithms for happiness.

First,

We have to believe that we can improve our lives,

We can become happier.

That's number one.

Number two is we have to adjust and come up with new algorithms periodically when life situation changes.

And number three is when we have a good algorithm,

We keep it and we keep doing it and keep doing it until the day we die.

A couple that I teach often here on the happiness podcast are keeping the mind still and living free of attachments.

Those are two very good algorithms that really help fine tune our happiness no matter what's going on in our lives.

And algorithms,

They're good.

So find those ones that are good,

Create new ones as circumstances change,

But believe that there are solutions to whatever struggle we're having right now.

There's always a solution.

I deeply believe that.

I have been working with people,

Helping them improve their lives for over 30 years now,

And I've never seen anything that I felt couldn't be improved in amazingly significant ways.

Not little ways,

In amazingly significant ways.

They did have to do things,

But if they did those things,

Their lives would become so much better.

The great thing about this algorithm,

The algorithms for happiness,

Is it is much like pie.

Pie,

If you don't know it,

Has no ultimate solution.

It's infinite.

It just goes on and on and on.

And I think it's much like that with our happiness.

We just keep getting better and better and better at it.

We keep refining it.

We come up with longer and longer algorithms that really make our lives hum along and life becomes a beautiful adventure.

But these algorithms can be a little tricky in the sense that we have a tendency to want big solutions right now that are permanent.

And we do get them sometimes,

But mostly it's fine tuning.

We just keep getting a little bit better and a little bit better through slow changes.

For example,

If we do start,

Say,

Doing yoga,

At first it may not feel so good,

But if we keep going,

We're going to get better at it.

And our bodies,

With time,

Are going to really like it and crave it and say,

Wow,

This makes me feel great.

Or let's say we really start working on some of our attachments to life and things that we know are causing us to suffer.

And we begin to let go of them.

We let the grip of the attachment loosen and become softer.

What we'll find is happiness will begin to become more of our permanent state because we're not as attached to things or fearful of things going a certain way.

We become freer.

So I want to end with an email that I got from one of our listeners and apply some algorithms to her concerns.

She writes,

Dear Dr.

Puff,

Hello,

My name is Liz.

First of all,

I want to thank you for creating your podcast.

I'm someone who is dealing with a lot of doubt in myself and feeling very angry at the difficult nature of life at the moment.

Your podcast is at least giving me some tools to relieve some of those issues and give me some strength.

Hopefully in time,

I'll be strong enough to be happier with my circumstances.

Secondly,

I wanted to ask if you had any tips for forgiving someone after a huge mistake.

I regret the choice of a degree I got in college and feel that I have ruined my life because of it.

This regret has manifested itself in resentment towards my parents and teachers who blindly led me into the direction I chose and general hopelessness about life.

I have a job which I hate,

But I feel I can't be something else because I screwed myself over too badly and that degree won't let me get a job.

My hopelessness is also making me a magnet for the Millennials are screwed anyways dialogue.

How do I deal with and move on from the idea that I may have ruined my life?

Sincerely,

Liz.

So first,

Let's start with the algorithm that she has in place.

She's saying her life is screwed because of past decisions that she made and other people encourage her to make in regards to her degree.

So now her life is ruined.

That's her current algorithm.

So first off,

Let's look at this algorithm.

Is it helping her?

Is it making her life better?

Is it something that's working towards the direction of improving her life?

As I said,

I believe deeply that we can have beautiful lives.

And I think we all can agree that regretting the past and feeling mournful over what happened in the past is not a very good algorithm.

Let's say,

For example,

We were born with a birth defect or let's say along the way we were in a car with someone.

They got in an accident and now we're in a wheelchair.

Does that mean that our lives are over and it's terrible?

Of course not.

It's just events that happened.

These are the events that happened in our lives.

And now we need to say,

OK,

How do I turn these events into something beautiful?

Because we can turn anything into something beautiful.

So the first algorithm I would put in place for her is stop regretting the past.

The past happened.

We can't change it.

We can't do anything about it.

It's not going to do us any good.

So let it go.

But let's do focus on changing the present,

Because in the present that's what we can change.

And now if Liz puts in place an algorithm to let go of the past every time it arises and she starts thinking about her regrets,

She will find that by letting it go,

It's not going to be fueling that negativity anymore.

So that's going to help.

That's going to soften her and her stance in regards to happiness or finding more happiness and peace in her life.

But now let's get to the present moment.

What about what's happening in her life right now?

Her present algorithm that's in place is that she hates her job.

Well,

Could we come up with a new algorithm for that one?

For example,

Could we say,

I just like my job,

But there are some aspects of it that aren't so bad.

And we could do that.

That would help.

That'd be a good algorithm to start putting in place.

And we could say,

Hmm,

Are there things I could do to make this job a little bit more pleasant?

I mean,

Already,

Lucy,

And the fact that she's not going to hear so much that she hates this job is going to make her job less detestable.

But then she might focus on,

Hmm,

Other people,

Things that she could do to make her job a little bit more enjoyable.

It could be anything,

Taking a long lunch,

Enjoying the people she works with,

Finding pleasure in what she's doing,

Taking on new tasks.

I mean,

Again,

It's all about finding better algorithms.

And then she could say,

Huh,

I didn't get the right degree that I wanted.

Maybe it's time for me to go back to school part time or take an online course or learn something different.

And that's another good algorithm because that gives her options.

That opens up doors.

Maybe a year or five years from now,

She could have a whole new degree,

A whole new training and get into something different.

The tricky part about algorithms,

They can take a while to work,

But if we plug away at them,

They get better.

So we would work on that.

And we might see with time that Liz in five,

Maybe 10 years is in a completely different job than now she loves.

Again,

Algorithms are awesome because they allow us to look for solutions because there's always solutions.

Negativity is not a good algorithm.

But when we start putting in place positive,

Pleasant,

Good algorithms that work,

They create happiness,

We're going to find our lives are going to slowly get better.

That's the key.

But if we have solutions that aren't working,

We do need to let them go and try new ones and deeply believe that there are ones that we can come up with.

Period.

So here's the three things we want to remember in regards to happiness algorithms.

Number one,

There is an algorithm for happiness.

There's many of them and we keep finding them.

And when we find good algorithms,

The second thing we do is we hang on to them and we do those algorithms over and over again because we know they work.

And number three,

When life situation changes and we have to adjust,

We create new algorithms that fit the changes because we believe one,

There is a solution.

Two,

We keep doing the solutions at work.

But three,

We find new solutions when new problems evolve or come into place.

And we can keep doing that till the day we die until we get better and better at this.

And one thing to keep in mind is really this podcast is about happiness algorithms.

I just keep presenting one after another that can be helpful to make our lives better.

We need to keep learning them.

We need to keep practicing them and we need to keep steeping ourselves in them.

But I think you'll find if you're able to keep listening to this podcast over and over again,

These will become very effective algorithms for our peace and happiness in our lives.

No matter what's happening,

We can all truly have beautiful lives.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

If you are finding these episodes helpful,

I would love for you to share your experience with others.

The easiest way for new people to listen to this podcast is just refer them to www.

Happinesspodcast.

Org.

That's happinesspodcast.

Org.

Or if you want to do more and leave a review,

On that site you'll find a Yelp link,

A Google Plus link,

A testimonial link,

Or perhaps even the site you're listening to this podcast on.

Often you can leave reviews there too.

The reviews are an awesome way to encourage people to start listening to the Happiness Podcast.

And until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Insightful! Thank you very mich!
Rapha ☯️🙏🏼

Excellent. Thankyou so much.

Very motivating. Will listen to again. Thank you!

Very interesting

Wonderful meditation on increasing happiness in our lives! Will listen again! Thank you, Dr Puff!

Wonderful message..now to put in practice

Loved this! Thank you!

Beautiful and supportive. Thank you. I strive to practice this in each moment, making the choice to course correct towards happiness. Namaste.

Very good! Thank you so much for sharing this real and helpful tool!♥

Really lovely. Thank you 🙏🏼

Great advice. So enjoyed how easy u made it to relate to real life. 🙏🏼🌈🙏🏼

Great approach to resolving unhappiness. Thank you.

Love the breakdown of taking small achievable steps towards happiness! Thank you.

Thank you very much 🙏

Thank -good scvice🙏🌸🌺🦋