Being Happy vs. Seeking Happiness

In this podcast we explore how we don't want to find happiness, we want to lose ourselves that is seeking happiness and happiness is there.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Happiness,

Peace,

Where do we find them?

My guess is a lot of people listening to this podcast are asking that very question,

How do I find happiness,

Dr.

Puff?

How do I find peace?

There's a story I once heard about a kitten who really wanted to find the secret of happiness and contentment.

And he was told that if he could reach his tail,

If he could grab onto his tail,

He'd be happy.

So he went around and around and around trying to grab his tail and he could never get it.

Finally,

One day after being utterly exhausted,

He went to this old wiser cat who he sensed had found the secret of contentment.

And he asked this cat,

How do I get to my tail so I can be content like you?

And the old cat paused,

Looked at him and said,

I found if you're still,

The tail is there.

Another story I once heard about a fish who was seeking enlightenment through finding water.

And he kept hearing about this elusive water,

But he couldn't find it.

And he searched all over the ocean seeking water until he was utterly exhausted.

So then he sought the wisdom of the older fish.

And he met one fish who he could tell had found that contentment,

That peace in life.

And he asked him,

Where do I find water?

And the fish replied,

I find if we're still,

Water is there.

So we may have spent years looking for peace,

Looking for happiness,

And it's so hard to find.

So where do we find it?

And it isn't in what we think it is.

The answer really lies in this very simple idea.

You don't want to find peace.

You want to lose yourself that is seeking peace and peace is there.

So there's three stories really illustrating the same point that the happiness we're seeking,

We have,

But in the process of seeking it,

It's keeping us from finding it.

How is that possible?

How could our seeking keep us from finding peace?

Well,

Let's start with what's doing the seeking.

Who is it that's seeking this peace,

This happiness,

This enlightenment,

Whatever you want to call it,

This contentment with life.

It's our minds,

It's our thoughts.

And these thoughts disturb our peace.

What do I mean by that?

When we are young,

The world is such an adventure.

There's so many things we don't know.

And we are young explorers trying to make sense of our world.

With time,

We start labeling things.

This is good.

This is bad.

We like this.

We don't like that.

So that sense of wonder goes away.

That sense of,

I don't know what this is,

But I'm going to label it so that I know what it is and I can put it aside so I can start making sense of the world.

And there's a lot of good in making sense of the world.

The world can seem quite overwhelming unless we're able to categorize it.

But there's a saying that goes,

Once I've labeled a sparrow,

I'll never see a sparrow again.

So with time,

We begin to condition ourselves to lose that newness,

To lose that wonder of life.

I mean,

All the beautiful things that exist in our world,

In many ways,

We stop seeing them.

They're always there.

They're always there for our wonder,

For our excitement,

For our enjoyment.

But because we've labeled them,

Because we've become accustomed to them,

We stop seeing them.

And life begins to become bland.

It becomes blase.

And we lose our wonder and love of life.

So what we do is we turn towards other things like addictions to numb ourselves from this pain or to experience thrills in the moment that never lasts,

But they're exciting in the moment.

But these thrills often come with karma.

Yes,

They're exciting in the moment,

But the next day,

The next week,

The next year,

Our lives perpetually become less and less happy,

Less and less content.

So what some of us do,

We become seekers and we say,

All right,

I know there's got to be a way to live well,

To find happiness and peace in the present moment,

No matter what.

So we begin to seek.

We begin to try different things.

We really begin to try to become that enlightened soul.

But with time,

What happens is our seeking is what keeps us from being happy.

Our seeking keeps us from saying life is good right now,

Because we're seeking it to be better instead of saying it is good right now.

And along the way,

We've had some incredible experiences,

Some experiences of high that are just hard to imagine.

And we want them all the time.

We want to feel that high or at least that happiness,

Contentment all the time.

But in the process of saying,

I'm not content,

I need something to be different.

My life needs to be different.

I need to get that job.

I need to get out of this job and find something better.

I need to find my soulmate.

I need to reach nirvana.

Whatever our minds have conceptualized happiness is,

We're seeking that.

And in the process of seeking,

We're not happy because we're telling ourselves we don't have it.

It's out there.

It's something we have to find.

It definitely can't be this because I'm not happy.

But why aren't we happy right now?

What's keeping us from right now saying all is well?

It goes back to our minds.

Our minds are discontent with what is.

We're fighting what is and we've stopped seeing what is.

We're looking and in the process of seeking,

Looking,

We're discontent.

Our minds will say things like,

Well,

This can't be it.

This is boring.

This isn't beautiful.

I mean,

I'm out of work.

I mean,

I'm alone.

I mean,

I have this horrible back pain.

Fill in the blank.

We're discontent because we say it has to look a certain way.

Our minds cannot accept what is and so we fight life and we struggle.

But in the process of saying this can't be it,

It has to look a certain way,

Then we're missing out on what is,

The beauty that's all around us,

Even with the things that we don't like.

Because if our minds say it has to be more than this,

It has to be different than this,

This can't be it,

Our minds are right.

We will struggle.

But if we still the mind,

If we can quiet our minds and stop seeking,

Instead of settling down into what is,

What we'll find is happiness,

Contentment,

Peace are there.

They're always there.

It's our minds that cause the disturbance.

It's like looking into a pond and the water's all messed up and we can't see in it because of the waves and the wind.

When it gets very still,

We can look deep down in and see all the beautiful treasures within.

When we can quiet our minds and stop being so discontent and stop labeling and stop seeking,

Then what we find in that quietness,

All is well.

We fight life because our minds are trying so hard to control life.

We want it to look a certain way.

We want it to go in a specific path.

We want things to happen the way we want them to happen.

The problem with that is life doesn't always oblige.

It has its own method.

It has its own reasons and it doesn't follow our course.

Now we have the option of saying,

Okay,

Life,

This is what you've given me.

I've tried my best to make it go this way,

But you've decided to go that way.

Then I'm going to go that way and not fight it.

If we lose our jobs,

If we get ill,

If our love life ends,

We don't have to fight that.

We can,

Of course,

For the rest of our lives.

Or we can say,

Hmm,

So now I'm going to make this work because this is life.

This is what's happening.

Because I've done my part and it's still going in a direction that I wish it wasn't going in,

My discontent with what is,

My discontent with the way my life has gone is going to cause me to suffer.

If I can quiet my mind and say,

This is life,

Flow with it.

Stop labeling it.

Stop attaching to things.

Stop saying it has to be a certain way.

All these ways our minds disturb the water of peace,

Of happiness.

Happiness is our natural state.

Our thoughts of attachment,

Our thoughts of discontent disturb our peace.

When these thoughts aren't there,

We are peaceful.

So let's end with a very specific way we can apply this to our lives as we go through our day.

So the first thing we do is we pause and say,

Okay,

What's going on inside of me?

We have to be aware.

It's like checking in.

Am I happy?

Am I peaceful right now?

That's the first thing we do.

Then the next thing we do,

If the answer is no,

Then we say,

Okay,

I'm not happy.

I'm not peaceful right now.

Why?

What am I thinking about right now that is causing me to be discontent?

Because that's where my unhappiness is coming from.

I am a content,

Happy,

Peaceful person when my mind is flowing with life.

So what am I doing that's making me feel discontent?

Now our minds are going to quickly say,

Well,

It's because of this.

It's because of that's happening and on and on it goes.

But we need to say to our minds,

Okay,

By not liking this,

By not wanting that,

By wishing for that,

That causes us to be discontent.

Yes,

We can do things to work towards goals to improve our lives,

Of course.

But if right now we can't do anything to make those improvements,

Then right now we flow with life right now when our minds are still because there's nothing to change.

Then what we find is contentment,

Peace is there.

It's always there.

It gets disturbed by us wanting it to be different.

So when we fight life,

We're going to suffer.

And the way to alleviate that suffering is to stop fighting what is and just flow with it.

So let me use a couple of examples to illustrate this.

Let's say we're at the airport and we're waiting for our flight to leave and we go up to the monitor and the monitor says it's been delayed by four hours.

Now,

Initially we may of course be upset,

But then we take a deep breath and say,

Okay,

Is there anything I can do about this delay?

And probably the answer is no.

So then we say,

Okay,

I have four hours at the airport.

How am I going to make them go well?

Perhaps I can read a book.

Perhaps I'll get on the phone and check in with some of my old friends that I haven't talked to in a while.

Perhaps I'll go for a walk.

I mean,

We just need to find things to do and then we'll find that contentment is there.

But what most people do is we probably know is they spend the entire four hours being very upset over something they cannot change.

They are discontent because they're not flowing with life,

They're not being still and finding beauty in the present moment.

Or let's say,

For example,

We wake up in the middle of the night and we notice that it's two o'clock in the morning and we're not supposed to get up till 6 30.

Oh,

We think this is not good.

We begin thinking about all that could go wrong and those thoughts are very unhelpful for us.

They don't make our going back to sleep occur very easily.

Instead,

If we were to say,

Okay,

Is there anything I can do about this?

No.

So I'm just going to lay here and perhaps just enjoy the rhythm of my breath.

Or perhaps I'll sit up and meditate or perhaps I'll put on an audio book and listen to that or a podcast.

Again,

There's many options we can do to flow with life or we can fight life.

We're listening to this podcast because we are seeking peace.

We are seeking happiness.

We can have it at any moment because it is our natural state.

But when we seek peace,

When we seek happiness,

That's what can cause us to be discontent.

So if we can lose that part of us that's seeking and just find peace,

Peace is there.

It's always there.

Or as I said at the beginning of this podcast,

We don't want to find peace.

We want to lose ourselves that is seeking peace and peace is there.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Besides creating this podcast,

There are a variety of other things that I do.

If you'd like to keep abreast of these activities and perhaps someday we may be able to meet in person,

Just go to www.

Happinesspodcast.

Org.

You can subscribe to my newsletter and if you do,

You'll be emailed a free PDF copy of my meditation book called Reflections on Meditation.

And until next time,

Accept what is love what is.

Reviews

I’m glad I found these recordings. What led me to them was a desire to break away from my not so happy thoughts. Great ideas and all so true, thank you!

Sound advice delivered in a gentle and soothing manner.

This talk really resonated with me and the overall message is so powerful. It reminds me of the saying "what we resist persists". I will definitely come back to this talk as I continue on the journey of a accepting what is.

This is the best talk ever! I will listen every day to keep me on track. I especially like the practical tips at the end with examples. Thank you so much

Great insight and reminder into how to tap into the present moment and make the most of it. Thanks so much! 😌🤙🏽

You think you know, then you hear it said like this and you start to begin to understand. Thank you.

No wonder is can't find happiness. It's here. It's right now. Nothing to do. This moment I'm in, and I am, IS happiness😊 THANK YOU❤️

Like the saying goes: "Happiness is an inside job." And this talk gives me more ways of doing just that! 👍

Boy,did that hit the mark! I'm finally realizing that struggling to be happy is blocking my happiness. I try to be realistic but maybe I need to change my reality. Thanks.

very refreshing ideas which I'm working on implementing thank you

Outstanding!!! Needed that reassurance today. Namaste

Great daily reminder. Just what I needed at this time of my life. Thank you

Really good message, enjoyed listening to it. Accepting what is, I wish to put it in my practice more.

Inspiring and empowering, thank you, I appreciate you 🙏

That was a great talk. Stop searching get quiet. You will find it.

Wonderful advice and examples. 🙏

Wonderful advice. I needed to hear this today. Thank you. 🙏🙏

So simple and so true. Thank you for enlightening me.

Such a helpful reminder to stop fighting life and enjoy what is. I need to listen to this regularly. Thank you.

Excellent. Very helpful.