Bitter Or Better, Our Choice

In this podcast, we explore how to find happiness when fate brings us tragedy. We always have a choice in how we respond to events, and how we frame them in our minds. (Please note, this is a lecture, note a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Most likely,

If we're listening to this podcast,

It's because we've either had or are having difficult challenges in our life.

When we've lived long enough,

We're going to have those challenges.

We all are.

But what can happen is a lot of people can just say,

I don't want to deal with it.

I don't want to think about it.

And they somewhat put their head in the sand and really don't.

But if we've lived long enough,

Sooner or later,

These challenges are going to come.

For example,

This morning,

One of my friends that I grew up with reached out to me because he found out that his sister was very recently diagnosed with cancer and is probably going to die in the next few weeks.

Here in the U.

S.

,

Which is one of the wealthiest nations in the world,

It was reported by the Federal Reserve Board in 2018 that 40 percent of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense.

And here in the U.

S.

,

Recently,

We've been under a governmental shutdown,

Which means millions of people have not been getting paid.

So can you imagine the impact it is having on people's lives?

And so many things like this,

Medical,

Financial,

Relationships,

Are just out of our control.

And like I said,

Maybe not now we're going through something.

Maybe sooner or later,

We're going to face crises in our lives.

What are we to do?

Do we give up?

Is there no hope?

Or can we work through these crises and come out the other end well,

Perhaps even better?

Recently I read this quote.

I can't guarantee it's by this author,

But it was attributed to him,

Josh Shipp.

It reads,

You either get bitter or you get better.

It's that simple.

You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person or you allow it to tear you down.

The choice does not belong to fate.

It belongs to you.

I so agree with this quote.

Life throws us things it just does.

Sometimes we create them,

Like for example,

Drinking and driving.

That can create a fate that is bad.

But other times they come out of nowhere,

Where I grew up in Iowa,

There was a factory had been there my entire life.

It was a packing plant.

And its purpose was to process all the animals in the local farms so that they could get their product and animals to market.

Many of my friends' fathers had worked there for years,

If not decades.

They had homes and families that they were supporting.

And for whatever reason,

This factory closed down and all of them lost their job in a heartbeat.

And in Iowa,

There aren't a lot of other jobs out there.

So a lot of people struggled for a very long time after that.

So when things happen,

We can't always control what happens to us.

Sometimes we can make better choices,

But the healthiest person can get cancer.

The most cautious person can still be killed by a drunk driver.

The most diligent,

Hardworking person that has devoted their life to their work can be out of work in a heartbeat when things change.

Like I said,

If we've lived long enough,

We're going to see lots and lots of examples of this.

So when fate does this to us,

Again,

I think the really good question we have to ask ourselves is are we going to become better or are we going to become bitter?

Well,

Let's start by trying to understand why we become bitter.

Mostly it has to do with fairness.

We think that life hasn't been fair to us,

And so we become bitter.

This isn't fair.

This is wrong.

And that anger and that bitterness that we hang onto grows until we become very unhappy inside.

After working with thousands,

If not tens of thousands of people over the past 30 years,

I've seen a lot of bitterness.

Sometimes it's related to our relationships.

We didn't expect our partner to leave.

We didn't expect our partner to cheat on us.

Whatever it may be,

We didn't expect our partner to die.

But there's a lot of sometimes after these events happen,

Bitterness that can hang on to our dying breath.

Truly.

I mean,

Don't we all know someone who's gone through a horrible divorce and now for whatever reasons they've decided they'll never date again ever?

We know people like that.

They're out there.

We may be that person that's hanging onto that bitterness.

Not always,

But often it's just because we're bitter and we can't let go and we hate sometimes the opposite sex because what they've done to us.

Of course,

There are other people out there to just say,

I'm done.

I just don't want to date again.

I'm not bitter.

I just choose to be single.

That's a better path for me.

That's not what we're talking about here.

That's where we're going to head to,

But that's not what we're talking about now.

We're talking about events happen and they didn't turn out the way that we liked and then we become bitter and perhaps we stay bitter for the rest of our lives.

I mean,

Even things that are in our control somewhat can still make us angry or bitter.

I mean,

Unfortunately,

Lots of people around the world drink and drive.

It's a very sad phenomenon and most of the time when they drink and they drive,

Nothing happens.

They don't get in an accident.

They don't hurt anyone.

They don't get hurt themselves,

But unfortunately,

Sooner or later they probably will and because of all those times where they haven't gotten hurt when they finally do get hurt or hurt someone else,

There can be lifelong bitterness after that because it wasn't fair.

How about all those other people that they know that drink and drive and never got hurt?

Our minds are great at getting upset when things don't seem fair and we can hang on to that unfairness for the rest of our lives or we can do the other thing and get better.

And better,

First off,

Is never about denying what happened.

It's acknowledging that this thing happened and we can even acknowledge that it wasn't fair because there truly are a lot of things in life that aren't fair.

And I know there's a lot of sophisticated philosophies out there explaining away this unfairness and not that they're good or bad,

They just are.

Karma is a big one,

But nonetheless,

When we're going through it,

It's not going to seem fair and initially we're going to be upset by it and that's normal.

It's even healthy because we surely don't want to deny our feelings.

We want to feel them,

We want to express them,

We want to share them with our friends that support us when we go through these very difficult times.

I mean,

After all,

That's why we have these beautiful people in our lives to support us and we support them when they go through challenging times.

It's a beautiful thing that all of us can be involved in helping each other.

But the next thing we want to do is say,

Okay,

This has happened,

How am I going to make this into something better?

Well after we felt our feelings,

Shared it with friends,

Then we do need to reach a point of acceptance.

This has happened.

Deep breath.

And it's hard.

Deep breath.

But I can make it into something to make me a better person.

How do we do that?

Well,

Thankfully,

Particularly in modern age,

There are so many ways to meet people,

To hear stories about people,

To read them,

To watch their YouTube videos,

To hear their podcasts of people that have had incredibly challenging experiences and how they are doing good even after these experiences,

Sometimes even a lot better.

So the biggest thing is to realize is that if it's a possibility to be better,

Then our purpose is to find that which can make us a better person.

There is a possibility,

Period,

As long as one person on the planet has gone through what we've gone through and they're better,

Then that means it's a possibility.

So our job is to figure out how to make it into something better for us.

I mean,

I'm sure we all know the story of Stephen Hawkins.

I doubt any of us would like to have that disease.

It's a very challenging disease and most people die from it quickly.

He did not and he became one of the most renowned thinkers in our world,

If not in history.

And yet someone else I know very recently contracted a disease,

Became very bitter,

And were angry until the end.

And he died with ALS with a lot of pain in his life and his family's.

I mean,

Again,

In my practice over 30 years,

You probably can't even imagine the number of horrible stories that I've heard in regards to tragedy,

A fate turning out very poorly to these people that just didn't see it coming.

And yet countless of them have turned out to have beautiful lives,

Regardless of these events.

If you want another example of a person you probably never heard of,

His name is Leonard Euler.

That's E-U-L-E-R.

He's probably the most intelligent mathematician that may have ever lived.

He's from the 18th century and was born in Switzerland.

But during his life,

He lost his eyesight in one of his eyes.

And then several years later,

He lost the eyesight in the other eye.

And you'd think at that point he would just give up,

Stop doing math.

But he didn't.

He just kept doing math in many ways like Stephen Hawking's in his head and publish and publish and publish.

And because he was blind,

He was actually able to publish more because he could really now concentrate on his mathematics.

I mean I do not think any of us listening to this podcast would be happy if we went blind.

But it doesn't mean our life's over.

We can turn that into something that makes us a better person.

No matter what it is,

It's always going to be a choice.

The fate we can't control.

But what we can control,

And what we do control,

Is our response to that fate.

So the question to ask ourselves is this.

Now that this has happened,

Whatever it is,

Am I going to become bitter or am I going to become better?

Because it's absolutely a choice.

No if you say it isn't,

Then you're going to become bitter.

And you can argue to your dying breath that it isn't better.

It's just wrong.

And of course there's countless people,

Perhaps the majority of people,

Go down this path.

But we're listening to this podcast to get better,

To have beautiful lives no matter what.

And the key here is if we don't give up,

No matter what,

If we keep trying to look for ways to turn this tragedy into something okay,

Perhaps even something beautiful.

Again,

We all know stories like this.

There are countless of them.

Just begin to do the research.

You'll find lots and lots of people that have had tragedies beyond belief that have turned into something that made them better.

Now unless I work with you one on one,

There's no way I can help you through this podcast to find your particular solution.

But what I can do is make you a promise.

And that promise is this.

If you don't give up,

If your goal is to find a way to make this fate that has happened into something better,

You will.

As long as you never give up and keep looking for solutions,

We'll find the solution.

We just cannot give up.

And we have to look outside our own head because the conditioning in our head probably is going to keep us stuck.

But if we're more like that scientist saying there's a solution here,

Or that mathematician,

There's a way to solve this problem.

When we talk with others,

When we seek advice,

When we really get quiet and listen,

The answers are going to come.

We're going to find ways to make our lives into a better person,

Period.

But the second we give up,

The second we decide,

Nope,

Fate is just bad,

Then we're going to become bitter.

And we can stay bitter for the rest of our lives.

But we can also,

At any point,

Even if we've been bitter for 30 years,

We can say,

You know,

I'm tired of this bitterness.

I'm going to change it.

I'm going to start working on making me into a better person because of what's happened and not hang on to the bitterness anymore.

At any point,

We can grow.

At any point,

We can change as long as we choose to.

Life is a choice.

So right now,

Let's choose to find the solution to our fate into making us a better person.

Again,

After all the work I've done with people and all the research I've done and all the traveling that I've done around the world,

Trying to find people whose lives are exquisite.

The one thing I've learned is no matter what,

And I do mean no matter what's happened to us,

We can turn that into something beautiful so that our lives are better.

The only reason we won't is because we choose to.

It is always a choice.

So because we're listening to this podcast,

Let's put our full force into finding ways to turn this bitterness into something that makes us a better person because we don't know why fate happens.

And in many ways,

We have very little control over fate.

The one thing that we can control is our response to fate.

And let's choose to respond in a way that we are a better person,

No matter what.

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.

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

This concept is litterally life changing! So timely, poignant & just what I needed to hear.

Excellent talk! Thank you for sharing your wise insights on such a challenging topic.

Thank you very much

Very eye opening. I learned so much. Thank you

Thank you Dr. Puff. Your podcasts are very inspirational.