How To Improve On Yourself

Personal growth is beautifully enhanced when two things occur. First, we see our struggles as growth opportunities. Second, we find teacher(s) who can help us find our way to peace and happiness.

(Please note, this is talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

My guess is if you're listening to this podcast right now,

You're interested in growth.

You want to know how to improve yourself and make your life better as you continue to move forward in life.

Of all the variety of things that we can pursue in life,

Like love,

Like wealth,

Like fame,

I believe this.

The pursuit of personal growth,

Of personal development is the highest pursuit that we can go after during our lives.

And I believe there are two aspects of personal growth that are just exquisite,

Beautiful because of how they manifest in our lives.

The first is of all the things we can pursue,

Like money,

Like love,

Like wealth,

They are fleeting and we all know people who have these things and are still incredibly unhappy.

But when we pursue personal growth,

What we'll find is that that leads to contentment,

That leads to truly lasting happiness regardless of the circumstances that we're in.

Because when we focus on personal growth,

What happens is we take the locus of control from the external,

Like wealth,

Like fame and move it internal.

How are we doing right now?

That we are in control of.

And there are so many things in the external world that we just don't have control over.

Did we choose which country,

Which environment we were born into?

Did we choose the parents that we had?

Did we choose the gifts that we came with?

Are we exceptionally smart or is school challenging for us?

There are so many things that we don't have control over,

But the one thing that we all have control over is our response to our world.

And when we learn through personal growth that we can control this and make really good responses,

We'll find that that's the beauty of personal growth.

We learn that,

Oh,

I'm in control.

I'm in control of how I respond to every situation that comes my way.

And that's beautiful.

And that makes our lives potentially exquisite.

So in today's podcast,

I want to talk about two ways that we can improve ourselves and gain far more mastery over how we respond instead of react to the world around us so that we can truly find that there is happiness and peace in our lives,

No matter what's happening around us.

Even when our external world seems to be in pandemonium,

We can say in our hearts,

All is well.

I know that may sound crazy,

But that's what people learn to do that really work on improving themselves and growing spiritually,

Emotionally.

That's the benefit of pursuing personal growth.

Our world changes in the sense that the way we see it changes,

Not what's happening externally,

But how we interpret,

How we respond to our external world begins to change.

And that's the beauty.

And that's the gift in investing in personal growth.

So let's begin by summarizing what are the two aspects of personal growth?

How do we change?

The first one is learning to respond better to situations that we struggle with and become masters over our response to the world.

We do this throughout the day,

Throughout the week,

Throughout our lifetime.

When we get struggles,

We say,

Okay,

I know I'm struggling with this.

I may have an attachment to my looks and it causes me so much suffering because sometimes I look in the mirror and I just don't like what I see.

So then we develop skills to help us to accept the way we look and who we are.

And with these skills,

We find that a peace settles in.

And instead of struggling with things we can't control,

We begin to relax and accept what is,

And ultimately love what is.

And then the second key ingredient to personal growth is that we do need a teacher or teachers to help us.

People that have done it before have figured out what works and learn from them,

Study them,

Steep ourselves in their thought,

And then apply the principles that they teach to our lives.

So for the remainder of this podcast,

What I'd like to do is to really dive deeply into these two aspects of personal growth and so that we can apply them to our lives and truly develop exquisite responses to everything that comes our way.

So the first aspect of personal growth is ourselves and the things we struggle with.

What we want to do is when a struggle comes,

We want to see it very differently.

If we wake up depressed,

If we're going to work and we're anxious,

If we have an interaction that causes us to stress.

Instead of seeing this as a bad thing,

We begin to see it as something we want to solve.

I have repetitively taught in this podcast that there's a solution to any problem that comes our way.

And so our goal in life is to find these solutions to really say,

Okay,

Instead of typically what we do of saying,

What's wrong with me?

Why am I doing this?

Why is life so hard?

I wish I was dead.

We now begin to say,

Oh,

I'm struggling with something.

There must be something that I'm doing that is causing me to struggle because there are people in the world that have gone through the exact same thing that I'm going through and they're doing well.

So there must be a solution to my struggle right now.

And instead of criticizing ourselves or hating our lives or hating our situation,

We look at it this way.

This is something that I'm going to solve.

I'm going to figure out a way to overcome this struggle.

I can't control a lot of things externally,

But I can control things internally.

What can I do to see this differently?

Let me use an example to illustrate this point.

The studies have shown that a lot of people,

About 80% of people do a job that they're not very happy with.

It doesn't create happiness and joy in their hearts.

So let's say we're in that 80 percentile.

So what we could do is this.

We could say,

Okay,

I don't really like my work.

It's not very satisfying.

So what could I do differently?

Well,

I could look at perhaps leaving my job.

That'd be one option.

I'm in control of that,

But that would have consequences.

I have a family to support,

So I can't do that very easily.

Then I could say,

Okay,

What about re-educating myself so I could go do something else?

Well,

Again,

I have a family to support perhaps,

And that could take a while,

But that's okay.

I like to learn and I can find a part-time program that I can get involved with and begin moving in the direction of making a change.

Or I could say,

Perhaps I can reduce my living expenses.

I mean,

I don't need this nice of a place that I live in.

I can get a used car.

And so by reducing my expenses,

I discover that,

Oh,

Now I don't need to make so much money.

And since I don't need to make so much money,

Perhaps I can work a little bit less.

Or perhaps now I have the ability to find a job that I'd rather do instead of keep doing this job that in a sense is emotionally killing me.

And it's not making me much happiness,

Even though it creates toys for me.

But the toys,

As we all know when we watch children at Christmas time,

Quickly fade.

So happiness is about enjoying our day all day long.

We spend a lot of time at work.

This is a big one.

We want to make sure that our work puts happiness in our hearts.

There are so many ways to tackle this.

The one that I've helped many,

Many people do over the years is really work less.

A lot of people have flexibility in their work.

I mean,

It can be as simple as they get,

Say,

Three weeks of vacation a year.

But if they don't take these vacations,

They get paid for them.

They make extra money.

And I tell them,

Is it worth it?

Are you really going to enjoy life more by working more,

Working during your vacations and now having a little extra money?

Is it worth it?

Instead,

Think about enjoying the journey.

And so what I've helped people do is really back off from their work and work a lot less.

And I can tell you,

When they do this,

They are so much happier.

Now remember,

This is just an example.

Your story that you're struggling with right now may be completely different.

But that's the approach you want to take.

How do I,

When I have a problem,

Instead of seeing it as woe is me,

This is terrible,

And I want to just come home and numb myself with a bottle of wine every night because I hate my life,

Instead,

Here's a new approach to personal growth.

There is a solution to the problem I'm having right now.

And I'm going to keep working on it until I find that solution,

Whatever it may be.

And that is how we see things differently.

Not that life is horrible,

But life is giving me challenges for personal growth.

When I overcome these challenges,

I don't have to deal with it again.

I now can move forward.

And when new challenges arise,

I just tackle them one after another after another.

And life becomes this exquisite adventure where we really discover that we have the ability because we have control over our response to what the world presents to us.

Sometimes our response is just acceptance,

Acceptance of what is.

But when we stop fighting life,

We find that life gets so much better.

So again,

The first aspect of personal growth is seeing the problems that are causing us distress as things that we are working on and are going to solve.

And there's always a solution to any problem.

And these problems aren't really problems.

They're personal growth opportunities.

And then the second key aspect of personal growth is finding a teacher that we resonate with that is helping us with the struggles we're having right now.

So a lot of it is about listening to our hearts and saying,

Okay,

When I listen to this teacher,

It really does work for me.

He or she is very helpful in the struggles that I'm having right now.

And so when we find that teacher,

We really spend time learning what they teach,

Studying them,

Applying their principles to our lives because we do need help.

Life can be challenging and difficult.

And really for most of us,

Our teachers,

Our parents,

And the people we grew up with,

They taught us how to respond to the world.

If we're going to change that,

We need someone who is better than our upbringing,

Better than our parents and the people that we were exposed to,

To our lives up to this point.

There are great teachers out there.

Find one or two and then just really study their methods,

Study the things that they teach and continue to study them.

We don't learn things through one time.

We spend years with someone to really understand what they're teaching.

So find a teacher that helps you,

That helps improve your life.

It doesn't matter who it is.

It's just someone that is helping you.

And there may be a point where you say,

Okay,

I've learned my lessons from this teacher.

They're now how I live my life.

Now I still struggle.

So I may need to go to another teacher to learn more lessons.

And then we just keep learning until our lives are flowing magnificently.

But we do need people to help us.

And that's our teachers.

Find someone out there that can help you.

And then with these two things in place,

Both learning from our experiences that present us struggles every day and having our teacher help us through our journey,

We can then live truly beautiful lives.

Our teacher doesn't have to be someone that we physically spend time with.

It can be an author that we study.

It can be an audiobook that we read.

It can be someone who we watch on YouTube or wherever it may be,

Perhaps someone that lived years ago,

Like the Buddha,

Like Jesus,

Like Rumi,

Like Krishna.

We find someone who we resonate with and then we really study their teachings.

And then we'll find that our lives will get so much better.

And that's what we're looking for.

We're looking for a teacher that when we spend time with them,

We do find that our lives are improving.

If you are interested in learning more about what I teach,

I create what's called the Happiness Podcast.

You can learn more about it at happinesspodcast.

Org.

This is the 322nd episode.

So there are a lot of them.

Your app may not have all the episodes because there are so many,

But all the episodes are at the happinesspodcast.

Org site.

You can find them there.

I promise to create a new one every week.

I've been doing this for years and will continue to.

If you have questions,

Send them to me.

I may not directly read them on the podcast,

But I'm pretty good to sooner or later getting to them and answering them.

You'll find your answers here sooner or later.

And I really love getting your questions.

So as we continue on our journey towards personal growth,

Remember we can grow.

We can have beautiful lives,

But we have to look at life as when struggles come.

There are things that we need to learn and overcome.

And secondly,

We need help.

Reach out and find a teacher or teachers that can help you.

It's very important to get help.

But when we do this,

I believe that we'll find that our lives can truly be exquisite.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

These podcasts are absolute gold. They're helping me through what's been the most profoundly transformative protracted period of deep introspection and (hopefully) improvements and growth. Painful as all fucking get out, but if that's what it takes...

Thank you 🙏