How To Learn To Be Happy (Small Steps, Beautiful Changes)

Finding and creating happiness in our lives, especially when going through difficult times, can be overwhelming. Are there specific things we can do to live happy lives, even with these current challenges? One of the keys to how to learn to be happy is by making small, beautiful changes until these changes become a habit. Then we keep moving forward as our lives keep getting better.
(Please note, this is a talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Being happy,

Feeling good,

Finding peace in our lives,

Doesn't that sound wonderful?

But where do we start?

After all,

Sometimes our lives are just a mess.

Maybe we dream too much,

Perhaps we're in a dysfunctional relationship,

We hate our job,

Or we're struggling with family issues and we've had to return back to living with them because of financial issues.

Rarely in life are there real simple solutions in the sense if I fix this one thing,

Then everything will be wonderful.

Usually when we start on the path of happiness,

There's a lot of things that need fixing.

And sometimes when one thing gets fixed,

A whole lot of other things go awry.

Don't we all know the stories about people who inherit a lot of money or perhaps win the lotto?

And six months or a year later,

Their lives are a mess.

Or the one I've heard countless times in my practice as a clinical psychologist is that someone's parents get divorced and their mom was so unhappy,

Let's say with their father because he was a drunkard or he did things that were abusive.

Well,

She finally gets free of it and guess what?

A year or two later,

She's remarried and that new guy,

That stepfather,

Is far worse than her husband was and yet she stays with him.

Why is finding happiness so complicated?

It actually isn't.

We just have to have specific things in place,

Which we're going to talk about today.

And we're going to use a comparison to really help illustrate the point.

Imagine when you were in high school,

You were in great shape.

You may have done a sport or two and everything physically was going well,

Or at least not too badly.

And then you graduate from school,

Go ahead and get a job,

Start a family perhaps,

And life goes forward.

And let's say 20 years later,

That body of yours is not in the same amount of shape.

Perhaps you put on 150 pounds.

Perhaps you haven't exercised for years.

Perhaps you've taken up smoking or maybe drink too much.

And there's a lot of bad habits in place right now.

And you decide to change that around.

You're going to get in physical shape,

Just like you used to be when you were younger.

So you buy some new tennis shoes,

Go outside,

Run as far as you can,

And then you come home and collapse.

And your body is in such pain the next day that you swear you'll never do that again.

Or if you live somewhere cold and you bought a treadmill,

That treadmill now becomes a place where you hang your clothes to dry.

But let's say a few months go by and you decide that life just isn't going well anymore.

And you really want to start feeling physically better.

So you come to me and you say,

Dr.

Puff,

I'm 150 pounds overweight.

I don't exercise at all.

I have all these bad habits.

What do I do?

So the key of getting back into shape is,

Of course,

Small steps.

Small steps in the right direction to get better.

So I might have you start by taking a two-block walk around your neighborhood and then come home.

And when you have your meal at night,

Include a salad with it.

Have that first.

And then before you go to bed,

Perhaps do a little bit of stretching to loosen up the body.

And in the morning when you get up,

Practice with your five-pound dumbbells that you purchased to get your biceps a little bit in better shape.

And then as time goes forward and everything gets a little bit easier,

We increase them.

We increase the dumbbell weight.

We increase the distance that you walk.

We increase the amount of stretching that you're doing.

And perhaps with time,

Start attending a yoga class.

And with time,

Perhaps join a running club.

And with time,

Perhaps going to the gym and lifting weights.

And then guess what?

With time and with effort,

You can get into very good shape.

It does take time.

And the key of it is small steps so that you don't get discouraged and that you don't quit.

Well guess what?

Being happy works the exact same way.

And the good news is,

Unlike our bodies,

Which with time,

No matter how much we work on them,

They will begin to wear out.

Our sense of happiness can continue to grow to our last breath.

So how do we then begin to make small steps towards being happy?

I'm going to start with a step-by-step approach of how we do make our lives better so that we are happier.

But hang on to the end because I'm going to also teach a technique,

A skill,

Something that we can do that we can find happiness wherever we are,

What's ever happening,

At least in that moment.

So hang on to the end.

Well the key of it is that none of our lives are pure misery for the most part.

Oh,

There may be a few exceptions out there.

But for most listeners right now,

There are parts of our lives that are good and parts of our lives that aren't good.

So the thing we have to ask ourselves is,

Okay,

What are areas that I want to work on?

What is a goal that I could work on and do that would add to my happiness and I could probably stick to it where I wouldn't quit the next day I did it?

For example,

Let's decide that we're going to start meditating.

We've heard that meditation is very good for us.

It quiets the mind.

It allows us to be still.

And our goal would be to sit for say 5 to 10 minutes twice a day in the morning and at night.

I think that would be a great goal to start off with.

If we started off with,

Say,

I'm going to meditate three hours a day,

We'll probably do it for a week and we'll never do it again,

Just like the exercise.

So we have to do things in moderation.

And here's the good news.

Habits are habits.

We have good habits.

We have bad habits.

But they really are habits.

The person whose life is going quite well for him or herself has habits in place,

Good habits,

That add to their joy of life.

They have healthy relationships.

They enjoy their work.

And they spend a lot of time in nature and take time off to metaphorically smell the roses.

But these are just habits.

Good habits,

But they're just habits.

Someone else who's struggling with life may come home after a challenging day,

Every day,

And have a bottle of wine,

Again every day,

Watch the news for,

Say,

An hour or two,

And then end the evening with watching violent or critical shows.

That's probably not going to add to their happiness.

We all know that.

They're just habits.

Habits are habits.

So what I'm suggesting is choose perhaps one,

Maybe two,

Or even three things that you know will add to your happiness.

I've talked about hundreds of things on this podcast of things that we can do to create a better sense of happiness in our lives.

One is spending time in nature.

Perhaps when you come home for the day,

You go for a half an hour walk in the neighborhood,

Or go to a park and sit and read,

Or listen to a podcast while you're going for that walk.

And that's your focus until that becomes a habit.

It's just naturally what you do.

For example,

In my own case,

I meditate about 90 minutes a day.

I like meditation.

I have done it for decades.

Even on vacation,

I meditate.

But it really is just a habit.

So I took years developing it,

And now it's just part of my lifestyle.

Initially,

It was hard,

But I kept at it.

And with time,

It became something very enjoyable.

But the key here is habits are habits.

And whatever habits we have in place initially is going to be quite challenging to change them.

But if we take small steps and increase them by doing more and more,

Then what we'll find is it's going to become easier.

And with time,

That new habit that's good for us will become natural and it will be easy to do.

So once we tackle it,

Then we say,

Okay,

What's next?

What do I want to work on next?

Do I want to work on my career or my relationship that I'm in right now or what I'm exposing myself to on the weekends?

And we just begin to tackle them one at a time.

See,

The key of it is if we take one thing at a time until we accomplish it and it becomes a new habit,

That's all about kindness.

Because what we tend to do and why we tend to stay stuck with our old habits is we fail or we don't like it or we quit because it's too hard and we took on too much.

And then we start beating ourselves up and say,

What's wrong with you?

You're such an idiot.

You're terrible.

You're awful.

And these negative talks keep us stuck because they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

But if we take small steps,

Which are easy to do,

I mean,

They do take work,

But they're not too overwhelming.

And then we accomplish them,

We feel good about ourselves,

And they become the new habit.

And it's easy to do.

So,

Cultivating habits in small steps is a key.

And then once we accomplish it,

Moving in a direction towards taking on bigger things.

And because we're doing better,

These bigger things actually won't be as overwhelming because we have things in place now that support us,

Things that we do every day that are creating happiness in our hearts.

So when we tackle,

Say,

Perhaps a career change or a relationship change,

It's easier because we have a lot of good things supporting us.

And that's the key of how to learn to be happy.

Small steps with lots of encouragement.

And once we accomplish them,

Meaning they are the new habit,

Then tackling bigger ones and bigger ones until ultimately we say,

Hey,

My life's going quite well right now.

I like it.

And we're able to do that because the small things begin to support us.

The small habits that are good for us that we have in place support the bigger choices that we have to make in the future.

And when they seem a little overwhelming,

Instead of quitting,

We have all these really good things in place that support us.

And it's a lot easier to make the changes.

Let's say,

For example,

We're in a dysfunctional relationship and we know we need to get out,

But we just can't.

It's just too hard.

We have children to support.

We're concerned about our finances.

But we work on this stuff.

We now start taking care of our bodies.

We start taking care of our minds.

We start listening to positive things.

We start meeting new friends that support us and are positive outside the home.

And then when it's time to make that decision,

Because we have this great support network,

We're able to make the decision that is best for us.

We can do anything when we work at it,

But it's a lot easier to make little changes until we get there.

And then the big changes that need to come aren't so big anymore.

They're more doable because now we're in shape.

We're in psychological shape to tackle them.

And then with time,

No matter what comes our way,

It's more like a dance we do with life.

We just tackle anything that comes our way.

And I want to end,

As I said,

With a word of encouragement.

The one thing that we can do,

No matter what's happening,

Even right now,

If we are in a mess,

We can do this.

We can say,

Okay,

Guess what?

Even when life is hard,

There's always something beautiful going on.

We may have a friend that is so dear to us.

We may really enjoy our kitty that we come home every day to.

We may enjoy our Friday nights with our friend,

Even though everything else is a mess.

And so what we do is we say,

Okay,

There's always something beautiful to be with.

I'm going to focus on that.

And even,

Let's use the example that we're stuck at the airport because we can't go anywhere.

We're going to be there for eight hours.

We say,

Well,

That's kind of depressing.

But guess what?

I'm going to read a book right now.

Interestingly,

I had a person recently who told me he had to go to the hospital because he was very ill and he was so busy.

He actually really enjoyed the quiet time in the hospital.

No one could really bug him.

And most of us would say that's horrible.

But for him,

He used the time in a relaxing way.

There's just always something beautiful to be with.

And when life is hard,

We look for those nuggets,

Those things that bring a little bit of joy to our life.

And when we do that,

What we'll find is the suffering we're in,

The hard times we're going through just aren't that hard anymore.

And we realize also that the external circumstances ultimately don't matter.

What really matters is my mind,

My mental thoughts of how I interact with it.

For one person having a tragedy,

For another person,

It could be a victory.

I know that doesn't make sense sometimes,

But we all know it's true.

We all know someone who lost everything and then came back and their lives were great.

We know someone else who had everything and their lives were miserable.

It's just the way we look at it.

And when we realize that,

We really do work at the way we're seeing life.

So even when there are difficult things,

Like let's say we have a job that we really just don't like,

We begin to realize that by focusing on the negatives of the job,

We will be unhappy.

But we realize there are things about our job that are pleasurable,

That we like,

And we give attention to that.

And when we can't change something,

Then we say,

Okay,

Then how am I going to make this work?

Because I don't want to go to work miserable every day.

I'm going to find ways of gratitude for what I do have.

Just being grateful that we have a job.

So in conclusion,

The way we learn to be happy is by taking small steps,

Making little changes.

But these changes create beauty and peace and happiness in our lives.

And we just keep doing it one day at a time,

One month at a time,

One year at a time,

One decade at a time.

And with time,

Life gets better.

Remember,

We can all have beautiful lives.

It does take work.

It does take effort.

It takes changing the habits that we have in place that are causing us to suffer with habits that cause us to be happy.

These are just habits.

Happy habits work when we put them in place.

But we probably,

Right now,

May not have the best habits in place.

So let's tackle one or two at a time until that becomes the new habit,

The good habit.

And then just keep tackling them until one day we wake up and we say,

Life is good.

Thank you,

Life.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Loved it. Listened whilst washing the dishes. I am in treatment for treatment resistant depression. Hearing your calm, kind voice and the simple approach to making change in life was very enjoyable.

Wonderful speech, very useful