Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.
I'm Dr.
Robert Puff.
Do you know the number one thing that keeps us from being happy and having a good life?
It's our self and all the thoughts that we have going through our head throughout the day.
I know many of us have encountered some really bad people in life that have hurt us greatly.
And these events are important,
They're traumatic,
And they do influence us greatly.
But what is far more important in the quality of our life is the thoughts that we think throughout the day.
Now the good news is we can actually have good thoughts,
Positive,
Loving thoughts towards ourselves,
Liking who we see in the mirror and say,
I like you.
And I want to talk today about how we achieve that goal,
That lifestyle of self-love.
But what may surprise you is how we get there.
Unfortunately,
There's a real tendency in our culture to be critical of others.
When we see someone doing something nefarious,
We are often very quick to judge these days.
On social media,
When we see posts about someone who has done something wrong,
It's amazing the amount of vitriol that will come out on the comment section.
We are so harsh on each other right now.
But the first thing I want to say is,
Because I don't want to be misconstrued,
Is that yes,
When people do things that are wrong,
Really wrong,
There should be justice done in those situations.
Things should happen where they have consequences for their action.
As you listen to this podcast,
I am in no way disagreeing with that.
I think it's very healthy and good,
If possible,
That we live in a country where things are fair and legitimate,
That there are consequences when people do things wrong.
But what I'm talking about today is our happiness.
Because our happiness,
Believe it or not,
Is related to how we treat others.
Not just with our words,
Not just with how we interact with social media,
But even in our thoughts.
And our thoughts,
Not only are they important,
They are incredibly important,
And the most important thing that we need to be mindful of.
Because our thoughts reflect our level of happiness in life.
Let me explain.
Let's say we're at the grocery store and we see someone who's heavy,
Perhaps very heavy,
And we judge them.
We may even look at their shopping cart and see what they're buying.
Because there's a tendency in us to really judge other people that do things that we think are wrong,
That we think are unhealthy,
That we think are unkind.
We may think,
Well,
Why doesn't that person exercise?
We may think,
What kind of modeling is that mom doing to her kids?
We may think,
Wow,
I wouldn't want to be married to them,
That's gross.
We know the thoughts that people have.
Hopefully we don't have them,
But we know people have them.
And now,
Because of social media,
We can make our thoughts known to the world and hide behind some other identity,
Where people won't know who we really are,
And just say scathing,
Horrible things about people.
Now some of you may be thinking,
Well,
Does it really matter?
Do they even read them,
Particularly the famous people?
I have worked with some people that are at that level,
And they come into me for that very reason,
Because people online are so cruel to them,
And it makes them miserable.
It's so hard on them.
They do,
Sadly,
Sometimes read them,
And it hurts them dearly.
So again,
You may say,
Well,
They deserve it.
Okay,
Think that,
But hang on there,
Keep listening to the rest of this podcast.
So first we have our thoughts,
And now we have social media,
But the third thing we can do,
Which I would argue is much more rare,
We don't see it that often.
I mean,
We may see it because we watch shows or YouTube videos,
But overall,
When we're out and about,
We don't see this as often,
Where someone gets in another person's face and starts saying horrible things to them because of what they've done.
That's rare.
It happens,
But I bet we're not seeing it all the time or regularly.
Unless we seek it out in life,
Like through videos,
There we can find it regularly.
But if we don't seek it out,
Probably in our daily interaction with people,
We don't see it that often,
Because it's just a line that many of us won't cross.
Or if we do,
Which we do sometimes,
It's a novelty.
It's not a regular occurrence for most of us.
But you may be wondering,
Well,
How is this relevant to my life?
I mean,
There are people out there that do really bad things,
And for sure I'm going to think badly about them.
And then I may post something to share my comments about how their lives are despicable.
And maybe in certain situations,
I may even confront them and say horrible things to their face because I feel they deserve it.
Now,
You may not be doing the second two things by saying things to people's face or posting things on the internet anonymously.
But most people think it's okay to think things,
To think awful things about awful people.
If the crime fits,
They deserve my awful thoughts.
Of course they do.
Why wouldn't I?
So now I want to talk about why you really want to work on stop doing that,
Because it's going to backfire.
And let me explain how.
Well,
When it comes to judging other people,
Again,
I'm going to state that if they do something wrong,
Hopefully there'll be some consequences to it,
Which I believe on some level,
There's always consequences to the choices that we make,
Good or bad.
There's just a ripple effect.
And if we do things to hurt other people or even ourselves,
There's consequences to those choices.
But we,
As an outsider,
Do not know their circumstances.
We don't know where they came from.
We don't know how they got there.
We don't know the whole story.
We weren't there.
We haven't lived in their shoes their entire life,
And we just don't have enough information to judge them.
Again,
If they break the law,
There can be consequences,
Of course,
But judging them for what they did and calling them names and thinking horrible things about them,
I don't think that's our place because we just don't have enough information.
Now over the years,
You could probably imagine as a clinical psychologist,
I've worked with some people that have done some things that probably most of us would not be proud of if we did them.
But over the years,
What I've learned is,
Again,
They did do something wrong,
But it wasn't just black and white.
They just weren't evil people that did evil things.
There are circumstances that led up to it.
Again,
It doesn't excuse their behavior,
But it helps us understand their behavior so much better when we know their whole story.
If we just judge them categorically for the deed they did without looking at the complete circumstances that got them there,
It's much harder to judge people when we spend time getting to know them.
I recently read an article from a researcher who was looking at people who are sexually into masochistic behavior.
They need to be someone that tortures them in order to get aroused and get stimulated sexually.
They seek that out and find someone that will hurt them in order for them to have an orgasm.
Now,
Most of us would very quickly say,
Well,
They're crazy.
There's something wrong with them.
They're screwed up.
They're nut balls.
I think that's what we would do.
But you know what was interesting,
What he found was that in every case that he found,
These people,
When they were kids,
They had horrifyingly painful diseases that caused them tremendous amounts of pain constantly.
And what their minds did is switch the pain sensation into pleasure.
They saw pain as pleasurable.
And now,
In order to get an orgasm,
They need to be injured because now,
For them,
Pain is pleasurable.
Now,
I think most of us would judge that very differently if we knew that story all along the way.
Again,
I'm not trying to condone or say this is right or this is wrong.
But so often,
We just don't know the whole story of people.
And I think if we really sat down with people and said,
How did you get here?
What happened?
We would be softer.
It doesn't mean that we would want to take away the consequences of what they did,
But we wouldn't judge them so harshly.
And we would understand that,
Oh,
I wonder if I had been in the same situation you were in throughout my life,
If I might have made different choices.
We truly are a product of our environment.
We can change things.
That's what this Happiness Podcast is all about,
Changing our environment,
Making different choices.
But you're making different choices because you're learning different things to do.
If you didn't have this information,
You might stick on the same path you're on the rest of your life.
But now,
You're getting conditioned to do things differently.
So now,
You can make different choices.
But now,
I want to talk about you and how this is so important for your happiness.
Because if we judge others,
Guess what?
We're going to judge ourselves with the exact same intensity,
With the exact same vitriol.
And if it's bad,
We're going to be hearing it all day long or numbing ourselves from the pain because it's so painful.
That's why people turn towards addictions,
Having to deal with the traumas of their lives and then having to deal with the negative talk in their own head.
It exhausts them.
So when they turn to their drug,
It gives them a reprieve from all that negativity.
But a lot of that negativity is self-induced and they need the drug in order to be free of it just for a moment.
Okay,
So why is this important?
Okay,
Let's say,
Okay,
I do judge myself.
So what?
Well,
Here's where the catch comes in.
We can't hide from our own story.
We know our story,
Our life,
And the choices we've made,
The way we've interacted with people.
We know our secrets that no one else may know.
And because we're human and because we do make mistakes sometimes,
And sometimes we make really big mistakes,
Well,
If we're judging others,
Guess what?
We then are going to judge ourselves harshly,
Ruthlessly,
And continuously.
That's why we have to stop judging others and start finding love and compassion for people and then ultimately realizing that we too are a product of our environment and our environment shaped us.
And we can change it through our future actions,
But our past is our past.
We did what we did based on our circumstances,
With the knowledge that we had,
But now we're learning new things.
And if we want to change,
We have to stop judging ourselves because judgment keeps us stuck.
You see,
In our head,
If we're hearing horrible things about ourselves,
It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We're just going to do it again.
People that hate themselves keep doing the same thing over and over again,
And they're stuck.
And my mission in life is to help people get unstuck through kindness,
Through forgiveness,
Through understanding,
Through mindfulness,
Realizing that we too are a product of our environment,
It shapes us,
And if we want to act differently in the future,
We have to make different choices.
We have to expose ourselves to different things.
We have to make changes.
And it's a lot easier to make changes when someone's cheering us on,
Like through positive,
Kind thoughts in our head,
Than if we look in the mirror and we say hateful,
Hurtful things.
And here's where judging others ties up to not judging ourselves,
Because if we become softer towards others,
And we stop engaging and judging others so harshly,
Then the good thing about it is we can start doing the same with ourselves.
We can stop judging ourselves for the mistakes we made.
The truth of it is,
We have all made mistakes,
And we know what they are,
But judging ourselves for them is not helpful.
We can learn from them.
We can say 10,
000 times,
What can I learn from this?
How can I grow from this?
But we've got to stop judging ourselves.
That is the path of suffering,
But we're not going to stop judging ourselves if we keep judging others.
Again,
I want to say again,
I'm not in any way advocating not having consequences.
Yes,
There could be consequences,
And people could spend their life in jail for what they did,
Of course.
But it doesn't mean we have to hate them.
We don't have to throw vitriol on them and poison in our thoughts or even in our words.
We do not have to do that.
Every human being is on their own journey.
It is not our journey.
Let's let them do their journey,
And let's focus on our journey.
The way we do that is by learning from our mistakes,
By growing,
By discovering what works,
What creates happiness in our hearts,
And it's through kindness.
The person that we can be so kind towards is ourselves.
It's easier then to be kind towards others when we're kind towards ourself.
It's a ripple effect of being kind to others,
We're kind to ourselves,
But being kind towards ourselves,
We're kind towards others.
And I believe ultimately we have one mission in life,
And that's to be kind,
Kind towards others and kind towards ourselves.
I know it's an uphill battle sometimes,
But if we just make little changes,
Softer towards others,
Softer towards ourselves,
I do believe we can make a difference,
And if we keep making a difference,
We will find that our lives will improve,
And perhaps will help others improve their lives too.
Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.
Until next time,
Accept what is,
Love what is.
