The Happiness Reset Button

Sometimes life is challenging. What if we could reset our day and our lives. Though we often can't do much to change the external conditions of our lives, we can always change our internal conditions. Learn how to press the "Happiness Reset Button." (Please note, this is a lecture, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Over the past years,

I've taught a lot about how to be happy.

But of all the things that I teach,

This today is a big one.

I would suggest until it really sinks in at the heart level and you're doing it almost spontaneously to keep listening to this one over and over again until it sinks in.

Because when we learn this one,

Our lives go better.

I call it the happiness reset button.

And here's it in a nutshell.

Basically,

When something happens in our life and we don't like it,

We ask ourselves one question,

Is there anything that I can do about this right now to make this better?

And if the answer is no,

Then I let it go and I readjust to the new situation.

Period.

Now,

Sometimes life's events are big and sometimes life's events are small.

But it's amazing how either one of them we can create awful stories about and we can let them ruin our days when we don't reset our happiness button.

If we travel much,

This is probably one we've experienced or seen more than once in our lives.

And I think at the time,

As with all things,

It can seem as a big deal.

But in the scheme of life,

It's definitely not one of the big ones.

It's more one of the small ones.

And it would be this.

We get at the airport and for whatever reason,

Our flight when we get there has been delayed and has been canceled or has left.

We've missed our flight.

Let's use that example.

We get there and because of the security check,

We get to our plane and it is taken off and we are not going to be flying on that plane.

Period.

So what we often do,

And I'm sure we've seen many people do this over the years,

We get upset,

We get mad,

We get frustrated.

And right now,

We aren't happy campers anymore.

But we have another choice.

We can do this.

We can say,

Okay,

I missed my plane.

It is taking off.

It's in the air.

There is no way I can jump up there and be in that seat.

So what do I do?

Well,

The next thing we have to ask ourselves is,

How do we catch our next flight?

If we need to get somewhere,

We need to figure out how do we get there?

Are we going to go rent a car and drive?

Are we going to talk to the agent and see where the next flight leaves?

Are we going to check into a hotel room because we can't make it that day and have to catch the next day?

We just get into the mode of fixing it and doing what we need to do next.

We may decide not to go on this trip.

There's lots of options,

But those are the options that we fall into.

What do we do next?

And once we talk to the agent,

They say,

Okay,

Your flight is leaving in six hours,

Your next flight.

You can make it on that one.

We have you in the seat.

Then what we do is we say,

Okay,

What am I going to do for the next six hours?

I remember once I was in New York City.

I was flying back from Europe and I was with a friend of mine and we got stuck in New York City because our flight had been delayed literally six hours.

My friend was very upset and just wanted to stay at the airport.

I thought,

Hmm,

I have six hours.

I'm going to go to the city.

So I got on a bus.

I went to the city,

Explored the city,

Went all over and then came back.

When I got back,

We both caught on the flight together and he had had a miserable afternoon and I had had a great day.

We both waited for our flight.

He didn't get home any faster than I did.

And I had turned that into a good day and he had had a pretty awful day.

That's life.

Life throws us things.

And after we decide there's nothing we can do about it,

Then we go into,

Okay,

Then what am I going to do?

If this is my reality and there's nothing I can do about it,

Then what am I going to do?

How do I adjust to this?

Well,

Let's use a mid-range example,

Something that's bigger but still not necessarily huge.

Yesterday,

I got together with one of my dear friends,

Scott.

I had seen him the week before,

So we'd keep up with each other pretty often,

But something new had happened.

He had just gotten a new job recently that he was liking,

But unfortunately,

The company was changing,

So they had to let him go.

And Scott gets life.

He lives his life well.

So what he had done was he was already interviewing for new jobs,

But he told me,

Hey,

When I get that new job,

I'm going to take two weeks off and tell them I need that time to transition out of my old job because I want to go on vacation and spend some time in nature.

So though it was an adjustment to having to find a new job,

He quickly realized there's nothing he could do about it,

And he was just looking for new work,

Which he's pretty sure he'll get soon.

But even when he gets that new job,

He was going to take some time off and enjoy his life.

For many of us,

Losing our jobs is devastating.

When I was 14 years old,

My father up to that time had one job.

It was a good job,

And he liked it quite a bit.

Well,

One time I was with him because I would go with him on the summers to some of his job things,

And I went with him to the corporate office,

Which was in Omaha,

Nebraska.

Well,

We were going to meet up a few hours later,

But he ended up coming to find me fairly quickly.

And he said,

I'm sorry,

Son,

But I lost my job.

And I love my dad.

I didn't care,

But he cared.

And sadly,

It took him eight years,

I would say,

To come out of that,

Because he really had his identity in his job.

And though he did come out of it quite well in the end,

It took him a long time to find his way,

Because he had that one job pretty much all of his adult life.

And he hung on to that identity,

And it took him a long time to let go of it.

And yet my friend Scott,

Though he didn't have the job as long as my father did,

Quickly adjusted and even turned it into something beautiful.

One of the main things about life that is very predictable is the unpredictability of life.

We feel like we're in control.

We definitely try to be in control.

But as hard as we try,

There are things we just cannot help.

And we all know this.

Sometimes out of nowhere,

These events happen.

It's like,

They just take our breath away.

Our role,

If we truly want to be happy,

Is say,

Okay,

Take a deeper breath now and say,

This is what life has given me.

How do I make this work?

How do I land on my feet and say,

I'm going to make this work?

Because the beautiful thing about being human is that if we choose to,

We can be incredibly adaptable.

I mean,

We're amazing,

But it takes effort.

It takes that skill to say,

Is there anything I can do about this right now that will make a difference?

I mean,

We can kick and scream.

We can do that,

But it probably won't make any difference.

And to be honest,

It often makes things much,

Much worse.

And this is where the happiness reset button can be so helpful.

And I believe it not only makes our lives better,

It makes people around us like us a lot more.

Let me give a couple examples.

Let's say we're a parent and we have teenagers and their curfew,

Let's say,

Is 10 p.

M.

And now it's 1 a.

M.

And they're not home yet.

We're worried,

We're concerned,

They're not picking up their phone.

So we have something we can do at that point.

When they walk in that door,

We can get very angry at them,

Very upset.

Or we can let the happiness reset button say,

Well,

I expected them to be home at 10.

And now it's 1.

It's a lot later.

But this is when they're walking in the door.

Thank goodness they're coming home.

So let's talk about it in the morning.

It doesn't mean there can't be consequences.

It's just we stay calmer when we realize if it's 1,

It's 1.

There's nothing I can do about that.

Except for that one thing,

We can reset our happiness button and say,

OK,

This is what time it is.

I'm going to adjust to this new time and deal with the consequences of that time.

Again,

It may have consequences on our children,

Like they don't get the car for the next week or they're grounded.

But we stay calm.

And because we stay calm,

Guess what?

We're going to just have a lot better relationship with our children than if we scream and yell at them because we're upset,

Because they're not doing what we want them to do,

Because life isn't going the way that we want it to go,

Because we realize that we're not in control as much as we thought we were.

Here's another big example I see so often.

Two people are in a relationship.

They're married.

They're dating.

And they love spending time together.

The guy particularly loves being intimate with his partner.

Well,

For whatever reason,

That time that he's expecting to be intimate with his partner,

She is unable to.

If he gets angry,

If he gets upset,

If he screams and yells at her,

That will not make for future intimacy as likely.

It affects the relationship.

But if he adjusts,

If he says,

It's OK,

Honey,

There's always tomorrow,

That is so much more romantic for his partner,

For any of us.

So staying calm not only benefits us,

It benefits the people in our lives.

We are liked better,

And we like ourselves better.

And guess what?

Life just goes better,

Because when we reset our happiness and adjust to the changes that we can't do anything about,

Then life just begins to go well.

Because what's happening at the core is instead of fighting life,

Particularly when there's nothing we can do about it,

We begin to flow with life.

And that flow makes life go so much better.

When we reset our happiness button,

Life just goes well.

And we reset it by saying the one question,

Is there anything I can do about this right now?

And if the answer is no,

Then we say,

OK,

Then this is what I get.

It's that simple.

And we make it work.

Now,

There is one exception,

Not really an exception to the happiness reset button,

But to our response.

There are some events in life that are big,

I mean really big.

So for example,

Let's say we do lose our partner to death.

I mean,

That's big,

That's gigantic.

Or we get divorced,

Or one of our children dies,

Or our parents die.

I mean,

We know the big ones.

They're huge sometimes.

And yes,

We still hit the happiness reset button,

Saying,

OK,

Now that this has happened,

How do I make my life work?

I'm single now again.

I wasn't expecting that.

But how do I say,

Being single,

What is that going to look like for me?

Or now that my mother's passed,

I can't call her anymore.

So when change happens,

We adapt.

We may start dating someone else.

We may have someone who becomes our surrogate parent,

In the sense that we reach out to them and call them like we used to call our mothers.

We adjust to changes.

But at the same time,

We give ourselves permission to grieve,

To be sad over the loss,

To be angry over the changes.

Angry in the sense of not taking it out on other people.

But I like going to the gym and being angry there,

Physically working it out of our system,

Or being sad and journaling or talking to a friend,

Or getting into counseling to heal,

But let our hearts heal.

Because the big ones are harder.

We're still going to hit the happiness reset button,

But we're going to realize that we may need to spend up to an hour a day,

I really think an hour a day is long enough,

But up to an hour a day,

Letting our hearts heal.

There's many ways we can heal.

And we need to find the techniques that work best for us.

But we will spend time healing.

But mostly the other 23 hours of the day.

We say,

Okay,

This is my new situation.

I'm going to adapt to this new situation,

Whatever it may be,

No matter how big it is.

We are really good when we hit that happiness reset button and say,

Okay,

I can make this work.

There's some way,

Some way I can make this work and find happiness.

There's always something beautiful to be with,

Even when we're in pain,

And pain that maybe we have to live with for a long time.

We can still say,

Pain is just pain.

There's so,

So much beauty in life.

I'm going to focus on that.

I'll do things to get that pain to be less.

Mostly I'm going to focus on the beauty in my life.

And that's so much what life is about.

When these changes come and we have to hit that happiness reset button,

Hit it quickly,

Hit it fast so that we then can be happier at that moment.

And the people around us too will experience that.

They'll see us as being kinder,

Less aggressive,

Less upset,

And our lives will go better.

Not only our lives,

But the people around us will experience us as being happier and less upset at times.

And I know this isn't easy.

That's why I'm suggesting listening to this podcast many times.

But the key is saying,

Okay,

Sometimes life doesn't go the way I planned.

And after I've done what I can do,

And it's going a different route,

And there's nothing I can really do about it,

Then we take that deep breath.

We say,

This is my opportunity to adjust.

Now we may not adjust the first time,

The second,

The thousandth time that we get hit with these changes in circumstances.

But if we really practice this over and over again,

Guess what?

We will get better at this.

A lot better.

And we're going to like it a lot.

Really.

This is one of the best things we can learn in regards to being happy is to hit the happiness reset button.

When we do that,

When we adjust the things that we can't change,

Life just goes better.

Because now,

Instead of hitting our head against the wall,

We're embracing that wall,

Walking around that wall,

Realizing that now we need to go a different direction because of that wall instead of hitting your head against it.

I know I say this almost every week on this podcast,

But we really can have beautiful lives as long as we do our best,

Adjust to the changes,

And stop fighting life.

There's nothing wrong with working towards things that we can change,

Of course.

But we do them calmly.

We do them with equanimity.

But when life says,

Nope,

That's not the way it's going to go,

Then we say,

Okay,

Life,

I will embrace that.

I will quickly adjust to these changes.

And I'll work towards getting my heart in that place of acceptance.

We may not be able to control much in life,

But the one thing we can control is that we can hit that happiness reset button.

And when we do,

And we keep hitting it each time,

Life throws us things that we didn't expect that maybe we didn't even want,

What we'll find is happiness will become far more of our natural state,

And we will find so much beauty in life.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

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Org.

That's happinesspodcast.

Org.

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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

Very nice 💜🙏.

Fantastic!! Very useful

Thank you🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻Accept, embrace, let go...

Wise words indeed! Thank you! 🌈