The Key To Happiness Is: “Malleability”

Our world is changing at an unprecedented pace. How do we find happiness with all the changes we must adjust to? In this talk, we explore how "malleability" is the critical ingredient to experience happiness even with all the changes in our lives and worlds.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Have you noticed something recently that's been going on in our world?

There's been a lot of change,

And the change seems to be coming at a very rapid pace.

For some of us,

This may be exciting,

Thrilling times are coming in the future,

And who knows what it's going to bring.

But I think for many of us,

It brings about fear,

Anticipation,

Anxiety,

Because our future keeps changing and rapidly.

Our world has always been a place of change.

Technology changes,

People change,

Leadership changes.

There's a lot of things in life throughout history that have changed.

But I think you will agree with me that the change of our current world is at a much quicker pace.

Of course,

There's going to be some people that get off the grid,

That live in isolation and don't see the rapid change around us as much.

But these people are more of an anomaly.

And nonetheless,

Change will still come to them too,

Ultimately,

Because even if they don't feel the effects of the world change,

They will feel the effects of their own body changing.

But the truth is,

No matter where we lived,

When we lived in history,

Life has always been about change.

Things change.

Our situations change.

Our relationship with people change.

People that we love leave us.

They die.

They move away.

We have illnesses that we have to face throughout our life.

Sometimes we have career changes.

Sometimes we have relationship changes.

Sometimes we have health changes.

But recently,

I think many of us are experiencing our world is changing.

And it isn't changing the same way it used to.

It's changing faster.

And because it's changing,

The one thing that change brings is uncertainty.

It doesn't guarantee what the future is going to look like,

Because change has so many different parts to it that we just don't know what's going to happen in the future.

People can speculate.

But for the majority of us,

We aren't going to influence the changes coming to our world,

But we are going to experience them.

And these changes seem to be coming at a much rapider pace than we've ever seen in history.

So should we be in fear?

Should we be staying up at night with anxiety because we know all the changes are coming,

We just have no idea how it's going to impact us?

But knowing that it will?

Is that our only option?

No,

It isn't.

We have another option,

Which we've always had throughout history.

Because even though there's now a time where our whole world is changing,

Sometimes groups of people,

Sometimes individual people have gone through catastrophic changes,

And some of them have dealt with it well.

But how do we do that?

How do we adapt well to our rapidly changing world?

If we want to find peace in our hearts,

Happiness in our lives,

And joy throughout a day,

We have to develop one skill,

Which will permeate every aspect of our life.

And that skill is malleability.

And at the crux of being a malleable person is learning to be adaptable in situations where change occurs.

Because as I said,

Throughout history,

There's always been change.

So there's always been people that have excellent skills at malleability.

They adapt well to change.

In life,

When we're rigid,

And we say things have to stay the same,

It may stay the same,

Of course,

And putting forth effort to make sure the good things in our life,

Like our health,

Like our relationships,

Are nurtured and cared for so that they stay healthy,

So that they stay well,

Is a very prudent thing to do.

But there's just so many things in life that are out of our control.

And if we try to fight them,

When they're completely out of our control,

Instead of adapting to them,

We will suffer.

Think of it this way.

There's a tree,

And there's a piece of grass,

And they both live near the coast.

And most of the time,

It's beautiful,

It's sunshine,

It's breezy weather.

But every once in a while,

A huge hurricane comes.

And let's say that tree says,

You know what,

I'm going to put my roots down.

I'm going to get real rigid.

I'm not going to move one inch when those winds come.

Well,

If you've ever seen hurricanes,

Often trees get bent,

Broken and destroyed.

Now the grasses,

What they do is they bend when the wind comes,

They adjust to the winds.

And after their hurricane is left,

They bounce right back up,

And they're fine.

And that in many ways is a metaphor for how we need to deal with change.

Because at the core,

What malleability means is yes,

We may say,

This is difficult,

What I'm going through.

I don't like this.

But I can adapt to this.

I can change myself to make this work for me,

Whatever the universe brings right now.

And right now,

What I'm suggesting is there might be a lot of change coming to all of us.

And wouldn't it be better to just say,

Okay,

I get it.

There's a lot of things out of my control.

But no matter what comes,

There are things that are in my control always.

And one of the biggest,

Which will bring about happiness and joy in my life,

Is my ability to adapt.

Because adaptation is really the key element of a happy life.

And it's really being able to differentiate between what I have control over and what I don't.

When we absolutely don't have control over something,

And we fight,

We get upset,

We get angry about that,

We can do that for a little bit.

But if we stay stuck there,

We're going to suffer instead.

When we're malleable,

We say,

Okay,

What can I do now that this change has come?

How do I make this work for me?

And do you know the real secret of people that are malleable,

That adjust super well to change?

They don't have a lot of expectations.

They don't need things to stay the same.

And they're okay when they do change.

They like things to go a certain way.

They have preferences for things to stay the same.

But when they don't,

They say,

Oh,

A new adventure.

I wonder what it could be.

Because that's the one thing we have control over.

Is there our attitude towards change that is happening right now?

Yes,

We can fight it.

And sometimes it's prudent to fight it.

It's wise that we fight change.

Because sometimes there's things we can actually affect still and make better.

If there's social evils in our world,

We can fight against them and perhaps make change.

If we have health scares,

We can fight them and see if we can make things better.

I had a friend of mine once who got diagnosed with cancer.

And she was told that she had about six months to live.

Well,

In California,

We have a very good hospital that deals with cancer.

And I asked her to go there and get a second opinion.

And when she went there,

They had a very effective treatment program for her.

And she lived years and years after that.

So we can do things to make change,

Of course.

But we all know when change comes,

And there's nothing we can do about it,

Or that we have very little control over it,

Particularly worldwide changes that are affecting everyone.

We can't stop them.

But what we can do is say,

Okay,

Is there something I can do to change this?

And if there is,

We go about making change.

But when there isn't,

We put on the hat of malleability.

We say,

Okay,

This is what I'm having to deal with right now.

How do I make this change work?

Not how do I fight against it?

Not how do I change it?

Because we've decided we can't change it anymore.

It's out of our control.

So the next question we really ask ourselves,

The most important question is,

How do I adapt to this change?

That's a really key question with change.

It's malleability.

We adjust to change.

And you know what?

We're really good at it.

We struggle,

Not because we're not good at it.

We struggle because we don't change.

We don't adapt.

But we are so good at adapting to change.

So I now want to conclude the rest of this podcast with how do we adjust well to change?

How can we be malleable people that when change comes,

We got this.

We're going to do well.

One of the keys,

As always,

When it comes to change is differentiating between what can we change and what can't we change.

Well,

Once we determine there's something out of our control and we can't change it,

Then we ask ourselves,

Okay,

How do I make this work?

Now that may sound simple,

But in many ways,

It's the key of living a good life.

Because once we accept that I can't change this right now,

And this is my new reality right now,

Then we ask ourselves is what do I do to make this work?

Not how do I change this?

No.

How do I adapt to this?

Because it's different than what we're used to.

But you know,

Again,

Once we stop fighting life,

We really lose so much of the struggle.

The struggle comes in fighting,

Saying,

I don't want it to be this way.

This is so unfair.

This is wrong.

That's where we suffer from.

When we say,

Okay,

I didn't see this divorce coming,

But now I'm divorced.

How do I make this work?

I didn't see this cancer coming,

But now I have cancer.

How am I going to make this work and solve it?

I didn't realize I was going to lose my job with all the changes in the future,

But now I have.

What can I do instead?

There are a lot of changes coming for all of us,

But we're going to do well.

Where instead we say,

This isn't right.

This is unfair.

Once we let go of that and we say,

I'm going to accept this.

Accept it in the sense of I'm going to stop fighting something that I cannot change.

And instead look for ways to make this new change,

This new reality,

A workable,

A livable,

And actually joyful reality.

Because our suffering comes from clinging.

When we stop clinging to things,

Clinging to the past,

To whatever reality we had,

And now we don't.

When we let it go,

We let go of so much of the suffering.

That was the past.

What we focus on is the here and now.

Given that life has changed and now these are the new circumstances that I need to live with.

How do I make this work?

And see,

We've been given a gift.

It's called our intellect,

But our intellect can be our curse or it can be our blessing.

When it's our curse,

We focus on the past and we fight things and we say,

That wasn't right.

It shouldn't have happened.

And we spend our energy and time and our mind energy thinking about the way the world is unfair.

But we can use that same intellect and say,

Okay,

I get it.

Life has changed in very drastic ways,

But I'm going to make this work.

And you know what?

I'm going to use this beautiful mind of mine to make whatever life brings to me work until I take my last dying breath.

So when I do reach the end of my life,

I say,

That was a good life.

We do that by being malleable,

By saying change is going to come.

It is one of the truisms of life,

Change.

So we say,

How do I adapt well to change?

That's how we use our intellect to find ways to adapt well.

And we are great at adapting to anything.

If that is our focus,

If we truly give a hundred percent of our energy to adapting to change,

We are amazing.

We are so good at it.

But the key of it is that's where our energy has to go,

Not towards fighting change,

But working with the change and asking ourselves,

How do I make this change work?

I mean,

Again,

Think of this one.

This is a good one.

Think of someone who ends up getting a disease where they go blind and now they can't see for the rest of their life.

Of course they could be miserable and mortified and struggle for the rest of their life saying this is so unfair.

But don't we know people that are blind,

That are fine,

That are actually living a beautiful life?

There are.

And no matter what example you give me,

You say,

Dr.

Puff,

I just lost my home.

Dr.

Puff,

My wife just left me.

Dr.

Puff,

I just lost my job.

Yes,

We face very challenging things at times and we do need to grieve.

We need to share with people our feelings,

Of course.

But at some point,

When the grieving is done,

When we see that this is now our new reality,

We need to spend all our energy saying,

How do I make this new reality work?

And then when the next change comes,

We say,

How do I make this new reality work?

It's something we've really all had to face throughout history.

Because we get older,

Our bodies slow down,

And there's a lot of changes as we get older.

But now what's happening is,

It's more in a worldwide change.

Change is coming at a much larger basis to all of us.

And I do believe as humans,

As listeners to this podcast,

We can truly have astonishing lives if we work on being malleable and we realize what we just need to do is live well today.

Make today work well.

And we're so good at that when we put our energy towards making today work.

If we want to create a reality and say,

I want this to be this way forever,

It's just not going to happen.

Not in this world.

But instead we say,

I want to live one day well each day.

And whatever life throws me,

It's going to be a good day.

Then we'll find that with our extraordinary ability to be malleable in every situation that the world throws us,

We'll wake up in the morning and say,

Thank you for this new day.

And when we put our head down at the end of the night,

We'll say,

Thank you for that beautiful day.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

This podcast is truly full of wisdom as Dr Puff opens the door to acceptance through malleability.
Thank you.

Accept what is and adapt
Excellent advice

This is so very helpful, plus I learned a new & very meaningful word “malleability”. Thank you.

Outstanding. Thank you. My friend was diagnosed with cancer. What was the California cancer hospital you referred your friend to?

Exactly what I needed today. Thank you Dr. Puff! Actually…I need this everyday to be malleable! ☺️

Thanks for being such an inspiration

Thank you so much for this! It is very helpful…

thank you for your beautiful wise thoughts 🙏💙
And I agree, life is change and is offering chances to us, if you're able to see them as chances and use them wisely, you can reframe your mind into positive thinking and get the ability to adapt & problem solving and live a happy beautiful life 🌈

Thank you 🙏