Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.
I'm Dr.
Robert Puff.
Society teaches us that when life gets hard,
We need to get harder.
We build defensive walls around our hearts,
We stubbornly dig our heels in when our plans are challenged,
And we try to control every outcome.
But there's a cost to this rigidity,
And sometimes a very heavy cost.
In clinical psychology,
We've learned that rigid defense mechanisms actually create profound fragility.
When we build a rigid wall,
It only takes one unexpected heavy blow to shatter it completely.
The harder the ego,
The more brittle the mind.
A friend of mine told me a story once about her aunt who had gotten into one of the top law schools in the United States.
It was incredibly challenging for her so she worked insanely hard to make sure she would do a great job.
And then she went through some personal life crisis as why she was in law school.
And this made it even harder,
But she was determined.
She was rigid.
She was going to be the top student in the class.
I don't know if you know this,
But they rank law students.
So you can actually be the number one graduate,
But there's only one.
And if you make it to number one,
The job opportunities are pretty much endless,
Particularly from a very good law school.
Well,
After all she went through,
She didn't give up and she became the number one graduate in her law school.
As I said,
I didn't know her,
But I think what happened was the lack of sleep,
The push in herself,
No matter what happened,
Caused her in the end to break.
My guess is her defenses went down after she graduated because she had made the finish line.
But she was so exhausted,
So traumatized by the experience,
She ended up becoming homeless.
And not temporarily homeless,
Permanently homeless.
Resilience is a beautiful trait to establish,
To live by.
But resilience is not the ability to withstand a blow without moving.
It's the ability to absorb the blow.
Bend with the Wind.
And return to our center.
We don't need a thicker armor,
We need greater fluidity.
Have you ever heard of the concept of the philosophy of water?
It comes from the Dao De Jing.
Lao Tzu wrote about this profound wisdom when he observed that the softest things in the universe consistently overcome the hardest.
He wrote,
Water is fluid,
Soft,
And yielding.
But water will wear away rock.
Which is rigid and cannot yield.
As a rule,
Whatever is fluid,
Soft,
And yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
We all see this in nature.
When a river encounters a massive boulder in its path,
It doesn't get angry.
It doesn't try to violently bash the boulder out of its way.
It simply yields,
Flows around the obstacle,
And continues its journey.
The water is perfectly soft,
Yet eventually it carves the Grand Canyon.
When I was working on my PhD in clinical psychology,
These lessons of fluidity really began to take hold on my heart and on my life.
Previously I had been very competitive,
But thankfully I changed my behavior and began to hike more,
Get out in nature more,
Relax,
Laugh,
And play a lot more.
I still graduated fine,
But I didn't need to be the top student anymore.
But one of my friends,
That was important to him.
He wanted to be number one.
We don't rank in political psychology,
But you kind of know who's getting all the A's.
Well,
My friend was that person and I knew he was working himself so incredibly hard.
And he had a wife and son that he had to help support too.
So he was crazy busy.
Well,
He made it,
He got through the program,
But right after he graduated.
He got really sick.
And has never to my knowledge been able to practice clinical psychology.
But because I learned this lesson of flowing with life and being softer with my heart,
I've been blessed to do my work for now over 35 years with great joy,
And wonder.
Though I definitely haven't carved the Grand Canyon.
Because I've worked at it steadily for 35 years,
I have created quite a few things.
It's just a natural consequence of sticking to one thing.
And creating new things along the way,
You end up having a very large resume.
For example,
I've been creating this happiness podcast episode once a week for 12 years now,
With now this one being the 615th episode.
It's not that we can't accomplish things.
It's not that we can't get through things.
We just need to flow with things,
Instead of fighting life so much.
When we fight life,
We suffer.
It's about yielding with life.
Like the oak in the reed.
Have you heard this ancient fable before?
The mighty master oak tree boasts to the slender reed about its immense strength,
Mocking the reed for bowing at the slightest breeze.
Then one day a massive hurricane swept through the valley.
The oak tree rigidly fights the wind,
Refusing to budge a single inch.
Because it will not bend,
The sheer force of the storm ultimately uproots it,
Destroying it completely.
The humble reed,
Meanwhile,
Simply blows its head all the way to the ground,
Yielding completely to the wind.
When the storm passes,
The oak tree is dead,
But the reed stands right back up,
Unharmed.
In the storms of our lives,
Whether it's an unexpected diagnosis,
A career shift,
Or a sudden loss,
The one who fights reality is broken by it.
The one who accepts and yields to reality survives.
I've known people who've gone through a divorce that I meet Decades later,
And they're still angry and bitter over what happened,
Not letting it go.
And really.
.
.
That divorce in many ways destroyed their happiness.
And yet I've met other people who go through divorce and they don't like it,
They realize they're going to a storm,
But they're not going to let that storm destroy them.
So they adjust to single life.
They get out,
They meet new friends,
They have more freedom,
And they realize that perhaps they may find someone,
And often do,
That matches their personality and needs even better.
When I was in high school and my father lost the only job he'd ever had,
And it was a good job,
He didn't do well at first,
Because he fought it.
More than just being angry and bitter over what happened,
He just couldn't let it go.
But after a few years,
He was able to find his way.
After he finally reached his nadir and he was driving a scooter to get around because my parents could only afford one car and he was working a very physical job at a moving company in order to help support my mom.
He was able to get a job in the health industry,
Helping people that were struggling,
And he loved it,
And it was such a good fit for him.
He never did as well financially,
But he really loved what he did after that.
But he never would have found that job if he hadn't first let go of the need and the anger he had about that great job he had before and he had to get one just like it.
There's so much freedom in psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay in the present moment and adapt our behavior to the situation rather than rigidly adhering a failed plan.
Suffering happens when we hold tightly to the script of how our life was supposed to go.
Softness means looking at a disturbed plan and saying,
This is not what I ordered.
But it is what has been served.
How do I flow with this new reality?
I teach a lot of things here on the Happiness Podcast to make our lives better.
This is a really big one.
It's not that we can't have desires,
Needs and wants.
It's just when we need to,
We adjust when life says no.
We don't have to fight life.
We just need to flow with life more.
We can still work towards things,
Accomplish things,
And even overcome obstacles.
But even when we do that.
.
.
We do it with fluidity.
So I want to close with three actionable steps that we can practice to create more fluidity in our lives.
First,
We notice a physical clenching.
The mind and body are entirely connected.
When we resist life,
We physically harden.
We clench our jaws,
Tighten our shoulders,
And hold our breath.
Several times a day,
Do a softness audit.
Consciously drop your soldiers.
Unclench your jaw.
And let your breathing become fluid and deep.
Second,
We do the pivot phrase.
The next time we face a frustrating obstacle,
A flight delay,
A difficult person,
Or a canceled plan,
Don't pass out against the boulder.
Use the pivot phrase,
How can I flow around this?
We shift our energy entirely from fighting the obstacle to navigating past it.
Here's a simple example of this.
It's yesterday I was getting together with some friends to meet for lunch.
For whatever reason,
The traffic was horrible.
So I text my friend and let them know that I was going to be a little late and then I enjoyed my free time.
I got to spend a little extra time listening to an audiobook I was enjoying instead of like some people that I could see that were very angry and upset.
And they still didn't get there any faster.
And thirdly,
We can do the physical practice of yielding.
We teach the nervous system about softness.
We must practice it physically.
While lifting heavy weights builds the armor,
Practices like Tai Chi and Yin Yoga build fluidity.
They teach our body that slow,
Yielding movements possess immense,
Grounded power.
In conclusion,
We don't need to be a stone wall to survive the difficulties of this world.
By dropping our armor,
Accepting reality,
And learning to bend like the reed,
We tap into the most enduring,
Quiet strength in the universe.
Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.
Until next time.
Accept what is.
Love what is.
