When Life Is Unfair

In this podcast we explore how we can find peace and happiness even when life is treating us unfairly. Life can throw us unexpected curve balls that test our patience, wellbeing, resilience and morality. In this talk, Dr Puff helps us to develop strength of character and overcome fear and barriers to our happiness.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

When I was in college,

One of my cousins,

Who was a little bit older than me,

Had started her family.

She had a new baby and things were really going well for her.

She was very happy and really enjoying life.

Then one day she wasn't feeling well,

So she went to the doctor and they discovered that she had cancer permeating her body.

And within a few short months,

She had passed.

I remember my grandmother,

Who I was living with at the time while I was going to college,

Shared with me that the loss of her granddaughter was probably one of the greatest losses she had ever had,

Even though she had lost her parents and her husband when she was younger.

It was just so unexpected.

It seemed so unfair.

My goal,

My purpose in life over the past 30 years has been to help people find happiness.

And because I do things like this,

Create the Happiness Podcast,

I've written 13 books,

I write a blog for Psychology Today,

I do hear back from people about their lives and how things are going.

And often,

Which I so appreciate,

I hear how their lives are getting better and they're learning and they're growing.

But I also hear the pain,

The pain of how life is unfair.

And how can we,

Dr.

Puff,

Be happy when life is so unfair at times?

So in today's podcast,

I want to explore that very complicated yet essential part of life,

Fairness,

And see how we can find happiness,

Even with life being unfair at times.

Well,

To start with,

In order to find happiness,

We do need to be truthful.

And the truthfulness of life is,

Is that life doesn't always go in seemingly logical patterns in ways that seem fair.

It's like,

Again,

Someone like my cousin who was so young,

Had a brand new child,

And yet we all know people who are almost on the fringe of being psychopathic,

Where they just want to hurt other people throughout their lives,

And yet they live into old age.

How is that fair?

How does the universe,

God decided to take a young mother of a child and leave behind a person who is only creating chaos and pain in our world?

How does that work?

And struggling with unfairness can really cause a lot of pain in our world.

I mean,

The little interactions throughout our lives where we see someone getting involved with world rage,

Or we see someone yelling at a clerk really loudly,

Or someone in line getting in a fight with another person,

That all boils down to unfairness.

I always remember the story about when I first moved out to Princeton to go to graduate school,

And I was going for the first time with my car to New York City.

And as I was waiting to go into the tunnel that led to New York City,

This cab driver and this other guy were vying for the same position.

And they both thought they had the right of way,

That the other person was being unfair.

And it escalated to a point where they both got out of their cars and literally started fist fighting with each other.

It really shocked me.

But interactions like this happen throughout our day.

When someone cuts us off,

When someone gets in line in front of us,

When someone doesn't treat us right,

We get mad.

We get really mad when we're online to get something fixed,

Perhaps our phone or computer,

And we feel the person on the other line is being unfair.

We're going to get mad,

Often,

Really mad,

Because we don't like unfairness.

And if someone's unfair to us,

There's a real tendency to get them back.

And then when the big things come,

Like the cancer,

Like the death of a loved one,

There are things that are like,

Wow,

That take our breath away.

We can go down a very dark path.

We can be so angry at times,

Or go into a deep depression,

Because we just can't handle,

We just can't make sense of the unfairness of life.

My guess is,

If right now you're listening to this podcast,

And you're listening because you're upset,

You're angry with life,

And you struggle,

If you get in a lot of fights throughout the day,

You're just argumentative,

You're probably going to find,

If you're honest,

That it's going to boil down to fairness.

You're getting in these arguments with your partner,

With your kids,

With your employees,

Whoever it may be,

Or life in general,

If you're struggling with something big,

Because it's unfair.

And we don't like unfairness.

So we fight life.

And so we suffer.

And everyone around us sometimes suffers too.

I know you may have heard this adage before,

But it goes,

If mama's not happy,

Nobody's happy.

And there's a sense of that,

That when we're unhappy,

When we think people aren't treating us fairly,

We're going to make sure that they're unhappy too.

We really don't like unfairness.

So of course,

The big question,

While we're listening to this podcast,

Is if we want to do better in life,

If we want to have a happy life,

Then we have to deal with appropriately the unfairness of life.

I don't think any of us would argue too strongly that life is fair.

I think most of us realize that life has times where it's like,

Wow,

That is not fair.

I mean,

Just look at human history,

What we did here in the United States to the African Americans.

I don't think anyone would consider that fair or what happened through the Jews throughout history.

I really don't think very many people consider that fair.

And on and on I can go,

The Native Americans here and again in the US,

How we treated them was very unfair.

So life is often unfair.

But the question to ask ourselves is,

Does that mean as we go through life and this fairness exists,

That I need to necessarily be unhappy?

Is that my only solution?

And of course,

You're going to know the answer.

The answer is no.

Of course we can be happy even with the unfairness of life.

But I like to be pragmatic.

So I want to state the two things we need to do in order to find happiness in the face of unfairness.

Our normal response,

As I said,

Is one of anger.

We get angry or we may get depressed.

But you say anger is a pretty normal response.

We may not show it to the world,

But we're angry inside.

And so we display that anger and that's why we see a lot of people getting in these fights,

Getting upset,

Having rough lives because they're angry.

They're angry with life because life is unfair right now and they don't like it.

But we're here to find happiness.

And so it's really a two step process in regards to unfairness.

This is what we need to do in order to find happiness with the unfairness of life.

The first thing we do need to do,

Which I think you're going to like,

I hope,

Is that we need to,

Of course,

Stand up to unjustices,

Things that are unfair when we can.

And then we need to do it with equanimity,

With a peacefulness.

So let's use an example.

Let's say we go to the doctor and he says or she says that our lab reports suggest that we may have cancer.

And of course we're going to say that's not fair.

So what do we need to do is we need to proactively say,

Okay,

Is there anything I can do to fight this cancer?

Maybe I can get involved with chemotherapy.

Maybe I can begin to make lifestyle changes.

There's lots of things we can do to proactively affect change and these changes may make a difference.

Now,

Of course,

They may not.

That's where the unfairness of life is going to be there.

But being calm,

Being peaceful as we deal with unfairness,

We're so much better to make rational,

Logical,

Good decisions for ourselves.

I mean,

Life may still end up being unfair,

But we're going to be much more able to proactively deal with things when we're calm.

I mean,

Think about going to the emergency room and a doctor there,

Again,

Is dealing with a lot of unfairness,

All these injuries that people come in with,

Sometimes life threatening.

Could you imagine if he or she was frantic and upset and said,

This isn't fair,

This isn't right?

We would go to a different hospital if we could as fast as possible and they would lose their job.

We do better when we're calm.

We make far better decisions when we're calm.

We take a deep breath and say,

Okay,

I get it.

Life isn't fair right now,

But what am I going to do that I might be able to create some positive change here?

It may not work,

But I'm going to give it a good effort to see if I can make things better.

Now on the smaller level,

Let's talk about unfairness.

Again,

This is the one we face throughout our day and often we're driving and someone cuts us off.

We're at a checkout line and the clerk is being really rude to us or we come home and our spouse doesn't even acknowledge that we made them this fabulous meal.

So what do we do there?

Well,

I think the first thing we have to ask ourselves is,

Do we want to let these little situations keep us from enjoying our lives?

I mean,

We can fight people,

We can argue,

We can get in their face and say,

Hey,

This isn't right,

But then that takes away from our joy of life.

That takes away from our enjoying life.

Now what we can do,

Of course,

Is we can,

If possible,

Sometimes see if we can come up with a solution.

Here's one that I've done over the years that I like.

If I'm at a place and as long as I know I'm not done anything,

Because,

You know,

Of course we can inadvertently do things that are rude and then what we do is we apologize and that often solves it.

But let's say we're not aware we did anything and say the clerk or the waitress or waiter isn't treating us well.

What I've done over the years is I'll just ask them,

I say,

Is everything okay?

And I try to do it in a very soft tone so I don't have their defenses go up even higher.

And they'll say,

What do you mean?

And I'll say,

Well,

It just seems like you might not be happy right now or not be kind of upset if something might be wrong.

And it's amazing,

About 90% of the time I get a response back acknowledging that something is wrong.

They may have gotten in a fight with their boyfriend.

They may have discovered that something at work,

The previous person in front of them was rude.

I mean,

I can go on and on the reasons,

But they often do have reasons.

It doesn't justify the way they're treating us unfairly,

But it helps soften it.

So then we're not carrying that unfairness with us and getting so angry.

Recently I was at a store called Costco and Costco is one of these huge warehouses where you can buy lots of things.

And as I was ready to check out the line was like super long.

But as I was standing there,

I noticed a manager come up to one of the registers and I said,

Huh,

I wonder if he's going to open that up.

So I went up to him and asked him,

Are you going to open this one up?

He said,

We're calling someone but we don't know how long it will be.

So I decided to stand there.

And then this older gentleman who was in a car came up to me and said,

Do you know what's happening?

I said,

Well,

They're calling someone.

I just don't know how long it will be.

It may be longer than the other line,

But I thought I'd give this one a try.

So he said,

Oh,

Okay.

I think I'll try it too.

And then he asked if he could go ahead of me,

You know,

Cause he was in a hurry.

I said,

Of course.

So he went ahead of me and we just both waited there.

And then remember that other guy I told you that was already fighting with someone else.

He in a very loud voice said,

Hey,

What are you doing?

I said,

Oh,

I'm just waiting.

They said that someone might be coming here.

And he says,

Well,

You need to get in the back of the line.

Cause if that opens up,

I'm going to take that.

That's not fair.

I said,

Oh,

Well,

You're more than welcome to,

You know,

Come in this line and you can even go ahead of me.

It's just a risk we're going to take.

I'm just willing to take that risk.

And he just kept going on and on.

And so I kind of went up to him.

I said,

You know,

Probably be good if we were nice to each other.

And then he looked at me and he said,

Well,

I'm just not a nice person.

And that ended it.

Now I could have argued with them.

I could have got mean back to him.

I could have said,

Well,

You're not being fair.

You're being unreasonable.

I mean,

There are lots I could have done in response to him.

And mind you,

Sometimes I do sometimes I don't always do this right either.

But what I didn't do that time is I didn't let him and the way he was treating me and other people ruin my day.

I didn't enter his world of unhappiness,

His world of unkindness.

And that's taking it to a deeper level.

That's part two.

And what we need to acknowledge here is that yes,

Life is sometimes unfair.

It actually is.

But does that mean that we have to be unhappy?

Or can we say,

Okay,

I get it.

I am dealing with something that doesn't seem fair right now.

Or I'm struggling with something in the world that really doesn't seem just a social injustice and finding it.

I'm doing things to make it better.

But now it continues to be bad.

Does that mean that I have to continue to suffer?

Or can I say,

After I've done what I can do to make things better,

Can I say,

All right,

Now the next thing I need to do is adjust,

Is in a sense,

Embrace this unfairness and say,

Even with this going on,

I can be at peace.

I can be happy.

I can almost embrace the unfairness.

I may fight it to my dying breath,

But I'm going to say,

You unfairness,

I'm not going to let you ruin my life.

I'm not going to let you take away from my happiness.

I want to be happy no matter what.

And that means when we face unfairness,

Instead of fighting it,

Instead of getting angry,

Which we normally do,

After we've done things to try to rectify it,

Then we take a deep breath and say,

Okay,

I'm going to embrace this.

I'm going to flow with this.

And I'm going to continue to make my life beautiful,

Even with this unfairness.

We can do this because we're good.

We're very good at adapting to things.

I mean,

Life has had innumerable times throughout history where it's been very unfair.

You may be listening to this in a country where there's a dictator.

You may be living in a place of squalor because of the unfairness of the economics in your country.

I mean,

On and on I can go.

It's how life can be unfair.

But that unfairness does not have to keep us from being happy.

We can still be happy.

We can still be at peace,

Even with the unfairness.

But here's the thing we have to do.

We have to stop fighting life after we've done what we can do.

And life says,

Nope,

This is the way it's going to be.

Then we say,

Okay,

Then today at this moment,

I'm going to flow.

I'm going to find beauty.

I'm going to find things that I can just revel in in this moment.

And instead of dealing with the unfairness after we've done what we can do,

Then we embrace life that is beautiful because in any situation,

There's just always something beautiful that we can be with.

So it's about focus.

We can struggle with the unfairness of life.

Or we can say,

Yep,

Sometimes life is unfair.

I'll do my best.

But when life says it's unfairness time,

I'm still going to be happy because I'm not going to fight it.

I'm going to say,

I don't need these things to be happy.

I don't need anything to be happy.

If I just be present in this moment and live well one day at a time,

No matter what,

I can truly have a beautiful life.

We can't predict what's going to happen.

We can't control the unfairness of life.

But what we can do,

No matter what situation we're in,

Is that we can find happiness in the present moment.

It may not be what we expected.

And when life is unfair,

It definitely isn't going to be what we expected.

But if we have to change from living in a mansion to living in a small apartment or even on the street,

We can still find happiness in these places.

The situation that we're going through at the deepest level doesn't matter.

What matters is,

Is that we flow with life.

When life says you're going left and we want to go right,

And if we fight it,

We're going to suffer.

I want to end with this image because I think this image is a good way to see life.

Imagine that we're a young child riding a huge elephant.

And this elephant,

We think we can control.

We hang onto its ears and we pull to the left.

It goes left sometimes.

And we pull to the right.

It goes right sometimes.

But mostly that elephant's just going to go wherever it's going to go.

And what we do is we enjoy the ride of whichever way it decides to go.

I mean,

We may have a little bit of influence over it,

But mostly we just flow.

It's so much about flowing with life,

Realizing that there are so many things we can't control.

And even though we try our best,

And we do,

We really do try to make a difference.

But when the elephant says,

We're going left,

We say,

Okay,

I'll join you because we're going to go left anyways.

Why not say,

Okay,

I'm going to embrace going this way today.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

If you are finding these episodes helpful,

I would love for you to share your experience with others.

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And until next time,

Love what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Thank you, Dr. Puff. I found this podcast helpful in coping with the sudden passing of my daughter nearly two years ago. She was 12 and had such a bright future. I have been having the most challenging time being my old happy go lucky self since she passed. I will endeavor to flow with life more and more.

Great podcast for our pandemic times

So lovely I really needed to hear this today, thank you 🙏

Thank you for your perspective and kind words.

A comfort blanket for those who feel life is so unfair...

A great way to look at it. 🙂

Thank you! This was just what I needed to hear this moment. I feel much better. Tremendous life lesson you share here. 🌺

Thanks Robert. I'm going to ride my elephant differently now 🙏🕉️♥️😊🕊️🌈

Dr Puff, I love your work. Thanks!

Just the right talk at the right time. Love and gratitude to you

Once again simple & factual. Our son will receive this podcast...you so nailed this. Thank you for being you. God bless ya. 💙🙏

Wonderful as always! It made me realize that I’m wanting to be somewhere else but I need to enjoy where I am. Thank you!🤗

Wonderful talk. Thank you. 🌹

Very good information about maintaining happiness in the face of injustice.

This came at the perfect time as I was struggling this morning with unfairness in my life. Thank you so much!! 🙏💕

What a GEM! Thank you for a great way to start my day.

Wonderful as per usual. Thank you for your uplifting talks 💞