A Gentle Happiness

Hi,

It's Brooks.

And here we are.

It's good to be here with you.

And maybe you can hear my chair creaking.

It's funny.

My chair creaks.

Today we're going to talk about happiness.

And what does it mean to be happy.

And I like to talk about this because so much of life is about what do I need to do to be happy?

I want to be happy.

I'm not happy.

And I'll tell you,

I've been working as a clutter buster for 20 years or so.

And my job is to help people go through their stuff and get rid of anything that's no longer serving them.

And my experience is that people bring a lot of stuff into their lives.

Stuff and activities and people with the feeling of that's my source of happiness,

My things.

And there's a feeling of initially not wanting to let anything go because I need these things to be happy,

To be fulfilled,

To be satisfied.

And it's not our fault that we think that.

That's a common thought.

I've thought that myself at times.

We've been trained as far back as when we first started recognizing and hearing things and understanding things when we were two,

Three years old.

We're trained to think that things are more important than us.

We see it advertising repeated over and over again.

You need this product,

You need this service,

You need whatever.

Fill in the blank.

To be happy,

To be fulfilled.

Because as you are,

You're not enough.

It's a lot of training.

It's a repetition of training.

And a lot of psychology,

Understanding psychology goes into it and so it's easy to get lost and really lose sight of what matters and what actually works for you,

What actually makes you happy.

And my experience was it took going through item by item,

Activity by activity,

Person by person,

Asking questions about each thing.

Do you like and use this or not?

To find out if a person really does,

You know,

If it really rings true for them.

If it serves them,

It fits their life.

And I usually found like 60 to 70% of the stuff in a person's life doesn't do that.

But there's this feeling that it should,

From the person's side,

You know,

It should make me happy.

That's why I'm hanging on to it.

That's why I brought it into my life.

You know,

It isn't.

But it's hard to even admit that.

Because then all the training that we've heard is wrong.

That belief that we have that things are more important than us is wrong.

You know,

To start questioning things really changes the way you think.

And it makes you think about what does it mean to be happy?

Do I need to receive a product in order to be happy?

Do I need to find somebody that matters in my life to be happy?

Do I need to find,

Do I need to be doing something in order to be happy?

It's worth asking those questions and it's worth taking that deeper look.

Because otherwise we're just going to get exhausted with just bringing things in and hanging on to things and just hoping that they'll make us feel better.

And there's a lot of exhausted people out there in the world.

Trying to live that life.

And it's a hard life to try to live.

So what I found is a lot easier is to just start looking and start questioning.

And to start seeing what it is,

What happiness even actually means.

You know,

What does it mean to be happy?

Does it mean I'm smiling?

Because that's usually the picture that we have.

It's like a person smiling really big and their heart is just leaping out of their chest.

Their skin is tingling and they're on top of the world.

There's like happiness.

You know a good way to really get to know your happiness is to just look at it and say,

To really put that in perspective is watch people eating ice cream.

Because ice cream is good.

Ice cream tastes really good,

Right?

Ice cream,

You know?

There's certainly joy in eating ice cream.

And you see an advertisement of someone eating ice cream and they've got this huge smile on their face.

It's like,

Oh,

I'm eating ice cream and the smile is going to break their face,

It's so big.

But you actually watch people eat ice cream if you go to an ice cream parlor,

You know?

And people that are eating ice cream,

They look serious.

You don't see that smile on their face.

Because it's an inner experience.

It's a very private,

Intimate experience.

So that idea of happiness as this buoyant thing bursting through us perhaps isn't actually what happiness is about.

Maybe it's something simpler.

Maybe it is true that,

You know,

The opposite of what we thought is true.

That we don't need things to be happy.

That we're enough as we are.

Maybe happiness is a feeling of being alive.

That I exist,

I'm alive.

There's a vitality to being alive,

To existing.

We don't notice it because we're always alive.

Life is vital.

Life is a current to life.

That's why they call it a life force.

And since you're alive,

That current is there.

If you can hear me right now,

You're alive and you exist.

And that current of life is there.

It's in you.

You can even say it is you because everything else has changed in your life.

You've come and gone,

Come and gone,

Come and gone.

But what's constant is your being alive.

And because we've been trained that things are what's most important,

Or whatever it is that we do in our life is really important,

Or the people that are life are more important,

We start to believe that we're those things.

If we're not enough,

If we believe that whole idea that we're not enough,

And that we need things to be more,

To be enough,

To be happy,

Then we start to believe that we're the things that we put into our lives.

But how can we be those things if they come and go?

They're here and gone,

Here and gone,

Here and gone.

What's always here is you.

You being alive.

Not only things and tangible things and people and activities come and go,

But even things in your body come and go.

Your body's constantly changing.

It's funny,

I was working with clients,

A lot of times people would say,

Like,

If I could just lose 20 pounds,

Then I'll be happy.

Just lose 20 pounds.

And I would say,

Like,

Well,

How long have you been trying to do that?

And they would all have a different amount of years.

And they would all have a different amount of years.

And I would say,

Like,

If I could just lose 20 pounds,

Then I'll be happy.

And I would say,

Like,

Well,

How long have you been trying to do that?

But it wasn't working.

Because their bodies had changed.

And I would say,

Like,

If I could just lose 20 pounds,

Then I'll be happy.

And I would say,

Like,

Well,

How long have you been trying to do that?

And they would all have a different amount of years.

Not that they gave up,

Or they're like,

Oh,

Whatever,

I can't do this.

Something's wrong with me,

I can't do this.

But it's just,

This is how things are.

This is what I am.

This is what's happening.

There was a happiness of this is what life is right now.

Happiness meaning this,

The acceptance,

This is what's happening right now.

This is what life is,

This is what's occurring.

This is what I am right now.

In acceptance,

There's love.

And unconditional love.

So I think people like dogs,

Puppies,

Babies,

Kittens so much,

Because they don't have any feeling of,

Oh,

I need to be like this.

You know,

A dog thinking like,

Oh,

I need this chew toy,

Then I'm going to be OK.

There's an inherent joy of being alive.

And just being,

And you know,

I'm not even saying just,

And being alive,

You know.

And you're alive because you can hear this.

And you exist.

And all the people that I've ever worked with,

I never like,

Never felt that anything in any of their lives was more important than them.

And some of them had some really nice stuff,

You know.

And some of them were famous people.

Some of them were really charming and just like,

All these different,

Had all these things in their lives,

You know.

Activities and people and things,

Just like quite an array.

But they were never in any way as brilliant those things as the person.

Brilliant meaning alive.

I've always found the person,

People to be like shining diamonds.

And the stuff in their life is insignificant compared to them.

And I feel that about you.

And I have no doubt about that about you.

And something really interesting too about things that I learned from my job is that when things come into your life,

And they may be really exciting initially,

Like oh my God this is so exciting,

You know,

Wow.

And that's a real true feeling because it's new.

When something new comes into our life we're excited.

But then in a very short period of time we acclimate to it because that's how our bodies and minds work.

We get used to things so that we can function with them.

So that idea like I'm going to bring something in and I'm going to feel happy forever.

Doesn't matter what it is.

You can win an academy award or Nobel Prize but after a few days or a week it's like sitting on your counter.

You forget about things.

But you're still alive and that's where the juice is.

And that's where the basic happiness is.

And that doesn't mean to not live with things that you enjoy,

To bring things in that you enjoy.

You can actually enjoy things a lot more when you're not dependent on them to fulfill you,

To make you happy.

They're pleasurable.

They're fun.

I have a guitar and I love to play my guitar.

It's fun.

I love to take it out,

Sing,

Play with it.

It's a good time.

And then I put it away and I'm done with that moment.

But it's because of my nature that I enjoy it.

Because I'm creative and I like music.

I like to create music,

Write stories,

Make paintings,

Things like that.

But I enjoy it because I feel fulfilled as I am.

Because I'm alive and I exist.

And I don't need the guitar to make me better or to fulfill me.

I like planting trees around where I live,

Fruit trees.

Because it's fun.

It's my nature.

But having the fruit trees doesn't make me better or create that constant fulfillment.

I don't think about them all the time.

They're there.

They're enjoyable.

But I know from planting things that sometimes trees die,

Sometimes deer knock them over.

Sometimes the trees get sick,

They die and you have to take them up.

So things come and go.

But what remains is existing,

Being alive.

And there's a vitality and aliveness and a fulfillment in being alive.

I got a,

About seven or so years ago,

I got a double lung transplant.

And I got so sick before that my lungs were really sick.

And it was hard.

I was basically dying over a year period of time.

A year and a half period of time.

And basically I just saw my life ebbing away.

And I think I lost almost 50 pounds and was on oxygen most of the time.

It was really hard.

It was really hard.

And I didn't want to let go of my lungs.

The doctors were saying,

You know,

You need a lung transplant or you're going to die.

And I was like,

No,

I can't let go of my lungs.

I need them.

You know,

I need them.

And then I realized,

Like,

I'm going to die if I hang on to my lungs.

Because they were deteriorating more and more.

And I was getting sicker and sicker.

So I thought,

Oh,

The only thing of value then is to be alive.

I remember when I felt that I couldn't stop crying because my heart was bursting through.

And I'm not just realizing that.

So I got the lung transplant.

And I'm alive.

It was June of 2013.

So I'm happy to be alive.

Even though my back's hurting me right now a bit.

And it's smoky outside because there's some wildfires that are happening.

But there's a really strong feeling of,

I've got life.

And that's the main thing.

And I'm enough because I'm alive.

I have everything because I'm alive,

You know?

And that makes me happy.

So I guess you could say being happy is like not needing anything.

By need meaning I'm not enough.

I need this to be enough.

I'm enough.

So you're enough.

So I think we're going to wrap things up for today.

Thank you so much for listening.

And take care.

Bye.