Happiness

Hygge represents the feeling of coziness and comfort. It is about friends and being with loved ones. Live life without stress. Get your socks, blankies and a hot drink. Sit by the fire or the window and enjoy the quiet life.

Make some cocoa or coffee or soup. Indulge yourself with treats. This is a personal retreat with comfort and carbs!

Use your crafting skills to knit socks or make a blanket. Create whatever makes you comfortable in your space.

Make your home clean and straightforward. Paint it with neutral colors and play calm music. Ensure you have the proper ratio of pillows in your home.

Try to slow down your lifestyle. Greet people and have coffee with them. Enjoy the fellowship with them.

Links

• https://smallstepspod.com/?p=2797
• https://www.amazon.com/Hygge-Lagom-Ultimate-Scandinavian-Happiness/dp/1952191076

Can you be a leader if you are not the entrepreneurial type or if you are not a risk-taker and bold? We discuss the book Barking Up The Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

Summary

• Great leaders can be for a particular time and place. So even if they display characteristics that you may think would make them bad leaders, a specific situation can make them great.
• They can be innovative thinkers or risk-takers, or calm, methodical people. But with what he calls “intensifiers,” a bad trait can become valuable and effective.
• High-energy entrepreneurs can make things happen even if they have flaws. They can be turned into strengths, and that “hypomania” they tend to have makes them great.
• The best bet is to know yourself and what your style is. Know what you are good at and what kind of projects tend to succeed.
• Without knowing what Peter Drucker asks, What are you good at that consistently produces desired results? That’s what you have to figure out. And Peter Drucker has this small system in place that he calls feedback analysis. When you do that, all you do is you’re going to write down your projects, you’re going to write down what you plan to do, what you try to do, and then you’re just going to write down how it went, was it a success, or did not go so well, I might even say if you could put in there, why it didn’t go so well
• Pick the right pond. What kind of environment helps you succeed? Is it a nonprofit? Or do you prefer a large corporation? Knowing where you can achieve will help you be successful.

https://www.bakadesuyo.com/

What is Ikigai? Ikigai has four simple directions to follow:

• Do what you love
• Do what you’re good at
• Do what the world needs
• Do what you can be rewarded for.

Choose Change – The first step is to choose to change and that will bring you joy as it starts to gel.

How to Get Over Fear – Get over the fear of success, failure and what others will think by doing the work.

What Interests You And You Have Skills?  – Use your childhood, past successes, feedback from others and research to find the thing you are good at and what you love.

The Half Ikigai – Start with your love and your talent.

Get the “Growth Mindset” – https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/

The Ikigai Gap Year – Take a year to fully dive into your ikigai. Save the money and arrange your life to do this deep dive if you can.

The Full Ikigai – Figure out how to fit your love and talent with the needs of the world. Figure out how to get rewarded for it.

Start with Small Experiments – Run small experiments to get there.

Challenge

Identify a one activity you do that you like, you are good at and you think the world might reward you for the effort. What is one step you can take that would allow you to try it out?

Links

How to Ikigai – Lessons for Finding Happiness and Living Your Life’s Purpose by Tim Tamashiro

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42301139-how-to-ikigai

Leave Early – Prepare for your day so that you are early all day. A lot of people show up for everything late and it causes a lot of stress and anxiety.

Stay Focused on One Task –  If you’re not jumping from thing to thing to thing, you will not lose your focus, get more done and do better on your projects.

Arrange Small Tasks for Short Opportunities – Just don’t just write down the big things that you want to do in your life. Make sure that you set up these small tasks that you want to do that you can get done in the nooks and crannies of your day.

Inbox Zero – See exactly what you have to do for the day by keeping your email inbox clean and only filled with things that should be done right away.

Get Rid of Annoyances in your work/play areas – Get rid of the things that really annoy you about your workspace or your living space at your home. If you are able to be comfortable and find the right things, your day will be less frustrating.

Learn Your Software – Learn the software tools that will help you actually get your work done easier. A lot of times there are shortcut keys and other features that will save you time and repetitive actions.

Set Everything Near the Door – Make things easy to take with you by setting them by the door.

Be with the People You Love – Being with the people you like and love will make your life happier and your days better.

Do What You Love Every Day – When you have favorite activities you love doing and you do them every day, you will be happier.

What out for Social Media – Social media can tear us down and tear us apart. Avoiding it or limiting your list of people you follow will help your day go better.

Plan Your Day to Fit You – Don’t just listen to advice. Make sure it fits you! No one is a better expert on your life than you are. Take the advice and make it your own.

Eat Well, Feel Great – Eat the things that give you joy and a break. Avoid the foods that make you tired or sick.

Review the Day

Look at how your day went. Take note of the successes and the things that did not go well.

Visualize the Perfect Tomorrow

What would the perfect day look like. Run through it in your head. Time block your schedule in loose categories.

Develop Routines

Develop routines of activities you can do at bedtime and in the morning. Make your best behaviors habits.

Relax at the End of the Day

Make sure the end of your day is peaceful and relaxing. Ease yourself into sleep time.

Stay Away from Trauma Entertainment Before Bed

Do not expose yourself to traumatizing events before bed. It can affect how you look back at your previous day and the next day.

Clean Up Your Desk/Main Sitting Area

Straighten out the area where you spend your time so that it is prepared for the next day.

Set Your Breakfast Up

Set out your breakfast so it will power you through the next day.

Set Out Stuff for the Next Day

Set out everything you will need for the next morning and the rest of the day. Plan on unexpected things happening and pack for them.

Write Down The Most Important Tomorrow Task

Write down the top 1-3 things you should get done tomorrow. It will be fresh right at the end of your day.

Schedule Fun Time

Make sure you do the things that you love to do every day.

Go To Bed On Time or Early

Going to bed is the new sleeping in. You will feel great and prepared for the next day.

Stop Waking Up Unexpectedly

It wrecks your relaxation to wake up from sleep. Fix the things that keep waking you up. Tackling quick problems will make such an impact the next day.

Reflect on Your Wins

Think about what went right with your day and pat yourself on the back. Figure out how to do that more.

Remember that life’s an adventure and a road trip. So make sure that you plan your goals and your destination to know how to get there.

Remember to fuel up your car and fuel yourself to have the right energy level to get the things you want to do.

Remember the side of the road in case you must pull off suddenly. And remember to buckle up so that in case something unexpected happens and that you’re prepared for the worst. Pack for the worst will also help you make sure that you do your adventure most comfortably and safely possible.

Remember that your road trip is an adventure. Try new roads. Try different destinations. Maybe leave the road for a while and meet new people. Always look for the thing that you didn’t expect to see. Enjoy yourself and have fun.

Remember that your adventure is going to have a lot of different speeds. Some days, you’re going to drive fast to make a lot of distance. And other days you’re going to be lackadaisical and enjoy the sights around you. But remember, you can only steer when you’re actually moving. Being stopped on the side of the road will prevent you from getting your goals and prevent you from getting to your destination.

Remember to explore not only the route, not only the things around you but learn about yourself. Learn about what matters to you and what makes your road trip so memorable.

Challenge

Draw up either on your computer or on a piece of paper a destination you have in mind. Where would you like to go in your life and make it small? What would you like to do next month or maybe the month? Draw a pretend roadmap to getting to your adventure? It doesn’t have to be that artistic, and it doesn’t have to be beautiful. Pretend like you’re drawing out a roadmap about where it is you want to go. What are some of the things that you’ll do along the way? What are some of the things you must do along the way to get your goal? Write down what are some of the attractions you’ll see on the side of the road. What is some of the fun stuff you’ll see on the side of the road? Pretend like your next short-term goal is an adventure on the road

Summary

1. Say yes to new adventures, yes to other people, and start saying ‘hi’ and introduce yourself
2. Find clubs, sporting events, meetup groups, anything that you can get together with people and start making new friends.
3. Keep your old friends and look to the friends of friends, work friends, networking groups, social events, and things you can go to to get to know people better.
4. Look for online groups, chat groups, neighborhood groups, and things online where you could make friends. Then, get together with some of those people so that you can actually meet them in real life.
5. Go out there, meet people. Don’t be afraid. Don’t feel like you’re going to get rejected. Realize that meeting people takes a little more work than it used to. Keep an open mind about people. Find friends who are of different religions, different political parties, different from you have current interests. Some of those friendships are the most incredible friendships of all. They give you a different perspective in life and sometimes challenge what you believe. It’s not about finding a clone. It’s about finding someone who can be your friend and giving them a chance,

Challenge

• Take the small step and talk to people you’ve never met before. Look at grocery stores or your gym and just say ‘hi,’ and start with small talk. Then, build on that conversation based on the topics you discussed. You’re not looking for lifelong friends. You’re looking at trying to get better at meeting people and getting to know something about them.

“Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you,” -Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Happiness is one of those very vague topics. It’s hard to describe. In fact, I don’t even think we know if when we say we’re happy, it means exactly what another person says when they say they’re happy. It is a very vague construct.

There is a book by Daniel Gilbert called Stumbling on Happiness, and it was an interesting reflection on happiness in general. It points out that people are happy and find happiness in the most extraordinary situations. For example, conjoined twins that struggled quite a bit with their physical limitations of being conjoined were incredibly happy in this particular case, in this book. Their definition of happy was being together and having that person with them all the time. I was reading an interview with a conjoined twin, and they said they couldn’t imagine being so alone and not having their twin with them. The book also mentions that we’re different than almost every animal on the planet because we can plot the future, we can think about how much control we have over the future, and try to adjust it. The problem is, is that we tend to be very bad at predicting it. We don’t understand that we can’t control all the things we hope to control. When we plan for something in our future, and then we don’t get it, it makes us very unhappy. People are sensitive to relative values when it comes to happiness. Not just what did I expect to have in the future? And then I didn’t get, or what do I see around me that I don’t have. So happiness seems to be this relative measure of what we think should be ours and isn’t.  We talked a little bit about that in the stoicism episode where stoics believe that there’s this gap between what you want and what you have, and it’s the gap that makes you unhappy. The book also talks about the fact that we have a psychological immune system, which buffers us against traumatic events. These systems protect us from very painful things or huge disappointments. How people see positive things and negative things is often how they either buffer bad events in their lives or enhance them.

Daniel Nettle wrote a book called Happiness, The Science Behind Your Smile. It’s a book that primarily talks about statistics and scientific research on happiness. It has a few interesting facts for us when we’re considering happiness itself. Married people are the happiest; single people are somewhere in the middle. Money is not as strong as social class is when it comes to happiness. And that may seem confusing because we tend to think of social class as directly related to money. But that’s more a condition of our society today. Social class has to do a lot with the privilege of special things, education, opportunities, meaningful responsibility, leisure time, and personal control. In certain circumstances, people have attained those types of things without the money behind it. It may be someone who’s brilliant as a scientist and has invented and discovered many things but never became rich off of it. But because of that social value they have in society, they have achieved that social class. So that is more important to happiness, that it is direct money. The study was interesting. It went through and discovered that janitors today make more money than doctors did 50 years ago. So you would think that the janitors would be as happy today as the doctors were 50 years ago because they even have more money. And yes, it’s even more money in terms of inflation, buying power, all those things. And they’re not. There’s more to it than just your money. I was reading a history book. And it said that the libraries that most of us have, rival the libraries of the richest people on the planet in 1910. The wealth that we have around us is far more than what kings and queens had in history. And yet, we still have that social stratification in our brains that has more control over whether we’re happy than the actual dollars themselves. It’s something to consider.

Getting a raise gave short term happiness, but it had no long term impact. Men are are a little bit happier than women. Most people are happiest when they have autonomy. He said that people hate to be told what to do. Countries that are the wealthiest aren’t necessarily the happiest. It seems that at a certain point of national wealth, the country’s become the happiest, but that happiness levels off when there’s a certain amount of rights and democracies that are seen. That seems to be the most important thing.

In the end, he says, the best predictor of how happy we will be, is how we address what happens to us in the world, not actually what happened. That’s a very interesting thought. He indicated that low neuroticism is more associated with happiness. Extroverts are also a little bit happier. They suspect it has more to do with the side impacts that extroverts tend to have more friends, more social interactions, and use more energy to get themselves out there to be with other people, which can make us happy. Not that they’re naturally more happy than introverts, it just means that some of the things they do naturally tend to make them happier.

A fellow named Martin Siegelman argued that it doesn’t make you happy to sit there and try to nail down everything that’s making you unhappy and fix it all. Instead, it’s about taking the things that are making you unhappy, and putting them into a larger context, understanding them more, and putting them in their proper space. He said that if you try to sit there and tackle everything that’s making you unhappy, there’s something called the “hedonic paradox.” That’s the notion that pursuing happiness tends to make happiness less achievable. So some other statistics from the book says a vast majority of people are more happy than unhappy, even in poor countries and either in poor areas, even among the underemployed, bereaved, and disabled. Very few people say that they are completely happy. And most people think they’ll be even happier in the future. When it comes to either income or possessions, happiness has actually more to do with what they see with the people around them than it has to do with actually what they have. People adapt quite quickly to positive life changes, and thus, the level of happiness isn’t sustained for very long. People also adapt to very unhappy situations, reducing some of the pain that’s been felt. So the book is interesting because it does give a lot of stats, and some of them are just not intuitive.

I think we have this false idea about happiness because we think, well, if only I had more money, or if only I had this, or if only I had that. And sometimes that’s not exactly true. So the question comes in, what do we do to get happiness? How can we try to achieve those things? The Lemonade Life by Zack Friedman talks about these five switches that he believes are involved in happiness. The first one is p for perspective.  It’s the lens that we see everything through and that we have to give context to the things that happen in our lives. That helps us either to be happy or to be unhappy. R is for risk, which means that you should remove roadblocks in your life and take calculated risks to make yourself happier. That might be moving to another town or changing up the friends that you have in your life. Those are all risky things. But if we do a calculated change, that means we planned hard for it, and we think that’s the thing that’s gonna make us happier. It could potentially make us happier. I is for independence. He said that happiness is being able to make our determinations in life. Sometimes we just can’t. We have bosses. We have bills. We have things that we cannot change and that has control over us. But there are many places where we have independence and where we can make our own independent decisions and control of our lives. Taking hold of that independence is what can make us happier. S is for self-awareness and mastering what you hear from yourself. It’s able to diagnose problems that you hear from yourself, which can also lead to happiness. And then M is for motion, and that’s that ability to change your circumstances and affect positive things that you need to change in your life.

He talks about three people that are kind of problematic when it comes to happiness. The first one is the External Excusers, and these are people who make up excuses for every reason they fail. The whole system is against me because of these things. The next one is the Steady Settler, who is all about complacency. They’re afraid of the unknown. They’re afraid to fail. They just won’t try things that they’re trying to change. And then the last category is the Change Chasers. These are people who do too many things to improve their lives. They’re trying every different scheme and plan and thought that they could do to make themselves happier. And they never really land on any specific theory or stick to any specific goal. They’re like, Oh, well, if I do this, I’ll be happy. And then they try it for a little bit. And then they switch to the next thing, and then they switch to the next thing. They’re never really fulfilling any of the things that they thought would make them happier.

He says, to gain happiness, we have to give up excuses and gain accountability. Give up a negative outlook, and get a clearer mind. Give up complaining, and get more energy. Give up blaming, and take responsibility, and give up worrying, and trust in yourself. He says that people are often having this fallacy that if you work hard, you make money, and then you get happy. And instead, he says it’s got happy, access freedom, achieve more success. You will gain the real things that you want in your life, maybe like money, or position or standing once you’ve become happy, instead of because of becoming happy.

There’s an article from Inc. that talked about some specific ways to make ourselves happier. It talks about some very specific things that you can do, to make yourself more happy, according to science.

1.  Exercise. Exercise was tested among people who were clinically depressed and were taking medication. They had different cohorts about people who took the medication and went back into depression. But what they found was that in the exercise group, their relapse rate into depression was about 30% of every other cohort when it came to lapsing back into depression. Exercise can make you happy.

2.  Get more sleep. Negative stimuli get processed by the brain, and when we are more rested, we are less susceptible to bad memories, to bad emotions, we’re able to handle negative things better. And that creates happiness in our lives because we’re better able to deal with and put bad things in perspective.

3. Be with family or friends. So, of course, having a good group of friends around you or family around you can make you happy.

4. Get outside. It has been proven in many, many studies that not only does being outside improve our happiness. But being around nature improves our happiness. Getting out to the place where there’s greenery and trees and animals. A study just recently showed that when people see more numbers of birds around them, whether they’re outside doing something or just around their house, that makes them happier.

5. Help others. In science, they found out that helping other people can make you happy and produces the single most reliable increase in well being of anything else that’s in this article,

6. Smile. A Michigan State study showed that when customer service employees fake smiled, it was terrible and their productivity went down. Their recorded happiness went down. But what they found instead is if people will think of a good time, think of a movie that made them smile, think of a memory that made them smile, even though it wasn’t happening right there that raised their endorphin levels, which is a happiness hormone inside your body by 27%. So don’t just fake smile. Think of good memories, good times, funny movies, whatever it is that makes you happy, and that will help.

7. Prayer and meditation also helps with happiness.

8. A shorter commute. Who knew!

9. Getting older. Believe it or not, older people are happier than younger people. It seems that older people, especially after 50 tend to be the happiest.

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-incredibly-happy-wed.html

And the last thing I’ll talk about when it comes to this happiness is an article that talked about when we’re unhappy and what to do about the times when we are feeling anxious, frightened, and unhappy. And it used to be this mantra of “just put on a happy face.” “Just tell yourself it’s going to be fine.” “Just talk yourself out of it.” And that is exactly what you don’t want to do. Because your body releases all these chemicals, your body knows it’s amped up for a reason. It just doesn’t really know why.  It’s just reacting, trying to help you. And so they suggest that the participants who were in that situation were asked to say the phrase three times out loud, “I am excited, I am excited, I am excited.” And that’s how they can get over these negative emotions by not ignoring them but by reframing them into a new positive emotion with that same amount of energy in our bodies.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/can-three-words-turn-anxiety-into-success/474909/

Summary

1. Realize that happiness is elusive and that sometimes people are happy for really interesting reasons, not the reasons you think they are.
2. Realize that your happiness may be things that you can either fix by going after some of those key changes that you think will make you happier or remove some of the key pains in your life that prevent you from being happier. But a lot of it has to do with changing the perspective on happiness.
3. Give up excuses, negative outlooks, complaining, blaming, and worrying. And instead, get a clearer thought about what’s going on in your life. Give it more energy, more responsibility, trust in yourself, and give yourself accountability.
4. Exercise, get more sleep, be with friends and family, get outside, help other people, smile, pray, or just get older. Those things will make you happier.

Challenge

Try to find one thing in your life that you think makes you very unhappy and put it in buckets. Is this something that I should tackle and change and try to get rid of to be a happier person? Or is this something that I need more perspective on, and I just have to change how I think about it.

Our quote today comes from Bob Ross,

“I want to get you to try being creative on canvas just to take your time and, and sit down have nothing in mind when you start. Just have a good feeling and be happy and in love with your life and your world and, and sit down and begin playing. And if you feel good about yourself and the world, it’ll show in your painting and all these little things will happen. If you happen to get some of it down in here. Who cares? We will end up turning that into reflections. We don’t make mistakes. We have happy accidents. Just don’t worry about it. Learn how to use what happens.”

There’s a man who knew how to be happy, even though I heard he wasn’t very happy with his hair. Who knew.

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place, but to be a different person” – Seneca

When I was a kid, my life was filled with chaos. Some people gave in to every whim. People who couldn’t control their fears or negative thoughts. People who decided that they should blame everyone else in the world for their woes. There was a general dislike of anything that was considered a virtue.

Interestingly, I would become so attracted to the philosophy of stoicism that early on. When I was young, I learned about the Greeks, and I appreciated many of their philosophy. “Nothing to excess” was something that stood out to me. All I saw around me was excess anger, booze, blame, and vise. But stoicism taught me to put life back into balance and to fight off all the things that I saw around me. This is a very brief overview of modern stoicism, and it’s built on top of Greek and Roman philosophy. We’re going to cover many different topics when it comes to two different books that talk about stoicism and how it can help us now.

One of my first steps was a fellow named Wayne Dyer. He would take two late-night fundraisers, also called telethons, and he would read parts of his book, answer questions from people in the audience. But he gives some piece of advice that stuck with me, even when I was very young. He talked about how you should not let people push your buttons. When someone pushes your button, you don’t have to automatically react in the way that they hope for you to do that. That’s on them. He gives us an analogy of a person who squeezes an orange, and what comes out of the orange is orange juice because that was inside the orange. The person who did the squeezing did evoke the orange juice coming out of the orange. But the orange juice is what came out. So if someone pushes your buttons, or squeezes you, so to speak, what comes out of you is what was inside of you. They instigated it, but it came out of you. If you’re full of love and forgiveness and positivity, hate and anger and despair doesn’t come out of you, and that’s where you have to reframe this person who is pushing your buttons. It came at one point that my dad was trying to push certain people’s buttons. After reading the Wayne Dyer book and seeing him on television, it struck me that he wants to push your buttons. So why would you allow that to happen? Because then he wins. And if all you do is figure out a way of not letting them push your buttons. He looks like the person who’s hurt, who’s bitter, who’s angry. If they see it doesn’t work, they’ll eventually stop.

http://drwaynedyer.hayhouse.libsynpro.com/dr-wayne-w-dyer-pushing-buttons

Stoicism is something I’ve been following for a long time. I just didn’t know that it was called stoicism, primarily because when you think of stoics, you think of someone telling you, “Quit complaining! Just stand there and take it.” That is not what stoicism is. That’s what we’re going to talk about today is what is stoicism, and how it can make you happy, make you stronger, and make you take on the goals that you want to achieve.

I’m a Christian, and so there are some major differences between Christianity and stoicism. Paul spoke the language of the Romans quite well. He was a Roman citizen himself. And so when he talks, frequently you see him talking in a way that they would understand. In the letter to the Philippians (4:11), Paul said, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” That’s a very stoic kind of message coming from Saint Paul.

Stoicism and Christianity: Professor Joseph Dodson on Similarities & Differences

There was an interesting podcast called Hidden Brain, and the interviewer talked to a fellow named William Irvine. William Irvine wrote two books, The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, More Resilient, and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. He also has a website and does a lot of public speaking.

https://www.williambirvine.com/

During this interview, he talked about if you had a roommate who walked out of their room every so often and told you what a failure you are or you how you should be resentful or told you that you should be afraid because of things that you’re afraid of will happen. You should be prepared for the very worst. We would kick that person out of our house. It is not someone we would want to live with. Yet our brain does this to us all the time, and that’s what we have to take hold of.

Minimizing Pain, Maximizing Joy

The interesting thing they talk about the movie Groundhog Day, which is one of my favorite movies, but as a stoic message. They talk about how Phil, the main character, has to live his life repeatedly until he can capture his bad attitude, emotions, and then take control of the things that he can take control of. That’s stoicism.

During this interview, he says it is the middle way. That it’s not about hedonism or barebone existence, it’s not about optimism or pessimism. He breaks things into two categories. First of all, things that you have control over and things that you don’t have control over. He says that you do have to control over your values, your thoughts, your reactions. And then in those places where you have a little bit of control, you should go after those key things that you can. Then don’t judge yourself based on whether you won, but only based on whether you did your best. Looking at it afterward and trying to analyze what you could have done that was better and what you did that was right, so that the next time you can do even better.

William Irvine suggests putting things into perspective, and he gave some stories about some tough times and people who came back from tough situations. He talks about understanding that the situation you’re in, compared to the situation people have been in throughout history, can give you a little bit of perspective. Then he talks about how we have this immune system in our body, but now we have to train our emotional immune system. That means enduring hardships, small setbacks, and even putting yourself through mild discomfort. He suggests, instead of driving your car someplace, walk there, use your bike. Maybe take a cold shower or stop eating something that you love to eat, just to give yourself a little bit of toughness. The more that we take on some of these tough things and challenges in our life, the better able we will be to take on big challenges when they come our way.

When a pipe breaks in your house, it’s not the broken pipe that’s the problem. It’s the water that comes out of the pipe that becomes the problem. Sometimes we see that too when it comes to allergies. Allergies are just our body fighting off this invading pollen. Our histamine system does it makes us stuffy; it produces all these white blood cells, and we feel terrible. But it’s not the pollen that’s making us feel terrible. It’s the fight against the pollen. He said that’s exactly what’s happening.  It’s not so much when we hit adverse times or a bad situation that does the damage. It does damage, and it will do its own set of damage. But it’s the damage that you do yourself in that event. That makes it so much worse.

 The other important thing when it comes to stoicism, according to this book, is that you don’t let things or people push your buttons to the same thing, as we were talking about earlier that someone’s trying to push your button, don’t let them figure out some way of dealing with them. He says that if someone says something really rude to him, he will just go on as if that person never even said it, and he can see that that person who said that hurtful thing starts to squirm. They may even say it again, and you say, “Yeah, I heard you the first time.” and then they just get frustrated. They look like a fool. They realize they haven’t hurt you. And they didn’t get a chance to push your buttons.

But stoicism goes into even other things like money. Money can’t make you happy. Money is neither good nor bad. But what it does to your well being can be good or bad. So don’t let money push your buttons. Don’t let food push your buttons. If you are just addicted to some kinds of food, go without that. You try to get to this point where you’re in control of your emotions, and you’re in control of your feelings. And so that you don’t have those things pushing that button that says you must eat this thing right now. You crave this thing right now. You’re in control, not it being in control.

Irvine talks about how what makes us unhappy is not so much that we don’t have this, or we don’t have that situation, or we never achieved a certain thing. It’s about this gap of thinking we want something and not having that thing we want. And so you can reduce that unhappiness in two different ways. The first way is you get what you want. But you’ll find out at some point that it is not the dream you thought it was or that you want something else after that point. Then you realize that the problem is the fact that you have that gap. When you learn to love the things and the place, and the people you’re with now, you’ll never have that extreme gap of I wish I were over there. Certainly, having increased wealth, or a different home, or a different car, or more friends could make you happy. But that yearning that you have inside of you, or that feeling that you have inside of you that those things will solve your life, is wrong. There was a famous quote by Jim Carrey, and he said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” You can understand that we all believe that there’s this magic thing out there that if we only had that, that’s the thing that would make us happy. And what we have to realize is that we are happy. We can be happy with the things that we have right now, with the place we have. That doesn’t mean you don’t fight for the things in your life. And then you don’t fight for those other successes that you want to have. But you don’t put all that emotion on top of them, so that if you don’t get it, you will be upset, or if you do get it and it doesn’t turn out to be what you thought it was that there’s no negative emotion that’s there.

He talks about removing the negative emotion. This is important that you’re not just going, “Oh, well, something horrible happened, I guess I’m just going to have to do better the next time,” and having this fake positive moment. Don’t swallow the issues. Don’t turn them off. That’s impossible. It will lead us to have mental health issues if we constantly bury bad things in us. This is about reframing it. It’s a little bit like that Wayne Dyer story. I told you the beginning. You think about that person and what a horrible life they’re having that they feel like they must push your button, or that person is hurting me because they’re hurting inside, or because of the things that happened in their life. That’s what you have to do to just reframe the situation so that you can take it on in a calm demeanor. Maybe you’ll say, “Okay, I tried something new, it really fell apart. This is not my thing, at least I learned something, or I will do a better job next time.”  Whatever it is, but you don’t bury the issue. You reframe it into a way you can deal with it instead of just being negative.

He does another exercise to help us realize that, again, the people and the things around us are on loan to us. What would it mean if the people in our lives didn’t exist? Or if the things that we enjoy about our lives weren’t here, and it’ll help us understand what matters to us, try to think about it, but don’t dwell on it.

Another fellow wrote a book called How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life by Massimo Pigliucci.  But he talks about some other concepts and stoicism that I think were valuable when taking a look at this kind of philosophy. In the Serenity Prayer episode, Epictetus is who we talked about that we should always take a moment before reacting. At times you hear people say, go for a walk around the block, and count to 10. But it’s always important that whenever we deal with some issue or provocation that we do so calmly, without emotion.

He also talks about existing in the here and now as being a part of stoicism. That means giving up living in the past. Don’t keep dreaming about the future. It’s fine to have plans, ad time to reflect, but don’t live there. You’ve met people I’m sure in your life who just had this period of their life. They can’t get over either for good or for bad. And they’re stuck there in this time.

He mentioned the beginning of every day, Marcus Aurelius had this strategy, where he reminded himself of the things that he’s probably going to encounter. He realized that there were many angry, stressed out, impatient, ungrateful people during his coming day. He also said that people who are going to come to me who are angry are not their fault. They’re just mistaken, and what they’re thinking, I’m going to try to help and come to a place where we can talk about this and come to some agreement. You always started every day by talking himself through the very hard things that he’s going to have to deal with for the rest of the day.

Seneca talked about at night, looking back at your day and reflecting on you know what went right. What made you irritated? Where did you lose control? Did you get angry at any point? Did someone get a bad emotion from you? And maybe they didn’t deserve it, or maybe they did deserve it. But they shouldn’t have been responded to in that way. By noting his mistakes that he had, he’ll be able to do better the next day at the end of every day. I’ve mentioned this before that at the beginning of work. I like to think about what I need to do and get done and the attitude I have to have. And then, at the end of every day of work, I try to reflect on what went right, what went wrong, what I could have done better, and what I should do tomorrow. I do the same thing at the beginning and end of every day. So those are two concepts that were in this book that I think they’re really helpful. 

https://happyproject.in/stoic-person-happy/

You can see, there’s a lot of stoicism built into the modern productivity movement. And I’ll tell you too that everybody has a different take on it. We covered a lot of topics that went by very quickly. But this is just to give you a taste of two people’s opinions about modern stoicism.

Summary

1. Make sure you consider the things you can change, the things you can’t change, and figure out what things you should do about the things you can change.

• Make sure that you build up an immune system of your emotions. That you can fight back anything that tries to make you upset, angry, have negative emotions, and how you can reframe anything negative into something that you can deal with and work with.

• Try to forget about the gaps between what you want and what you don’t have. And instead, look at everything around you as a gift. That doesn’t mean you give up on your goals, but it also means becoming content with the things around you.

• Don’t let anything push your buttons, not money, not food, not people.

• Learn to appreciate the people and the things around you to understand what richness they have brought to your life. Sometimes things can be temporary, and that you should appreciate them right now.

• Come up with a pattern of reflecting at the beginning of the day on the tough things that you’re going to have to face. Then reflect at night and how well you did.

Challenge

• Find one thing in your life that pushes your buttons, whether it’s a thing or a person, and learn how you can reframe what it is they do to you so that they no longer have the power to change your emotions or make you angry or upset.

Now we have our quote of the day. This comes from Phil in Groundhog Day.

“When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet, we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. From Punxsutawney, It’s Phil Connors. So long.”

It’s exciting to see in this movie how he started his day, where he hated everyone. He hated the town. He hated his job. He hated the people around him. He had this bad attitude about everything. But by the end, he gave this speech that even winter would be great with the people and the place around him.