Have you ever had this question? I feel so stuck in life, how can I help myself feel happy?
Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins, I am your positivity psychologist and as a professional psychologist
I can help you understand the psychology first and then I'll give you four practical steps that you
can immediately apply to increase your happiness today. Here's a quick overview of the psychology.
Back in graduate school, they called this the cognitive triad. That's just fancy cycle babble for
what you think, what you feel, and what you do. Those three things, that's why
they called it a triad and here's how those three things relate to each other. What you
think determines how you feel. This is one of the errors that a lot of people make
because they think or assume that their feelings are caused by their circumstances. What's going
on in their life? Well, what we know about this is that circumstances are neutral. You can have two
very different people going through exactly the same circumstances and having totally different
experiences with it. That's because it's not the circumstances that cause your feelings
it's your thoughts. That's part of the cognitive triad. What we think determines how we feel.
Now, what we feel affects what we do. Because remember the three, are thoughts feelings and
actions. What we feel determines what we do. Think about it, this has happened to you probably today.
You may forced yourself to do something you didn't feel like doing or maybe you
did exactly what you felt. Our feelings affect what we do and then what we do has an impact
on how we think. Partially, because it creates new results for us in our life and then our results
become our new circumstances and we have thoughts about those. So, what we do impacts how we think.
I've asked a lot of people this question over almost three decades now of clinical experience.
Think, feel, do, those three. Which one would you guess most people would say is the hardest
to control? Now, there's different answers to this. The most common answer is feelings and that makes
sense. Well, let's start with what you do. I just gave you an example of how sometimes you can get
yourself to do something even if you don't feel like it. You can force yourself to do it right
and in the case of habits, it gets a little trickier because sometimes those are really
hard to change or break. Thinking, let's go there. This is a tricky one. Can you control
what you think? I don't know. Let's test that. Try this, think about bananas. Can you do that?
Picture the banana. You can think about its shape and texture and taste and color. You got it?
You got the bananas going? You going bananas? Yeah, well, talk about that later maybe. Notice how easy it is
to think about bananas. Now, try this, do not think about grapefruit. I do not want you thinking about
those big round fruits you know the sour ones that scorch in the eye when you stick a spoon in them.
Do not think about grapefruit. How are you doing? Yeah, you blew it, didn't you? It's almost
impossible to not think about something when we tell ourselves, "Oh, I need to not think about that".
Obsessive-compulsive patterns get built on this dynamic. Just notice that thoughts are tricky
and sometimes thoughts come in without your invitation. So, notice that and thoughts are just
thoughts but what about the feelings? If I were to ask you, "Okay, I want you to feel sad right now."
How do I do that? The way that you would do that is think of something sad right and when you think
of something sad the feeling just kind of follows it and then what if I said, "Okay, now cheer up",
and you're like, "Thanks Doc, wow that really helped". No, it didn't really help. In fact, it's kind of
annoying and I might get a black eye for that. You can't just turn off the feelings just like that
and it's annoying if somebody suggests that you can. I've long been a proponent of helping people
understand how happiness is a choice instead of just telling them that it is because that's
annoying and offensive quite frankly. We have to get to the psychology behind it and the cognitive
triad will help you to understand that psychology. Thoughts lead to feelings, feelings determine how
you show up or what your actions are and that creates your results and then you have thoughts
about that and so we're back to the races. Notice that it's happening and that will help you to see
maybe where you're getting stuck. Am I stuck in my feelings? Well, what are the thoughts that are
driving those feelings or is it my actions that I'm having trouble with? Like I can't get out of
bed or I seem to be stuck in the same rut all the time. What are the feelings that you have
that have you showing up that way and what are the thoughts that are supporting those feelings? It's
really pretty straightforward when we get down to those three. Then when I say it's straightforward
I don't mean it's easy because your brain is already used to whatever you've practiced doing
and sometimes it takes a little bit of work and maybe a little bit of coaching and some input to
get there. So, let's get to those practical steps that I promised you at the beginning. But before
I get to that, would you just take a moment to hit that subscribe button. That way, I can be part of
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Now, here's step number one, turn on your metacognition. Metacognition is just a fancy psychological word
that means thinking about thinking. This ties right into the psychology that I just shared with you.
Metacognition puts you back into a position of control over your thoughts or at least choice
if not control. Because when the thoughts occur to you, you can choose to roll with that or to pick a
different thought. Metacognition allows you to do that. It just means thinking about your thinking.
I invite you to do that right now because we're going to do some things with your thoughts. Step
number two, I want you to pay very close attention to the inputs. I just did a training not too long
ago with a room full of people. In this training I demonstrated to the audience how much the
inputs matter as I had two-thirds of the audience close their eyes and I showed the other third
a certain set of words and then I had that third close their eyes second third opened their eyes
and I showed them a different set of words and the third group got a whole different set of words
and then I had everybody open their eyes and I showed them a word with a missing letter.
I asked what is the missing letter and I got 3 different answers from those three groups
of people because of the words I had already shown them. Now, the word that I showed them was just it
could have been any of three different words. But the input that I gave them beforehand programmed
their mind to select the word that went with their set of words. This isn't highly scientific and it
makes perfect sense when you realize that the input matters. In the computer industry, they've
got a term GIGO have you heard that one? What it stands for is garbage in garbage out,
GIGO. When you put garbage into your mind what do you think you're gonna get out? Pay close attention
and select carefully what the inputs are to your wonderful mind. What are you watching? What are you
listening to? What are you reading? Those are the inputs and they matter. If you're feeling stuck and
depressed let's just do a little inventory of what kind of inputs coming in. You know what, I choose to
ignore for the most part the news. Why? Because it is so negative for the most part. I don't want to
put that kind of stuff into my head and it's not really news most of it is sensationalized
or it has some kind of a political spin that I don't even agree with. So, be very selective
about those inputs. You know what, I want to give you a little free gift there. I've put together a
list of my top 10 favorite personal development books. This is a current list I just made it and
it's available to you. Go to the URL on the screen drpauljenkins.com/best books. Just go
there after we finish this conversation here today and you'll get a list of my top 10 favorites. I'll
give you the title and the author and then you can go have some fun with that, you're welcome.
Now, in step two, we talked about changing the inputs. Let's go to another area of that cognitive
triad what you do and my invitation there is to immediately change something about what you do
habitually. This could be as simple as choosing the other foot to put your shoe on first.
You know how when you put on your shoes? It's usually, in a particular order, you're into a habit.
Just switch it up. In fact, if you really want to have a powerful experience with this switch which
shoe goes on which foot. Now, you might be thinking that's not comfortable. Yeah, I know but that's part
of the point. When we get comfortable in our routines we can get stuck or trapped in a rut
and would it really hurt you to wear the left shoe on the right foot and the right shoe on the left
foot for a little while. I'm not even saying you have to do it all day long but this will change
things up for you. Use your other hand to brush your teeth. Put your watch if it's normally on your
left arm on your right arm. Just pick something and it doesn't have to even make sense. What we're
doing is we're breaking a pattern for your brain we get into habits. There's a couple of books these
aren't even on the list that I promised you but they could be. Atomic Habits by James Clear
and The Power of habit by Charles Duhigg. In fact, I'd read them in reverse order because James Clear
actually expounds on some of the basic principles that Charles Duhigg presented in his book. It talks
about habit both of these books and how we program our brain. Look, how many things are just programmed
in and whatever we practice consistently over time we get better at even if it's not helpful to us.
So, changing it up just helps to break that pattern in your mind. Do some things differently, give it a
try, that's step three. Here's step four, now you may not be able to do this right now, right here
today, but maybe you could too. Hire a coach or a counselor or a therapist, somebody that you can
talk to about your thinking because we get stuck inside of our own head and it's almost impossible
to just bust out of that all on our own. One of my coaches and yes, I hire coaches. I've got three
right now that are working for me to help me keep my head in a space where I can serve you. I think
all coaches need coaches. I think it's something we should do as a matter of course. I was starting to
tell you what one of my coaches told me. It's like we're inside of a bottle if you can picture that
and there's instructions for getting outside of our bottle but they're printed on the label and
you can't read the label from inside of the bottle so you need somebody to read the label to you
that's what coaches do and think of a sporting analogy as well. I'm a big fan of the Utah Jazz
my favorite player right now is Donovan Mitchell love that guy he is so talented. One of the best
basketball players, I've ever witnessed and he is so coachable. His coach Quinn Snyder
is one of the top coaches in the NBA but he's not as good of a basketball player as Donovan is.
See, that's not the purpose of a coach. The coach is there to read the label to you.
The coach is there to help you take your performance to a higher level and to see things that you can't see
because you're blind to it you're still stuck inside of your own bottle. That's step four hire
a coach and if you can't find one, I'd be happy to be your coach. We've got coaching programs for you
that are very affordable and I'm not trying to sell that to you. I just want you to make sure
that you've got people on your team who can help you to see what you're probably missing. So, here's
a quick recap of those four steps. Number one, turn on your metacognition you think about your
thinking. Number two, pay attention to and carefully select your inputs. What are you listening to? What
are you reading? Remember, I gave you a resource for that drpauljenkins.com/bestbooks.
Go get it, I'll give you a list of my favorite ones. Step 3 change something about your habits. Change
what you do, put the shoes on in a different order, take a cold shower do something different from
what you normally do. It's going to break those patterns and open up your thinking and finally
hire a coach. You don't have to do this on your own. There are a lot of good people in this world
who can help you to have a more successful and happy life. Now, while you're still thinking about
how you're going to do those four steps. I've got another video for you how you can reprogram
your mind to stay strong and positive. Cue that one up next let's continue this conversation.