When I worked with teenagers in wilderness therapy, I would often ask them the question
"What do you want from life?" The vast majority of them would say something along the lines of "I
just want to be happy." Many of them had put loads of work into that desire. They sought happiness in
friendships and in drugs. They looked for pleasure in dangerous behaviors and sexual exploits.
They tried to escape pain through smoking pot or avoiding school or family. And, you know,
they hated their parents for trying to stop them from enjoying life. The harder they tried to feel
happy, the more miserable their lives became. In America there's a constant pressure to feel happy
all the time. Maybe it's because the pursuit of happiness is written into our constitution.
But somehow this is warped into a mixture of using happiness to sell product and a sense of
shame for not feeling happy all the time - you know, this idea of "You're not feeling happy?
What's wrong with you?" Research shows that the more pressure we put on ourselves to feel happy,
the worse people feel. On a side note, making people feel miserable but promising them happiness
if they buy your products happens to sell more products. People who try to live up to society's
expectations of happiness tend to feel worse in comparison to people who focus their lives
on their purpose, their values, and their meaning. Today we're going to
look at one way we can create a good life without becoming obsessed with happiness.
First I just want to take a moment to mention today's sponsor. This video is sponsored by
BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy provider that will connect you with licensed
therapists in your state so that you can talk with them through video chats or through messaging or
in other ways. And you can get help from a licensed professional from the comfort of
your own home. One of the things I love about BetterHelp is that it's really accessible,
it's easy to use, and it's quite affordable. So if you'd like to learn more, check out the link
in the description for 10% off your first month. In my humble, and perhaps pessimistic, opinion,
we've been duped into thinking that happiness is the goal of life. Happiness may be the outcome
of a good life, but if you put all your efforts into happiness, you may end up feeling miserable.
People who live rich and fulfilling lives focus on their purpose and their direction - their
values - instead of putting all their effort into feeling happy. Check out this
comic: I am not a happy person. When I tell people this, they infer that I am unhappy.
They assume my status is binary: either I'm a joyous triumph or I'm a miserable
wretch. They recognize no spectrum, only two states of being: happy and unhappy.
But I've never felt happy. I've felt joy. I've felt bliss. But those feelings are ephemeral.
Being happy implies permanence. It implies you completed all the prerequisites, and now
you get to sit atop your giant pile of happy forever. Yay! It implies you won, you beat the
boss, you made it. "I just want you to be happy." You're a triumph, you're incredible, you're whole.
When I disparage this idea of happiness, the counter-argument is always the same:
"Oh, I know, it's all about the journey." But that's not it either. The conversation
about the journey is always coupled with the idea that the journey is a joyous one,
rich with smiles and fun and laughter. Also, journeys require endpoints. Otherwise,
you're not Frodo; you're just a homeless guy wandering around with stolen jewelry.
The problem with happy is a lot like the problem with Pluto. I'm skipping this part. You guys
should go to his website to read the rest of the article. Our sense of happiness is so brittle it
can be destroyed simply by asking whether or not it exists. "Hello, strange creature. What are you
doing?" "I'm SlargNakking." "What's SlargNakking?" "Well, I take these Blorks, and I plug them into
the Klall, like this. And if I arrange them in a certain way, they all start lighting up."
It's beautiful." Thank you." "How long have you been doing this?" "My entire life." "Does it make
you Glorkappy?" "Glorkappy?" "Yeah, Glorkappy. It's when you generally feel good all the time.
You smile a lot because you're fulfilled." Oh, I don't know. I just like SlargNakking. Sometimes
my arms hurt from lifting these, and sometimes I get frustrated, but I find it meaningful, I
guess. I never really thought about it until now. I guess I'm not all that Glorkappy. I guess I'm
UnGlorkappy." "That's too bad. It really is beautiful, though. "Thank you." Frowny face.
"Maybe I'm just built differently. Maybe I was born anxious and angry,
and this is how I find peace with the universe. Maybe I truly am miserable,
and everyone else is feeling something I'm not. Or maybe they're all full of crap. It's irrelevant
because I'm not happy, and I don't pretend to be. Instead, I'm busy. I'm interested. I'm fascinated.
I do things that are meaningful to me, even if they don't make me happy.
I run. I run 50 miles at a time. I run over mountains until my toenails fall off. I
run until my feet bleed and my skin burns and my bones scream. I read. I read long,
complicated books about very smart things, and I read short, silly books about very stupid things.
I read until their stories are more fascinating to me than the people actually around me.
I work. I work for 12 hours a day. I work until I can't think straight and I forget
to feed myself and the light outside dims to a tired glow. I work until I smell weird.
When I do these things, I'm not smiling or beaming with joy. I'm not happy. In truth, when I do these
things I'm often suffering. But I do them because I find them meaningful. I find them compelling.
I do these things because I want to be tormented and challenged and interested. I want to build
things and then break them. I want to be busy and beautiful and brimming with ten thousand
moving parts. I want to hurt so that I can heal. I'm not unhappy; I'm just busy. I'm interested,
and that's okay." If you like this, you can get his book.
I really think there are some people who can or do feel happy much of the time, but they aren't
struggling to feel this way. And for the rest of us, struggling to feel that way often makes us
feel worse. That comic was based off the article by Augustine Burroughs. He starts off with "I just
want to be happy. I can't think of another phrase capable of causing more misery and permanent
unhappiness - with the possible exception of 'Honey, I'm in love with your youngest sister.'
In our super positive society, we have a zero-tolerance policy for negativity, but
who feels great all the time? Yet at first glance, it seems so guileless. Children just want to be
happy. So do puppies. Happy seems like a healthy, normal desire. Still, this recipe of defining
happiness and fiddling with your life to get it will work for some people but not for others.
I am one of the others. I am not a happy person." Now, this is all quoting from this article. "I am
not a happy person. There are things that do make me experience joy, but joy is a fleeting emotion,
like a very long sneeze. A lot of the time what I feel is interested. Or I feel melancholy.
And I also frequently feel tenderness, annoyance, confusion, fear, hopelessness. It doesn't all add
up to anything I would call happiness. But what I'm thinking is "Is that so terrible?" I know
a physicist who loves his work. People mistake his constant focus and thought with unhappiness.
But he's not unhappy; he's busy. I bet when he dies there will be a book on his chest.
Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy
person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy. You can be
fascinated instead of happy. The barrier to this, of course, is that in our super positive society,
we have an unspoken zero-tolerance policy for negativity." He continues by explaining how his
life is good, but that thinking "I just want to be happy tends to make him feel more miserable."
Now, I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but I do think that seeking positive emotion
and avoiding negative emotion is a trap. Both of these lead to rumination or seeking the next high,
seeking the next, you know, transient feelings of of pleasure. Happiness is a good thing, but trying
to feel it all the time makes you feel worse. I and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy propose a
radical alternative to seeking happiness: to make your life about your direction and your purpose
instead. To allow yourself to feel all the feelings, and to put your energy towards something
else. A rich and fulfilling life is more likely to be found when your life has a purpose. What
beauty are you creating with your life? What good are you doing in the world? What are you
building? What are you making? A self-centered, hedonistic drive toward feeling good tends to
lead to loneliness and misery. When we center our lives on our purpose, on what's meaningful to us,
and when we move in that direction, we tend to be joyful. When I use the word joy, I mean a lasting
appreciation of the beauty of life; of fulfilling relationships, even when they include pain;
of seeing and appreciating and creating goodness and abundance rather than demanding happiness.
I can find joy in a long and painful hike or a freezing cold wind, but that doesn't mean that
it's fun or comfortable. It might be, but joy is bigger than comfort. Same thing with love:
we can create love by reaching out to others, but to risk loving also risks hurting. But to not
risk loving guarantees hurting. We create love by reaching out to others. So going back to my years
in wilderness treatment, it was really interesting for me to watch these teens in the desert, right?
Their circumstances were difficult. We hiked long miles, we slept under tarps, we ate simple
foods cooked over a fire. They had no drugs or sweet foods or cell phones or video games.
But as the weeks went on, something bright inside of them began to glow. They would feel a
sense of awe in an amazing sunrise, or they'd get excited about their most recent cooking invention
involving flour and dried beans, or they'd laugh their head off playing a game of stickball.
And as they spent time in the quiet nature, they started to see their life from a broader
perspective. They cared about the group of kids they were with. They talked about their future.
And the way they talked started to change. They began to talk about helping others,
or they'd talk about their little brother. They opened up and talked about trauma and philosophy,
and they'd tell stories, and we'd have the most amazing like group discussions under the stars.
And then one day their parents would come to visit, and a surprising majority of them would
run to their parents and hug them and cry with joy to see their mom and dad.
These were the same parents that only weeks earlier they'd been cursing. And even though
their faces were filthy, their eyes would shine with excitement and with joy for life. If you
asked them if they were happy out there, I doubt many of them would say yes. But if you asked them
if it was worth it, many of them would say it was the best experience of their life so far.
And just in case you're wondering, I do feel happy some of the time. And other times I feel lots of
intense emotions, whether it's, you know, crying in therapy with a client or feeling stressed about
the next YouTube video. But for me, that's all good. My life is about doing good in the world.
And so I I love it, this whole experience that I'm having. So tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? What do you want your life to be about? Your mortal life is
just a short blip in eternity, but it matters what are you going to put your energy towards.
For this week's assignment, I want you to go to a cemetery and walk through the headstones.
As Robin Williams says in Dead Poets' Society: "Soon, boys, you'll all be fertilizing
daffodils. Carpe diem." At the cemetery, look at what people chose to be remembered by. Some of
them are remembered by sports, others by hobbies. Some focus on their families or their beliefs.
Take your journal and write about what you want your life to be about.
Is there anything you need to change about your direction and priorities to make that happen?
If you look at the big picture of your life, does that help you change your perspective on the
momentary challenges of the now? In the next episode, we're going to talk about how you
can define your values - the things that matter the most to you - and how you can use those to
overcome challenges like depression and anxiety. Thank you for watching, and take care. This video
is one skill from my 30-skill course How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the
most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion
processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people have
never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on YouTube for the world
to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my Patreon and my
sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in one place ad free
with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short readings,
and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.