7 Behaviors that Rob You of Happiness

What if the secret to happiness isn’t about finding it but clearing the path for it to flourish? It's time for a fresh perspective on the pursuit of happiness. Uncover the seven terrible habits and mindsets that hold us back. Let's shift the focus from chasing an ideal to creating space for authentic contentment. This episode provides inspiring insights that point the way toward a more fulfilling life. True happiness happens one small change at a time.

Original article: https://personalbrandingblog.com/if-you-want-to-be-genuinely-happy-without-being-rich-say-goodbye-to-these-behaviors/

Transcript

Welcome to Trandescendant. I'm Joe and I'm the dad.

And I'm Rya and I'm the daughter. So, a couple of weeks ago, we went over and picked up that treadmill.

Yeah. How are you doing with that?

Yeah, I'm looking to sell it. I'm just not using it much anymore. I think I'm going to have a going-out-of-fitness sale.

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Well, I hope you're doing better on your New Year's resolution than I am, but we wanted to talk a little bit about something we do well, I think, and especially because dad is one of the most positive people that I know.

Well, thank you.

Yes, we thought that this would be a good time for us to talk about happiness. Dad, you actually found this article recently here and we thought this would be a good place for us to start. This was an article posted at the end of last year by Ava Sinclair. on happiness. It's was posted on her blog and we figured we'll just kind of walk through this and contribute some of our own ideas. Well, that sounds great. And I could tell you that happiness is a pursuit, you know, an even saying in the constitution, the pursuit of happiness. But do we achieve it? Yes and no. Some people never achieve it. And I know people who are so used to never achieving it that I can honestly say in a kind of a strange way they're not happy unless they're unhappy. It's true. I feel like I see these people all the time that you can give them the best news in the world and they will look for the most negative spin that they can get on it.

Yeah.

No matter what you say.

Exactly. Wow. Isn't it a nice day?

Yeah. But it's not going to last.

Right. Right. Or you say, boy, isn't it great how well we're doing in the company. Well, yeah, but it's and they'll look for some negative thing. Well, isn't it great what's going on in our community? Well, yeah, but you know what this jerk down there did? No matter what you say, they're going to find some negative way.

I did a presentation once for an organization and in there I ended it talking about happiness by quoting from the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." In that musical, Charlie Brown sings happiness is. And in there, it's really so logical and and so right. And he says to Lucy, what she asks him what happiness is, and he says, "Happiness is pizza with sausage, telling the time. Happiness is learning to whistle, writing your name for the very first time. And he ends the song by saying, "Happiness is anything or anyone at all that's loved by you." And that's true, isn't it? That is true. That is true. Now, there's an ironic aspect to happiness and talking about happiness that the more that you focus on trying to be happy, the less happy you actually are because you're noticing how unhappy you are. One of the things I like about this article is it's not focused on how can I be more happy, but it's focused on how can I get rid of some of the distractions and the things that are keeping me from being happy. Before we get into that, I can remember the first time and it might have been on a commercial that they had the expression which everyone knows now where two guys are sitting someplace in out in the woods or something and they're fishing and one of the guys turned to the other one and he says, "Well, it doesn't get any better than this." And when I had that heard that the first time, I thought, "Why not?" Right? So, Ava Sinclair starts, she says, "Believe it or not, many of us are unknowingly holding on to behaviors that prevent us from fully embracing contentment and often in the pursuit of external success. And guess what? They're not always tied to our financial status. I'm here to shed some light on these behaviors. If you want to live a life filled with real joy and contentment, it might be time to bid farewell to these seven behaviors. Let's start with number one. What do you got for us, Dad?

Living beyond your means. A lot of people think Oh, I can do this. I'll just put it on my credit card or it doesn't really matter what I've got here. I I want this and I'm going to get it because that's what's going to make you happy. That's what's going to make me happy. When I get this thing, that'll be it. I really feel I need this new car or I need something else. It doesn't matter what it is or at what level. I knew somebody who was wellconed in spending more than she had. And yes, it did make a difference. She would go out and buy things because it made her happy until she walked out the door. She would go out and go to a fine restaurant because it made her feel happy. She had this upgrade which she was happy with until she finished the meal and walked out the door. She'd be sitting at home and she would be so depressed with herself because she was in such debt and couldn't get out of it. And she knew she had to do something. But it took her so far down that she said, "I just can't get out of this funk. I guess I'm going to have to go out to a fine restaurant." And it was just time after time after time and it never ended up being happy. It always ended up making her worse. Living beyond your means almost always does that. It's a difficult thing and it's also difficult to get out of. But if you're one that's living beyond your means, now is a time to really take stock in it. And you realize when you think back all of those things you spent your money on aren't really making you happy. They're making you more depressed.

Right. Right. Now, there's always times where, you know, well, I had to get this because it it was a life need. You know, I had something come up. Anytime though that those come up, you got one of two choices. You can either cut in other areas or you can make more money. You got to do one or the other. But too often we figure, well, I'm going to stay about at where where I am right now and I I'm not really moving on or maybe I've got my sights set on where I'm going to be, but I'm going to spend as if I'm where I want to be. Well, that ends up working across purposes. It's really like a lot of things on this list that the more self-discipline you have up front, you're really saying no to this immediate quote unquote happiness, it's a fleeting happiness of, oh, I want I want this thing right now, but in the end, it makes you more frustrated. It makes it harder because now you're worried and then that worry leads to more frustration which then you spend to get out of. It's a vicious cycle.

Yes, it sure is. Number two, neglecting self-care. Ava says, "Let me share a personal experience. For a long time, I thought that happiness was about being constantly busy and productive. I'd work late. I'd skip meals, ignore exercise, and even put off sleep. But guess what? I wasn't happy. On the contrary, I was exhausted, stressed, irritable. That's when I realized that neglecting self-care is a huge roadblock to happiness.

Well, it certainly can be. Absolutely.

You had an idea about this. What do you think of when you think of neglecting self-care?

I think of just letting yourself go. Uh uh not caring at all what people think about you, not worrying about whether or not you have food on your shirt. or whatever it happens to be.

You saving that for later.

Exactly.

Another snack

Or you go for for days or even weeks of of not showering or not washing your hair, not taking any pride in your personal appearance. That can also drag you down.

Sure. Sure. And that can be on a daily basis of just taking a shower and those things. And that's a danger for me working from home. It can be very easy to oh well, I kind of let this thing go and let that thing go. And it's a good thing that I have set times in my life that I have to get out of the house because it keeps me making sure that I'm staying on top of everything. But not just that, also we want to make sure that we're doing self-care in terms of taking care of our bodies, taking care of our our mental uh well-being, self-care about making sure that we're good, making sure that we're healthy, that we're going to the doctor when we need to be going, that we're going for that annual checkup, that we're going to the dentist. How many people just say, "Well, and I I'll tell you a lot of people because I get those calls that will they'll say, "I haven't been to the dentist for five years."

Oh, yeah.

If you're listening right now and you haven't been to the dentist, this is your wakeup call right now.

Yeah. Now, understand, right? I just said, "You know the drill."

Oh my goodness. And we did the joke at the beginning about that, you know, I'm selling that workout equipment, but the reality is I actually go to the gym and that's important.

Yeah.

When I'm in a time where I'm not going to the gym or I don't have whatever my exercise is, I can feel it.

Me, too. And I'm 80 years old and I still go out. I try to walk four days a week. week minimum, sometimes five. And if it happens to be bad weather outside, I have a place I can go to and walk in the gym. And boy, that's so fun. It's one of the best things that you can do is staying active and staying fit. If you are going through a period of depression or difficulty in dealing with life and you're not exercising, I would encourage you take a time Figure out what you like to do. Maybe you like to run or maybe you like to walk or maybe you want to go and do the rowing machine at the gym or you want to do any of a hundred things. You want to play some basketball. You want to just get moving. Yes, that's true. And bicycling is another thing that really can make you feel good.

Rya, let's take a look at number three.


Something that can drag us down is holding grudges. I knew someone who went to their 25 year class reunion and she had been bothered by something that someone else had done that just really affected her. And she held a grudge on that other person for 25 years. And she thought when I go to this class reunion, I'm going to tell this person that I forgive her. She had been letting this drag her down and drag figure down and she saw the person and she went over to her and says, "I would like to talk to you." And she told her the story and she says, "I just want to tell you, I forgive you." And the person on the other end, the one that was forgiven, said, "I don't even remember that 25 years of her carrying that weight and that grudge against that other person was worthless. There was only one person who suffered, not two people. And if you're suffering because you want to make the other person suffer, you're not both going to suffer anyway. It's a sad thing. And a grudge will keep you back from moving forward because you carry it for such a long time. I know it can be difficult. I actually experienced that. myself, we had a person in our company, the company we owned that had really done a lot of damage and I finally got rid of that person and that was difficult to do. And when I did, you'd think I would have been happier, but for at least a year or two, I had a hard time getting rid of that grudge.

Well, he almost destroyed the company.

Yes.

And so it was really hurtful. The thing about holding grudges is that it's not something that we're blowing out of proportion. It's something that's real and legitimate. And yet when you hold a grudge, it's like eating poison and hoping that the other person suffers.

That's right.

It only hurts yourself. One of the best ways that you can get rid of a grudge is through journal. that you can write write out in your journal, I forgive this person for whatever they did and get your emotions out there and make sure that you are letting it go, releasing it and saying, "I'm no longer holding this against this person." And just like if somebody owes you a debt, and you forgive that person a debt, when you forgive that person, there's something about doing it in writing that I think can be so powerful that when you write down I forgive this person. Well, just like if you wrote down I forgive you your debt, you can't come back and say well actually you owe me that money. There's something that sets us free from that. And it is it's just like a big heavy weight. It is. And that once you get to the freedom stage, you'll find out it contributes very positively to your happiness. Number Number four, comparing yourself to others. And Ava Sinclair talks about social media in particular. And it's gotten so much that that there's that fear of missing out. And people are only posting online their best selves. And it's can be really easy to see what everybody else has and what you're lacking. We get into this mode of comparing ourselves to one another and we think, "Well, they have more than I do." And yet, We're all living in our own story. You have no idea what their story is like. You have no idea. You look at them and the people that you think, "Boy, I really wish that I could be them." You might be surprised how much they wish they didn't have to be. And the people that you think, "Boy, I'd hate to be going through what they're going through." Some of those people you discover, actually, I'm doing really well right now. I've discovered that I I've discovered the key to contentment. And you never know from looking at people on the external part how they're really doing. So just compare yourself to yourself. How am I doing today versus how I was doing yesterday? By comparing yourself to others, it never ends. So if you said, for example, I'm on the city council, but I'm not the president of the city council. And if you were the president of the city council, you might say, "If I was head of the county, that would make a difference." And the head of the county says, "I wish I was the governor. That guy's got it. He is." And the governor says, "Yeah, our state isn't really doing the best. We're always kind of in the middle. Why couldn't I be the best governor?" And the best governor probably says, "I ought to be a senator." It never ends. It goes on and on. What we need to do is turn our focus back and look at what can I do right now and we're going to talk about how I am dealing with that for myself after this.


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I'm Monica Scarbin. I love listening to the Trandescendent podcasts probably because I've been a guest speaker. I've been listening to these podcasts for over two years now and have found them to be not only inspirational, but very informative and emotionally lifting to my spirits, especially when I'm not feeling very hot. I'm a supporter and I'm glad to be a supporter. Please go to trendescendant.com, click on support by as little as $3 a month. You can cancel at any time.
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Number five is ignoring your passions. There's a busy season that I go through when I sell Medicare, and that That ended back at in December. And during that time, I became really really aware of this is not really how I want to be spending all of my time. Now, I love my job, but I realized there's a part that I'm really missing right now. And so, we've talked about that we want to put together a book for this podcast. And I want to be doing some more writing and some more getting my ideas out. out there. I love doing what we do on this podcast and I would like to do more. Then I've realized there's an aspect of myself that if I'm not getting those ideas out there, I feel a little disappointed. One of my favorite books of all time is called The War of Art. Not the art of war, as you might have heard, but The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Steven Pressfield is the author of "The Legend of Bagger Vance."

Oh yes, I know that. And he wrote a book about how to be an author, but really it's a book about how to do anything creative, whether it's writing or painting or being an actor or anything that you do creative. And he talks about how we encounter something called the resistance. And he almost personifies it as there's this thing out there that's trying to get us and keep us from doing what he calls our work. We know there's something we were born to do and you know that you were born to do it because anytime you think about what you wish you were doing, the work that you wish that you were doing, I know for me I want to be writing. Well, it's interesting you say that because I like writing as well as you know I wrote my memoir and that's great. It's called "I'm Hearin' It." H-E-A-R-I-N-apostrophe because that's one of the expressions we used when I was in the military. I wrote a variety of chapters and I put them together and after I published it, many of my friends said, "Oh, did you write the thing about Oh, no, I forgot that. Oh, what about And so I started a list and I thought, I'm going to write all of those things." But you know what? Something kept me away from it. And I realized just recently I belong to a writer's group and they when I go they say well did you bring anything? No I didn't. No. No. Every time it's No. No I didn't. Well recently I decided to start writing again. And somebody said if you want to be a writer the or anything you want a passion you know what you have to do? You've got to show up. That's it. You Got to show up. Yes. Oh, I have this passion. I'm going to do this. I'm going to learn how to ski. I'm gonna be a frog man. Steven Presfield in the book tells the story about how he started writing. He had put it off for years and years because he felt like everything he did was crap. But one day he decided to do exactly as you said. He decided to show up and he went and he sat down ated his typewriter and he put in that piece of paper which shows how long ago this was. Put in that piece of paper and he just started click click click click click click click and after about an hour or two he had some writing done and he pulled it out and he said it was all crap.

Yeah.

It was not anything that he was going to use but for the first time he felt good. He felt like I did my work. I put in my time. I earned my keep for the day. Another thing that's going to keep us from happiness is chasing perfection. You can't achieve perfection all the time, but there are people who think they can. I read a an autobiography by a very well-known person who was one of my 1960s rock our guys. And I loved the kind of things he wrote, but I realized one of the things that was ultimately his downfall was perfection. When the Beatles would create a song, they might do three or four or 30 takes, but they would just keep doing it until they had what they needed and they could go on. They if they were to make certain everything was absolute perfection and nothing was wrong with it on every song, they wouldn't have written or recorded as much as they did. There wouldn't be time for that. And this guy would take sometimes two weeks to record one song because nope, that wasn't right. We got to do it over. And it happened over and over and over again. And when you read his autobiography, you'll discover he was really a h unhappy person. And that was by and and what happened was the rest of the band was so frustrated with him that they kicked him out of the band. Well, the band was no longer much of a band without him. And one of those was his own brother and they kicked him out. And that's what can happen when you pursue perfection and you can't achieve it.

Right now, we learned concerned about finishing things whether they're perfect or not because we were in the magazine publishing business. And when that magazine has to go to press, it has to go to press and it's got to be as good as you can get it. And there's always tweaks and changes you could make. But when it's time to upload that, you upload that. And that's the difference between a magazine company that stays in business and a magazine company that folds because you miss one deadline. and all of a sudden you're everything's falling behind and people are angry and subscribers are mad at you.

And that same thing is true about the podcast.

It's really important that we show up every week. That's why you can rely on that. You know that next Monday we're going to be here. That's why we chose to do it that way because we know otherwise if we just publish this here and there and oh, we got a good idea right now, it's eventually going to be be, you know, less and less.

Yep.

The way to get where you need to be is to put yourself on a schedule and do whatever it is that you're looking to do. Boy, it makes you way happier. And we've experienced a tremendous amount of happiness. The sense of satisfaction that comes from doing this podcast, it helps us in our sense of accomplishment and it helps us in our relationships.

Which brings us to number seven, neglecting relationships. Relationships do matter very much. We have seen over and over in so many studies that people who do not have a circle of friends don't live as long as people who do and certainly are not as happy. I've told a story. I'm not sure if I told it here or not, but I've told it a few times. When I was, I think, in high school or maybe junior high, the people who lived next door to us shared the same driveway. That's how close they live to us. And I remember when the man next door retired, the day he retired, he drove home, drove his car in the garage, and went in the house and never came out of that house again. Wow. He used to sit on the front porch, which was an enclosed porch. He'd sit there a good part of the day during the summertime and as I would walk by, I was a paper boy. He would wave and smile at me, but he had no one. He never saw anyone. He never went anywhere. His wife did all the shopping. It was just them. and in six months from his retirement day he passed away. That's not unusual. A lot of times people feel they don't have any connections. There's nothing there. There is so much you could do. There are so many things you can go. There are places that offer relationships. Whether it happens to be the corner bar or whether it happens to be your your your local Lions Club or something like that there are a lot of things you could do. There are ways to get involved. If you're in a church, they always have activities that you could be a part of. And I know that our church says our church isn't about one hour a week being there and listening to what somebody else says and not shaking somebody's hand and and not saying hello, but just turning around and walking out. It's a seven day a week thing. And there are activities, there are things to do. And it happens so many places. I know a a restaurant that I go to occasionally that these guys get together and every morning they have their little coffee clutch and they're there and they're having a great time with one another. They're they're laughing and they're joking and enjoying each other's company. You can do that. You can find a connection. Maybe your connection is a connection with an organization like PFLAG. There are just so many opportunities. In fact, there are so many opportunities that I tell you, you can fill your complete day with opportunities to develop relationships. She ends the article with some final thoughts. She says, "Happiness is a journey." At the end of the the day. True happiness is about living a life that aligns with your values, passions, and meaningful relationships. And boy, that is true. Really, all of life is a journey, isn't it? And we need to find that sense of satisfaction, sense of peace in the midst of the journey. There's going to be ups and there's going to be downs through the whole thing. But one thing that will never be a down is listening to this podcast.

Yes, that's right.

We are grateful that have you here and we really are your voice of positivity and boy this episode more than ever. That's what we want to do is breathe some fresh air into your life. If you heard something in this podcast that has helped you to be uplifted a little bit, let us know. On the other hand, if you didn't like what we said, we want to hear that too. We actually do read everyone and you can contact us very easily just by writing us at trandescendant@gmail.com. And with that, we'll see you Monday.

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Did I say number three on the other one? No, you said the second thing. Yeah. So, Rya, let's take a look at number three. Number two.