Three Choices When Life Is Hard

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Many years ago,

My brother-in-law was diagnosed with brain cancer.

So my sister,

Who deeply loved him,

Researched everything she could do to help make him better.

And one of the main things that she decided to do was start feeding him organic fruits and vegetables because she wanted to get things inside of him that could help beat the cancer and get him well.

Another friend of mine was diagnosed with heart disease.

He was given a variety of options,

But the main one he took was,

Again,

To really eat well and make sure that his body was getting all the nutrients that he needed.

Whether we see it as a main cure,

Many of us would agree that what we eat greatly affects our health.

And if our health isn't doing well,

Getting organic fruits and vegetables in our body is a really good thing that we can do for ourselves when we're suffering or having major issues with our health.

But not all crises in life that we face are physical.

Sometimes we face mental crises.

And the list can seem endless at times.

As we're going along,

Everything seems to be going well.

Then all of a sudden,

Bang,

Something happens,

Like we lose our job,

Or one person that we deeply love gets ill,

Or we're faced with some emotional crisis because of things that are happening in our world or even the world around us.

Sometimes there are natural disasters.

Sometimes there are world disasters like pandemics.

Sometimes our lives just get overwhelmed with all the things that we have to face at this moment.

So in today's podcast,

I want to talk about what do we do when we face these really hard times in our lives.

And I think it really boils down to three options that we have when things get really tough in our life.

The one which I think is most common is that people just keep doing what they've always done.

They really don't make any changes.

But what changes is now the preoccupation is with the event going on.

So instead of just watching the news or coming home and having a glass of wine or getting together with friends,

Much of the energy and thoughts go towards the crisis.

There's a strong preoccupation with what's going on right now and what isn't well.

There isn't much energy or necessarily much energy going towards making things better or making things worse.

It's more just a preoccupation with what's going on.

It's like this is life.

This is really hard and I'm going to give it my attention and talk to everyone about it because life is hard.

If you go back to my metaphor with health concerns,

It'd be like someone having aches and pains and talking about it,

Thinking about it,

Sharing it with everyone else,

But not necessarily doing anything about it.

Let me use an example to illustrate it.

Let's say someone's going through a divorce.

So they wouldn't necessarily get into counseling to understand what's going on.

They wouldn't necessarily dive into alcohol to suppress their feelings.

They would just focus on,

Wow,

I'm getting divorced.

This sucks.

And they would share it with everyone they met.

And it's a sense of preoccupation with the divorce the next day that they have in court,

What they're going to lose,

What they're going to keep,

The custody,

And all that comes along with the divorce.

And it's a sense of,

Well,

This is life.

I just got to get through it.

Not a sense of how can I learn from this?

How did I contribute to this?

What could I do to make my days better right now as I'm going through a divorce?

It's more of a sense of,

Well,

This divorce is a really big deal.

So my preoccupation is going to be with all that unfolds from the divorce.

There's not necessarily a preoccupation with making life better.

It's more a resignation.

It's like,

This is just what happens.

I just need to get through this time.

I've gone through hard times before.

This is another one.

In a sense,

Just grin and bear it.

I mean,

If you ever heard the phrase,

Life sucks,

Then we die.

Because remember,

These are times when it's really hard.

When it's really hard,

Sometimes it's just a sense of,

Wow,

Life is really hard.

And that's it.

You just kind of hang in there and hope that it will pass soon.

Or if it doesn't pass,

Then you say,

Well,

I guess I wasn't very lucky in life.

And you live life in a sense,

In emotional pain.

There isn't necessarily anything we're going to do to make it better.

It's just life.

It's the cards we've been dealt.

And really the only thing we can do is kind of grin and bear them as we go through these very difficult times.

The similarity to health concerns that I started this episode with would be like,

I've been diagnosed with cancer.

I'm just an unlucky person.

And I'm going to let it do its course,

Watch it.

And then if it kills me,

It kills me.

Everything in a sense would look the same,

Except there'd be,

Of course,

A strong preoccupation with the cancer.

Or in our situation that we're talking about,

Again,

Everything would look the same.

There'd just be a preoccupation with the suffering we're going through right now.

And I actually think when it comes to emotional or spiritual or psychological health,

This is the stance that a lot of people in the world take.

This is life.

You just kind of accept it.

Some people are lucky.

Some people aren't.

And I think the majority of people take this stance because we as humans are creatures of habit.

And however long we've lived,

If we're 20 or if we're 70 years old,

That's how many years we have with these habits.

And so when a crisis comes,

We just tend to do what we've always done.

We watch the crisis.

We may be overwhelmed by the crisis,

But nothing really changes.

We just keep doing what we're doing.

But now we have this very heavy emotional load on our shoulders with everything else that we do.

Now another option that we can take,

Option two,

That again,

I think a lot of you will take,

Is that when we get overwhelmed by some crisis,

Say someone we love is dying,

Say we've lost our job,

Or perhaps we're going through a breakup,

What a lot of people do is they turn towards other things to numb the sensations that they're going through.

They do not want to feel the emotional overwhelm.

So they turn towards something that can help numb it.

And there are so many things that we can turn towards to numb our emotions.

I think often this is where a lot of addictions begin.

There's a crisis that we're going through and we turn towards something to numb it instead of working our way through that crisis or just feeling that crisis.

We numb it and they work.

I mean,

Alcohol,

Drugs,

Prescriptions,

Food,

Sex.

I mean,

It's rather limitless.

But the point would be here is that life is overwhelming and I can't deal with this overwhelming feeling.

So I'm going to turn towards something to turn these feelings off.

And though they work in the time of crisis,

They have so many consequences to them.

Because now in this time of crisis,

We aren't dealing with the crisis.

We're also having to deal with the after effects.

When things often do settle down of now having an addiction,

I may not be in a crisis anymore,

But now I have to deal with the consequences of having or dealing with an addiction.

Normally,

If you've ever met anyone who struggles with a pretty serious addiction,

I think if you spend some time getting to know them,

You'll find that the circumstances in their past have been challenging and this often leads to the addiction.

Not always,

Of course,

But when we're under a crisis,

I do think that is the worst time to turn towards anything that can turn into an addiction.

I often tell people that if you really want to avoid,

Say,

Alcoholism,

The best way to drink if you're going to drink is drink when it's a good day,

Everything's going well and you're happy.

Then go ahead and have a glass of wine or a beer.

You're more likely if you don't have a genetic predisposition to not become an alcoholic.

But if it's a horrible day and things are awful,

Then coming home and having a glass or two of wine or huge box of donuts or a feast of porn,

Whatever it may be,

These are times where addictions can get a hold of our hearts and they're much harder to let go of later.

So what's our third option?

If option one is basically just doing what I've always done and really not making any changes or option two is turning towards addiction in this time of crisis.

What's the third option we have when we're in a time of crisis?

And it really gets back to how I started this podcast.

When we're in a crisis,

We need to really double down on doing things that are good for us,

That feed our soul and put a smile on our hearts.

There are so many things that I've talked about in this happiness podcast that can feed our soul.

And ultimately we all know what they are.

The things that after we do them,

They make us feel better.

They put us in a place of even though I'm in this crisis,

There's a lot that is good in my life and I'll do that.

For example,

In my own life,

Whenever things are excessively stressful,

I get to the pool.

I love to swim.

I love the experience of being in the water,

Spending an hour not thinking about or talking with anyone,

Just swimming back and forth,

Using my body and just physically allowing myself to find a way to express myself where the emotions I'm feeling have somewhere to go.

In many ways,

It's much like my brother in law and my friend who had very serious health issues and they didn't do nothing.

They didn't drown themselves in addictions.

Instead,

They proactively ate really good food.

They fed their body really good organic fruits and vegetables.

And that's what we're looking for in times of crisis.

What will feed my soul right now?

What is positive?

What is healthy?

What will put a smile on my heart?

What will alleviate the stress?

What will help me get better?

I'm not going to just sit and say,

I just need to grin and bear this.

I'm not going to try to numb it through some form of addiction or distraction.

Instead,

I'm going to say,

What feeds my soul?

What is good for me?

What helps me alleviate the stress?

And what is positive that makes me feel hope and happiness in my heart?

And I think when we're under times of crisis,

We need to be very proactive and proactive in two ways.

One,

Making sure there's nothing additionally negative coming in.

And two,

Making sure there's a lot of positive loving things coming into our hearts and minds.

That's the key because we can go down the path of letting more in,

Spending a lot of time steeping ourselves in things that are negative because we're already feeling bad.

And we know this.

We know there's a tendency when things are going very poorly to almost make choices that add to it.

It's like,

Well,

Life already sucks.

So I'm going to make choices that are even worse.

So what we need to do if we choose this third path is two things.

If right now we're in a very serious crisis,

Our energy needs to go in two directions.

One is to monitor and make sure that there's not additional negativity coming into our lives.

For example,

Coming home and watching violent shows is really not a good idea when we're in crisis.

And the second thing that we need to do is make sure that we are having a lot of beautiful positive things in our lives.

So getting out in nature,

As I so often talk about,

Is key.

Surrounding ourselves with people that love and support us is essential.

Making sure that our thoughts are focused on the positive and the beautiful things in life is so helpful.

So these two things,

Staying away from the negative,

Focusing in on things that feed our soul,

They're going to help us through the crisis.

And this is what I believe because I too have gone through crises in my life,

Is that when they happen,

If we really do these two things,

Then the crisis is far less of a crisis than we ever thought it could or would be.

And instead,

I often find,

Actually I always find,

That something beautiful grows out of the crisis.

And not only was it not horrible,

But something beautiful grew out of it.

It is very hard when crisis has come.

But if we choose option one,

Where we do nothing,

Or option two,

Where we try to numb the crisis,

These aren't going to make things better.

We need to proactively say,

I can make this better.

I can improve this no matter what it is.

We can make the suffering less.

It is work.

It is challenging.

But the benefit is that we get our lives to improve and not just grin and bear this crisis.

We are very capable of getting through anything in life,

But we can't give up.

We can't lose hope.

And we have to proactively say,

I'm going to work towards making my life beautiful.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.