Don’t Give Up (How To Stay Kind)

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

There's one thing that we all have in common.

That if we live long enough,

Sooner or later,

Another person,

Other people,

Are going to be cruel to us.

It's impossible to get through life and not have someone along the way be unkind towards us.

And for many of us,

Lots of people are unkind towards us.

And sadly,

It can start incredibly early,

Even before we enter school.

We can find people that we're living with that chose to have us,

Or our siblings are cruel and unkind towards us.

And then once we enter school life,

It's just pretty much inevitable that that's going to happen.

People are going to be unkind towards us.

They're going to say things that are hurtful.

They're going to do things to try to humiliate us and shame us.

I remember in junior high,

One of my friends who was a neighbor of mine had a sister who was in my class.

And she had an eye that protruded that was bulging out of her eye socket.

It didn't bother me at all,

And I was friends with her too.

But clearly it was something that other people could see.

I wasn't close friends with her,

So I didn't know her story or all that happened to her.

But one day,

I came to my class,

And a professor that I dearly loved got so angry at the class.

Because of her,

People had been teasing her about her eye,

And he was so infuriated with the way they were acting towards her.

He gave the entire class a real scolding.

But I remember to this day wondering,

How was it for her?

What was she experiencing?

And after that moment,

I tried to be especially kind towards her,

Because I realized her life had to be hard.

Other kids clearly were abusing her,

Were hurting her because of the way she looked.

And I was very saddened by that.

And my professor was very mad about that.

We all know stories about people being unkind towards others.

We've probably seen it thousands of times throughout our lives,

Whether in movies,

Television shows,

Or in real life.

We may be the recipient of their unkindness.

It is truly something that we cannot avoid.

If we're human,

We're going to experience it.

But here's what we can do.

We do have choices when we experience unkindness from others.

And there are three of them.

And we're going to talk about the two that we need to avoid,

And the one that we need to embrace.

It is a harder path,

But it truly is a much better path.

The first thing we can do,

That a lot of people do,

I don't even think it's that uncommon,

Is that we become tough.

We say,

Okay,

I know they're going to dish it out to me.

I'm going to dish it out back to them.

I remember the first time,

Or at least the most memorable time,

That I ever tried this.

I was in elementary school with a friend of mine.

We were standing in line,

And there were two girls behind us.

And they started saying some very unkind things to us.

And my friend started saying very unkind things back to them.

And I joined them.

I remember afterwards,

To this very day,

Thinking,

Why did I do that?

These were girls that were my friends.

I don't know why they were attacking us,

But why did I say those hurtful things back to them?

I felt horrible about it afterwards.

And though I can't say I've never done it again,

I can say that experience reminded me not to go down that dark path.

Because it is a dark path.

Hurting someone in a cruel way because they hurt us,

Or at least we think they hurt us in a cruel way,

Leads to the path of darkness,

Leads to the path of unhappiness.

Because then,

Yes,

We hate them,

But guess what?

We did the same thing.

So what are we going to do with ourselves?

We're going to hate ourselves for being cruel and unkind back to another person.

Yes,

We can justify and say they did it first,

But isn't that what little kids do?

And don't we as parents say,

Well,

It doesn't matter what they did to you.

Don't do it back.

Returning cruelty or cruelty is not a good way to go through life.

Yes,

Some people may respect you for being tough,

But in the long run,

You're not going to be happy because you're not going to like the person you see in the mirror.

You didn't like the people that were unkind towards you.

That's what made you become tough.

Tough in the sense that now you're going to be hard on people back.

But if you act like they acted before,

Now you're just like them and you didn't like them.

And I can guarantee that you're not going to like yourself.

And it's easy to prove this.

Just find someone who's really tough,

Who you don't want to mess with because they'll give you an earful.

And you'll find consistently,

Always,

That they're not happy people.

And we want to be in life to be happy.

Plus,

Do we really want to hurt people?

Of course we can,

But that makes us hate life because then we just realize that life is a terrible place and we get through it by being tough and then it's over.

I mean,

What a miserable existence.

We don't want to go down that path.

So what can we do?

Well,

The second thing we don't want to do is we don't want to numb ourselves from the unkindness of the world because that's another option we have.

We just shut down.

The pain can be so overwhelming that we just say,

I don't want to feel it anymore.

I'm sick of it.

So we turn towards things and numb ourselves,

To numb our emotions.

It can be food,

It can be sex,

It can be drugs,

It can be alcohol,

It can be our work.

It can be so many things that we turn towards to not feel the pain from others.

But we all know that addictions are a dark path too because who wants to be an addict to anything?

Who wants to go through life numb?

Because addictions do that.

Yes,

They can take away the pain,

But now we're numb inside.

And yes,

We've numbed ourselves from the pain,

But we also numb ourselves from the joys of life.

We miss out on life when we become addicted to something.

Yes,

We have the thrill of our addiction.

If we're a food addict,

We love that first bite.

It tastes so good.

But then afterwards,

All the pain comes.

Or if we're an alcoholic,

Yes,

A few drinks can make us feel so good inside.

But afterwards,

We have to deal with all the collateral damage of being a drunk.

It's better to do the third thing.

But what is that third thing?

What option do I have,

Dr.

Puff?

Well,

The third option is to stay soft and not let the meanness,

The cruelty,

The unkindness of the world beat us down.

Yes,

We're going to be hit.

Yes,

We're going to be hurt.

But hurts heal.

Even emotional hurts heal.

When they do,

We can go back to being soft,

To being kind,

To being gentle with others,

To loving life in the fullness of what it is.

It really boils down to a choice.

The choice is,

Do I get tough?

Do I become an addict or something and numb myself?

Or do I say,

I'm going to stay soft.

I'm going to realize that other people,

Yes,

May have gone down the path of meanness,

Of cruelty.

But I'm not going to join them.

And I'm not going to just numb that pain.

I'm going to feel it.

I'm going to share it with someone.

And I'm going to move on.

I'm going to get my heart better.

I'm going to keep my heart soft.

And from that softness,

I'm going to love the world.

Because what happens is,

With time,

You realize that when people are mean,

It's because people have been mean towards them.

They're in the group one,

Where they become tough or perhaps even mean.

And now with that meanness,

They hurt others.

But we know they're not happy people.

We just know that.

Could we be happy if we were doing what they were doing?

Of course not.

So what we do is we say,

I don't want that path.

And I'm not going to take in what they're saying.

It's coming from an unkind place.

It's coming from an unhappy place.

And I want to remain happy.

The way I'm going to do that is by keeping my heart soft and open.

I want to share a beautiful story that happened to me yesterday at the time of this recording.

I was flying home from a vacation and on the plane,

I sat across from this man and we were sitting up towards the front of the plane.

And we were in group one,

So we got to get on first.

Well,

When I first get there,

The person sitting beside me was having this really good conversation with him.

And it was lively and it was entertaining and it was just fun to watch.

Well,

She had to slide over because she was in my seat because I was actually supposed to sit across from him.

I thought maybe they were related or traveling together,

But they weren't.

And then the next thing I noticed is probably every third to fifth person that came on that plane,

He had a conversation with.

I'm not kidding.

I was thinking,

How does this person know so many people?

I was shocked.

Well,

Being the very curious person that I am,

I started up a conversation with him.

And I asked him pretty direct questions.

The first one was,

I said,

How do you have so many conversations with all these different people?

And he told me,

I look at everyone that comes on the plane,

I look directly in their eyes,

About three to five of them will give me eye contact and I'll start up a conversation.

And they would laugh with him and they would connect with him.

And it was very brief,

But he was just an incredibly engaging human being.

Well,

Thankfully we had about an hour for our flight,

So I kept asking a lot more questions.

I said,

Tell me your story.

And he did.

Well,

You may be thinking,

Well,

He probably was a Brad Pitt type,

Handsome,

Gorgeous,

And just everyone was attracted towards him.

And that's why they talked with them and engaged with them.

That was not true.

He was an incredibly beautiful person,

But not in the normal ways that we think.

So he ended up telling me his story because I was very curious.

He grew up in Southern United States on the East Coast.

I believe it was in North Carolina,

Which is a fairly conservative part of America,

If you've ever been here.

And he grew up in a fairly impoverished environment.

He struggled with weight his entire life to this very day.

He was about 58 years old and he told me that both his parents and several of his relatives died at this very age.

And he knew his life too may not go on forever because he had a lot of health problems.

And he discovered or realized when he was very young that he was gay,

That he was attracted towards the same sex,

And he'd been in a long-term relationship with a partner that he deeply loved.

And that was his story.

So if you can imagine growing up in the South,

Which is very conservative,

Being gay and being overweight,

He probably got teased a lot.

I didn't ask him,

But we both knew that was the case.

And he just realized that people that were mean towards him had their own struggles because I asked him that,

What about when people are mean towards you?

And he said,

I just know they're unhappy people.

So why would I be mean back?

I'd rather give my energy towards people that will receive it.

And I just love being loving towards others.

And he was.

He was a beautiful,

Beautiful soul.

And I was honored to meet his acquaintance for that short trip.

So this is the truth.

Life is going to be hard sometimes.

People are going to be mean.

But we don't have to let it in.

We don't have to be mean back or numb ourselves.

Instead,

We can heal those wounds and stay soft,

Stay kind.

And from that kindness,

I believe we'll find a deep love and happiness for life.

It is work.

I'm not negating that,

But it's worth it.

We need to stay soft.

And from that softness,

We'll find happiness.

Life truly can be hard,

But it doesn't mean that our lives are suffering.

They're just experiences.

Experiences that with time,

We can learn to push away very quickly.

And when we do,

We will find from our softness,

There is joy,

There is happiness,

And there is peace.

May we all find that softness throughout our lives.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.