How To Let Go To Be Happy

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Have you ever had one of those moments that is just exquisite,

Beyond words,

Incredibly beautiful,

And hard to imagine that it will ever come again?

I bet we've all had these moments.

They may not come often,

But when they come they are powerful and incredibly rememberable.

For some of us,

We may have them often.

For others of us,

They may only come once or twice in our entire lives.

But when they come,

Like I said,

They are breathtaking.

Let me share one with you that I had recently.

I was on vacation to Yellowstone National Park,

Which is here in the United States.

It's one of the most beautiful places in the world,

And they have what are called hot springs.

These are either large or small pools of water that are very hot.

They're able to maintain this high level of heat because hot springs feed into the lava below and the lava or magma heats up the water.

They can come in very different colors,

But there was one that I saw that was truly breathtaking.

It was so deep.

It was the bluest blue imaginable.

I just even can't describe how blue it was.

It was like magical.

It was again,

Like I said,

Breathtaking.

I remember standing there and going back to it another day because it was just so incredibly blue that I just wanted to see it again.

Like I said,

It took my breath away.

It was so beautiful that for me it created within me called a pea experience,

An experience of joy and bliss that is very hard to put in the words.

But I also remember walking away from the hot springs and thanking life for this most magical experience and then letting it go.

Because one of the secret ingredients of happiness is letting experiences go when we have them.

We have a tendency,

If we're not careful,

To compare past experiences to current experiences.

And sometimes when we have these most magical experiences,

It is very unlikely that our daily life will ever compare to these magical experiences.

So,

If we don't let them go,

We will suffer.

And if we're not careful and let these experiences go,

There can be so many ways that we can suffer in our lives.

Let me give a few examples.

I remember once talking to a man who loved to play football or as we say here in the United States,

Soccer.

Well,

20 years earlier he had had a perfect game.

I mean it just went exactly as he wanted.

He didn't have any thoughts.

He just played in the zone and in his mind it was the best game of his life.

But when I was talking to him,

He really displayed a desire,

A longing to have a game just like that again,

An experience like that where everything was perfect.

And he spent 20 years trying to recreate it with little to no success.

And it caused him a lot of suffering.

Sometimes when we're younger,

We are blessed or perhaps cursed with early success.

And this early success leads to lots of suffering later.

Haven't we all known people perhaps in high school or when we were in college that were very successful,

Very popular at what they did?

And they just want to recreate that,

Go back to that and live there again instead of moving on and being thankful for what they have now even though it may not be at the same level of success than they used to have.

If you don't believe me,

Look into early superstars,

People that peak at a very young age.

I work with a few of them and what happens is they have so much success and attention given to them when they're younger that later they try to recreate that.

And because they can't,

Because often their skills are gone or they try to recreate it through drugs,

Their lives end up going very poorly and they suffer so much.

An extreme or negative form of this is drug addiction.

If you've ever had a chance to study or talk to a drug addict,

They'll often tell you that their first experience is incredibly overwhelming in a good way for them,

That they do what's called chasing the high.

They'll spend the rest of their life trying to recreate that high because it's so good,

That first experience,

But afterwards they're just using the drug to sustain their own habits from suffering instead of getting the experience up high anymore.

Haven't we all known people that were so deeply in love that they felt like they were the luckiest person on the planet and then their partner leaves either through a breakup or through death.

And if they hang on to that love,

They're gonna suffer and they can suffer horribly.

I knew a woman that when her husband died literally drank herself to death because she just couldn't live without him.

So what do we do?

We're given these exquisite moments,

Peak experiences that are just breathtaking and we want to hang on to them.

We want to keep them.

We want to keep having them throughout our lives.

But that's not how life works.

So if we choose to hang on to them,

We will suffer.

We can be so thankful for them.

We can be grateful that we had them.

But if we try to hang on to them or compare life to them,

Then the suffering will set in and we will suffer greatly because of our attachments to these peak experiences.

But we don't have to suffer.

We just have to let go of these experiences and then find happiness in that which is around us.

It may not be and probably won't be to the same intensity,

But that doesn't mean it isn't good.

Life is good as long as we don't hang on to attachments.

When we go with life,

When we flow with life and work towards accepting the things that we can't change and working towards changing the things that we can,

We find that life can be a truly beautiful adventure.

The key is we have to let go of these magical experiences that we're blessed with every once in a while.

The key is to see them as a gift,

A gift from the universe to us as we journey through life.

We're thankful for them.

We're so grateful for having them.

But we realize they're not easy to recreate.

And if we try to force them,

I think often we'll spend our lives just chasing them like the drug addict or my friend who played football or American soccer.

We can chase things our entire life.

Or sadly,

Sometimes we're so depressed and grieved over the loss of them that we give up on life.

That's not the way to find happiness.

Happiness is found through taking in every moment of life in the fullness that it is given to us.

Sometimes we're given the most exquisite moments.

Sometimes it's just mundane.

But even the mundane can still be beautiful if we realize we're not comparing it to anything else.

We're seeing it as a unique experience.

And we're thankful for each moment that we're given.

With this thankfulness,

With this appreciation for what we have,

Without comparing to the past or wishing things would go back to what we had,

Instead just savoring each moment of life,

What we will find is happiness.

It may not be the peak experiences or these blissful experiences that we have sometimes,

But it will be an acceptance,

A peacefulness,

A joy,

A happiness for what we are given each moment that we take and experience life.

It's really focusing in on the here and now and trying to avoid comparing to past experiences.

Instead,

We focus on what's happening right now and say,

Is there something beautiful I can be with right now?

And when we quiet our minds,

When we're just in the here and now,

What we'll find is that peacefulness,

That happiness is actually our natural state.

It's when our thoughts kick in that it disturbs our happiness.

I remember on the day that I saw that most beautiful hot springs thinking,

I can't hang on to this.

I can be thankful for it,

But I need to let it go because life is beautiful.

But if I'm going to compare it to that most beautiful hot spring,

I'm going to be grateful for it.

If I'm going to compare it to that most beautiful hot springs,

I'll suffer.

So I needed to let it go and I did.

I still think about it.

I sometimes even look at it because I took some wonderful pictures and I probably will go back and visit it again.

I'm pretty sure I will.

But right now,

I'm not at that hot springs.

So I let it go.

I'm thankful for the experience.

I don't do that,

But I don't hang on to it.

So the question to ask ourselves is,

Am I hanging on to something from the past or something that's happening right now that is exquisite?

Because if I am,

I'm going to suffer.

I can enjoy what is happening right now.

I can remember what happened before.

But when it's over,

I need to let it go if I truly want to be happy.

Hanging on to things is the path of suffering.

And one of the absolute positive guarantees of life is that life is impermanent.

Life changes.

And if we flow with those changes,

Life goes well.

If we fight those changes,

We will suffer.

And the simplest way to let things go is just by focusing in on what's happening now,

What's going on right now,

And give attention to that and find joy and beauty in the present moment.

When we're in the present moment,

It often is quite good.

There's often things we can focus on that are pretty good or things that we could do to make it better because we're focused on the here and now.

But when we're stuck in the past or we're hanging on to something,

We are going to suffer.

I want to end with perhaps a little bit of encouragement.

I know sometimes it can seem like,

But Dr.

Puff,

I like those experiences.

I want to have them often.

Well,

What I have found,

And you may not find this to be true,

So I want to put it as a caveat,

It may not be true for you,

But it has been true for me because I really work at not hanging on to things.

Those peak experiences,

Those magical,

Wonderful experiences that we have,

Guess what?

I have them pretty often because I'm not seeking them.

They usually come out of absolutely nowhere,

But they come and they come often.

And I'm thankful for them,

But when they're over,

I let them go.

I don't know what will happen to you,

But that's what's happened to me in my life.

So as a word of encouragement,

Learn this skill of letting go,

And perhaps too,

You will find they'll come more often because you let them go.

And remember,

Whatever is happening,

Work towards being happy right here,

Right now.

Change the things you can and never give up when you can change them,

Particularly when they're suffering.

But in the moment,

If right now you can't do anything,

Then learn to love and accept what is happening.

That is the key.

And what we may find if we do that is these beautiful experiences start coming by and visiting us often because we have learned to let go of them.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.