Self-Centered Happiness: The Paradox Of Selfish Happiness

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

I want to talk about something that we almost all do that makes being happy so much harder.

In and of itself,

Being happy,

Finding peace in our lives,

Living a good life is not an easy task to do.

There are a lot of moving parts that have to be in place in order for our lives to go well.

But before I begin delving into what we do that's getting us in trouble,

I want to talk about a physics phenomenon.

Hang on,

It will be important and it will relate.

But there's something called the three-body problem.

You may or may not have heard of it.

In physics,

What it means is,

Imagine you have two objects in space,

Like the Earth and the Moon.

They pull on each other with gravity and scientists can predict their movement pretty accurately.

This is called the two-body problem and it's solvable with equations.

Now add a third object like the Sun,

Suddenly things get incredibly complicated.

All three objects are pulling on each other and those pulls are constantly changing as the objects move.

The three-body problem is the challenge of trying to figure out how these objects will move over time.

And why is this so hard?

Unlike the predictable two-body situation,

The three-body system tends to be chaotic.

This means that even tiny changes in their starting position or speed can lead to widely different outcomes.

And if you add a fourth,

Fifth,

Or sixth object,

Etc.

,

It gets incredibly complicated.

Now the big question is,

How does this relate to us and our happiness?

What I'm going to share next,

You're not going to find in any theory book.

This is something I came up with because I love physics and I saw how the three-body problem really relates to human behavior and our happiness.

In our universe,

The universe of happiness or well-being,

There are two main objects that we have to deal with.

One is ourselves,

Our thoughts,

And the way we interact with the world.

And then there's the external world,

Everything that we have to deal with.

Things like losing our job,

Having health concerns,

Having an argument with a family member,

Things that we directly deal with every day and that we need to work through in order to find happiness in our lives.

And as we navigate life on these two objects,

One,

Ourselves,

And the second being the universe,

Everything we deal with in our lives,

We focus on what are we in control of,

What are we not in control of,

And we change through things we're in control of.

For example,

If we lose our job because our company we work for went out of business,

We can't control or do anything about them going out of business,

But we can control our response to losing our job.

Like will we initially right away go out and look for another job?

Will we live on our savings for a while and take a hiatus from the busyness of life?

Or will we choose to just be angry and upset and say life is unfair?

These are things that we can control,

Change,

And have an effect on,

And the way we respond to life's events,

The universe interacting with us,

Will affect the way our lives go.

And really at its core,

The Happiness Podcast is about helping us make good choices so our lives go well when we interact with our universe.

So this is where the three-body problem kicks in,

And we really do face the same chaos that physicists face where they're trying to predict a three-body gravitational problem.

What we do is,

Instead of basing our happiness on our lives,

We base our happiness on other people's lives too.

For example,

I think this is incredibly common,

And most people do this,

Which is why many people feel that life is so chaotic and out of control.

They base their happiness,

They base their well-being,

On other people or other events in life.

Before I share what this is,

I want to explain one thing very emphatically.

It's that yes,

We care for other people,

Yes,

We care for world events,

Yes,

We can do things to help other people,

Yes,

We can do things to make our world a better place.

But if our happiness is based on the results of our caring,

Then we're going to get in trouble.

Because though we can affect our own internal world and our relationship with the universe,

We have very little power with other people's relationship with the universe or world events.

Let me use an example to illustrate what I'm talking about.

A young man or a woman decide to get married.

They find someone they want to spend their life with,

And then after a while they decide,

Let's have kids.

And now let's call this person Joe.

Joe has a wife and he has two kids,

A girl and a boy.

Now when he thinks about his day and how it's going,

It's going well if his life,

His wife's life,

And his two kids' life are all doing well.

So his happiness shifts from a two-body problem,

Meaning his relationship with his universe and his own self,

To now a five-body problem.

Now his happiness is based upon how he's doing with the universe,

How his wife's doing,

How his son and his daughter is doing.

Unless everyone is doing well,

He's not going to be happy.

And then let's add that Joe is a naturalist and he really likes sea otters.

So when he gets on the news and finds out that bad things are happening to sea otter environments,

It affects his world and it makes him unhappy because he really cares about sea otters.

And his happiness not only is based upon how he's doing,

How his wife is doing,

How his son is doing,

How his daughter is doing,

But how the ocean is doing and how sea otters are doing.

What's happened in Joe's life is he moved from working on making sure that he's making choices that help his life go well to making sure that his life goes well when everyone else is doing well,

Which he has limited and sometimes no control over.

He may have some but limited influence over his wife and some but again limited influence over his children.

But if his wife decides to move back to the Midwest because her parents are ailing and she wants to be closer to them,

Regardless if he goes or not,

He has limited influence on how he can affect that.

He can choose how he wants to respond,

Whether he wants to join her or perhaps seek a separation,

But he can't control whether she's going to go or not.

Ultimately,

If she's going to leave,

She might just leave.

Or if his daughter ends up marrying someone who's abusive,

He can be there and support her,

But he can't force her to leave the abusive relationship.

That is her choice.

And then when it comes to the sea otters,

And remember,

This is just an example,

Filling your own issue you having with something in the world,

He has incredibly limited influence on it.

I mean,

He can join committees that helps protect the sea otters,

But if the current government says we're not protecting them anymore,

Then there's very little he can do.

And if his happiness is based on sea otters being protected and then they're not,

He's going to be unhappy.

He's giving his happiness power away.

I know this is a complicated issue I'm dealing with today,

But it's an important one.

So let me try to recap it in order to make it perhaps clearer.

We are 100% responsible for how we respond to how the universe engages with us.

Now,

We have very limited power on how the universe chooses to interact with us.

But what we do control is our response.

That's up to us.

If,

For example,

Our partner decides they don't want to be with us anymore,

We have a lot of options before us.

We can try to convince them that the choice they're making is a bad one and they'd be much better off staying with us.

We can ask them whether they'd be willing to go to counseling and see if a professional might help us get through this difficult time.

We can ask them what we've done to cause them to want to not be in the relationship anymore and then try to do our best to change our behavior so they'll want to stay.

But if they're adamant and they've left,

There's really ultimately nothing we can do.

We can still try to get them back,

But if they're going to stay the course,

Then we have the choices of deciding,

Are we going to let ourselves go into a deep depression saying life is so unfair?

Or are we going to say,

What can I learn from the mistakes that have happened in this relationship and move forward so I don't repeat them in the next one?

These are the things we can control.

What we can't control is our partner wanting to leave us.

Ultimately,

That is their choice.

But if we base our happiness on them making a choice that we like,

Then we're going to get in trouble.

This is where we get in trouble and this is how it relates to the three-body problem.

We can control our response to anything that comes our way.

That's up to us.

But what other people do or events that happen in the world,

We have so little influence on them.

And the farther they're removed from us,

Say like the sea otters,

I mean,

How much control do we have over the oceans and politics that mandate protecting the sea otters?

Probably not a lot as an individual.

If our happiness is based upon what the politicians are doing to protect the sea otters and when politicians get in that we really don't like,

And then we go into a state of anxiety,

Fear,

And fretting because what other politicians are doing,

That's giving away our happiness that we ultimately have no control over or very little.

I'm not saying we can't do things to try to make our world a better place if we feel there's things going awry in our world.

But we have to ask ourselves,

Do we want to make our happiness,

Our core happiness based upon how things are going besides our own world,

Our world being ourselves and the universe?

That's our world.

Everything else is limited in that we can't influence it that much.

We can influence it some.

We definitely have an influence over our partners.

We have an influence over our family,

Some,

But it's limited.

I mean,

When our kids turn 20,

How much influence do we have on them anymore?

Probably not a whole lot.

But let's say with our kids,

If our happiness is based upon how their lives are going,

Even though we have very limited influence on the choices they're making in response to their universe,

And yet if our happiness is based upon them making particular choices that we like,

There's a probability that we could end up in a chaotic world of emotional mess by giving our happiness away.

I'm in no way implying that we don't care for others,

That we don't do things to make our world a better place.

But if we base our happiness on how our lives are going,

On how other people's lives are going,

That's going to make our life very much on the edge because we can't even control the choices that they make.

And if our happiness is based upon their choices,

That's giving our happiness away.

I want to end with a personal example.

I'm a clinical psychologist,

And I've been helping people for decades,

And I love what I do,

And I care about every person that comes into my office,

And I do my best to help make their lives better.

But if my happiness were based upon their lives going well,

I would be miserable because though I can advise,

I can direct,

I can encourage,

Ultimately the choices they make are their choices.

And of course it's sad when I see people making choices that are self-destructive,

But it isn't going to make my life overall sad.

I can feel it in the moment,

The sadness,

But I do let it go because I realize that's their journey.

And that's really the key secret of a happy life.

Everyone is on their journey in life.

They have the things that they have to deal with,

Struggles that they have to overcome.

We can encourage,

We can love them,

But ultimately it's their choice.

And if we make our happiness based upon their happiness,

We're giving our happiness away.

And the wonderful thing about realizing that I don't have to control what other people do is when they do do things that make us upset,

Uncomfortable,

Then we can respond lovingly instead of getting angry.

Because if we say,

If you do this,

I'm going to be unhappy,

Then we can get very upset.

But if we say,

I hope you don't do that because it will make me sad,

But I know it's your choice and I have to focus on making sure I'm okay.

I hope you make choices that you're okay.

But ultimately our responsibility is to make sure we're okay.

Taking care of ourselves,

Making healthy choices,

Loving others,

Of course,

Making our world a better place.

Absolutely.

But with equanimity,

With peace,

Because when we do that,

We'll find that we will be there for others and for our world the entire time of our lives.

We won't get burnout,

We won't get exhausted,

And we'll find that happiness is within our grasp as long as we realize what we're responsible for,

What ultimately we're not responsible for.

It may seem selfish,

But I think you'll find if you try this out that in the long run,

You're able to love and be there and help our world throughout your life.

And instead of growing bitter,

Angry,

Or just upset,

You find that love is what permeates from your heart.

And that love,

That happiness makes your life go well,

And it may,

I believe,

Help others to make their lives go well too.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.