00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 306, "The Problem with Happiness." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today, as always. I'm always super happy to be here and just as happy to have you here along for this amazing ride of figuring out how to have relationships that are meaningful and kind and connecting. I spent a lot of years of my life not having any idea how to do that and showed up in my relationships for sure. They were difficult and they were tough and now I've figured out some stuff and this is what I get to share with you here and I'm so glad that I do. 

00:59 

Couple of things. First of all, if you are interested in the couples counseling that I'm going to be practicing and figuring out, I would love to have you join me. I do have space still. I am looking for couples. You will get 18 coaching sessions for the cost of 12, which is a super good deal because I will do half of my sessions with one partner and the other half with the other partner. Then we will do six sessions together so that then we can implement the tools that we're learning and we can practice having these difficult conversations with me so that I can coach you during the process of this is how you approach this. This is how you say it. This is why you say it that way. Let's clean all this stuff up. I think if you are a partnership where you both want a successful relationship and you're just a little bit hung up on "we just can't figure this out. We're two good people and we can't figure it out," I've got some tools that can really, really help you get in a better place. So you can sign up for that by going to tanyahale.com. You can just go to the "free consultation" tab and sign up for one there where both of you are available to meet with me we can talk about it and I can we can get it all set up and get you ready to go. Also, I do free 90 minute consults for anybody who is interested in checking to see if coaching is a good fit for you. I love the 90 minutes; it gives me time to really get into coaching you and helping you see the power of coaching so that you can make a decision whether you would like to work with me long-term. 

02:38 

And that's it. Okay, let's jump in. Today we are talking about the problem with happiness. So I think that we live in a very interesting time in the history of the world, because for much of the existence of people on the earth, life has revolved around survival. Do I have enough food? Do I have shelter and warm clothing? Am I safe from predators and other dangerous things? And survival was a daily concern. Even just 200 years ago, much of a person's daily life was centered on working the farm desperately hard all summer so that they would have enough food to last through the winter, working from sunup to sundown. Even if they had had a television back in the day, the regular person wouldn't have had time to watch it. Also interesting is that they had times in their lives that even amidst this daily struggle for survival, they still experienced happiness. Most of what I've read and learned about past generations though, is that they weren't obsessed with being happy like we seem to be. Happiness happened, but it wasn't something that was expected every minute of every day. 

03:51 

But with machines and automation, our lives have eased up so much. We now have extra time, time that doesn't need to be used solely for survival. And with this, our focus on happiness and needing to be happy has multiplied. It seems that in so many places, the question is asked, "but does it make you happy?" And if it doesn't, we don't do it. There seems to be this idea that we should be happy all the time. There shouldn't be struggles and difficult times, that sadness and grief are necessary evils at times and that we want to work through them as quickly as possible. I always find it fascinating when working with clients who are so concerned that their children aren't happy. They think that there must be something wrong with their parenting or with them if their children have struggles, if their children have difficulties or if their children are pushing back. And it's pretty subtle. When we talk about trials and struggles at church, we fully understand the need for the struggle, opposition in all things, right? For it's in the struggle that we grow, that we learn and understand things at deeper  levels, that we start to tap into our possibility as a human and as a child of God. 

05:05 

But then we leave the church building and we go to our homes where we seem to very often step back into the belief that we should all just get along. A place where holidays should always be magical and there should never be a cross word. Now that we have time in our lives to explore interest and develop hobbies and time and energy to develop deeper and more intimate relationships, we have moved into expecting that happiness should be our constant companion, that everything should make us happy. And if it doesn't make us happy, either we shouldn't do it or we are doing it wrong. But I don't think life was meant to be pleasant all of the time. And I think in our more lucid moments, we think that. 

05:56 

I love that Brooke Castillo, from the Life Coach School where I got one of my certifications, uses the concept that life is 50- 50, meaning that it's supposed to be both happy and unhappy, both amazing and not amazing. Half of the time life is positive and upbeat and good and the other half it's difficult and frustrating. And though it may not be exactly 50-50, that's just a concept, right? It can be a helpful way to look at our lives and the expectations we have of our lives. When we accept and even embrace the idea that life is not supposed to be happy all the time, that we're actually supposed to have ups and downs, that there is as much value in the downs as there is in the ups and maybe even more value in the downs, then we can find a sense of acceptance in our lives that can bring more peace. 

06:50 

When we are in constant refusal and denial and rejection of how our life is, we are adding suffering to the already difficult situation. For example, tough things happen. Let's say you get a divorce. That's a challenge for sure and it's one that happens to many people. It's hard to separate two lives, to watch our children struggle, to separate out finances and furniture, to figure out living spaces and custody arrangements. That's just a tough, tough struggle in life. But when we add on the idea that this shouldn't have ever happened, that there must be something wrong with me, that we should never cause our children pain, that we are a victim of the other person's selfish behavior, then we are turning a struggle into suffering. 

07:41 

I like the idea that there will always be challenges in life, but when we start shooting on ourselves, when we start layering on guilt and shame and blame, then the pain of the challenge turns into suffering. I've heard it said this way before: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. We don't have to resist and push against the pain and struggle of life, but when we think that the pain and struggle is not supposed to be there, it's hard not to resist it. We live in a world where so much discomfort that used to be a part of daily life is just not part of our lives anymore, and so our capacity for feeling and working through discomfort has been diminished. For example, I can be in my car going somewhere and the temperature can start getting a little warm. I can adjust my air conditioning down just one degree if I want. I can make it so that I don't have to feel any discomfort from being too warm. And the exact opposite if it's too cold. I can adjust the heat by just one or two degrees to make the temperature perfect. No discomfort whatsoever. And on that same car trip, if I decide I'm thirsty and I forgot a drink from home, I can stop somewhere, usually within five minutes, and buy me a drink, or a snack if I decide I'm a little bit hungry. 

09:04 

I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, and we would load up seven people in a five-person vehicle, do you remember these days, and we would drive for almost four hours to get to Salt Lake from my home in southeast Idaho. My mom might have brought a Pepsi for her and for my dad, but we just went that four hours without something to drink, because remember that was the day before water bottles. You didn't buy water in the store, and we didn't have water bottles that we filled up and took places. Occasionally, she would bring a loaf of white bread and a container of bologna, and we would eat a sandwich, but many times there weren't any snacks at all, because we would eat, and then we would drive for four hours, and we would eat on the other end. And guess what? We were just fine. We were used to the discomfort of being a little bit hungry and a little bit thirsty, so it was all okay. The discomfort wasn't a bad thing, it was just part of life. 

09:59 

Now, all of us, kids and adults alike, are so used to not dealing with discomfort that it feels multiplied when we do feel it. Even a little bit of discomfort feels so big, right? We all get whiny. I was also raised in a home where we ate what was served for dinner. I honestly didn't know that it was an option not to like a food when I was a child. I know that sounds silly today,  but back in the day, I just ate what was there. I didn't complain. I don't know why I didn't know that I could not like something, but I didn't. I don't know that I loved everything we ate, but I didn't push back because I was used to the discomfort of eating things I didn't like. These are just some small and probably somewhat silly examples of how we used to handle discomfort better, but the challenge now is that we're not used to even these small and silly discomforts. And so the discomfort that we do feel can almost be unbearable at times. We are so used to not having to be uncomfortable that when we are, our tolerance is way down. 

11:10 

Now, this isn't necessarily a huge problem. If I'm in my car, adjusting the temperature by a degree or two is not hurting anything. But overall in our lives, our lack of tolerance for discomfort creates a lot of dissatisfaction with our lives. Our brain will start to think that if I'm uncomfortable, something is definitely wrong. I'm doing it wrong. The situation is wrong. Whereas discomfort used to be just part of the drive to grandma's house. Now discomfort is a signal that something is wrong with my life or with me or with the people I'm surrounded by. And we also tend to equate discomfort in the lives of our children or our spouse or other people near to us as an indication that we are doing something wrong because it is our job to make everybody happy. 

12:02 

Right? Yeah, you know I'm being sarcastic with that one. It is not our job, but we often think that it is our job to keep everybody happy. We feel a lot of discomfort around discomfort, our own and others. And that's when we start multiplying the discomfort, right? Because now I feel discomfort around that. OK, but when we feel discomfort around our own discomfort, we will often turn to what we call buffering. 

12:30 

Now, buffering is any activity, whether it is perceived as positive or negative, that we use to escape our emotion of discomfort. So let's talk about a phrase that people use a lot, emotional eating. OK, we are having difficult emotions and we turn to food for comfort. The process really is that we are feeling bad, difficult emotions, right? And eating something that tastes really good will give us a dopamine hit that distracts us from the difficult emotion. You following? OK, so two problems ensue here. One, we are not acknowledging and processing the emotion. We're not sitting with the discomfort. So it sticks around and it builds up and it wreaks havoc over time on our bodies and with our minds and with our spirits. OK, and two, we find ourselves eating more than we would often like, and then it can be super easy to beat ourselves down for not having more willpower. 

13:34 

But I want you to realize that buffering can take any form, not just eating. We might talk about eating or watching pornography or escaping into our phones with games or with social media as forms of buffering. easily be exercise, or doing family history, or reading a book. What makes it buffering is not the activity, but the reason behind the activity. Am I doing it because I want to and because I enjoy it? Am I doing this activity because it makes my life more fulfilling? Or am I doing it to escape doing something else that feels uncomfortable? I will say that when I am struggling to sit down and work out a podcast, or something that is going to take brain work, my buffer of choice is social media. 

14:22 

So when I ask these three questions about my social media use, here's what I get. Do I want to spend time there and do I enjoy it? Yes, but honestly only for about 15 minutes. Then I become numb to it and I don't really enjoy it at all. Once I've seen posts from people I want to stay connected to, the continued scrolling actually feels pretty blah. Pretty horrible even the longer I go on. So am I doing the social media because it makes my life more fulfilling? Again, for about 15 minutes while I catch up with people I am friends with or that I follow then the longer I'm scrolling, the less fulfilling that action becomes. Am I doing it to escape something else that feels uncomfortable? Almost always I'm avoiding engaging my brain in creating content for a podcast or learning something new by reading a great book. Or doing an online course that I've signed up for, or doing my physical therapy exercises or returning emails that require my attention, right? All things that are going to require brain work. And my primitive primitive brain wants to avoid using up energy, wants to avoid pain, and wants to increase pleasure. And it matters just right now, this second, sitting down to engage my brain to create a podcast or do any of those other things requires energy, it's painful to have to sit down and get to work, and it's not pleasurable this second. 

15:57 

So here's the clincher with all of this: I am avoiding discomfort actually engaging my brain, right? I am seeking greater happiness by engaging in social media, but when I'm done with it I actually feel more discomfort than I felt before. Now not only is the initial situation that caused the discomfort still looming, but now I know that I've been avoiding with something that leaves me feeling empty and unfulfilled. So now I've doubled down on the discomfort and the happiness and fulfillment and relief I would have just felt doing the thing or processing the emotion didn't happen and in fact it is now farther away, because now I have to work through my feelings of frustration with myself for buffering instead of doing the thing that I actually wanted to get done. 

16:50 

Okay, interesting, isn't it? To see how avoiding discomfort to feel happier actually multiplies the discomfort and puts happiness even farther out of our reach. We feel a temporary reprieve from the discomfort. I will feel that when I go to social media, but by the time I'm done scrolling social media, which is almost always much longer than I wanted, I have multiplied my discomfort. When we feel discomfort around other people's discomfort, we tend to go into control mode and start swerving all over in their lanes. Our thought tends to be that if they are no longer feeling discomfort, then we won't feel uncomfortable either. So we step into trying to fix their situations for them by telling them what we think they should do, how they should respond, what they should be feeling or thinking. "Oh, don't think that," or "you shouldn't feel that way," or "you know what you should do," or "if I were you, I'd (fill in the blank)," right? Because if they do the work to get out of discomfort, then guess what? I don't have to. Them fixing their problem means that I don't have to watch them struggle anymore, so I don't have my own struggle over watching them struggle. 

18:09 

But what if it's okay that other people struggle, and we struggle? What if it's what we're meant to do, is not to fix their struggle, but for us to learn to be okay with their struggle, to learn to manage our own response to their struggle, and keep our hands off of the stuff they're putting on the table? The super tricky part about this is that much of the time we don't even realize we are going into fix-it mode when we are. We've been so conditioned through society as women, wives, and moms that it is our job to fix things for people, to make sure that people are happy, that we don't even see it as fixing. We see it as helping. Okay, how many times have you used the phrase, "oh, I'm just going to help them?" Or we think, "this will help them, I'm going to help them," when we're actually swerving into their lane. 

19:03 

And this is where we get ourselves in trouble. It's when we tell ourselves that we're helping, and we avoid seeing that we're actually getting into their lane. And again, why do we do this? Often, it's because we are uncomfortable with their struggle, with their discomfort, and our own discomfort as well. We just want everybody to be happy. We have been conditioned to believe that everything should be sunshine and daisies all of the time and that it's our job to make sure it is. And then when it's not, we or someone else is doing something wrong. 

19:39 

But again, life is not meant to be happy all. of the time. God didn't send us here to float along on fluffy clouds and sing and play the ukulele all day long. Right? I know I'm being a little silly, but here we go. We are here to learn and grow, to figure ourselves out, and overcome obstacles. Because in the overcoming of the obstacles, we become stronger, more aware, and more wise. And we grow into deeper understandings of who we are and who we feel we are capable of becoming. Leaning into the discomfort of the obstacles is what creates the foundation for us to push against so we can create movement. Because all movement relies on tension, the arrow shoots forth from the bow only after being pulled backward and having tension created. The butterfly creates the strength to fly by engaging in the discomfort of extracting itself from its cocoon. The baby creates the muscles needed to walk by engaging those muscles to get back up from a fallen-down position. The baby chick will only survive if it fights its own way out of the shell. 

20:58 

If we can learn to really normalize discomfort and truly embrace it as an important part of our journey here on Earth and an important part of everybody else's journey, then I think that happiness is actually more readily available to us. I think it's fascinating that the more we chase happiness, the more it tends to elude us. We chase it by avoiding discomfort, by engaging in buffering activities that actually move us farther away from happiness. We chase happiness by trying to control and fix others' discomfort, but that inevitably breaks down our most important relationships and leaves us disconnected. 

21:38 

Let me give you an example of how this works for me. I'm going to go back to the podcast example. Every week for five years, I have put out a podcast for y'all, and I love it. When I have finished writing, recording, and posting, I get this rush of  dopamine, and I'm so proud of myself and I'm so proud of this content, and I just am like, "gosh, I'm a freaking rock star. I am so amazing. Look what I've done." Some weeks, I dig right in on Monday, and between coaching sessions, I get a huge chunk of the podcast written, and I go to bed feeling satisfied with how I've used my time that day and it contributes to my happiness. Then on Tuesday, I'll finish up writing the podcast, I'll record it, I'll get it in the queue to show up on your feed on Monday, and again, I feel great at the end of the day because I've done this amazing thing already in the week and it's only Tuesday. And to make it even better, then I have more free time during the week to do other things I want and enjoy, and overall, I have a more focused and productive week, not just with my business stuff, but things in my personal life as well. And this contributes to my overall happiness for the week. 

22:51 

Other weeks, I piddle around all day on Monday. I waste time getting started. I might have an hour between clients and I just, well, you know, I get distracted on social media. I might decide I need to buy something on Amazon. The day ends and I haven't even decided on my podcast topic for the week. So Tuesday and Wednesday, generally, if I don't get started on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday follow suit with some constant reminders that I'm behind schedule. So even when I'm doing something I enjoy, the enjoyment is diminished by the voice in the back of my head saying, "oh, Tanya, you haven't done a podcast yet this week. You're behind schedule," which I mean, really, is there really a schedule? I get to do it myself, but it's not what I planned. I'm not keeping my word to myself. And so in the back of my head the whole time there's like "you should be doing your podcast. You haven't done it yet. You've got to get a podcast done," and then I feel some stress and some pressure and that makes it even harder to dig in and focus my brain because those feelings of stress and pressure create actions of avoidance and procrastination. 

24:03 

Now I always eventually get it done, but the overall happiness in my life is diminished with constant thoughts about how I haven't done it yet and and I haven't done what I'm committed to doing, that I'm not using my time well, that if I would just sit down and do it, and then I could relax and...why do I just put it off and I don't know and blah blah blah, right? All this constant chatter in my brain. 

24:28 

So see how that works when I put it off? I don't have as much free time and I don't enjoy the free time that I do take as much, and I tend toward feelings of stress and pressure rather than feelings of pride and accomplishment. Pride and accomplishment adds to my happiness. Stress and pressure take away from my happiness. And this pattern will play out in so many areas of our lives with so many people in our lives. So learning how to lean into the discomfort of our lives of things we want to do that may be difficult of embracing, that it's not supposed to be a cakewalk, but rather if this life is meant to be challenging and create growth, the more we can lean into that the more we will actually create more happiness, not less. Isn't that amazing how that works? 

25:26 

Alright, this is all part of growing up: learning how to have trust in ourselves, learning how to do the things we want to do that brings us great happiness. When we don't trust ourselves to do what we say we're going to do, we diminish our happiness. When we resist and push back against and fight something that's so natural and normal in life, the discomfort of challenge, our happiness is decreased. When we learn to lean into the challenge, when we learn to embrace it, when we learn to let other people feel their own discomfort, then we increase our happiness. 

26:13 

So the problem with happiness is that we have to learn how to be uncomfortable again. I'm not saying you have to do the cold plunge. That is not on my radar for sure because cold is not my thing, right? But that's partially what's going on with that, is people learning to lean into the discomfort of being cold. We are learning to reintegrate discomfort into our lives and there's a lot of ways you can do that without jumping in an icy bucket of water, just saying. 

26:52 

So okay, that's gonna do it for me this week. Thanks, my friends. Sure appreciate you being here. If you have not left a review, that would be an amazing thing and I would appreciate it so much. The more reviews I get, and the more stars I get, the higher it goes up on the algorithm of being recommended to other people. And if you know people in your life who would love this content as well or you think maybe they would and you hear a podcast specifically that you just think "oh, I think this person would love these ideas," please share. Share this with people in your lives because there's so much goodness here. So many ways for us to grow and become better and stronger and yes, might I say, even happier. Okay it's gonna do it  for me have an awesome awesome week and I will see you next week. Bye. 

27:46 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win Friday" email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to TanyaHale .com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.