Accountable Mentality Podcast E1: Secret to Happiness

(upbeat music) All right, looks like we are back. And, ready to rock and roll. So, I appreciate you guys popping in as the first dry run. This is a accountable mentality podcast. Yep, so one, talking about happiness today. And I hope that all of you guys have a great day. Hope this message finds you in good spirits and a place of contentment. Please note that this show is meant for mature audience. So, if you're at work or you have your children around, please consider putting headphones. Maybe a few curse words or something like that. Again, welcome to the accountable mentality podcast on live stream, here on Twitch. My name's John and I'm here today to share with you some dynamic and thought-provoking information that could save your life, improve your life, change your life, whatever would have you. This show is gonna challenge some of the societal norms that you're used to and make you think critically about your behavior and the way that you choose to live and approach that you have to your life. The Accountal Mentality Podcast aims to empower each and every one of us to focus on getting it right and not just being right. So today, on a very first episode, we're gonna dive right in to the deep stuff and we're gonna discuss happiness. I hope that everyone who listens to this is happy and in a really good place right now. I hope that if you're not happy or you find that you're rarely happy, that we can give you some food for thought today to help you get started in that right direction or find more of the happiness that you're looking for. But, you know, first, anytime you're hunting anything, you're looking for something you have to understand as nature, right? You can't hunt a deer and not know where to find them of what their habits are and so on and so forth. So, let's look at happiness. What is happiness? I took the pleasure of looking up the definition in the Miriam Webster dictionary and it says that happiness is a state of wellbeing or contentment, joy. It's pretty short and sweet. So, I looked up joy and it was a little bit longer. The definition of joy is the emotion evoked by wellbeing or success or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. Okay, still pretty vague, still pretty vague. And I think it's kind of vague because, right, like happiness is this abstraction, like justice or courage or love. So, it makes it kind of difficult to define. Happiness is so many different things to so many different people. What might make me happy may be a nightmare to you or vice versa. So, you know, happiness isn't just having a family or just being super successful or having a big house or whatever. You can't weigh it. You can't measure it. You can't bottle it, save it for later. You got too much happiness today. Pull it out on a day where you're like, fucking depressed or something, right? Like, it doesn't work like that. The thing about happiness though is, when you have it, you know it. And when you don't have it, no one can give it to you. It's kind of weird, you know? I mean, I'm not sure if happiness like is even part of this earth. It might be alien or something because you can't weigh it. You can't quantify it. The scientific method does not account for it. So, it's kind of hard to pinpoint what it is. But we're all still trying to find it, right? We're all still searching for it. So, you know, with that vague information, it makes it hard to find and it's overwhelming. When you're sad or when you're down or you're having a tough time or a spell in life, it can be overwhelming. You know, it can be very frustrating. I mean, I've been there. I know that you all have. And so, that's why conversations like this are so important. And that's why you're listening, you know? 'Cause you're curious what the hell is this guy going to say about fucking happiness and where to find it, right? Like, send me some money and I'll give you happiness. You don't have to worry about that. (laughs) But, you know, here we are. We're asking ourself this question, the question that they've we're asking themselves when Plato and Aristotle talked about happiness, right? We're trying to figure out what it is that actually makes us happy. You know, some of the most highly-regard and enlightened people that, you know, ever lived have been quoted about happiness. And I put some together for this just to share with you all. And I'd like to bounce these, I guess, off of you. But, the Dalai Lama, I think that's how you say it. Dalai Lama says that happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. Buddha said, "To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind." Okay, that's interesting. That's very interesting. The philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said, "The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts." Notice none of these people when speaking about happiness, they talk about money, cars, clothes, hoes, any of that, anything, not even remotely close. What did they talk about? What did they have in common? Well, each of them had the message that happiness begins with ourselves, that it's something internal, right? The Dalai Lama says, "It comes from your own actions." Buddha says, "Discipline and control one's own mind." Marcus Aurelius said, "Quality of your thoughts." Right? That's just deep, because that's not exactly the message that we get all the time. That's not what is constantly pumped into our brain in all of our sensory organs. I don't know where you are while you're listening to this, but I know in my society here in America, we live in a very commercialized society where every commercial TV show, everything is pushing you by something, understand something, that's going to benefit some company. But those things aren't going to bring you happiness, right? We know happiness definitely comes from inside of us. Happiness is a way of looking at things. Happiness is a mentality. Right? I mean, that's kind of crazy. We've got to be accountable to ourselves. You cannot scapegoat or make excuses or otherwise bullshit yourself about these external issues saying, "Oh, well, if I just had more money, I wouldn't have a problem." Or if I could just win the lottery, man, life would be perfect. Trust me, that's not true. Mo money, mo problems, you get that money, your real problems will come to the surface. If you got money, you can't look at the guy who has a simple life for the woman who has a simple life and say, "Man, I wish I had a wife who loved me. "Oh, I wish I didn't have to work 100 hours a week "and have to take care of all this property "and all of my family's problems and so on and so forth." You don't look at them. The grass is always greener. And you're not gonna find happiness by constantly looking at your neighbor or your friends or your family, or even worse, the people on social media, and comparing yourself to that and thinking that that is how you're going to get happiness. You're never gonna get it. It's not gonna happen. And if you have that mentality that, "Oh, when I get this promotion, things are gonna be perfect." When I get, if only this relationship would work out, my life would be perfect. No doubt there's some truth to some of those things. But it's not the be-all-end-all. It's not even the cornerstone or the root of it. So what is? Okay, so then what is? I mean, 'cause I get it. I get the mentality. I get the mentality. Someone's like, "Okay, John, so you're telling me that my boss not giving me the raise and the promotion, I was promised that's my fault." And that I'm wrong for being pissed. I mean, I get it. Someone hits your corner parking lot. Is it your fault? And do you not have the right to be pissed? Absolutely. Absolutely, right? Your father is told that he's diagnosed with cancer. Is it your fault that you're pissed or that you're unhappy? Absolutely not. I get it. Okay, I understand that part. What we have to keep in mind, though, friends, what we have to keep in mind is that bullshit happens to all of us. It doesn't matter if you're a good person, a bad person, whether you try hard, whether you don't give a shit about anything. Mis-fortune. happens to all of us randomly, right? It doesn't, it's not biased towards Christians or Jews or atheists. Shit just happens, you know? So the only thing you can control is yourself, your mentality, your thoughts, you can't change what happens to you, but you can change the way you react to the things that happen to you. You can change your mentality so that when things happen to you, you can handle it a little differently. You can choose to be prepared for these things so that it makes it easier for you to achieve happiness, right? So let me give you an example of what that looks like, right? Let me give you an example. So, so you go to your friends house, right? You have a best friend, you just walk in their house, they walk in yours, you walk in theirs, it's no big deal. You go over there every day, hypothetically, right? So you go over there every day, you pop in on Monday. And when you walk in, you hear warning water. You hear the water running in the kitchen, okay? So you go into the kitchen and you see the sink is overflowing. The sink is plugged and the sink, the water is running. The sink is overflowing and there's water starting to trickle onto the floor. So what do you do? Well, of course you turn off the water and, you know, possibly you pull the plug on the sink, let the water kind of drain down and then you find a towel or a mop or whatever would have you paper towels and you clean that water up off the floor so that, you know, they don't get any water under their linoleum or hardwood floor or laminate, whatever. So you don't think anything of it, your friends says, oh, thank you for cleaning that up. You say, no problem. I got you. Damn, that sucks. You know, I hope it didn't damage your floor and you don't think anything of it, right? It's your pleasure to do that for your friend. Well, let's look at the same scenario, but on Friday. Now you've come over Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and you every time I've come over, you've seen the sink overflowing and you've cleaned the water up. And at some point now you've told your friend, hey, stop fucking plugging up the sink and running the water. You dumbass. You're going to ruin your floor like that, but they don't listen. So you come over Friday and you open the door and what happens? You hear the water running in the kitchen. The exact same thing that happened Monday. On Monday, you were a gong home Monday. No problem. I got it. I'll clean it up. No problem, buddy. Sorry that your on Friday is a whole nother story, right? On Friday, you're like, this fucking asshole is trying to flood their house. Like are they trying to get an insurance claim or some shit, but you're not very happy about cleaning up. You have better shit to do than run around and be made for this fucking jackass, right? Now the situation is identical, but your perspective is not the way you're looking at it is changed. So then what changed your attitude, right? Fucking attitude changed because you're frustrated because you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them think, right? So you're frustrated. And now you're not cleaning it on Friday the same. Your whole disposition about this situation is completely different. So what is that? What's the point? Right? So what does that tell you? I'll tell you what, let me give you one more example and we'll get to that. And then I'll let you go and enjoy the rest of your day. So I'll give you another example. My wife, she works in a very high volume healthcare environment. Okay? And a couple of years ago, she took a new position and she started coming home, fuck, and pissed, right? She was pissed every damn day because, you know, some process was always breaking down. Some communication or some electronic signal, you know, something. It was always something every day with some more bullshit. She seemed like she can never just go to work and just go in her office and just do her job and then just go home. Like it was always so much bullshit from her staff and other entities within the organization that she, you know, felt like a firefighter always putting out fire, so to speak, and not what her real job was to her at the time. So as her friend, of course, I listened to her day after day and, you know, I tried to make her feel better, told her, "Hey, it's just temporary, you know, just kind of cutting your teeth in a new position." You know, it's going to be fine. But after two weeks of that shit, it wasn't fine. And it became apparent that she had just kind of inherited a shit show, right? And it was going to be a shit show for quite some time because if you know anything about healthcare, this is a pretty big bureaucracy, you're not just changing processes immediately. And, you know, whatever your job or line of work is, you probably, you know, you probably relate. So one day I just told her, I was like, "Hunt, what are you going to do? You're going to become an alcoholic, you're going to start drinking a bottle of wine every day, you get home, you're fucking, you can't be mad every day about this." What do you expect? It's happened every day for two weeks. Do you think you're just going to go in on week three and it's just going to magically be different? Well, no, of course it's not. Of course I didn't say it just like that because she would have punched me or something. But that was basically the gist of what I told her. What I told her was this, honey, try, try having the attitude that you're a firefighter now, that your new position at work is that you fucking deal with bullshit every day. And on the days where you don't have to deal with any bullshit, that was a lucky day, a truly lucky day. And it was a great day, right? Well, why would she want to do that? Well, clearly because if you change your expectations, if you change your perspective, see she was looking at it like the friend who was coming all over on Friday and was very frustrated every single time the water was overflowing. But she if she looked at it like the friend looked at Monday, then she's still cleaning up that mess. But in one hand, she's perfectly happy and fine with it. And on the other hand, she's miserable. Do you see? So how does that apply to us? Right? How does that apply to, you know, what we're talking about today? You know, it's all about your mindset. That's the point. If your mindset is nothing but fucked up better happen today or else, I'm going to go eight shit. Well, damn, get prepared to go eight shit every day because this is the life that we live. News flashed, life is not meant to always be easy. Right? So in time, you know, my wife, she began to be much happier at work because as she adopted the mentality of, okay, I got it, I got shit I got to put up with today. It become less a surprise, more of an expectation. And she started to handle it with grace. And then as those problems and kinks, she was able to get those worked out eventually and slowly, but surely her job began to morph into what she wanted it to be originally. But the key to that and the key to her being successful in that position was her changing her perspective in the way she looked at it. So if you're not happy with your situation, let's work on helping you change your perspective. Okay. So what do we go from here? Because change is impossible, right? You know, we all want to change. We don't quit smoking and start working out, stop being so, you know, this way or that, changes so fucking difficult, right? If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. And what I'd like for you to really try to embrace and just consider is if there's a way you can change your perspective. That changes your attitude and it makes it a lot easier to change your behavior. Okay. That's the secret. The secret of happiness is not knowing how to find happiness. I would propose to you that the secret of happiness is actually learning how to become not unhappy. So if you find yourself a situation where you really upset or you frustrated and it's not temporary, having the skill to internalize those feelings, hold yourself accountable for the portion that you can control. And then changing the way you look at it may be the fastest way that you can achieve your change. But I can promise you one thing. I can guarantee you one thing. If you think that life is supposed to be easy or it's supposed to be happy all the time, you're not going to find happiness. If you're thinking about how the neighbors affording that escalate and affording that house and affording us in their kids to public or private school and how they can do this. And if you're looking at your peers and you're thinking in that way, you're not going to achieve happiness. Okay. But if you're willing to work on yourself, if you're willing to hold your stuff, self-accountable for your own actions, your own thoughts. That's the first step my friends. That's the first step of finding more happiness in your life. Okay? So let me close with this. I'm gonna let you guys get out of here. Life is a whirlwind. It's crazy. I want you to all put yourself out there. I want you to all try to be actively mindful. Okay? About what it is you're thinking, why you're thinking that way. And if that thought process is going to help you become happy, think about whether or not your attitude is helping you achieve happiness. Show yourself some courage. Do something different today instead of staying in your lane or in your comfort zone. Read or listen to someone else's story or account so that you can you know possibly gain a new perspective that may help change your attitude in your life. The best things in life my friends are not free. They say that they are. They say the best things in life are free. That's not true. The best things in life are definitely not free. You just can't buy them. There's a difference. Anything worth having requires hard work. And trust me, you're worth it. So until next time have a great day. Take care.