Transforming Life Struggles into Growth

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff Have you ever gone through a devastating heartbreak? a health scare or a major life disruption and someone tells you to just look on the bright side. It can feel incredibly dismissive I actually don't think people are trying to be hurtful when they make statements like this. It's just so hard to look at someone else suffer. And because we want to help other people, we just try to come up with something that might just work. Look on the bright side. But there's actually a real danger in denying pain. Think of it this way, you have a rotting wall that is fallen apart And you want to make it look better. So you paint right over it and then it looks better, right Like the rotting wall, suppressed pain always manifests as anxiety or illness later on. When I was in high school, I was working at a full time job and going to school full time. It was quite a lot. That meant I didn't have much time for sleep. Well I was working in the fast food industry and one of the benefits was in quotes, I could drink all the soda that I wanted for free And then I remembered to this very day, in the middle of the night, I woke up and I felt someone stck a knife in my stomach. It was so painful. I went to the doctor the next day and he said, With all that soda you're drinking and all that caffeine you're drinking to stay awake, I think you have an ulcer. And I did And I had to stop drinking soda in order to let my ulcer heal. and it did. But imagine this instead, instead of going to the doctor, I started eating tums in order to neutralize the acid in my stomach. and it worked temporarily, but I also kept drinking the soda and it worked too. And with time, that ulcer would have gotten a lot worse So just like we can't ignore our physical pain, we really can't ignore our emotional pain. But does this mean when we're going through a really hard time, we just need to become a curmudgon and an unhappy, grumpy, sad person? Not at all. Today, I want to talk about the goal of living a mindful life not to escape the friction But the goal is to become an agathyist, someone who accepts a friction, knowing that all things, even painful ones, ultimately lead towards good. So what do I mean by the philosophy of aggathism? Agathism comes from the Greek word aggathos, meaning good. Unlike an optimist who blindly believes everything is fine Right now, and Agathes acknowledges that things might be terrible right now, but trust that the final outcome will be good And this wisdom goes back to the ancients and has been around throughout human history. The ancient mystic Platanus understood this perfectly. He taught that everything emanates from the one, meaning the ultimate source of goodness, and is always trying to return to it. From an eternal point of view, the universe is not chaotic or cruel It is a profound unfolding process of returning to peace. Or think of the ancient alchemists who turned lead into gold, and Agathyas turns the lead of the daily life struggle into the gold of empathy, patience, and wisdom. I think what's challenging about this approach is that there are two outcomes There are a lot of people, perhaps over fifty percent of people who go through very difficult times. and when we see them later, they aren't doing well I live on the west coast near Los Angeles, and if you go to Los Angeles, there are a lot of homeless people. They didn't get there overnight. They got there through struggle, particularly the ones that ended up being addicted to drugs or alcohol. It wasn't that their lives were going wonderfully, everything was fine, and then they ended up turned into drugs and ended up on the street. theirir lives were really hard. and in response to this harshness, they turned towards drugs to numb the pain. But now think about the wisest, the most evolved person that you know of, someone that you actually know personally. Take a moment Think about who is that person. And then since you know them, think about their lives. Have they had easy where everything was handed to them and they never had any struggles? Of course not. You will find, I think, as I have found, that anyone who's profoundly evolved as a human being has gone through horrific struggles And they grew out of that and became the person we know now. Or perhaps if you can, think about one of the biggest struggles you've had in your life, one that you overcame fast food job that gave me an ulcer also later fired me Though it was difficult, very difficult because a lot of my identity was tied up in working there I was able to let go of my pride. moveove on and find other work that I could do myself at the time, but that also wasn't so hard on my body The ulcer and being fired together taught me I needed to slow down and find balance in my life, that diving into things wasn't good for my soul And I've held by that rest of my life. If I hadn't had those negative experiences, I wouldn't have changed and learned to live a much more balanced life for the rest of my life. Our life struggles, which all of us face are like resistance training for our soul. This morning, after I record this podcast, I'm going to go to the gym and lift weights If we want to build physical strength, we don't do it by sitting on the couch. We get in the pool and swim against the drag of the water, or we get on a yoga mat and hold a physically demanding pose until our muscles burn. We deliberately subject our body to friction and resistance because it's the only biological way grow stronger. When it comes to the growth of our soul, the universe treats us the exact same way. When we face a difficult cooworer, a financial stress, or a painful loss, the universe is handing us a heavy weight. It isn't punishing us, it's giving us the exact resistance training required to build a stronger, more compassionate soul. No one grows when life is easy. The growth comes by overcoming and working through the ups and downs of life. Are you familiar with the beautiful artwork of Frida Carlo? When Frida was eighteen years old, she was involved in a horrific bus accident that shattered her spine and pelvis. She survived, but she was left completely bedridden in a full body cast for months, facing a lifetime of chronic pain. Her dreams of entering medical school were completely destroyed When she was trapped in bed, her parents brought her a custom lap easel and a mirror mounted to the canopy. Having nothing else to look at, she began to look inward. She took the immense physical and emotional friction of her reality and poured it onto the canampvas. The devastating accident was the exact resistance training that forged her into one of the most brilliant, transcendent artists of the twentieth century. She alchemized her brokenness into masterpieces. We might not all face a shattered spine, but we all face our own version of heavy friction. The goal isn't to deny the friction The goal is to say, how do I turn this into something beautiful Working as a clinical psychologist, I work with people that go through divorce. a lot of people do, as you know, and sometimes there's children involved, so there's a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. And that could perhaps be the end of the story. Something horrible happened and it's horrible for everybody. And I think for a lot of people, this is how the story goes But in my work, I've also seen and help people transform this tragedy into something beautiful. Sometimes they realize that the person they're with wasn't really right for them. and they need to find someone more aligned with who and what they are. Sometimes the children of divorced parents actually do better becausecause now the parents aren't fighting all the time and they have more one on one time with each parent. Again, to reiterate, it's not that our goal is to deny the suffering that we're going through right now The goal is to say, can something beautiful grow out of this suffering? And we have to be incredibly careful not to stay stuck Don't we all know people who are years later still angry, upset over some event that happened in their past? I think what will be helpful for us is to think about someone we know that has gone through a really difficult time and come out of it. There are just so many beautiful examples in our world where we can discover these type of experiences where the tragedy was turned into something beautiful. Again, the Egathist approach isn't about denying the tragedy of what we're going through right now. It's giving us hope that there'll be an outcome that is better You might completely disagree with me right now, but the pain that we hang on to and don't work through As a result, it creates a very hard life that never gets better Whatever life throws at us We need to say, this hurts, but there's a way out of this 's a way to make this better and I'm going find that way Having hope, believing their there iss an outcome isn't denying the reality of what we're going through right now. It's giving us hope that no matter what life throws at us, there's always a way to make our lives better An optimist, yes, can be a denial But a pessimist is a very exhausting life When we're at Agathas, we do three very specific things. When we're facing a very difficult moment today, we don't pretend it doesn't hurt. We acknowledge it. We say out loud, This is really hard and I'm feeling overwhelmed Validation is the first step of resilience. But then we go to step two. once we've validated our feelings, we ask ourselves one powerful question How is this happening for me instead of to me What muscle is this heavy lifting forcing us to build? Is it teaching us boundaries, patience, humility? And then thirdly, we release the resistance. Much of our suffering comes from fighting the reality of the present moment We take a deep breath Drop our shoulders and consciously stop fighting the friction We trust that the universe has a master plan that is far more beautiful than our current view allows us to see. We don't have to be thankful for the bad things that happen to us, but we can be thankful for the strength they leave behind And then one last thing, when we go through these challenges and they come out well because we didn't give up Write them down, remember them because more challenges in life are going to come But with that record of remembering this is what I did and how I got through this and how it turned out to be not even a bad thing in the long run will'll find that Next event happens. We're ready. thinging Let's say I'm wrong Things continue to get worse. And we're heading towards the end Would we rather take our last breath in despair O our last breath. with hope If hope is the only thing We have to hold on to It is a very Very beautiful thing. Brace That seems my friends. Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, please go to wWW. happinesspodcast. org. That's happinesspodcast. org. Until next time. Acept what is, love what is.