You're going to be. Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. About 20 years ago, when I first started working in private practice,

I had a young man come to me, who was so intelligent, bright, and alive with life. It was amazing. He was an incredible pleasure

to work with. But he came from a background where there was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of, if I can use a phrase, darkness.

Just a lot of very, very painful things happened in his life.

We worked together for about six months and he was definitely getting better

and on an uphill path. He was so intelligent. I'm sure he had the potential to do great things

with his life inside of him.

But circumstances change.

He stopped coming to therapy and he got involved with other things.

He stopped working on himself. He stopped his pursuit of happiness.

About seven years later I was leaving my office one evening and he was there. He was waiting for me and just wanted to talk with me

for a few minutes clearly life hadn't gone well for him and though I could still see

hints of his old self most most of him wasn't there anymore.

He was a completely different person, and I could barely recognize him.

Life had been hard on him. I remember after he left, I believe I cried for a little bit

in my car, just being sad for how his life had turned out because he was such a beautiful, beautiful soul that had so much potential, but life

hadn't gone well.

Because he had come from such a challenging background, it didn't take long, only about 7 to 10 years, to change

his personality and things about him so much that he was barely recognizable.

We may be thinking, that's too bad, but how does that relate to me?

And if we didn't have a background as challenging as him,

it may not completely relate to us, but it does relate to us all.

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