Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Our minds are so powerful.

No matter what's happening in our lives, we can convince ourselves that we're doing the best that we can.

And it really isn't going to get any better than this,

so we best just adjust.

Many years ago, when I was working at my doctorate to become a clinical psychologist. I had one of those life-changing

moments. It happened towards the end of my doctorate. I was working at the VA hospital

in Suppovira.

And though I had up to that point several years

of working with people in the normal population,

I was very aware that people often could look at their lives

and say,

this is the best it gets, this is the best I can do,

I'm going to live with this.

I was used to people who lives weren't going that well

coming up for reasons why it wasn't, and really not doing anything about it. going that

were well coming up for reasons why it wasn't and really not doing anything about it to change it.

But at the VA hospital, the population that I was working with were men and some women who were living on the street, were very much addicted to alcohol and very hard drugs, had been in and out of prison, and really were what we could describe as a nadir of our culture.

Given that their lives were so challenging,

I had expected them to say that, that their lives

were challenging, and they were very sorry

for what they were doing, and would just say that, that they got it, that things

weren't going well and they were really messed up.

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