Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. When I turned 16 in high school, though I already had been working at

side jobs like mowing people's lawns, shoveling, snow, things like that. Now that I was 16 I could get a real job.

And my first real job I got was at a restaurant called Hardee's. It was a fast food restaurant, much like McDonald's. And my job was cooking the French fries.

And I remember I had one focus. I was going to be the best French fry cooker they had ever seen. I was just going to do a really good job cooking those French fries.

So whenever it was slow, I would just be wiping things down, claiming things off, but I was always ready to make sure those

French fries were available to customers.

And my focus was really on just doing a really good job cooking those french fries. Well to my surprise they were so

impressed with what I was doing that they started promoting me and I don't remember

how long it was I think in about a year. I was assistant manager working at that restaurant as a full-time high school student.

And that was a lot of work.

So what I did was, because I had to go to school and work at this restaurant. It was a lot of hours.

I started drinking sodas that had caffeine at them to keep me awake.

So I thought I wouldn't fall asleep because I didn't have a lot of time to sleep because it was just a lot of work.

But one morning when I was sleeping before I woke up all of a sudden I felt like someone stuck a knife in my stomach.

It was horrible. I mean literally it felt like a knife was stuck in my stomach.

So I went to the doctor and he started asking me questions. He said, well, do you drink coffee? I said, no.

Do you drink tea? And I said, no. Then he said, well, are you under a lot of stress? And I didn't feel I was under stress. I was

under stress. I was managing my grades fine and I really liked the job. I didn't feel stress I was just busy and then he finally asked

me what do you drink soda and I said yep a lot of soda and he said well you have an ulcer

so I stopped drinking soda but I And he said, well, you have an ulcer.

So I stopped drinking soda, but I remember it took years for that ulcer to completely go away.

I didn't use medicine or anything. I just let it naturally heal.

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