Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. If you're new to this podcast or if you've been listening for a while, there's

good and bad news about happiness. Let me explain. As we begin to apply some of the principles we're learning here, we're going to find that our lives are going to get better.

We're going to find ourselves finding more peace in our hearts, finding more happiness in our hearts, and life is just going to go more smoothly.

And that's the good part, the very good part.

It's wonderful to live life more richly and find happiness no matter what's going on in our lives. It's such a joy to know that no matter what life throws us, we can be at peace. We can find happiness and joy no matter what. But there is a hard part to this happiness because no

matter how hard we try, no matter what we do, we have very little influence on other people

around us.

We can greatly affect our own happiness, our own peace,

but affecting those around us is far more challenging

and sometimes just impossible and sometimes they may even go the opposite way

in which we are going and these can be people that we deeply love.

First I'd like to use an analogy to illustrate this. Imagine that we're a very physically

healthy person. We eat really well, organic fresh fruits and vegetables. We exercise regularly and we just take good care of our bodies.

Now our own partner, our own family, our parents, our children, our sisters, our brothers,

may be the exact opposite of us. or I mean if you're a parent and in this situation like I said you make good choices you may notice that your children do the exact opposite of what you do.

Even in marriages we see this sometimes or in relationships where one partner is healthy and fit and the other person isn't.

I remember many years ago I was working out at this particular gym and it had a group of these men that were friends

that came to work out early every day.

And they had been friends for many years, they knew each other, they worked in the same type of

industries, but every day they were complaining about their wives and how

their wives weren't fit like they were.

These guys were in great shape.

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