You're going to be. Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff.

When we were children, I'm sure most of us had opportunities to play with puppets,

particularly the type of puppets where there were strings attached to their arms and legs, so that when we pulled them, the puppets with their strings attached to their arms and legs so that when we pulled them, the

puppets would move in different directions based upon the way we pulled the string.

And of course this can be very entertaining for children, particularly if they get to see a show

where a master puppeteer is controlling the puppets and having them do all sorts of things.

But the sad thing is, we're not very different than puppets. Let me explain.

We could walk into a restaurant and the waitress could comment on the way that we look,

like commenting on how nice our outfit looked, and we might feel like a million dollars, like everything was going well, and we are on top of the world.

Our puppet string of self-esteem had been pulled up. But later that same day, we may run into an old friend

and they may comment on how tired and exhausted we look, and our puppet string may be pulled down and we feel very ashamed and upset and

sad about our lives.

It's amazing how other people, because of what they say about us, pulls our puppet strings, and our emotions

go up and down throughout our lives.

We are greatly affected by the way people say things to us and what we think they think about us.

Let me give you really two good examples of this.

When I was in high school I remember being in a speech class and the professor queried us on the point of

why do students work so hard at getting the letters on their jackets? What he was referring to is when you did a sport for varsity, you were given a patch that you could put on your jacket, and it was called a letter, and that was based upon your succeeding in that sport.

And everyone gave different answers why people got them

and what it meant to them.

But the bottom line was, people got them

so that other people would think highly of them. It was sort of like a

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