Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff.

Have you ever known someone or perhaps been this person yourself?

Where from the world's eyes it looks like they have or you have everything and yet at the same time there's a great deal of unhappiness there why is that or perhaps there's been times in our lives where we've worked really hard for something,

perhaps someone that we want to be in love with, perhaps a goal that we want to achieve,

perhaps a career that we've really wanted or an educational achievement

that's very important to us.

And then we get these things and we're still not happy.

Again, why is that?

And yet we know other people who have very little

and we're not envious of their lives in any way. And yet they seemingly seem happy and their lives

seem to be going well. Why is that? Or if we've lived long enough, we've even known people who we would describe

as in pain are going through a horrific ordeal right now, and we look at their lives and they have a smile on their hearts.

Why is that? The common theme in all four of these scenarios that I just painted was The external doesn't seem to be very important when it comes to happiness.

But what is important then? Why can we be happy when it looks like we should be unhappy?

And we can be so unhappy when it looks like we should be happy.

Or perhaps in other words, who is this enemy that is keeping

us from being happy? When it looks like everything should be going well.

Well, that enemy, if you haven't guessed yet, is us, or to be more precisely, our thoughts.

Our thoughts are so powerful in the way they shape us and our happiness.

But the sad thing is, we spend very little time trying to make changes to our thoughts.

Instead, we look to external changes that can make us happy.

If we find that right person, then we'll be happy. If we reach that financial

...