Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. There's a lot of things in life

that can keep us from being happy, but one of the big ones is imperfection. When we're younger, our bodies

may look good, they may be smooth, and then with time we notice that, wow, I'm starting

to get wrinkles, or oh no, my hair's starting to do gray.

Imperfection set in.

In other ways they do too.

We may be going through life, dreaming of our soulmate, meeting that person, and then it doesn't work out.

And our hearts are broken, and sometimes they feel damaged.

We're damaged goods now. We're just not the same. Life can throw us so many curves that it makes

it hard to stay happy because life just doesn't turn out the way we expected it to, we wanted it to, and because of that we begin to suffer.

Maybe we had plans of being a doctor, but we end up working at the local grocery store.

Maybe we had plans of having a beautiful home overlooking the ocean, and instead, because we couldn't make our rent have moved

backing with our parents. Maybe we had plans to come to Hollywood and make it big

in the movies but instead life said no you're going to get married you're going to have

children and your Hollywood dreams have died but what I want to ask ourselves

really ask ourselves today, are these imperfections necessarily

a bad thing?

Or could we see them as something beautiful, part of who we are, and that we can not only not be ashamed of them,

but actually celebrate them.

Many centuries ago in the country of Japan, philosophy an approach to life was developed that had

deep wisdom in it. You may have never heard of it but it's called Wabi Sabi and at its core it's called Wabi Sabi.

And at its core, it's about learning to accept the imperfections of life,

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