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

Do you know one of the main reasons why we suffer?

The answer I give may surprise you.

We suffer because we identify with ourselves. Let me say that again. We suffer because we identify with ourself.

Now you may be wondering, Dr. Puff, what do you mean by that?

Let me explain.

Let's start from the beginning to explain this. Go to a park sometime where there's

lots of children, all different ages, and let's watch them. The younger kids you'll find will be playing, doing very silly goofy things,

and they'll be completely oblivious to what other kids are thinking about them or even other adults. But with time, with time, they begin

to say, oh, what does he or she think about me? What do my friends think about what I'm doing right now?

What do they think about what I'm wearing? What do they think about what I'm saying?

And with time, they start to identify with themselves saying this is who I am and I am

this way because of the way people treat me.

I must be a cute person because people tell me that I'm cute. I must be intelligent because people say

that I'm smart. I must be really funny because people laugh at my jokes. We begin to identify

with what other people think about us.

And what we call this is, we call this ourselves.

This is who we are.

We become that which other people think of who we are

in our interactions with what people think about

us. And then we develop a sense of self. But this causes us suffering, believe it or not.

We suffer because sometimes we don't like the identity that has developed around us.

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