Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. I think if you and I went out there and

ask people what does happiness mean, I think we get a lot of different answers, but one of them I'm pretty sure we get is that

happiness is bliss. It's basically like having a drug high. We are feeling great all the

time.

And in this podcast, I really want to disabuse ourselves of that notion and talk about

more the peacefulness of happiness.

And how happiness comes from routines. It can even seem in some ways boring. It isn't

boring, but it can seem that way to the outsider and even to our egoic self. Our minds think, I should feel happy all the time.

I should feel great. I should feel wonderful. And if I'm not, I'm doing something wrong.

So we seek things that will cause us to feel happy all the time.

And it isn't really happiness that we're seeking.

We're more seeking thrills, excitement, just feeling that sense of kind of like drug-like high all the time.

I'm going to argue in this podcast, that isn't happiness, that's more of a drug.

In this podcast, we're going to explore what then is

happiness. There are many definitions of happiness but one I like that I like quite

a bit is happiness is being free of thoughts, living in the present moment, and really embracing the beauty of life because there's always something beautiful to be with if our egos, if our minds aren't

creating stories.

I do like to compare it to young children.

Young children can have a parent dying, they could be living in squaller, all kinds of things

could be happening in their lives that we would describe as horrible. But that young child,

that young innocent child, can see a bunny, can see a flower, can see a plant, can see something beautiful, and give his or her 100% attention to that and really find peacefulness and joy in being present without

caught up in all the stories that are going on around him or her. We can do that too. But what it may seem to our ego and to other people

...