Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr Robert Puff. When I was a kid we used to do a lot of

camping and I love being outdoors but there are dangers to being outdoors and one of them is getting thorns in your feet or in your hands.

Boy can they hurt. But when you're in primitive environments like camping, there often isn't tools to get them out.

So what you look for is another thorn to take the thorn

that you had in you out and then you throw them both away, preferably in the fire so it wouldn't

stick yourself again. And this thorn analogy is really a great way to look at happiness, how to find it, how to keep it, and how to live a happy life well.

So in this thorn analogy, we need to think of Thorns as those things which keep us from being happy.

And it's very simple, the things that keep us from being happy are our thoughts.

Whatever we're thinking, whatever we've been brainwashed with is going to affect us no matter what. So what happens is we have lots of things brainwashing us all day long. We participate in conversations, we watch

television, we listen to music, we text people, all day long we're being inundated with

thoughts and these thoughts affect our perspective of the world.

They can cause a suffering particularly when they're negative, when they're harsh,

when they're self-critical or critical of others.

Actions don't matter as much, what matters are the thoughts that we apply to the actions.

For example, one person may lose their job and they're fine.

Another person may go into a deep depression when they lose their job and they're fine, another person may go into a deep depression when they lose their job.

One person may have a breakup and end a marriage and again they're fine and seeing it as an opportunity

to grow and another person may go into a deep depression and stay there for the rest of the lives.

Okay, so what are these thorns? Where do they come from and how do we get them?

The thorns are the thoughts we have in our lives that

causes suffering, their concepts. They can come from being raised in an environment that's

negative. They can come from worrying and fretting over current issues. They can come from worrying and fretting over current issues.

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