Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. As we go through life, we experience

bumps, things that cause us to stress, anger, sadness, things that happen to us. Let's now take a moment and think about something

that may be bothering us right now. It could be anything current, for example, something

that someone is doing to us at work, at home, in our relationships.

It could be something in the past that's happened that we're still hanging on to.

It could be something more minor like when we get on the road we get

upset and distraught. But think of something for a moment. And this think about how it bothers

us. Let's pause for a minute and think.

Unfortunately, I can't know what you're thinking.

So let's think of a tangible example.

Probably the big one that many of us are going to experience is a breakup of a relationship or a friendship or even a divorce.

This is probably going to happen if we live long enough, someone we deeply care about, and that relationship is going to end.

Unfortunately, when healthy relationships end, they often end very poorly, because though they start off well they have a tendency

to end on a very bitter painful note and what we tend to do is we focus on the other

person's behavior and what they did wrong and how they're hurting us.

And it's important to understand that so that we can set boundaries and deal with that.

But far more important in regards to suffering, if we want to alleviate suffering,

what we have to focus on is not what they're doing, but what our thoughts are about what they're doing.

That's where the really crux of the suffering comes

from, not from what they're doing, but our thoughts about what they're doing. What we tend to do

in these situations is really focus on the other person's behavior and how

they've wronged us, how they've hurt us, and how they're causing us so much suffering.

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