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

When I was an undergraduate, I had an intent at that time to go into graduate school to get my PhD.

Now nothing in and of itself was unhealthy about this, but what made it unhealthy for me

and caused me a lot of suffering is that I would compare in contrast with other people

in regards to how I was doing. I thought I had to be one of the best students

at school, so I would watch how they did, I watched how I did, and I would share how I did.

And my ego really caused me at that time a lot of suffering because there was a lot of

competition. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. But in either case, I was losing because of that comparison game. It really did cause

me a lot of suffering. My ego was, in a way, the real reason that happiness wasn't flowing from me at that time.

Well I had this insight over the summer that it's time to change this.

I didn't like the competition. I didn't like the suffering that came from that. I didn't like to make other people feel bad or me feel bad.

So what I decided to do when I started graduate school is that I would never tell anyone how I did on any test and what my grades were.

It's not uncommon after a test comes out for students to get together and ask each other

how they're doing.

And I just decided at that point I wouldn't participate in that. If people asked how I did, I would just say fine.

And I left it at that. And the wonderful thing that came for that is that I was free from all the egoic mind games. Instead of winning

sometimes, instead of losing sometimes, I could just focus on doing well in school for the

sake of doing well and school for the sake of doing well and learning for the sake of

learning well. From that point on it was one of the best decisions I'd ever made because

there was a lot of mental suffering during the first four years when I did compare when I was egoic,

but during the remainder eight years of graduate school,

it was incredibly freeing because then all I was doing was learning and getting ready for my profession and really

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