The (real) Secret to Happiness: Attachment, Craving, and Enjoying Life

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Forrest and Dr. Rick focus on the secret to everyday happiness: learning how to like without wanting. They talk about the lies our brain tells us, the rapid movement from liking to wanting, and how we can enjoy an experience without craving more of it. They then explore a specific example of getting captured by the brain’s “inner ad agency,” and what we can do to stay in the present, meet key needs, and see the whole of our experience without getting trapped by any one part. You won’t want to miss this one! Forrest is now writing on Substack, check out his work there. You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 2:00: Liking, wanting, and healthy desire 11:30: The story craving tells us 15:00: Inhibition and “prudishness” around liking 21:15: “21st century problems” 25:35: A personal example of getting trapped by desire 29:05: Meeting your legitimate needs, somatic cues, and inner freedom 35:20: The search for the slightly better experience 42:25: The brain’s prediction errors, and longing for what is already here 47:50: The ability to zoom out and see the full spectrum of our experience 59:25: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors: Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month! Want to sleep better? Try the Calm app! Visit calm.com/beingwell for 40% off a premium subscription. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everyone. Welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today.
0:13.0	And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:15.0	And I'm glad that you decided to join for today's episode,
0:19.0	because today we're going to be focusing on what I think is truly the real secret to happiness.
0:26.0	First, learning how to like. This means getting better at enjoying the truly enjoyable
0:31.1	parts of life, becoming more aware of the full stream of our experience
0:36.0	without getting so wrapped up in the more difficult parts of it, and learning how to deliberately find
0:41.6	more things in life to really authentically enjoy.
0:45.0	And then second, relaxing around wanting.
0:48.0	This is craving in the Buddhist tradition and includes everything from excessive comparison and envy, jealousy, and addiction, to much more everyday experiences like something that I've been dealing with for a long time, wanting to be seen a certain way by other people. Today we're going to be
1:04.6	focusing on how to like without getting so wrapped up in wanting. And I'm
1:09.0	joined by somebody who's made that a major focus of his career clinical psychologist Dr Rick Hansen. So dad, how are you doing today?
1:16.3	I'm doing great and thoroughly liking our topic. Yeah, same very much. I was really excited for this one. A third thing to maybe just name at the beginning here that I think is essential for everyday happiness, which is what we're going to be focusing on, is getting better at coping in different kinds of ways, developing coping skills.
1:34.0	The reason that I didn't include it is that's what we talk about most of the time and
1:38.0	it's what we wrote a book on together called Resilience
1:41.0	so if you're interested in that, you can look it up.
1:43.4	And before we get into the material for today's episode, just a quick reminder,
1:47.7	you can follow me on Substack, I'm writing over there now, and if you would like to
1:51.5	support us in other ways ways you can find us on
1:53.3	Patreon it's Patreon.com slash Being Well Podcast. But Dad I would love to
1:58.4	actually just start with you here. You've thought about these ideas for a very
2:02.2	long time,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Being Well, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Being Well and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.