Life Isnt Supposed to be Good All the Time

[Music]

if you’re happy and you know it clap

your hands

if you’re happy and you know it clap

your hands

clap along if you feel like happiness

is the truth i’m feeling so

cool top to the bottom just cool

when you worry your face will frown and

that will bring everybody down so don’t

worry

be happy do more of what makes you happy

have good vibes only turn that

frown upside down

the most important decision you could

ever make

is to be in a good mood from preschool

through adulthood we’re taught a very

clear lesson over and over again

just be happy because when you’re happy

life is good sounds simple right

maybe not since 2013

sales of self-help books in the united

states

have doubled and according to the world

health organization

rates of anxiety and depression around

the world

have increased by almost 20 percent in

the past two decades

these numbers are even higher for teens

it seems we’ve never had more guidance

on how to be happy

yet we’ve never been so unhappy

as a professor at penn state i’m seeing

this trend

in my classroom too i started teaching

in 1998 when no one had a smartphone or

a laptop

email was more of a novelty than a way

of life and

students never came to office hours even

though that was the only way they could

get in touch with me

these days my colleagues joke that i

need a bench outside my office because

my students are literally lined up

outside my door

waiting to talk to me and they’re not

asking me about class material

they’re telling me about how much

they’re struggling in their lives

they’re wondering why they’re not

happier i don’t need the world health

organization to tell me

people are more stressed out i see it

every day in my students

but i’ve also felt it in myself too

see most of my life i’ve struggled with

anxiety

mine manifests as an existential dread

that something terrible is going to

happen to me

or worse to someone i love or the world

so 2020 as you can imagine was

challenging but

long before the global pandemic hit my

anxiety had gotten

so bad that i had what some might call

a breakdown my therapist god lover

wouldn’t wish that job on anyone called

it my come to jesus moment

so let’s go with that it started in

for 10 years i’d been a professor during

the day

a musician at night and a wife and a

mama

throughout it all people wrote articles

about me

called me wonder woman everybody thought

i was doing great

and from the outside it looked like i

was really happy but on the inside

every day seemed like an internal battle

my anxiety was worse than it had ever

been

then i began experiencing some unusual

physical

symptoms strange flashes of light in my

peripheral vision

the sound of my heartbeat in my ear when

i laid down

i consulted with dr google and learned

that these were called ocular migraines

and pulsatile tinnitus and that both

might be symptoms of a brain tumor so

i consulted with my real live doctor and

she sent me for an mri

just to be safe thankfully the mri was

normal

but my symptoms persisted so

nevertheless

i persisted too and then things went

from

strange to scary i began having

difficulty

swallowing and one night sitting at home

with my family i found i couldn’t say

the words

i was trying to say my kids thought this

was funny

but my husband and i knew maybe i was

having a stroke so

i went to the er and after another mri

and a whole lot of blood work the doctor

came back in my room and

looking at my results he said to me

you’re

really healthy so this must all be

stress

this made no sense to me i’d been doing

so much more of what was supposed to

make me happy and my body was breaking

down

i decided right then and there that i

had to learn

why this had happened to me when all i

was doing was following the prescription

our culture gives

us to be happy i’d like to think that

fate stepped in

at this point i was sitting in my office

not long after that when a colleague

who just joined our department poked his

head in to say hello

his name was dr robert roser and he was

our new

professor of caring and compassion

the greatest title a professor could

ever have and rob

totally lives up to it now as luck would

have it

one of rob’s graduate students blake

colany was assigned to be my teaching

assistant

that semester blake and i often got

coffee after class

and one day i felt compelled to tell

blake about my come to jesus moment

and he in turn told me about the work

they were doing in rob’s lab

i heard words like contemplative

practices

empathy flourishing mindfulness

and i learned that rob along with richie

davidson at the university of wisconsin

and david germano at virginia had

designed a new course called the art and

science

of human flourishing their goal

was to teach students how to thrive in

their lives

not just survive and they hope to do

this

by helping students learn to manage

their own

stress i was like sign me up

i started popping into rob’s lab all the

time

asking all sorts of questions they

literally couldn’t get rid of me so

finally i just asked rob

if i could sit in on the flourishing

class and he said yes

and here’s where my come to jesus moment

my breakdown really became

my breakthrough class began

every day with an arrival practice

basically two to three minutes of guided

thought

deep breathing an invitation

to be aware and curious and

non-judgmental of whatever we were

thinking or feeling

in the present moment the class that

really resonated with me

was the day we talked about emotions

now in the social sciences we tend to

think of emotions as either positive

or negative positive emotions like

happiness

joy love our emotions our culture

teaches us to embrace negative emotions

like

anger sadness and fear our emotions that

our culture teaches us to avoid

or at least keep to ourselves rob

taught us instead to think of emotions

as

pleasant or unpleasant because

all emotions even the unpleasant ones

maybe especially the unpleasant ones

offer us something important the chance

to investigate

why we might be feeling these emotions

and then the

opportunity to really process them

the writer brianna wiest captures this

idea perfectly

she says your anger it’s telling you

where you feel powerless

your anxiety it’s telling you something

in your life

is off balance your fear

it’s telling you what you care about

your feelings aren’t random

they’re messengers let them speak to you

and tell you what you really need so

this got me to thinking

if the messages we’re hearing over and

over again from our culture

are telling us to run from a negative

emotions and only embrace the positive

ones then no wonder we’re such a mess

see the human brain wasn’t designed to

make us happy

it was designed first and foremost to

keep us safe

by responding to perceived threats and

danger

like a tiger in the bush is ready to

pounce

but because many of us in our modern

lives no longer have to worry about

being chased by a tiger

our brains tend to focus on the threats

that do

seem real threats like social exclusion

loneliness isolation not feeling good

enough

smart enough pretty enough popular

enough

rich enough cool enough or happy enough

so we do all these things to try and

make ourselves feel

better feel happier and often we just

end up

feeling worse what’s more these threats

are easy to find

every day right there at our fingertips

but our brains have another amazing

capacity and we call that plasticity

the human brain was designed to change

and adapt

to new experiences like the arrival

practices i was doing

every day in rob’s class habits like

deep breathing and being in the moment

and accepting all emotions have been

shown

to increase happiness happiness levels

and decrease

stress indeed rob’s lab is discovering

that students who take the flourishing

course are reporting reductions

in their anxiety and depressive symptoms

and greater levels of flourishing

well for me the proof was in the

existential pudding

before my breakthrough i’d been avoiding

all those unpleasant emotions that are

simply a part of daily life

but as that semester in rob’s class

progressed i noticed

something interesting was happening i

was developing a new relationship

with my anxiety when i felt it coming on

i didn’t brace myself i simply paused

took a few deep breaths noticed what i

was feeling

thought about what those feelings were

telling me and then told myself

it’s okay to not feel okay

this worked so well for me that i knew i

had to share it with my students

so now i do an arrival practice at the

beginning of every class i teach

and my students tell me how much these

practices help them too

now you can do an arrival practice in a

number of different ways but basically

they go something like this

you can join me if you’d like we get

comfortable

we center ourselves by putting our feet

on the ground we

sit up straight relax our shoulders and

we begin to breathe deeply

we notice our thoughts and feelings we

acknowledge and accept them for whatever

they are and then we let them go

then we offer ourselves some loving

kindness and compassion

we extend that compassion to our

families our friends and the world

because here’s the thing

life is hard sometimes it’s painful

sometimes

scary sometimes and sad sometimes

it’s also overwhelmingly beautiful

sometimes

and filled with joy and happiness and

love

sometimes life is lived in the moment

but it seems to me that maybe our

culture has us so focused on the pursuit

of happiness that we’ve forgotten to pay

attention

to the journey to all the moments for

better or for worse that happen

along the way i often tell my students

it’s not rocket science but it’s not

always easy

the trick to being human is to embrace

all of life

the ups the downs the smiles the frowns

the good times the bad times the happy

times and yes even the sad times because

life isn’t supposed to be good all the

time

it’s just supposed to be life but guess

what

once we learn to celebrate life in all

of its big

beautiful messiness it actually gets

better

thank you

you