The Truth About Happiness
[Music]
when i was 14
i wrote this letter to my teacher and it
could have got me
into so much trouble
but instead it taught me a really
important lesson about happiness
a lesson though that i wasn’t to learn
until i was 27
feeling completely broken
i found myself face down on my carpet
sobbing
sobbing like an italian widow at her
husband’s funeral i was in
child’s pose hands palms turned up
begging for the answer to what will make
me truly happy
if you’ve ever asked yourself that
question or maybe
if you’re asking yourself that question
right now
this talks for you stay with me because
i want to show you that
your natural state of being is to be
happy
and that’s not because of the car that
you drive because of how you look or
because of how much money you
make it’s because of what you think
about happiness and this is more
important than
ever right now because in
may 2020 it was reported in the states
by the norc who did a study at chicago
university
that less than 29
of americans have ever said that they
feel very
happy and in the uk a study in june 2020
by the national office of statistics
reported
that people experiencing symptoms of
depression had doubled
from one in ten to one in five now
of course this has all been impacted by
the pandemic but
you know what life’s always going to do
its thing it’s always going to be high
and it’s always going to be low
it will be positive and it will be
negative you can’t stop
life from doing that but what
you can do is learn how to take
control of how you feel so that you can
make life better even when you’re faced
with adversity and that’s possible for
you
but you may have been taught something
about happiness
that means you’re actually looking for
it in all of the wrong places
which is why we need a re-education
on happiness we need a reset we need to
reset the truth
around happiness and this is something
that i believe we should have been
taught
in school because when i was at school
i hated school
i found it so boring
i wanted to be anywhere else but where i
was at that
point in fact what i wanted was to be
further ahead doing the thing that i was
going to do
when i grew up whatever that thing was
going to be
it was a average wednesday morning and i
said to my mate you know what should we
just skip class
14 we had enough
money to buy a 10 box of cigarettes
a bottle of 20 20 lime and kiwi flavor
i don’t know if you’ve ever had that
it’s kind of like when an ice pop melts
and then it’s been mixed with the white
wine that your mum keeps in the corner
for
forever to make the spaghetti bolognese
with
yeah and because we were feeling classy
we splashed out on
a large packet of mcdonald’s fries as
well this was a good morning
i i actually don’t know how i have gone
from drinking at 14 on a wednesday
morning
to being a master life and business
coach who’s coached
thousands of hours i mean it really does
prove
that transformation is possible for
anyone but you know what by 10 30
we have two cigarettes left
we’ve pretty much finished the 2020 and
the fries were gone ages ago so we think
well we’ve got
no other choice we’re gonna have to go
back
to school we needed a really good cover
story though
so i said here’s what we’ll do
i will write a letter from the vet
saying that
we found a dead dog on the green and we
poured that dog
to the veterinary as i was writing this
letter i
also found myself writing what
responsible and respectable
young women we were
so we take this letter back to school
with bright green
lime-colored tongues smelling of
and booze
i don’t know how but in that moment
we got away with it or at least we
thought we got away with it
that morning taught me something
really important about my
happiness and what i thought was missing
and it comes back to
something that we are asked at school
were you ever asked what do you want to
do when you grow up
i know from the many hours i’ve spent
listening to
people tell me what makes them happy and
what makes them unhappy that
this question alone has been
subliminally
teaching us that when you get there
once you’ve figured out what it is you
want to do once you’ve arrived at that
destination
then you’ll be happy you have to do
something to be happy
when in fact what it does is it means we
get stuck in a cycle of saying
i’ll be happy when i have got a job that
i love i’ll be happy when i’m in a
relationship i’ll be happy when i’ve
lost
more weight and it becomes this
happiness
waiting game where we’re just
outsourcing our happiness
to some point in the future it’s exactly
what happened to me because a year after
this letter i quit school
at 15 and then at 16
i left home because i wanted to get out
there and i wanted to find
that thing that was going to make me
happy
and i accomplished a lot at 21 i was
assistant producer at 22
i had a restaurant in panama i did many
different things before
- i changed my life
whenever i felt unhappy because i didn’t
fear change
and that’s a good thing but if you’re
changing
your life to escape yourself
it’s never going to be enough
if you’re trying to find yourself out
there in your job
in your relationship in how you look
you’re only ever pulling yourself
further away
from your true self
and at 27 when i was
stuck and unhappy again crying
every day because my negative inner
dialogue was
so strong that i had voices in my head
that were giving me panic attacks
i realized that this time it had to be
different
have you ever woken up in the night
with a start because you’ve remembered
something or you’ve had an idea or
you’ve had an insight
the moment that followed for me felt
just
like that it was like
i remembered something that i’d always
known but had been in a deep sleep and
forgotten
and that was that i
am responsible for my happiness and i
had
not been taking full responsibility for
it
so in that moment i made a commitment to
myself
that i was going to discover
what does it mean to be truly happy
right now
here’s what i’ve learned your true
self is happy
i want you to think about the last time
that you
didn’t feel good maybe you were stressed
at work maybe you were going through a
breakup
or you’d been sick you’re getting over a
hangover
what was the first thing that you said
when you came
back to feeling good again can you
remember
i bet that you said ah
oh yeah feel like myself again
and that is because we equate feeling
good
with feeling ourself
when we’re happy it just feels like
coming home
and i’m not talking about the kind of
happiness that would be like an all
singing or dancing character out of glee
that would be exhausting
it’s also not the happiness that you
experience
because you win that contract or because
you get a match on tinder
it’s much more content and you feel
much more at peace this is what we’re
really searching for
so i’m not saying that you shouldn’t
change your life
because of course
if you don’t have money worries or if
you meet the love of your life or you
really feel fulfilled by your work it’s
gonna
add happiness to your life but if you
believe
that those things are the source of your
happiness
when they get taken away you will feel
out of control if you lose your job if
you go through a breakup
you will not feel in control
and this is how you can make your life
better even through adversity
when you realize that you are the source
of your happiness
it was the same year that i had that
insight that i found
myself in conversation with my mum and
dad on the way to their house
i had seen a dog get run over and it was
really upsetting i was telling them
about it and my dad made a seemingly
really inappropriate joke about oh hold
is that another dead dog story
i don’t know what i’m crying here dad he
was like you know
the dead dog story you told when you
were at school
turns out when they went to parents
evening that year
mr connolly told them all about my dead
dog story
but the teachers had found it so funny
that they let us get away with it
the main reason they knew that it wasn’t
true
was because i had spelt veterinary
wrong i mean what there
doesn’t know how to spell veterinary i’d
missed out a really important letter and
that letter was the letter
i and i continued to miss that
letter out from my life from that moment
because i thought that i’d find
happiness skipping class
i thought that i’d find happiness
changing my career
i thought i’d find happiness losing more
weight
making more money when in fact
i was the source of my own happiness
so if you feel like there’s more out
there for you i want you to know that
there
is more out there but it’s not out there
it’s within you
are you taking full responsibility for
your happiness
or are you outsourcing it to the future
saying i’ll be happy when i’ve lost more
weight i’ll be happy when i’ve got that
job
i’ll be happy when i’m in a relationship
you don’t have to drastically change
your life to feel happier because your
true self is happy
but once you are happier
your life will drastically change
you