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