Happiness is a choice built on Gratitude.
The Buddhists believe mentally overcoming the pain of life is deliverance from it.
What is happiness to you?
Watch Video 1 by Matthew McConaughey re: this subject.
Video 1
Video 2
We’ve all got two wolves in us. A good one and a bad one.
And they both want to eat.
Best I can tell we just got to feed that good one a little more than the other one.
Happiness is an emotional response to an outcome.
If I win I will be happy, if I don’t I won’t. It’s an if-then, cause-and-effect,
Quid pro quo standard that we cannot sustain.
Because we immediately raise it every time we attain it.
See happiness;
happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result reliant. And i say if happiness is what you’re after then
You’re gonna be let down frequently and you’re gonna be unhappy much of your time.
Joy, though.
Joy’s a different thing. It’s something else. Joy is not a choice. It’s not a response to some result. It’s a constant.
Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do. No matter the outcome.
Now personally as an actor. I started enjoying
my work and literally being more happy when I stopped trying to make the daily labor.
A means to a certain in. For example, I need this film to be a box-office success.
You know, I need my performance to be acknowledged. I need the respect of my peers.
All those are reasonable aspirations, but the truth is as soon as the work;
The daily making of the movie the doing of the deed became the reward in itself for me.
I got more box-office more accolades and respect than I ever had before.
See joy is always in process. It’s under construction. It is in constant approach.
Alive and well in the doing of what we’re fashion to do.
And enjoying. The easiest way to dissect success;
it’s through gratitude.
You mean thanks for that which we do have, for what is working.
Appreciating the simple things we sometimes take for granted. We give thanks for these things .
And that gratitude reciprocate. Creating more to be thankful for. It’s really simple and it works.
I’m not saying being denial of your failures. No, we can learn from them, too.
But only if we look at them constructively. As a means to reveal;
what we are good at, what we can get better at what we do succeed at. My life’s a verb.
We try our best. We don’t always do our best.
And since we are the architects of our own lives.
Let’s study the habits the practices the routines that we have that lead to and feed our success.
Our joy, our honest pain our laughter our earned tears.
Let’s dissect that and give thanks for those things. And when we do that guess what happens. We get better at them.
And we have more to dissect.
It’s a get-rich-quick on the Internet riches 15 minutes of fame world that we live in and we see it every day.
But we all want to succeed, right?
So the question that we’ve got to ask ourselves is what success is to us. What success is to you.
Is it more money? That’s fine. I got nothing against money.
Maybe it’s a healthy family. Maybe it’s a happy marriage.
Maybe it’s to help others, to be famous, to be spiritually sound. To leave the world a little bit better place than you found it.
Continue to ask yourself that question. Now your answer may change over time and that’s fine. But do yourself this favor.
Whatever your answer is; don’t choose anything that will jeopardize your soul.
Prioritize who you are who you want to be and don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character.
Don’t drink the kool-aid man. It tastes sweet, but you will get cavities tomorrow.
All right life is not a popularity contest. Be brave. Take the hill, but first answer that question.
What’s my hill? Well for me it’s a measurement of five things. We got fatherhood. We got being a good husband.
We got my health mind, body and spirit. We got career and we got friendships.
These are what’s important to me in my life right now.
Because I want to keep all five in healthy shape.
And I know that if I don’t take care of them if I don’t keep up maintenance on them.
One of them is gonna get weak man. It’s gonna dip too deep into the debit section. It’s gonna go bankrupt. It’s gonna get sick.
Die.
So first we have to define success for ourselves.
And then we have to put in the work to maintain it. Take that daily tally.
Tend our gurdan. Keep the things that are important to us in good shape.
Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are.
You know that group of friends that you hang out with that really might not bring out the best in you.
You know, they gossip too much or they’re kind of shady.
They really aren’t gonna be there for you in a pinch.
Or how about that bar?
That we keep going to. That we always seem to have the worst hangover from.
Or that computer screen.
Right? The computer screen that keeps giving us an excuse not to get out of the house and
engage with the world and get some real human interaction.
I bet that food that we keep eating and stuff to taste so good going down;
makes us feel like crap the next week. We feel lethargic and we keep putting on weight.
Well, those people those places those things.
Stop giving them your time and energy. Just don’t go there. I mean put them down.
And when you do this when you do put them down, when you quit go in there.
And you couldn’t given them your time. You inadvertently find yourself spending more time and in more places;
that are healthy for you. That bring you more joy. Why?
Because you just eliminated the who’s, the where, the what’s in the winds that were keeping you from your identity.
Look trust me too many options.
I promise you this too many options will make a tyrant of us all. Alright so get rid of the excess, the wasted time.
Decrease your options.
If you do this you will have accidentally;
almost innocently put it in front of you what is important to you.
My process of elimination.
Knowing who we are is hard.
It’s hard. So give yourself a break
Eliminate who you are not first and you’re gonna find yourself where you need to be.
Make voluntary obligations, I’m talking about the ones that we make with ourselves.
With our God. With our own consciousness.
I’m talking about the you versus you obligations. We have to have them.
Now again, these are not societal laws.
Expectations that we acknowledge and endow for anyone other than ourselves. These are faith-based obligations that we make on our own.
These are not the lowered insurance rates for a good driving record.
You will not be fined to put in jail. If you do not gratify these obligations i speak of;
no one else covers these but you. They are your secrets with yourself, your own private counsel.
Personal protocols. And while nobody throws you a party when you abide by them, no one’s going to arrest you when you break them either.
Except yourself.
An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind. And when you lay down on that pillow at night no matter who’s in your bed.
We all sleep alone.
These are your personal jiminy crickets and there are not enough cops in the entire world to police them.
It’s on you.
It’s all on you.
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the measurement. When our reach continually
exceeds our grasp and when we have immortal finish lines.
And when we do this; the race is never over the journey has no port. The adventure never ends,
because we are always on the way.
So do this.
Do this and let them; let somebody else come up and tap you on the shoulder and say “Hey, you scored.”
Let them run up and tap you on the shoulder and say “Man, you won!”
Let them come tell you you can go home now. Let them say “I love you, too.”
Let them say “Thank you.”
Take the lid off the man-made routes that we put above ourselves and always play like an underdog.
We’ve all got two wolves in us. A good one and a bad one.
And they both want to eat.
Best I can tell we just got to feed that good one a little more than the other one.
Happiness is an emotional response to an outcome.
If I win I will be happy, if I don’t I won’t. It’s an if-then, cause-and-effect,
Quid pro quo standard that we cannot sustain.
Because we immediately raise it every time we attain it.
See happiness;
happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result reliant. And i say if happiness is what you’re after then
You’re gonna be let down frequently and you’re gonna be unhappy much of your time.
Joy, though.
Joy’s a different thing. It’s something else. Joy is not a choice. It’s not a response to some result. It’s a constant.
Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do. No matter the outcome.
Now personally as an actor. I started enjoying
my work and literally being more happy when I stopped trying to make the daily labor.
A means to a certain in. For example, I need this film to be a box-office success.
You know, I need my performance to be acknowledged. I need the respect of my peers.
All those are reasonable aspirations, but the truth is as soon as the work;
The daily making of the movie the doing of the deed became the reward in itself for me.
I got more box-office more accolades and respect than I ever had before.
See joy is always in process. It’s under construction. It is in constant approach.
Alive and well in the doing of what we’re fashion to do.
And enjoying. The easiest way to dissect success;
it’s through gratitude.
You mean thanks for that which we do have, for what is working.
Appreciating the simple things we sometimes take for granted. We give thanks for these things .
And that gratitude reciprocate. Creating more to be thankful for. It’s really simple and it works.
I’m not saying being denial of your failures. No, we can learn from them, too.
But only if we look at them constructively. As a means to reveal;
what we are good at, what we can get better at what we do succeed at. My life’s a verb.
We try our best. We don’t always do our best.
And since we are the architects of our own lives.
Let’s study the habits the practices the routines that we have that lead to and feed our success.
Our joy, our honest pain our laughter our earned tears.
Let’s dissect that and give thanks for those things. And when we do that guess what happens. We get better at them.
And we have more to dissect.
It’s a get-rich-quick on the Internet riches 15 minutes of fame world that we live in and we see it every day.
But we all want to succeed, right?
So the question that we’ve got to ask ourselves is what success is to us. What success is to you.
Is it more money? That’s fine. I got nothing against money.
Maybe it’s a healthy family. Maybe it’s a happy marriage.
Maybe it’s to help others, to be famous, to be spiritually sound. To leave the world a little bit better place than you found it.
Continue to ask yourself that question. Now your answer may change over time and that’s fine. But do yourself this favor.
Whatever your answer is; don’t choose anything that will jeopardize your soul.
Prioritize who you are who you want to be and don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character.
Don’t drink the kool-aid man. It tastes sweet, but you will get cavities tomorrow.
All right life is not a popularity contest. Be brave. Take the hill, but first answer that question.
What’s my hill? Well for me it’s a measurement of five things. We got fatherhood. We got being a good husband.
We got my health mind, body and spirit. We got career and we got friendships.
These are what’s important to me in my life right now.
Because I want to keep all five in healthy shape.
And I know that if I don’t take care of them if I don’t keep up maintenance on them.
One of them is gonna get weak man. It’s gonna dip too deep into the debit section. It’s gonna go bankrupt. It’s gonna get sick.
Die.
So first we have to define success for ourselves.
And then we have to put in the work to maintain it. Take that daily tally.
Tend our gurdan. Keep the things that are important to us in good shape.
Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are.
You know that group of friends that you hang out with that really might not bring out the best in you.
You know, they gossip too much or they’re kind of shady.
They really aren’t gonna be there for you in a pinch.
Or how about that bar?
That we keep going to. That we always seem to have the worst hangover from.
Or that computer screen.
Right? The computer screen that keeps giving us an excuse not to get out of the house and
engage with the world and get some real human interaction.
I bet that food that we keep eating and stuff to taste so good going down;
makes us feel like crap the next week. We feel lethargic and we keep putting on weight.
Well, those people those places those things.
Stop giving them your time and energy. Just don’t go there. I mean put them down.
And when you do this when you do put them down, when you quit go in there.
And you couldn’t given them your time. You inadvertently find yourself spending more time and in more places;
that are healthy for you. That bring you more joy. Why?
Because you just eliminated the who’s, the where, the what’s in the winds that were keeping you from your identity.
Look trust me too many options.
I promise you this too many options will make a tyrant of us all. Alright so get rid of the excess, the wasted time.
Decrease your options.
If you do this you will have accidentally;
almost innocently put it in front of you what is important to you.
My process of elimination.
Knowing who we are is hard.
It’s hard. So give yourself a break
Eliminate who you are not first and you’re gonna find yourself where you need to be.
Make voluntary obligations, I’m talking about the ones that we make with ourselves.
With our God. With our own consciousness.
I’m talking about the you versus you obligations. We have to have them.
Now again, these are not societal laws.
Expectations that we acknowledge and endow for anyone other than ourselves. These are faith-based obligations that we make on our own.
These are not the lowered insurance rates for a good driving record.
You will not be fined to put in jail. If you do not gratify these obligations i speak of;
no one else covers these but you. They are your secrets with yourself, your own private counsel.
Personal protocols. And while nobody throws you a party when you abide by them, no one’s going to arrest you when you break them either.
Except yourself.
An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind. And when you lay down on that pillow at night no matter who’s in your bed.
We all sleep alone.
These are your personal jiminy crickets and there are not enough cops in the entire world to police them.
It’s on you.
It’s all on you.
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the measurement. When our reach continually
exceeds our grasp and when we have immortal finish lines.
And when we do this; the race is never over the journey has no port. The adventure never ends,
because we are always on the way.
So do this.
Do this and let them; let somebody else come up and tap you on the shoulder and say “Hey, you scored.”
Let them run up and tap you on the shoulder and say “Man, you won!”
Let them come tell you you can go home now. Let them say “I love you, too.”
Let them say “Thank you.”
Take the lid off the man-made routes that we put above ourselves and always play like an underdog.
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO 2
what better
subject to study than ourselves
what better subject to interrogate and
investigate
daily what what what’s the one character
that we
that we should never get bored with
chasing to figure out
but also what’s the one it’s also the
one character that we can’t get away
from
ourselves it’s the one person that we
can’t get rid of
so i have enjoyed and not enjoyed
investigating myself through through my
life
i write about this in the book i don’t
you know to form a personal style or to
know who we are or what we want that’s
hard to do
so i have learned to by process of
elimination
get rid of the things you go well that
is not me or that is just a
fad that’s not going to ever be classic
that go that does
not feed me um that may be
for instance there are certain pursuits
we go yeah that may be an immediate
green light
that’s just plugged into a battery but
that that that light’s going to go out
because that battery’s going to die
that’s not
truly uh solar-powered green light so
how to style this finding those things
where we go oh that’s a solar-powered
green light that’s
that’s who i am and who i am not so we
figured out who were not first i found
that i was able to figure out who i was
uh by process of elimination um it’s
also
you know i’d rather be a good man than a
nice guy
that that that that happens later and
that that come that’s part of style
you know i i’ve always said this i’m i
i’d rather have an than a dork
why because at least i know where the
stands
the dork’s trying to be everything to
everybody that he thinks they want them
to be
i don’t want to be that i don’t i don’t
really enjoy being around that
person because i can’t trust them and
when i’ve been one i couldn’t trust
myself
so style is also about you know once you
do
find your frequency on something it
go forward if you’re a non-tyrant and
don’t ask permission
and that’s the not giving a damn part
i’ve found that the world will actually
acquiesce and go
yep i’ll give you a green on that green
light on that if you actually go forward
and mean it
like you’re and you’re gonna do it by
hook or by crook and not ask permission
you know it’s a trick but it works in
our life i mean sometimes
if something is number one on our list
and we’ve got to have it oh we need it
we need
a lot of times we don’t get it think
about it whether it’s that girl or
whether it’s that friend or whatever it
is man if you make them the number one
thing in your life they kind of go like
well what else did you have going before
you
you came to me you know what i mean i
want somebody who had had their
together before they came came to me a
little bit if i’m your everything
then i’m probably a lot of times people
go or situations will say
no we don’t want you because you need us
too bad um
something about taking that trip to
germany got that need out of my mind
and the idea of getting a a job or an
agent in hollywood became
subliminally number two on my list of
priorities
just by sure that i kind of forgotten
about it it wasn’t
thinking about it all the time well that
allowed me to relax be involved in a
meeting with an agent where they
accepted me
to then go out on auditions and actually
get them because i was like
i really want this but i don’t need it
and there’s a very there’s a big
difference and hollywood is
is in fame there’s a game in hollywood
it is an affair
it’s not necessarily marriage um and
there’s a game to play and it’s better
to be
better to want it and not need it in
many ways
and i think especially today not just in
enacting a career but in all of our
careers
athletes everything is with so much
room to be objective what are we on our
phone there’s a jumbotron
immediate response when we put something
out
we may be becoming too objective or
measuring too aware giving too much
credence to awareness of oh how am i
perceived
you know kids these days it’s what they
put out
how it’s received if it’s got enough
thumbs up they have a good day if it’s
gotten a thumbs down they have a bad day
so their entire
our being and our attitude and how we
feel about ourselves is more reliant
we’re letting it be more reliant on what
other people think about us today than
ever before
i say leaning to the subjective i don’t
give a damn about what anyone else
thinks i’ve done it but but i’m gonna
chase down and do what’s true is to me
and then it’s time to pop out sometimes
and read your reviews
or have a look at the jumbotron or watch
that
watch that performance on playback it’s
okay but but
but if you’re thinking about the result
or thinking of in the third person too
early
i don’t believe you do near as good or
true of a job
in the first person subjectively that
you could do
i do think uh that there’s great value
in being alone and if we are alone and
we get
bored and we don’t like the company
ding may that light go off to say that
does not mean
we need to pick up our phone to get some
attention or
go to the bottle to to to to to ease the
anxiety
or go online to get some feedback to
entertain yourself no it’s actually a
great time to say no
sit here in that discomfort long enough
to go
okay until you come out the other side
to go
all right i’m good with me again now
it’s part of that i write about when i’m
about traveling in general ideally you
don’t go to a place you don’t i always
say that don’t
i don’t want to leave a place i travel
to until i get to the point of going
ah i could live here this could be my
existence
and soon as i get to that point then i’m
like okay you can go
now i can go that’s the same thing in
the personal journeys stick with it
till you get through the discomfortable
to uncomfortable times until you go you
know what
i can spend time with myself i could do
this i could do this forever
well then it’s okay to go re-engage pick
up your phone go see your friends go
have a drink what have you go look for
those things that are
other relationships in life but
hopefully not until there’s great value
in not doing that until you go
i’m good with me and me for right now
there’s a responsibility
to freedom and that there is freedom in
responsibility
you know and that earn your way there
we remember the stuff we earn the stuff
we experience more than what the teacher
tells us or what someone gives us for
free
we just do we broke a proverbial sweat
on it whether it’s mental or physical or
whatever we
we built it we we understand we felt how
we got it
how we achieved it how we got what we
wanted
those stick with us whether we forget
them intellectually they were written in
our lineage
and they build resilience and they and
and they build
a healthy true optimism going forward to
know that oh no i’ve worked for
something before and achieved it
delayed gratification oh there are
choices i can make today for myself
that will pay me back later in life
mailbox money as we call it
entertainment industry um
roi there are specific personal choices
we can make
and they’re worth considering look i’m
all for hedonism i’m all for immediate
gratification too sometimes it’s like
yes dude it’s halloween eat all the
candy you want go for it
it’s not gonna become a habit day to day
there’s certain nights where you’re like
hey guys tonight we’re gonna blow it out
the walls are padded and we got nothing
we’re off work on monday
let’s go you know i mean certain times
to say that’s okay
but there’s you know
i where is the selfish
choice the selfless choice where is what
we want
actually what we need whether it’s what
we need actually what we want
where is the best choice for me the best
choice for weed where’s the best choice
for we
the best choice for me that’s the place
i believe the hunt talk about honey
holes that’s the real place
to go forward in trying to find
tea ourselves up for those green lights
in the future and although i and i mean
the
simple things let me bring it down
they’re really simple
you drink coffee i do
do you prepare your coffee put it in the
filter and pour the water
in the coffee maker the night before not
for myself but ironically i do for my
wife
because you’re teeing her up for what
a green light the next morning so she
doesn’t have to come in and go where’s
that filter
she can just come in and go press the
button you’re giving her a gift
to her future self you’re making
something easier for her it’s a very
simple thing
but it’s a great little simple metaphor
so there are choices we make if you’re
going to say right now
i’m going to lie cheat and steal to get
what i want and i got it
i got an immediate green light for me
that’s a battery-powered green light
that’s not a solar-powered green light
why
because now everywhere i go i gotta look
over my shoulder
to see if someone’s there that i lied
cheating stole from
and when i’m doing that i’m stealing
who’s time my time
now i’m not freedom i’m not free i don’t
have the freedom i didn’t create freedom
in my future because i chose to
be it make an irresponsible act that i
left crumbs
i’ve now got reasons to look over my
shoulder and the more things we do to
create in our
in our future that we got to look over
our shoulder the more of our most
precious thing we have in our life’s
time that we’re stealing from ourselves
so it’s not puritanical it’s just like
it’s actually self-serve it’s a very
selfish choice um
and and i’m a fan of the word selfish
i’ve read it helped redefine it
but i believe that there are selfish
choices we can make that are the most
selfless that there are selfless choices
that
we can make that are the most selfish
choices those two are not a
contradiction
and we see them that way responsibility
of freedom and the freedom in
responsibility life’s more than just
straight saturdays with as much cake as
you want to eat it just is
you will see how long you last doing
that if you really do it you won’t last
how long
um there we we responsibility is
is appreciation of a past it’s building
of a lineage
it’s investing in ourselves it’s
investing in something we started to
build yesterday that we want to take
into tomorrow
that gives us freedom so to actually
have true freedom we have to take
certain we have to be responsible more
responsible for certain things
for ourselves who we are constantly
investigating
interrogating our better selves to say
i’m going to be a little bit better
at this tomorrow knowing that we never
land we never
we never there’s no there’s no ta-da
moment and that is one thing i think we
all got to watch because we all
are so result oriented oh if i keep
doing this i’m going to get to that
place of pure enlightenment i’m going to
go tada
bullet no you don’t can it be a small
ascension
of evolution yes
but there’s no ta-da moment we’re always
chasing yet
and if we can get comfortable and
understand and laugh at
and be ready to work hard the fact that
we’re all just achieving our way to the
unachievable
and that’s as good as it gets and that’s
pretty damn awesome
you