921. If You Are Not Happy With Your Life, You Can Change It In 2 Ways...

John Ruskin wrote, "If you are not happy with your life, you can change it in two ways: change the conditions in which you live or (I say, and.) change your inner spiritual state. The first you cannot always change, but the second one you can."

Happiness is a direction, NOT a destination. You will never possess anything that will make you happy. Happiness is a state, a condition that you put yourself in. 

Aligning with happiness is not as difficult or overwhelming as you may think. 

Transcript

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All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it as we always do. Somebody mess with my microphone. Somebody's been in here. It's probably my daughter playing on my microphone. Welcome to What's Your Problem, the podcast. I'm your host, marsh Bison here on What's your problem? We're gonna deal with the three universal problems. I don't care how much money you got, I don't care what your social status is. Hey, we all deal with the same problems, man. So you're a good company. Adversity, uncertainty and complacency, and will give you some skills to help. Um, embrace the uncertainty, handle the adversity, embrace uncertainty, and never settle again. And those skills all start with the letter C, and they're all. Right there within. And those skills all start with letter, say C, communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, productive confrontation. These are skills you already have within. So it's not like this 9 99 app that you gotta buy or anything like that. We just, we sometimes don't bring an awareness to being better communicators, being communi, uh, being, being, uh, better communicators, being curious, creative. Continuous learners and productive confrontations. Some things, man, we just allow to, to go too far in our lives. And so, even though sometimes we may not per se talk about today, we're gonna talk about how to be an effective communicator. But these are the, um, these are the underlying. Core principles that I talk out of every single day. And so, and I try to have an awareness all throughout the day too, on how well did I communicate today with myself and others? Was I curious today, was I creative? Like I lack something and I just bitch about it? Or was I creative and and use something else that already had. Was I a continuous learner? Like that's how I start my day off and I'll talk about that here, uh, in just a second. And then confrontation. Did you confront some things? Did you just like, um, I'll take care of that another day or maybe tomorrow, or, you know, confront some things. And sometimes the confrontation is not necessarily just like with other people. It's not necessarily that sometimes it's just confronting things in your own life. Like you wanna get in better shape. Confront it, man. Start right now. Don't start with these theme days or anything like that. You wanna start reading more? Well do it right now. You know the thing that I gotta constantly remind myself at too is if it takes less than five minutes, go ahead and do it. Dude, I'm the king of procrastination. Like as soon as I get off this mic, I gotta fold about. A hundred pounds of clothes because like last week, I just like, eh, do it. But look, if it takes less than five minutes, do it. Like I could have banged out, you know, some clothes.'cause what happens is if you set your timer, say, look, is this gonna take less than five minutes or 10 minutes, whatever. It's an arbitrary number. But if you just set your timer for that, a lot of times man, because you got started, even when the timer goes off and you're not done because you're almost done, you go ahead and. Just knock it out. Anyway, it's a good mantra to to have, and as I'm speaking this, this is something that I've gotta be reminded of as well. But that's not what we're gonna talk about today. We're not gonna talk about folding clothes, but you're welcome to come over and help me fold clothes if you got a little time today. But I wanna hit you with the thought that, uh, the, uh, you know, I, I, I read out a to story every single morning before I get into my other reading and other podcast episodes. I've talked about that, and it was like, well, I didn't get into the other reading I wanted. This is one of those days, and the title of this, this little snippet for the day's thought is Happiness. Well. Of course, everybody wants to be more happy. And so I read this and this is a, a, uh, I'm a riff out of John Ruskin. Tolstoy just basically paraphrased what John Ruskin said, and John Ruskin wrote, if you're not happy with your life, you can change it in two ways. Two ways you can change your life or change. If you're not happy with your life, you could change it two ways. Either improve the conditions in which you live or improve your inner spiritual state. He said the first is not always possible, but the second one is, and I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't go into anything else. I'm like, man, I gotta really think about this one. And so if you're not happy with your life, and I began to write, as I began to write, I said, if you do not like your life. And that's not what he was saying at all. The, the liking factor of it, that that's just superficial. He says, if you're not happy with your life and see, happiness is a state of mind, happiness is a direction. It's not a destination. And so many times we want to get to this destination, and this is the elusive side of it of life. And we say, oh, if I could only be here, bruh, everything would be peaches and cream. No, that's not it at all. Happiness is a direction. So when you think about it like this, and I've talked about this in many episodes before, but many times if you're not in the right state, if you're not happy with your life, it's because you're not in the right state. That's all that is. And so you're just a little bit out of alignment. The beautiful thing about life and the grace of life is you can begin to course correct right then and there, so change happens immediately. The results may take time, but if you reinforce it every single day and begin to change the conditions in which you live in your inner spiritual state. Then you're going to have a more happy, fulfilled life. Okay? But it's not in materialistic things. It's not in living in a 4,000 square foot house with 11 acres in the backyard and, uh, with's those infinity pools and uh, you know, it's none of that. It's none of that. It's happiness is a direction. And it's an inside job. And so I wanna, I wanna unpack this a little bit. So let me finish reading what he wrote. For context and then I'll come back around and chop it up like we always do. And he goes on to say, so let me back up a little bit. The first, uh, so well, lemme just start from the beginning. If you're not happy with your life, you can change it in two ways. Either improve the conditions in which you live or improve your inner spiritual state. The first is not always possible, but the second one is he goes on to say, if you wanna live in paradise. Where there is no suffering or animosity, then liberate your heart, set it free, fill it with love. There you will find heaven that you desire. He says, we should thank God for making all good things easy and all that hinders goodness difficult. Do not search for pleasure. Rather be ready to find pleasure in anything that you do. Alright, so let's back the truck up a little bit. Chop this thing up and you know, if you, if you want to just stop right then and there and, you know, and don't, and come back to me like maybe it would be a good thing to kind of re-listen to what I, just, the quote. What does it mean to you? How do you interpret that?'cause that's exactly what I did this morning. I wrote this down. I said, man, I just can't unhook from this thought. Sometimes I read these passages like, oh, that's cool. Go. And I go on. But some of 'em, man, I, they just sting me and I'm like, I, I can't, I, I can't go without unpacking this thought. And this is why writing is so important. So let's start with, if you're not happy with your life, you can change it in two ways. There's only two ways, so it's not as overwhelming as what you think, so you can improve the conditions in which you live. Okay, so let's unpack that. The conditions in which you live are based in three different things, okay? It is based on the appearance, the quality in working order. That's what conditions are. So let's start with appearance. So. If you wanna improve a life, you can change your life in two, in, in, uh, in, in two ways. Either improve the conditions in which you live your appearance. That's the first condition. Okay? What's the appearance? It's probably your fitness level, it's probably how you look. You're probably a little bummed out about how you look. Okay. There's something, and I'm not talking about just being like magazine shredded or anything like that, but you know if, if you know you could do better and you could feel better and look better and you're tired of buying clothes that are kind of masking things and you're just kind of looking like the drabs all the time, it's because you just. You're not feeling good about yourself, and so you're buying clothes to kind of mask your clothes and the way that you wear what you wear and how you carry yourself is really a display of your interstate. So you have that inner turmoil. So the first thing is, man, begin to change your appearance. How do you do that? I get it, man. You wanna kick the can down the road, you condemn yourself. You're not high school, fine. No more, all that. Look, we're all older, but you can begin to change some things, so take care of yourself. That's why I say, man, put yourself first. You put yourself first. The BO gets a better representation of you, so begin to use what you have. Begin to get some movement in. Okay. You don't need an elaborate gym membership. You're not about to join a gym that's 30 minutes away, so stop fooling yourself. You're not gonna do it. You're not gonna do it consistently. We're talking about building some consistency. So the appearance side of it is taking care of you eating foods. Not only that helps support what you're doing. Okay, but the biggest thing is it's not really the working out that is important as you age and wanna stay mobile and stronger and stuff like that. But it's also. What you're feeding yourself to. You know, you gotta eat today. You know you got a jam packed schedule. You know that going into it. Change some things on those things. See, when you begin to change your appearance, and dude, I'm talking about in 30 days, you begin to do this, you're going to start seeing a difference. You'll start feeling better, start looking better. Your clothes are starting to get a little looser, and now you're looking at that downsize. You're trying to downsize your appearance. Then you're starting getting those smaller clothes that are just in the back of the closet over here. You'll feel better. You'll start carrying yourself better. You'll start to expect more. Okay? These things go hand in hand. So that's the appearance side of it. The next part of improving the conditions of your life is the quality. Content in, content out, garbage in, garbage out. So it is impossible to have a quality life taking in junk food, bullshit things, content. Okay? So your content is based on your content. So how contented are you in life? You're contented probably'cause you gave up. You're just like, oh well. And so you're doing things every single day that are reinforcing that. So you gotta begin to change the quality. You have direct control of the quality, so begin to feed yourself something different. When you're sitting there and you're, you're feeding yourself something different, you begin to reshape the narrative. You begin to talk differently. You begin to see things differently, and you begin to associate yourself with better quality people. So the, the quality people, the toxic relationships that you, yeah, they're fun to be around, but they're not getting anywhere in life. And so if you want, and it's really not a, it's, it's seeking the pleasure, which I'll talk about here in just a second. This is where you seek pleasure. When you seek pleasure against, or, or with toxic people. Then it's, it's, it's kind of, it's fun in the moment, but like an hour after that, you're like, I feel like shit. I did shitty things. And you just, you you're really off track and it's, it's not fun anymore. And then you condemn yourself and then you get trapped in this loop. So you gotta begin to change this quality. So when you begin to. Take in different things and do, there are tons of free material. You don't have to get back in school. There is nothing but free information out there. You begin to listen to podcasts like this one. You begin to listen to other podcasts, audio books, good quality content. And you begin to think differently and speak differently, and you're talking about growth where everybody else is talking about gossip. You begin to distance yourself from the quality of things that don't enhance your life. And it's not that you're better than them, it's that you're being better for you. You gotta put yourself first, okay? If they wanna raise their game up. Fine. Raise your game up, but I can't go down to you. You can. You can come up to where I'm going again. I'm not better than you. I'm better for me. So that's the quality aspect of it. The quality aspect of it. I guarantee you, we'll link over to the appearance side of it too. These just get all laced hand in hand. And I realized this as I was writing this. And then the last part is, is working order. Working order is it's, it's not being this paper bag in the wind. It's not waking up in a deficit. It's not waking up behind the eight ball, okay? It's not waking up, reacting, running late. All in this ski man. So the working order is the process that you work, just dude, I'm talking about a few things. Three to five things that you do every single day that bring you energy, that stretches your faith, your family, your fitness, your finances, your fulfillment. It's five areas, man. So how can you win in these areas? How can you begin to reposition yourself, improve the conditions of your life improvement? See, that is key. See, he's talking about improving. It's not this one and done kind of thing. So did you move the needle today? Did you do some things that improved? Okay. Based on the appearance, based on the quality, based on the work in order, I would say wake up. At, at a set time with enough time to be able to take care of you. Okay? That's getting some movement in, that's getting some knowledge in. You can listen to a podcast while you're sitting there exercising, so you can have it stack. You can get on a treadmill and read a book. You can, if you got a Kindle, the book will actually read to you while you're jumping on the treadmill, whatever. So things that are improving and then you get off that you get finished working out, then maybe you write it. Uh, you know what your thoughts were, what were your takeaways from the workout? Whatever free flow on, on a page. Okay? We'll talk more about that here in just a second. So that's the, that's the working order. Okay? Some things that you're just doing sequentially every single day that bring you energy. Okay? So that's how you improve your life. You improve the conditions of your life. Then he says, if you can't do that, actually, lemme rephrase that. But he also says, so that's one way that you can improve your life or you can improve your inner spiritual state. This is so key. Your inner spiritual state, it seems like it's more overwhelming than it is. It's not at all. Okay? How you start your day is your inner spiritual state. It is, I can't stress this enough. So how you start your day is all dependent on how you ended your evening. Okay? So if you, if you just, you ate poorly, you drank excessively, you, you, you hung out, you partied, you stayed out late, whatever. Well, you're waking up in a deficit. You're already, you're not, you're in a brain fog. You're not thinking clearly. You're just, you're just trying to get through a day. Right? And so this is, this trap you've probably just slid into. So improving your, your, your inner state is where you begin to wake up In the mornings, you, you read something of quality, 10 minutes, random reading. Okay. Find a random book. Open up the table of contents. Find the chapter that most resonates with you. You know that book that's been sitting there that somebody gifted you and you're like, bro, I'd love to read about this person. I just don't have the time. You got 10 minutes, man. So if it's Steve Jobs that you're wanting to go through, Walter I, Walter Isaac Sin wrote a book about Steve Jobs. That thing is super big. That'll be overwhelming, but you can go to a chapter. And just read that one chapter. That's interesting. Maybe it's a chapter about simplicity. Boy, I'd love to have a Simple Life. There is actually a chapter in there about that. The only reason why I say that is'cause I just did this very same thing. Uh, so you, you read it on Simplicity, man, and, and then write about what you just read. What, what's it mean to you? Like, this isn't for anybody but you. I just happen to share this on the podcast 'cause I feel like this is what saved my life. This is what could help others improve their life as well. So when you begin to read randomly in the morning, I. Set aside some time, some alone time. You don't need any distractions, man. No TVs, no people in your face talking about good morning. Like you, you really like. I try to get up before my family because that is my time that I need some alone time with myself. This is the only time that you're alone with yourself. So you do this. This is, I'm telling you, this will change your interstate. When you change your interstate, you'll change your interstate. It's a terrible dad joke, but it will, man. It'll change. Your inner state, changes your inner state man, where you're going, okay? You fast track that thing, and so that's how you begin to improve the conditions of your life. You improve the way that you live and you improve your inner spiritual state. Now he says the first is not always possible, but the second one is. Okay. A lot of it, these two link really hand in hand as I, the way I see this, but I get the fact that you may not be able, um, the, the, the, the first is not always possible, meaning, and I, I think what he me means by this is. Like if you have a job that you're not really happy with, it's kind of dead end, or maybe you're in a toxic relationship. It's not that you can just cut bait right then and there. You obviously have obligations. You obviously have just gotten kind of in this funk, okay? So you can begin to reposition yourself and improve the conditions. Even if some of the things you can't change right then and there, you can begin to re reposition yourself so you don't just. Accept it and oh, well it away so you can change the appearance, the quality, the working order. So these are some things that you actually have control over that as I was reading this and writing this, I'm like, okay, I see that now. Okay, so the first is not always possible, meaning that if I want a different path in life, career wise or whatever, it's not like I can just. Shoot the deuce up and then just, you know, live on the streets until I figure out what I want to do. But you can begin to think differently, shape the narrative differently while you're doing this. So these are kind of an overlap. And then things will begin to, as you get stronger in certain areas, things will begin to kind of play themselves out and you'll be in a position, a better position of power. That's the thing, man. You gotta be in a position of strength. Um, and not out of, out of weakness, but that's all about positioning. And again, you didn't get here overnight. You're not gonna change it overnight. Okay. Lemme go on with what he's saying. You wanna live in paradise. I mean, when I saw that, I'm like, hell yeah. Everybody wants to live in paradise. Where there is no suffering, where there is no animosity, then liberate your heart and set it free and fill it with love. Okay, this kind of sounds kind of woo woo, but the love is, I looked up the definition of love. One of the definitions of love is having a, uh, a, a strong appreciation, a deep affection for, okay, so it's actually enjoying. You have paradise right here on Earth. It's the attachments that we have to things that's already happened. It's the attachments to the past. You gotta unhook yourself from those. Learn from it. Okay? But leave it where it's at, man. Like why do you keep going back to that? It's a dog returning to his own vomit. So you gotta, but that's an awareness. You can't just, well, you don't understand. I don't need to understand. You need to understand it. So you can distance yourself from it. Okay? That's the thing. That's the first thing we say. You don't understand my situation. No, nor do you, because you don't understand it. You keep going back to it. You keep tethered to this thing. When you get an an understanding of what you can control and what you can't control, you can unhook yourself from those things. I'll leave it there, but he says There you will find the heaven that you desire. The Heaven on Earth. You fill yourself with love. You have a deep affection and appreciation for everything that you al that you have. If you can shit on your own and you don't have a bag attached to you, that's a blessing. Okay? If, if, if you have ac, that's a blessing, man. If you got a car, I don't care if it's a hoopty, that car gets you from point A to point B. Yeah, you'd want something different, but guess what it's paid for? It's yours. Fog and all white smoke out the back and all to begin to appreciate these things. I, I, I will tell you this, when you begin to appreciate all that you have, you'll get more. It's a funny paradox when we're unhappy with what we have and we want something else and we just discount what we have. Yeah. But. It is like you get. You get no better. This is what leads to unhappiness. It's the materialistic things. It's because our interstate is all just tumultuous. I will tell you this, if your interstate is all just. In turmoil. It's, that's life signaling to you that you're, you're out of alignment. Just begin to course correct. Get some things that bring you energy, okay? Begin to improve your appearance, your quality, garbage in, garbage out, your, um, working order. Get you a few processes in every single day. Just consistently do that every single day. Tell him, bro, you're gonna be off to the races. Alright, so let me end it with this. We should thank God for making all good things easy and all that hinders goodness difficult. Be thankful for that. Thank God for making all good things easy. Okay? We don't, we don't tend to see the easy things. We, we tend to just kind of mow ride over that, but be thankful and all that and hinder and all that hinders goodness difficult. It's a good thing. Better. That's your skin in the game. The thing that I just did an episode on, the tension, the productive tension. Go back and listen to it. Um, I think it was episode nine 20, if we're not on nine 20 now. Um, so it's about that productive tension. So the things that are hindering you from the goodness, sometimes that's, that's a way of strengthening your faith, man. Sometimes you're resolved, sometimes you just life's trying to toughen you up a little bit. Trying to get you calloused a little bit, but in a good way. Get you stronger, get your sea legs about you. And so embrace that man. That's a good thing you gotta wrestle with. If all came easy, bro, your life would be super boring. I know you love the fact that if, if everybody did everything and you just won every single time, but dude, what would you talk about? What would you reminisce over? I mean it just, everything, your life would be completely boring. I tell my salespeople that all the time. Like I get the fact that you want every single customer to say yes, and that would be, but you would be so bored outta your mind. It's the thing of where you have to figure things out. I. Whether you have to wave brave past the rejection, they're telling you no, they're not seeing what you're seeing, and you keep painting that picture and you're resilient about that. And you say something, you bring something into the mix and it creates that spark. And they're like, wait, what? And now all of a sudden you tilt that thing and the next thing you know you sold the product. That's the best feeling in the world. But see, that's that skin in the game. You wouldn't have that appreciation. If you didn't, if you didn't wrestle with those things. So it's a good thing. And last part. His last part and my last part, do not search for pleasure. Rather be ready to find pleasure in anything that you do. This is so key. Think about this. When you search for pleasure, the searching for pleasure is usually things that you're gonna regret or that's gonna put you in a deficit. When you search for pleasure, it tends to lead to be destructive, okay? But rather be ready. To find pleasure in anything that you do, meaning you find it don't matter what you're doing, you're gonna find a satisfaction, an enjoyment. Okay? A wrestling, a contentment, an education level, an aha moment, some, uh, commitment, some appreciation that. Some newfound knowledge. I mean the, I mean, just sit here and just swirl on the pleasure. When you find pleasure, you're ready to find pleasure in anything that you do. You're not chasing pleasure that leads to some, can't wait for the weekend, can't wait for this big beer smash. No, that's, that's when you're chasing that, bro. It never leads to anything good. But when you find pleasure in all that you do and you're improving the conditions. In which you live in your inner spiritual state. That my friend is where you will find happiness. And happiness is a direction. You will not find it in a object. It's this right here, it's a state of being. It's a direction. And I'm not talking to you, bro. I'm talking to me too. All right? We're all in this thing together. All right, let's get out here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Thank you so much for. Being a part of What's your problem? The podcast, if you would help grow the show by sharing it, just share it with one person who needs to hear this episode. There's somebody around you, man, who needs to hear it, who's just, you know, and you, you can pick up on it in conversations and the conversations that you're having with him. You're like, bro, that cat's gotta get it together. Okay. Maybe you're not the one to tell 'em, okay. Maybe you don't want to be the one to tell 'em. All right. Send old Uncle Morris there. Be like, here's a link. Man. I just came across this guy and man, he's so attractive too. Okay. I'm just kidding. All right, let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.