Kay:
Hello there, Questers, and welcome back! Today is Monday and it’s kind of a fun date on the calendar. It is 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1. How interesting is that? This is episode 471, and we have a fantastic quote for you today from the one and only Dale Carnegie.\
Shi:
An American writer and lecturer. You know the name, you’ve heard it. He is a famous author, a developer of courses for self-improvement, salesmanship training, public speaking, and so much more.
Dale tells us “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.”
Kay:
Now, this is a really fancy way of saying you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you feel about it, right?
Shi:
It’s also a fancy way of saying happiness is an inside job, and I couldn’t help but reflect on this principle this weekend. Actually, it was even just this morning as my daughter, Annadelle said to me, “Mom, would it make you happy if I showered this morning?” And I couldn’t help but hear that, and I had to tell her, “Well, being happy has nothing to do with what others do. It is an internal feeling and it’s an internal choice, but I understand where you’re coming from.” And then I asked her if that was a task she needed to complete. But I thought it was a really interesting phrasing and a really interesting demonstration of how, even from an early age, we’re taught that outside things are what make you happy?
Kay:
Right. Well, think about, you know, when you’re a kid it’s so easy to get that new toy and have the elation. And frankly, for a child, the new thing, the outside circumstances, the joy from that, lasts a lot longer than it does for us adults. And so we kind of learned through both experience and through conditioning that this happiness can be brought about by these external things, these external conditions. And then we start to say, “If I’m not happy, as we get older-based on this mental model-then it is because of my external conditions, and if I change those conditions, then I’ll be happy.”
Shi:
Right? The other side of the lesson from Annadelle is to think about how often many of us put our happiness in the realm of somebody else, that I’m not allowed to be happy unless someone else acts a certain way, or proves other certain thing, or says a certain thing, or demonstrates a particular emotion or circumstance. When we give our power to our happiness to others-I mean, it’s hard enough to control on your own-think about how hard it is for somebody else who doesn’t live inside of your head and know all of your nuance and your specific requirements, how difficult it’s going to be for them. So really understanding and realizing that it’s your responsibility and that no one else’s happiness is your responsibility. You only take responsibility or get responsibility of one set of happiness, and it is your own set.
Kay:
Well, it’s not fair to put that happiness onto somebody else, right? Especially since it’s an inside job for both them and you. By saying, “Unless you’re happy, I’m not happy,” then you’re making both their happiness and your happiness the other person’s responsibility, and that’s not fair to the people that you love. So maybe if that’s a pattern that you play out in your life, take some time to examine that here. But I want to walk us back to this idea of circumstances, right? And I just want to touch on a book that I know has been impactful for many people in the world. It’s called A Man’s Search for Meaning where a gentleman in the Nazi concentration camps in Germany was in a horrible situation and was able to find joy, able to find peace, and see those things in some of life’s darkest circumstances. So be it the external condition of another person’s emotional state or the external condition of where you are, what’s happening to you, we can’t always can control what happens to us, but we can, remember, control how we react to it. And that’s really the key to creating happiness, no matter what your mental state is.
Shi:
Which brings us to this. Dale, who is somebody who got to experience the upper echelons of society, of wealth, of privilege, of opportunity-talk about somebody who got to have that front row seat and who experienced probably a grand amount of opulence that many of us can only even imagine-he was surrounded by the external things that so many would say that is what would make me happy, or those conditions certainly would elicit happiness. A wash in those conditions telling us that your happiness doesn’t depend on anything, it allows us to take particular credence to this principle. But then he says, “it’s governed by our mental attitude.” And so realizing that it’s governed, which means controlled by, and putting the bumpers on that emotion it’s governed by. And then our mental attitudes. So like that mental attitude for most of us is how we’re feeling on the inside, how our inside coach is coaching us, how our inside voice is talking to us, how our inside, our interior landscape looks and feels to us. That is what governs the happiness. And that is what Dale Carnegie is telling us in this quote today which, to remind you of, is “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is by our mental attitude.”
Kay:
All right, guys. Well, it’s Monday-get-it-done-day. So we want you to take your quest forward and engage in some kind of physical activity today to trigger a release of dopamine and shift your mental and emotional state. Now, if that happiness is governed by your mental attitude, physical exercises are one of the easiest way to trigger that happy-producing chemical, dopamine, in your system. So get out there and Monday-get-it-done-day. Are you ready?
Shi:
Let’s quest!
