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What makes you happy (is it apple crumble)?

Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 86


What do you think makes you happy?


If someone asks you what happiness is for you. You might say friends or family or a holiday, or a massive pile of money. Maybe it's good health. You could probably think of a whole load of things. A good night out with friends, your favourite song coming on the radio, any of these things you could describe as the things that make you happy.


Now, there's loads of stuff on the Internet that tells you that happiness is from within, and lots of other memes that I'm sure you've probably screenshotted and then never thought about ever again. And I would like to offer a potential alternative that you may or may not have come across before, but something that's a really useful tool that you can sort of spread about a bit like butter, into some of the other areas of your life. Hopefully, you could have some little happiness leaks going on from the things that you really love into other areas of your life that you feel a bit more meh about. This is the idea of noticing the things that you love and then taking the time to notice what the thoughts are that you're thinking about them.


So you might, for example, think that it's very obvious that your friends provide you with happiness because you really love them. But some people might have very different thoughts about the same people and might even have other thoughts about your relationship with those people. You might think that, when I was just thinking about what I wanted to share with you on this podcast, the first thing that came to mind was apple crumble. Apple crumble makes me very happy. And I'm sure that someone's listening to this who's like, oh, no, I don't really like that. And so I'm giving you these examples to try and show you that it isn't the thing itself that provides the happiness, it's the thought that we have about it. My thought about apple crumble is what a fucking win. Apple crumble is so good. It tastes of contentment, being safe and happy and warm in winter and all of the goodness. And it reminds me quite often of one of my favourite moments in my whole life, where I overheard my niece saying the words that we've all wanted to say at some point or other, which was, "please could I have some apple crumble, but without the fruit?"


What else are the sort of things that you would say absolutely give you happiness? Your favourite tune, I'm sure, lifts your absolute soul. And you know for sure there's someone that doesn't like it. So when you can identify that it isn't the thing that causes the happiness, it's your thoughts about the thing that enable you to feel happy. It's your thoughts that trigger those emotions, those sensations in your body that feel all warm and good and tingly. Then when we can work out what that actual thought is, we can see if we could apply this to any other area of your life. So, if I have thought that apple crumble is absolutely brilliant, then I wonder, is there something else that I could think of? So, for example, I really love having house plants. I don't always love watering them. Stupid but true. When I think it's stupid but true, not a useful thought, it becomes a drag. It's a bit of a hassle, but I do it anyway because I want the plants around. If I could think, "oh, it's really brilliant that I have to do this. What a great opportunity for me to be able to love and nurture growing things in my home." That makes me feel a bit more warm and connected to them, more incentivises me to want to do it. I'm going to do it anyway. It's just one way feels like a bit of a hassle and one way is actually enjoyable, and I get to choose which one of those things that is.


And sometimes it's not always as easy as just leaping from one thought to the other, but finding some little steps in between. So if I could think rather than, oh, this is a bit of a hassle that I have to water these plants, maybe I could think, "Well, I really love my plants, and this is what I'm going to do to look after them". That feels really different in my body than telling myself that it's a bit of a hassle. So taking it just like a tiny degree more in the direction of where you want to be going takes you more in the realm of happiness. It takes you more along that path. So identifying what thoughts work for you can be a really, really useful way of you connecting happiness that you know is already accessible to you and then spreading that out to other areas of your life.


I am going to make you a little special little diary or journal log, if you like, where you can identify what thoughts are going on for you and then keep them like a little positive thought journal, sort of that you can pluck a little thought out of when you're feeling a little bit stagnant about something and see if you can apply any of those thoughts to your current situation to just make whatever you're doing a little bit more enjoyable.


I'm going to make a little booklet for you to be able to record those down, and I'm going to pop a little a link to that into the show notes. So if you came to the show notes, you should be able to click on that and get that for free. Just as a nice little thank you for listening to the podcast and sort of hat tip to say it's lovely to have you around.


I hope it's really useful, and I hope this idea could be something that you dabble in throughout the year to make your days a little bit more breezy and take you slightly closer to happiness rather than the myth. Wishing you well this week. I'll speak to you next week.

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