Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Meaningful Happiness is a podcast that unpacks the science of emotions, relationships, and personal growth through the lens of Affect Relational Theory (ART), Chronic Shame Syndrome (CSS), and Latalescence—the second act of life where experience, adaptability, and purpose shape our journey forward.
Each episode explores how shame operates beneath the surface, influencing our confidence, connections, and sense of agency. Through deep insights and practical tools, we uncover ways to rewrite our personal narratives, break free from shame-based cycles, and cultivate a life rich in authenticity, curiosity, and joy.
Join me as we dive into the psychological frameworks and real-world applications that help us navigate relationships, self-perception, and the ever-evolving landscape of human experience.
Let’s make happiness meaningful.
Check out our other content at:
https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Navigating Your Emotional Operating System: Core Affects and the Four Pillars of Happiness
What if your emotions weren't just random feelings but actually sophisticated firmware—hardwired systems constantly running in your brain's background? This groundbreaking idea forms the foundation of our deep dive into affect theory and its profound implications for authentic happiness.
Your emotional operating system isn't infinitely variable. We're all born with nine specific core affects—biological responses that tag experiences as important, dangerous, pleasurable or socially significant before conscious thought even begins. These aren't subjective emotions but universal firmware that shapes how we process everything from relationships to life goals. Understanding interest/excitement as your curiosity system, enjoyment/joy as your reward mechanism, and even shame/humiliation as your social repair alert completely transforms how you work with feelings. Instead of fighting against these hardwired responses, you can learn to use them as powerful navigational tools.
Taking this understanding further, we explore how these core affects shape our life stories through four essential relationships: with yourself (as the lead actor), with meaning (as the screenwriter), with money (as the producer), and with others (as the casting director). Most of us live scripts we didn't write and cast people before knowing what story we're telling. By consciously addressing these four pillars in sequence, you create a life that feels authentically yours. Your core feelings provide the raw data, while your evolving life script organizes these feelings into patterns that reflect your deepest values. Ready to transform your emotional understanding and become both the artist and artifact of your own story? Listen now and discover what genuine happiness is made of.
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Hey, dr Scott Conk, right here with Meaningful Happiness Podcast, welcome back. I'm going to talk guess what? I'm going to talk about feelings, core feelings, affects, again. This time I'm going to talk a little bit more about how they work in ways that I haven't before. So one of the things that people have really a hard time figuring out is that feelings, as I'm talking about them, are not subjective feelings. They're not like oh, we all have our own feelings. Yes, we do. Those are emotions. Actually, what I'm trying to convey is the limited ways in which we feel things, or at least how things come into awareness. What I mean by that is, for instance, in our bodies. We know when we're hungry because our bodies tell us that. We know when we're tired because our bodies tell us that. We know when we're feeling something because our bodies actually give us some data that tells us what to pay attention to. And those are the big feelings, the big feelings, the core feelings, the affects. Those are built in, they are part of our.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're a computer programming person, it is firmware, so stay with me, I'll explain it to you. So you may know hardware, you may know software most not most, but a great many people don't know what firmware is. Firmware is the limitations, basically, of what any device, computer or anything that interacts with the world can do. Like your smartphone knows when it's fully charged, it knows how to connect with the apps, it knows how to connect with Wi-Fi. There's a lot of things that your phone does without your having to do anything, just like there's a lot of things that your body does without you having to think about it. We are pre-programmed, we are bio-wired, as I call it. We're bio-wired to feel nine different core feelings. That's called firmware. For instance, in terms of viewing things, in terms of perception, we can only see within a certain range that's predetermined. The way that we're going to see things in the world with our eyes, with our limitations, with our particular type of eyes, with our particular type of hearing, with our particular type of touch, those are built in. They are the constraints of our bodies, and also not just constraints, but it's also what allows us to feel and to do whatever we want to do. So firmware, so hardware, is our body, in this case our brains, body, blood circulating, all that sort of stuff. Software is what we learn. So one of the things that I want us to understand is how all that comes together. So let me let me say a little bit more about it. So, again, with the, with the smartphone, you've got apps for texting, for browsing, gaming. Those are like the thoughts, beliefs and habits you've picked up over time. These are your software, the parts of your mind you can update and customize. But underneath all that is what I'm saying there's something deeper, deeper, something built in that you don't really see or control directly. That's the, that's the firmware, that's what makes your phone turn on, recognize touch, connect to wifi, so forth. Like I just said, without it, none of none of the apps could run at all. Now here's here's the idea that I'm trying to get through.
Speaker 1:Our affect system, our feeling system, our core feeling system is the brain's firmware. We don't choose it, but it's always, always, always, running in the background. It's what tells you when something's exciting, when something feels wrong or when you've lost connection with somebody important. That's the shame affect. So affect theory says we're born with nine of these. They're fast, they're automatic responses that happen before you even have time to think. They aren't thoughts, nor are they moods. They're the raw signals your body and brain send out to help you make sense of what's happening. Otherwise we just have to be guessing all the time, or if we just use our thoughts. That would be problematic too, because we know that we react often faster than we can think If we come across something gross, something disgusting, that's an affect. It's not only a bodily reaction to something that may be harmful for us to smell or eat, but it's also a feeling state like yuck, that's gross.
Speaker 1:So what are the other ones? The interest, excitement this is your curiosity system. It makes you want to explore, it makes you want to learn or to pay attention to something. Enjoyment, joy this is your reward system. Pay attention to something. Enjoyment, joy this is your reward system. It tells you when something feels good and is worth staying with. Shame, humiliation this one gets a really bad reputation, but it's actually super useful. It tells you when something has interrupted a good feeling, usually in a relationship or social situation and it gives you a chance to notice, pause and maybe even repair what happened, if need be. These core feelings are your brain's way of tagging the world as safe, interesting, risky, off-track, and they do it before your thinking mind even kicks in.
Speaker 1:So how do you use firmware in a wise way. Here's the thing you can't rewrite your emotional firmware, but you can learn how to work with it. Follow your interest. Pay attention to what pulls you in. What do you want to explore more deeply? Those are essential questions to ask yourself. Lean into joy. Notice what brings real satisfaction not just pleasure, but a feeling of being alive and connected. Watch for shame, instead of ignoring it or letting it spiral. Treat it as a signal. Something important just got blocked. Maybe your voice wasn't heard, maybe your excitement got shut down. That doesn't mean you're broken. It means something in your story needs attention. Rewrite the story. Your feelings are real, but they're not the whole story. You can adjust how you think about what's happened and choose a new direction. So a final takeaway from this is that the wisdom of core feelings is that they're just not random, they're not just in your head. They're biological guides. They're biological guides, fast embodied signals that help you survive, connect and grow.
Speaker 1:Your emotional firmware, your affective firmware, is not your enemy. It's your starting point. By understanding how it works and how shame, joy and interest shape your experience, you gain more power to create a life that actually fits you, not somebody else's version of success, not a mask to please others. Your story, your voice, your meaning, that's what real happiness is made of. To part two of this, in which I'm going to introduce the four pillars. In which I'm going to introduce the four pillars, your life, as a movie script.
Speaker 1:From the moment we are born, we are immersed in narrative from day one, before we can speak, we gesture, before we form memories, we feel patterns. We are, in essence, born storytellers and as we grow we don't just tell stories, we become them. Our lives are shaped by a collection of internalized scripts which form our understanding of our feelings, our relationships and purpose. In affect relational theory. These scripts begin as embodied blueprints for handling core feelings Like I just mentioned interest, joy, fear, shame and others. They evolve into the emotional and relational narratives that guide our lives, and relational narratives that guide our lives. Some stories end well, others end prematurely, some go on through endless rewrites, but all of us live our lives inside stories, not necessarily the ones we choose, but often the ones we inherited, ones we rehearsed and that we've repeated unthinkingly.
Speaker 1:It occurred to me that, particularly in our media-saturated world, many people understand their emotional lives through the metaphors of movies. Think about how often we hear phrases like I felt like I was in a horror film, or I didn't audition for this role, or it was a Disney fairy tale. Come true. These aren't just poetic turns of phrases, they are core feeling truths. They reflect how storytelling structures have become our way of making sense of experience. This metaphor isn't just useful, it's neurologically appropriate. The brain is wired for narrative, and when we use familiar structures like scenes, acts, roles, we activate our innate ability for self-reflection and for evolving. When I began developing the four foundational relationships, I noticed something surprising Each of these relationships has a natural parallel in the movie-making process. If you view your life as a film messy, improvised, occasionally Oscar-worthy then these relationships form the production crew that supports its unfolding.
Speaker 1:So let's start with the first pillar, which is your relationship with yourself. You're the lead actor, you are the central character in your life's story, or at least you should be. Many of us have handed that role to somebody else a parent, a partner, a persona but no film works when the lead actor is out of sync with the story. Acting in its deepest form is not about pretending, it's about inhabiting a role with honesty. That same skill is required in real life, especially in intimate relationships. The more emotionally intimate the setting, the more authentic your performance must be more authentic your performance must be. But this kind of presence doesn't come naturally, it must be cultivated. Group psychotherapy, which I will detail in a later chapter, is, I think, the best rehearsal space I know of for being authentic. It provides live feedback, emotional stakes and real-time relational improvisation. There we practice honesty, discomfort, expanding our emotional range, the full actor's toolkit.
Speaker 1:The second pillar is your relationship with meaning. You are the screenwriter Every film needs a script to. But most of us are living scripts we didn't write. We certainly didn't write them ourselves. We are ad-libbing someone else's expectations, often recycling old plot lines or editing ourselves out entirely. The second foundational relationship is to meaning, and meaning is what emerges when we begin to consciously write our story. Life rarely sticks to the script and that's why improv matters. As any theater veteran knows, if an actor gets sick or sentinel functions. The story must go on. Improv isn't chaos. The story must go on. Improv isn't chaos, it's adaptive. Authorship is what it is. Similarly, your relationship with meaning demands resilience, creativity and a willingness to embrace messiness.
Speaker 1:Ask yourself what is the genre of my life story? Is it tragedy, a romantic comedy of my life story. Is it tragedy, a romantic comedy, a coming of age road movie? More importantly, why would anyone want to watch it? Why would someone choose to be in it? You are not only the protagonist, but also the script doctor. The more honest your story, the more compelling your life becomes.
Speaker 1:The third pillar is your relationship with money. I mean, you are the producer. You have to come up with the money somehow Loans, hard work, somehow unless you're born into money Most of us are not we may have some means from parents and others, but usually we have to find a way to make a living. So no movie gets made without a producer. Basically, the producer is the funder. They manage resources, they set budgets and they decide what gets greenlit In your life story. Money plays the producer's role. It doesn't determine your worth, but it does shape your options.
Speaker 1:Your emotional relationship with money such as scarcity, abundance, fear, freedom dictates how you allocate your time, your energy and your attention. Many people outsource this in a relationship, assuming it's purely logistical or external, but it's not. It's affective. It has to do with your core feelings in the scripts that you write about them. Are you investing in scenes that bring you joy? Are you funding scripts that reflect your values? Are you funding scripts that reflect your values, or are you spending every dollar and every hour trying to keep somebody else's production afloat? To take back your producer role, you must start making financial choices that support your plot, that support your script. This doesn't mean extravagance, it means alignment.
Speaker 1:Pillar four, the last one, has to do with your relationship with others. Notice that it comes at the end. You're the casting director here. Once you've clarified your role and clarified your script, your meaning and your production resources, it's time to cast your film. Too often we do this in reverse, inviting people into our lives before we know what kind of story we're actually telling. This leads to miscasting, plot incoherence and emotional genre mashing, for lack of a better term.
Speaker 1:Your relationship with others depends heavily on the first three relationships. Without clarity on who you are, what matters to you and what you have to offer, your choices and connections will be reactive, not conscious. Being your own casting director means learning to discern who enhances this story, who drains its energy, who deserves a recurring role and who is only meant for a cameo. That's frequent, that happens a lot. This isn't about coldness, it's about coherence. When you cast wisely, your life becomes not only more intimate, but also more alive. Now, these four pillars aren't separate compartments. They are interwoven threads in the fabric of narrative living. They support one another, revise each other and evolve in tandem, and when they align, they create a life that feels artfully lived, not perfect, but profoundly yours. In what follows, we'll explore each of these relationships in depth. We'll move from theory to practice, from metaphor to method, and, as we do, I invite you to think of yourself as both artist and artifact. You are both the one telling the story and the story being told.
