Happiness is an Inside Job: How to Find Lasting Joy and Inner Peace

What if the key to happiness isn’t found in external success, but within yourself? In this episode, we explore why happiness is an inside job and how shifting your mindset can help you find lasting joy, inner peace, and personal fulfillment.

You'll discover the two things you can truly control—your thoughts and actions—and how mastering them can reduce stress, increase confidence, and bring more meaning to your life. We discuss the power of presence and mindfulness, helping you break free from overthinking and live more in the moment. Plus, we share practical strategies to overcome social media overwhelm, stop doomscrolling, and protect your mental well-being.

Through real-life experiences and expert insights, we’ll also dive into how to identify your core values, why they shape your decisions, and how aligning with them can bring clarity and purpose. Whether you're feeling stuck, searching for more meaning, or just looking for ways to feel happier every day, this conversation will help you reframe your mindset and take back control of your happiness.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ The two things you can actually control in life (and why they matter)
✔️ How to respond vs. react to thoughts and emotions
✔️ The secret to finding joy and inner peace through mindfulness
✔️ Why social media is draining your happiness—and how to take back control
✔️ How to discover your core values and align them with your daily life
✔️ The difference between happiness and contentment—and why it matters

If you’re ready to stop searching for happiness in the wrong places and start cultivating it from within, this episode is for you! 🎧✨

About David James

Dave James helps business owners and professionals speak with authenticity, confidence, and presence. A former healthcare professional turned speaker, host, and coach, Dave’s approach focuses on helping people be seen and heard without turning them into stage robots.

As a professional speaker, Dave has delivered keynotes on authenticity, presence, and connection, including his talk “How to Be a Happy Human.” He also runs speaker coaching workshops and one-to-one coaching, helping clients refine their content, delivery, and confidence using his Brain-Page-Stage framework.

Dave’s background in healthcare, combined with his experience in stand-up comedy, gives him a unique perspective on presence, storytelling, and engaging audiences. He believes that great speaking is about human connection first, skills second.

Transcript

0:00

In this episode we divee deep into two things you can truly control, your mindset and your actions, and how mastering them can transform your life. We explore why happiness is an inside job, and how to break free from the overwhelm of social media. And you will also learn how to identify your core values and use them to guide you to create more joy, purpose and authenticity. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. There are only two things that we can control. How we respond to our thoughts and our actions. David, David, David, tell me more

David: 1:18

so when you, when you asked me to do a state for this, I was like, Hmm, but what, what will I go with? And over the last few years or last 10 years of personal development, a lot of what I had to do was realize that there were so many things which I couldn't control, which were influencing me and affecting me. And I was taking them on board and, and it was hard. And there were, there were very few things that I could ultimately control. And so I. When I started coaching when I started doing more of the life coaching stuff before I got into the speaker coaching I When, okay, there's probably only two things that we can realistically control. How you respond to your thoughts, and respond being a very clear and very deliberate word, because I spent so much time in my life reacting to my thoughts, and even now they'll catch me out. And then what you choose to do with that information. So, there is a little caveat to this, and I remember saying that, I did it on a video, I think it was last year, and one of my friends, Charlie, who had ADHD and autism, she turned around and she went, ah, she says, but with ADHD, she goes, I can't do either of those things. And so I flipped it a little bit and went The only two things we can control, eventually, are how we respond to our thoughts and our actions. Because sometimes there are things which happen and we just, we just don't know what's going on. And then we realise what's going on and we're like, whoa, hang on, put the brakes on and we can, we can slow down a bit. But I do tend to work very much on the idea now that there's only a couple of things that I can truly control. And when I let go of the other stuff that I can't control, it makes me so much happier. But there is an overlap between those two places for me. There's a The circle of what I can't control is absolutely huge. The circle of what I can is tiny and they, they overlap a little bit. And I call that, I call that place influence because even though I can't control what's going on in the rest of the world, you know, I can't, I can't control what's going on in, in, in Gaza or the Ukraine or, or, or in the U S anywhere. If I choose to do something which can help in that direction, I can, I can have an influence, whether that is post about it, whether that's talk to a friend about it, have a conversation, whether that is donate money to a cause, there is an influence which I can have. But that true space of what I can control is how I respond to my thoughts and the actions that I take. You

James: 3:37

know what, we had a conversation about this last time, didn't we? Yes. And Last night, actually, this is good timing because last night I caught myself, again, getting caught up in the whole, uh, U. S., the whole world thing, and it's so, it can be so overwhelming, so I literally made a pact with myself last night that I'm going to Reign myself back in. I'm not going to scroll through TikTok and social media and allow myself to get caught it caught up with all that stuff going on all the shit because it's it's so overwhelming and it makes you it makes it made me feel powerless. Yeah, but what it's kind of what I've come to realize is that if I turn it around and decide, you know what, I'm not going to get caught up in all that crap. What I'm going to do is do what I can to impact my own world. So that could mean things like I might post some videos on how you can improve yourself. I might go and do some meditation. I might allow myself to raise my vibration. I might go and smile more and be happy. When I walk around, look as though, you know, who is this guy? Because that's the stuff I can control. Yeah. And I can't control anything going on in that world, because it's just, it's not that I haven't got the power, it's more that I'm giving my power away to it.

David: 5:14

Absolutely. And, and I love that. I love what you do in there. It's that. It's that, it's that intentional choice of, but, but we, I think sometimes we get, well, I think often, not sometimes, often we get to that intentional choice when we, we, we're so far down the rabbit hole it becomes really uncomfortable. And I, God, I stopped watching, I mean I used to watch BBC News years ago, so. Must be 15 years ago and I remember just going, I'm not going to watch this anymore because I'm waking up in the morning and I'm feeling so bad because the reason that we continue to scroll, the reason that we click on these things, we like a trauma, the phrase rubbernecking as you drive down one side of the motorway, there's an accident on the other side, you are having a look because that it's like a human reaction. It's like a psychology thing. But what happens is that the people who want us to, you know, the social media companies, marketeers, and I'm not blanketing all marketeers with this if anyone's watching, so don't come after me later on, but people who are using psychology to market know these tricks. They know what they need to do to keep you glued on it. And I remember having a conversation with my youngest, who's now 14, who got really frustrated when he was on YouTube. He said, you keep showing me things which I didn't ask for. And I said, that's It's that's it's aim. It's aim is to go. Oh, you like that? Well, let's give you a little bit more of that. And then it will occasionally throw in something which is so far left field or so far right field to see how you respond. It will throw things in which you don't expect to see what your reaction is to it is. And then it will go. I have learned something about you now. I know if I show you this thing over here, which you've not asked to look at, but you watch it for a certain period of time, then I know that I can. I can do more of that. And then there's the demographic. So the only way to do it, and I said, the only way to do it. And, and for me, there's a, there's a really interesting balance in all of this is that we, it comes down a lot to individual responsibility. That we, we have to make that choice as to what we control. So again, back to how we respond to our thoughts and our actions. But there is a bigger responsibility in, in society in general to stop doing things to try and distract us. It's the, I, I stopped drinking seven years ago, and I'm not, I'm not saying that because there's a little halo above my head and look how wonderful I am. But I still have a mate who turns around and says, when are you going to start drinking again? And that is the equivalent of what we have. It's just people who want to disconnect from the, from the emotions, the thoughts, the feelings, and the psychology, yet you've got someone behind them who keeps putting it in front of them, going, yeah, but what about this? And what about this? And what about this? And we've only got a certain amount of energy just to go, no, I'm not interested, before we just go, yeah, alright, I'll have a look at it then. And then you're in that spiral, and that wormhole, and that rabbit hole, and off it goes. And, and it's the individual responsibility piece is huge. But we need to look wider than that. We need to look wider at what society does to to draw us back in and we all want to be liked. We all want to be part of something. We all want to be be seen and heard because that raises our status. And when we do something different, we're not saying we're not heard. It lowers our status. It's a fascinating thing to play with. It really is to sit and observe it and observe it from inside it and go Thank you. My god, I'm stuck in this myself. How do I get out of this? It's, it's crazy stuff.

James: 8:37

Hmm. There's a couple of things there. The first thing is, what I've come to do myself is, when I find I've got an urge to look at social media, Or whatever it is that I'm looking at kind of reducing, I allow myself to go into that feeling of wanting to do it and exploring around that. Because quite often there comes a level of disconnection that could be a sense of loneliness. We shared a discussion about yesterday's podcast. Um. There could be a level of anxiety, it could be fear, but you're just wanting to know more and more and more. And it's exploring them emotions so much so that if you keep digging the more you dig, The deeper you go, the more you find out. And quite often, and I always, um, talk about this in a big, big way. Inner child healing. And quite often it goes down to that inner child that perhaps got hurt at a very, very early age. And it's wounded or there's trauma. And as you said, we like the good trauma, don't we? But it's allowing ourselves to heal that trauma. And then another couple of things was, um, the question is, what can we do? In order to counteract all that rubbish coming in, so things like finding people who inspire you, who make you, uh, who you admire, and joining, and watching more of that, and also you can, I think, I did it before, where you can, Hit double some dots in the corner and say I don't want that you won't come again

David: 10:32

Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's the individual responsibility pieces is what can you do to protect yourself from those things? And and you're just going to touch on the other child stuff I've got a very good friend Brooke who talks a lot about in a child work and We all we all have something in the past somewhere and it doesn't have to be a major trauma. It can be All traumas repeated over a period of time and we respond, we always respond to it in different ways. I know, um, Brené Brown talks about comparative suffering, that we will, we will be suffering with something and then we'll see somebody who's suffering with something which we believe is bigger and we'll go, ah, well what we've got going on isn't as important so why am I even worrying about it? It's the, the, there's always somebody worse off than me theory. Well, you know, at the end of the day you feel what you feel and you should be allowed to feel it. But it's, it's really interesting coming back to the, how do you, how do you protect yourself from those things out there? And I think this, this is, this is where there's a pendulum swinging, this is where there's a continuum. Because we could just shut ourselves off from anything which we disagree with, we dislike, which causes us a, a, you know, an emotional, psychological harm. But I don't think that does us any favors. I think we have to be very careful with what we do. I know there's people out there who have totally differing experiences and viewpoints to me. And my question is, what can I learn from them or what are they seeing? What are they seeing here, which which I'm not? And I, the Buddhists have an amazing concept of concept of emptiness, which is, you know, you have this thing and this cup, this cup has nothing. It's no emotion to it at all. I mean, apart from the fact that I look at it and it says, I'd rather be in Birmingham. So that makes me feel happy. So I feel happiness when I look at that. There's a bit of tea in the bottom, you might be able to see that. That makes me happy. But if I drink the tea, that might make me sad. And the thing is, it doesn't make me do anything. It's my response to it. So having somebody who can look at this thing from a different perspective and give me a different view and be able to have a civil conversation around that. is, is a beautiful thing. One of the challenges I see is that we're, we're pushed too much in this dichotomous direction. And, you know, we, I don't wanna, I don't wanna go too, too far down the rabbit hole of, of, of the lockdown and the pandemic. But that was a very good example of how it pitted two groups of people against one another. And, and it's never just about two groups of people. But you can protect yourself. But you also have to let those things in so you can have an appreciation and widen that circle of your knowledge. But what's really interesting, and you talked about, you know, here's this thing, but what's underneath it? Anger was a huge thing for me over the years. And, and when, when I look at anger and what it is, I realized that it probably wasn't anger, it was frustration or sadness or not being seen or not being heard. All, all of those things which kind of go down underneath it. And those days where maybe you're reacting in a, in a negative way to something which is going on in the world because we can shut out the news, we can shut out social media, we can shut out all those people who just, who we just don't want to, don't want to engage with. But there will be a point where something absolutely normal will happen and we'll just, we'll just lose it or something will go on. And the digging goes on to understand, well, what's led to that point? I know, I know being tired or being hungry or, or not being productive. I know all these things which can be factors so that I have a much smaller ability to respond to what's going on around me and it goes from response to reaction. And that's where the curiosity comes in is, well, okay, what, what's gone on for me, which I could have changed or I can't change it, but what can I do next time?

James: 14:13

Yeah, nice. I like that. So Dave, tell us about yourself. Who are, who is Dave James? Dave James. Dave.

David: 14:22

There we go. The annoying thing is, I was saying to a friend about this the other day, I've got, I've got a thing on there about what I do, that's a banner I take out to events, and I've changed my LinkedIn profile since. It's like, oh my god, why did I do that? So about me, so I am, I'm dad of three. I'm currently separated, currently going through a divorce, which is its whole test on reaction and response. I, from Birmingham originally, live now in Bromscove in Worcestershire, which is about 12, 13 miles outside. I've had a fairly interesting career path. I started off, started off getting kicked out of school at 16. I was a computer programmer for a while. I got very, very heavily into the computing world. I was a bit of a geek, bit of a nerd, still am in many ways. And then when I Failed a number of computing courses. I left home and I got a job working in a nursing home. So I got a job working, wiping people's bums for a living. And it was one of the best jobs ever. Because you got to learn about people. You got to learn about how to, as a, then in my early 20s, I had to interact with people in a different way. Move away from that. Oh, it's Friday and Saturday night. I'm going out for a few drinks, too Well, actually I might be working a shift on a Friday or Saturday night So it changed that whole whole kind of thing for me I then moved into nursing because I realized I needed more responsibility Eventually working in A& E for three years, which is where where I met my ex and we started that family And then, we moved back to the Midlands, that was in Oxford, moved back to the Midlands and retrained as a podiatrist, as a foot and leg specialist, and that's where I've spent the bulk of my healthcare career, is as a foot and leg specialist. And, picked up a masters degree, ran my own business, worked for the NHS as a manager, taught students, started a charity, all this kind of, you know, the cool stuff which, which you get up to, particularly when you get bored easily and you have to have something in your life to distract you. And then 2018, I, I decided that I didn't want to be in that podiatry business anymore, and, and I sold it. I, I sold it to, to a colleague who, who was a student of mine, and stepped away from it and moved into coaching. And I have been coaching since, and that coaching has shifted from a business and marketing for health care professionals, because that's what I knew, growing, uh, you know, a five figure business from, from nothing through to, to those five figures over eight years and then selling it, which is unusual in the, in the podiatry world to sell a business. And then during lockdown, people were going, my life's a bit crap. Can you, can we talk about it? It's like, yeah. And then realize that I was going through that whole journey with separation. I was looking more at me. I was more, more of a life coach. And then because speaking has been such a big thing for me in terms of my personal growth and development and also lead generation and business. I realized how much I enjoyed speaking, so I threw myself into speaking a lot more a couple of years ago. And then went, why am I doing life coaching? Why am I getting geeky on speaking? Why am I speaking? Why don't I, why don't I just bring it all together? And then decided I was going to coach business owners and leaders around speaking, as well as hosting events, as well as speaking, and a bit of stand up comedy on the side. So, so the career's been a bit of a, bit of an interesting one. Um, But the, I suppose that the biggest story for me is that the underlying bit, this is, this is the bit which people don't generally talk about because it's vulnerable and they don't like to be seen in anything other than than perfect and wonderful, which obviously I am, was that I was in. Yeah, I mean, look at me and you. Well, I quite, quite often say, and I do this, I do this a lot at, even at gigs, I say, I say, you can't polish this, but you can roll it in glitter, but it will cost you extra. And when I was in hospital as a child, I wa I had spina bifida in a club foot and that. You, you in many ways underestimate that, that being in hospital as a, as a child is a big thing. And my experience in hospital as a child was, was okay. There was one moment where, as was on the children's hospital ward in Birmingham, they did bring in the darex one day, but that was, you know, when you are sort of five, five years old, that's quite scary. But the scariest thing is they brought members in of the, of the Birmingham Sydney football team, which is far scarier to be honest than Darex and. So I was in hospital as a kid. That gave me, with the spina bifida, that gave me various, various issues. I, back issues, ulcerated my foot at, at, at 20, which is how I eventually ended up in podiatry, because it was, it was me trying to find out more. And then at, at, when I was 14, I had a friend at school who was abducted and murdered, a young man by the name of Stuart Goff. And my way of expressing how, how I wanted to communicate with the world was via anger. That was the only way in which I communicate. Everything was about anger. And that went with me right the way through. Right the way through my, my life until 2015 when, when my, my, my ex turned around to me and said, right, get out of the house, I've had, I've had enough of this. And it was that, it was that pivotal moment where you realize you're about to lose everything and you have to do something, because I thought it'd been okay up until that point. It was like, yes, anger, break a few things, no one gets hurt physically, psychologically we're all a bit broken, kids see this stuff, but we, we all, we all hug afterwards and everything's okay. And, and that was the moment where I realized that no, it wasn't. And I had to do something about it. And that was the beginning of my big grand personal development journey where I, you know, you, you, you buy books and you start reading them and you listen to podcasts and you start meditating and all of the stuff which goes with it. And it, and it opened up a whole new, it opened up a whole new world to me, and it, and it then changed over those, the three years after that, it changed the course of what I was doing within my career, and eventually selling the, the podiatry practice. And, and now, as much as I try and get away from men's mental health stuff, it still creeps up on me, and people come to me and go, Dave, can you come and talk about anger to someone or can you, can you come and talk about men's mental health because you, you've got the experience on it. I'm like, yeah, okay, then I can come and do that. So, so it's been interesting. It's been an interesting journey. There's, there's definitely the two strands of the, you know, the professional side and, and the strands of the personal side. And, and now with, with the speaking, they, they dovetail. I get to stand up and talk about, talk about the personal stuff. I get to. I get to show people that side which which maybe a lot of people don't and and for me that that's essential because it all blends in it all fits together. And that was a really long monologue on that one as well so that's probably ruined your social media clips.

James: 20:47

That's alright. So, when we were discussing this last week, we were, we were deciding on having the topic of happiness and joy, because that's what you also speak about. Now, how, in your, where in your life has happiness and joy really influenced who you are?

David: 21:12

You see, that's a really good question, and I'll, so, so anger for me is a very comfortable place. Because I spent so much time being angry and frustrated that I can slip into that very, very, very easily. And it's like a coat. You put it on, it's like, yeah, this is really comfortable, it fits, it's always good. And when I did a clowning course, a clowning workshop, five days last year, and we were talking about the expression of joy and happiness. And Dan, who runs the course, he'll say, right, come out, be happy! And you're like, yeah, I'm happy! Woo! And he went, no, I'm not feeling it. He said, how about anger? And I went, Oh, I can do anger. And I did anger and he looked at me and he went, don't do that again. I was like, okay, because it's such a comfortable place. And I, and know as I, as I grew up, I was, I talked a lot with, with therapists about this, about, you know, expressions from other people to me about, you know. Saying you've done really, really well, or you've done really badly. Everything was very kind of tight and very close. There was no kind of, you know, overtly over the top praise. And there was no real overt criticism. And I think it's because the people around me were so scared that I might flip into anger. And, and what do you do? You know, you wrap someone in cotton wool and you look after them and make sure they're okay. So for me, the expression of joy is, is a really, is a really interesting one. And I still find it hard to think about how I would describe that, but probably for me it comes down to, it comes down to comedy, so it comes down to laughter, and it comes down to being a bit maverick and a bit mischievous, and it comes down to fun, and fun is a huge value for me. If I'm not having fun doing something, If I go to a conference or I go to a workshop and I've had my fill of what I need, I am probably the cheekiest, most disruptive person in the room. But I'm also learning in the background. And people will challenge me and go, are you actually listening? Oh yeah, you've just talked about this, this and this. And I go, oh. So for me, the, the It's less about joy and extreme amounts of joy and it's more about the fun. Everything for me has to be fun. When you said to me, will I come on this? Yeah, because it's going to be fun. We're going to have a conversation which is fun. And I don't have to put a mask on and pretend to be someone else. I've talked openly about anger. I've talked on stage about it a number of times. I share that story with someone. My, if I have skeletons in my closet, my closet doors open, everyone can see it. So, It can't hurt me in the way that it used to. So now I, I have fun with things. And it doesn't mean that things don't catch me out occasionally, because, because they do big, big time. But for me, that expression of, of joy is, is probably more for me around fun.

James: 24:03

And it's, it's um, There's something that I'm trying to incorporate more into my life, because I know that when I'm in, when I'm having fun, I'm in the flow. You're not, you're not worried about what happened in the past. You're not worried about what's going to happen, um, 10 minutes time or five minutes time. You are literally in that moment and you are having so much fun. Like I suppose we first met at the PSA. I think it was about two years ago. Was that right? Two years? I think it was two years ago.

David: 24:36

It was, uh, yeah, it was the, the SBS conference in Birmingham. Um, at the, at the voco. This is where my, my memory comes out. And you were doing speaker factor?

James: 24:45

Yeah, I was, I was on stage. I was literally about to do a five minutes speech and I gone, I got up, started to speak a first sentence, literally forgot. Everything. And then, okay, and then I heard the audience saying, Come on, James! Come on, James! So, so I started again, and again, I literally forgot everything. But in that moment, I decided to, I had two choices. I either ran off stage Or, I'd just stay and, you know, kind of fight. And I stayed and fought, and I just allowed it, whatever to come out, comes out. I must admit, I swore three times. But, what I did have, was I did have fun. I wasn't worried about what people thought. I wasn't worried about what's going to be said after. You know, I was just allowing it to come out. And, you know, quite often we get caught up either in the past, Or in the future, but when we're having fun in the moment, life, life, I think becomes easy because you know what you need to do because you're having fun.

David: 26:00

Absolutely. And I, and I remember that. I remember when you did that. And I, I remember the, I remember seeing your face and, and, and it was very obvious the process you were going through. And, and I, and I love the, the, that you chose just to go, right, I'm here. Let, let, let's do it. And, and the support from the audience. And. I'm trying to think, who won? I know, I know who won. I had to think about who won because I still remember you in many ways more than them. Because of how you showed up and, um, and it was taking away that, that prepared bit and it was going, right, here I am. And it, it was beautiful to watch. It was, and the word I would put to it is it was present. Presence for me is, is, is such a big thing. I've learned that through mindfulness and meditation and the, the speaker coaching work, the work of Patsy Rodenberg, where she talks about presence, about being in this moment and intentionally doing things from, from um, Now that there's nothing else going on at the moment other than this conversation that that's that's the important thing for me. Yes, I know that there's still going stuff going on in the world. I'm sure my bank account is lower than it than it needs to be. I might will have an email which is saying either something which is useful or not. But this this is is the space to be because when when you when you get present, it brings you back to that space. You can control. You can control what's going on in this moment. And I. I delivered last night men's we do we do a thing called meditation, which is men's meditation and mindfulness. We started the group two and a half, almost two and a half years ago now. And it's been, it's been amazing. And I still chuckle that they put me at the front of the room and let me, let me whittle on while people's eyes are closed about, you know, take a deep breath in and all this, all this kind of stuff and make it my own, but it's. That ability to, to almost take what, what's unconsciously going on for people and, you know, take it from under the table and put it out and say, this, this is what we, we can all see this. Why are we hiding this and not talking about it? It brings you back to the moment in, in such a powerful way. And one of the biggest ways, and I, I didn't realize this until I tried it, one of the biggest ways to be present is to do comedy, do stand up comedy. Because you are very acutely aware of whether you are funny or not in that moment. Because the audience tell you. You, and, and I, I did our stand up comedy, our stand up comedy hosting last Friday as we record this. And I, I died on stage quite a lot. And I told them, I said, I've died on stage tonight. And they laugh. And it's because it's, it's true. Truth is funny. You, and that's a Beth, Beth Sherman quote. She's, she's, she is the person who, who I go to and talk about comedy a lot. And. You get present in that moment and when you're present in that moment You kind of realize that that things can't hurt you in the same way that you think they can all the stuff which I mean Okay, there are some things which will hurt you very much in the present like buses and firearms But a lot of the stuff which we have to deal with goes on in the six inches between the ears So being being present is huge being in that moment and you did that you did that at the PSA It was beautiful to watch there was just that yes I don't know what's going to go on now, and it then wasn't about the competition, it was about you. And it was beautiful to watch, it was memorable.

James: 29:18

With regards to presents to do with happiness, how would you define true happiness? Oh,

David: 29:28

it's a lie. No, that's the wrong answer. So I, I, I have a, I have a keynote called how to be a happy human. Um, I thought I put it to bed last year and, and, and did it a couple of times. I thought that, that won't come out. I'll go and talk about other things. And then somebody asked me in March to go to a PSA event and do how to be a happy human. I was like, you're right. I'll, I'll pull how to be a happy human back out. And I, about two thirds of the way in, I say to people that I've lied to them. I've said, I've, I've, I've hooked you in with a beautiful title. How to be a happy human. It's, it's alliterative. It's beautiful. It flows. It, oh, it gives you something. And, and most people, if you said to them, what do you want from life? They go, I want to be happy. And I say, it's, it's got, it's got very little to do with happiness. Happiness is, is a, an emotion like joy or sadness or anger or frustration. It is a, an emotion, which we, we have a very d different relationship with. When, when happiness comes along, we, we try and hold onto it as tight as we can because you never want it to go. But if we, if we're angry or frustrated, we'll we'll push that away as quickly as possible. And the reality is it, it comes and goes quite a lot. For me, it's more about contentment. And it's about the recognition of the states that you're in emotionally. Are you angry? Yes, okay. Let's label it as anger. And then what are we going to do with that? Are we going to let it? Are we going to let it? If anger's in the back seat, are we going to let it nudge us out of the way, jump in the car and drive it? Same with happiness, are we, are we going to do the same? Or is it about contentment and about recognition of those states? And going, while I'm in this state where I feel really happy, I'm going to enjoy it, but I'm not going to hold onto it so tight and strive for it to never go away, that I miss being happy to hold onto happiness. It's, it's, it's a really interesting, and I, and I've I've played around with this, I've thought about it, and for me it comes back to contentment. Happiness is a beautiful thing. But then, I think anger is a beautiful thing. I think joy is a beautiful thing, I think sadness is a beautiful thing. Because it's about, for me it's about creating a space which is available for you to experience all of the beautiful stuff which goes on in life. Because if we were happy all the time, at some point we'd get bored. At some point we have to have some tension, we have to have some stress. Muscles don't grow unless you go to the gym and do exercise. My abdomen doesn't grow unless I go to the shop and buy chocolate and eat it. There has to be some tension to change that state. And that's where happiness, sadness, joy, anger, all of those things have to be in there. But to have a healthy space in which we can experience those, and not feel judged by others or by ourselves, that for me is, that for me is the game. And that's and it's really hard to do that. It's really hard, because some days that space is really, really big, and other days it's teeny tiny. And you can only fit one emotion in for a very brief moment. It's a it's a really interesting game to play. And I and I and I don't know the rules, and I don't even know whether there is a prize at the end.

James: 32:25

Nicely put, nicely put. Um, I feel as though you can it's quite easy to shift. I find moving from say, for example, I'm feeling angry, but you acknowledge that anger, allow yourself to feel it. I'm able then to shift to how do I want to feel? And for me, happiness comes down to that idea that not to follow what society wants us to do. Or less, that's what makes you happy. If that makes you happy, that is great. Do that. If you don't find following what society wants you to do makes you happy, then do something that does make you happy. Because, um, I feel as though with, um, happiness and joy, with a sense that it's about following, following a purpose, following a reason, a reason to live. Contentment. Usually, and it's, and it's, it's not one of these things where it's going to be easy to follow. Because if it was easy to follow, everybody would be doing it. And we'd be bored, as you said, because it's just, it's just too easy. We, as human beings, like a good challenge. We like a good, um, as we said, we could look like a good, a good trauma. Um, so it's, it's about us going through this, this journey, this path of self discovery and Discovering who, who, who we, who are we meant to be, who are we, what at the very core can we teach people that can really help them to grow and to be, and that's what you do with your mental health and your, um, your happy place, your happy talks and things like that. Yeah, it's given

David: 34:25

people an opportunity to look at things differently and And that realization that we're in a system which we, we probably can't get out of easily. And we, we have, we have to, we have to adapt to that. And we, I talk, I talk with clients about, about values, particularly around values when it comes to speaking. It's like, who are you? Who are you at your core? What are your behaviors? Because when you go up on stage, you want to express that. So that you, you connect with your audience and it's the authenticity piece that if you're your authentic self, which is a whole other discussion on its own, then then people will connect with you more and you can have a greater impact on people. But to realize that we're, we're in a system which we, which will influence us either consciously or unconsciously, and particularly around things like, you know, if we look at capitalism as a system, capitalism is, is, is amazing, and it's also awful at the same time, because it means that people change their focus and their purpose, not to experience everything that life has to offer, to experience all of those emotions, to have amazing connections, and, and to, to live a fulfilled life, whatever a fulfilled life is, is to you. What happens instead is we we end up going in the pursuit of money because what money does is it gives us security and safety and we know that money is also related to status and and if we've got a lower status, that means that we were rejected were rejected by the Trump. There's a whole host of things which which go on and so. It's trying to find a way about how, how do we find that meaning and purpose and that's that answer that big question. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? And I, and I quite often, my girlfriend gets, gets the brunt of this. She, she'll quite often have me going into a place where I get really down about it. And I, and I talked to a lot of people who, you know, a lot of friends and they're like, yeah, we talk about money and a company which has done half a billion in turnover and revenue. And my question simply is. To what end? Most people that I come across are in industries where the aim is to make money. Why? To make more money. Why? To make more money, to pay our shareholders so people can buy nice things. Why? What does that mean? And There are less people in industries which are truly about, you know, earning a bit of money so that you can help people. Nursing, for example, medicine, all of those things. They, the outcome of that is that you improve the quality of someone's life, coaching therapy, all of those things. And so for me, I get into this little funk about why are we doing these things anyway? And it's, and that's not, and that's not a happy place for me at all, but I think it really. For me comes down to to understanding what what it is. What what is it that gives you joy and happiness and and also realizing again back back to this is that That can be, that can generate happiness, or you can, you can generate happiness, or sadness, or frustration towards it, I can use that as a weapon, I can use that as a way to, to, you know, to put, put water in my car, I can use it to fill it with tea and drink and stay hydrated, everything has multiple uses. And I can guarantee that that something which we might think is, is the most horrendous thing in the world. There's, there's somebody else in the world who's going, that's a really good opportunity for me. And it, and it's that understanding that, that it, that it's personal. I get really geeky on, on science fiction. I, I could quite happily quote to you lines from Bladerunner because it, it's, it's one of the most beautiful things in, in the world. I, I get really geeky with Lego. I, I, I love to do, you know, I get on the PlayStation and have fun, but then I'm quite happy to sit there with a nice cup of tea and read a book. And then, there's so many things which, which give us joy. The challenge is that there's so many people on social media who are, who are telling us what should give us joy. Or what should make us feel a certain thing. And it's that realization that actually that's just It's just their opinion, man, to quote a bit of the Big Lebowski. And it's working out where we fit in all of that. And that, again, for me, comes down to presence. What's important to me? How do I feel? And when I do my How To Be A Happy Human keynote, I talk about five areas. I talk about authenticity. I talk about meaning and purpose. I talk about control and choice. I talk about community and connection. And that's to others and to ourselves because we We can't be truly who we are in isolation. Yes, we would all feel better if we went off and found a desert island and sat on a rock and meditated all day and drank water from coconuts. But we need to understand, we can only understand who we are in the reflection back from other people. And then the fifth one is physiology and biology. Which is, you know, how are we looking after our bodies? Sleep, nutrition, and that's not my expert area at all. One area I don't talk about is money. Because I have No particular interest in it other than How do I keep the lights on? How do I you know have a computer and a camera where I can do these things other than that? It it doesn't it doesn't excitement the pursuit of money is not something which excites me And I also realise that, because I've got enough money to do that, that there's an inherent privilege in that as well, which, which messes with my head on many levels. But it's, it's, it's really about exploring what, what it is for you, and then being okay with that and then expressing that.

James: 39:42

You mentioned earlier about What does it mean? And you're talking about people earning lots and lots of money. That's a, that's a deep question. That's quite a very, and that can send you down a massive rabbit hole, I think. And it's, it's, I think a lot of what it means when it comes to things like building capitalism, like building business, money, money, money, money, comes down to, as you said, society. But also it's the idea that, yeah, it's security and safety. But is it really security and safety, or does it look like it on the surface? And another thing you mentioned, values. So, how can anybody here listening Discover their values.

David: 40:35

Oh, that's a really good question. What I do want to touch on, you might have to ask me that question in a moment, is that idea of safety. So I talked to clients in the past about the difference between safety and safeness. And I think that money can provide safety. You earn money, that improves your status, you buy nice things, you have a nice car, a nice house, nice clothes. All of those things. But then what you do is you use that money to then pay for ways to protect your things and your status from people taking that away. Secure, big house, security systems, God, whatever it is. Whereas on the other hand, you've got safeness. Safeness is this, this, I know who I am and I know that I can walk into a room confident that I am going to be okay. The, the, actually the views of other people. I think the views of other people always matter because we're always judging and being judged and that's okay. And we walk into spaces which maybe we're uncomfortable in. We will, it will change us. We will, our authenticity level will shift. But when you've done that That work when you've looked at who you are, you come from a place of safeness rather than safety, and I think I think it's a it's a very subtle shift, but it but it's a it's a much. It's a much nicer thing. I think that comes with a number of things. I think comes with age, and it comes with knowing who you are, and it comes in realizing that if there's less years ahead than there are behind, then well, why am I wasting my time trying to conform to someone else? Why don't I just go and swear at people a bit more and just and just have more fun doing that? But going back to that question about values, about how do you find your values, there's so many ways of doing it. We know people in the PSA who do behavioral and personality profiling and describing it that way isn't giving an idea of the true depth of it because that stuff is amazing. Then I do exercises with clients. There's the very cheesy, very typical, here's a list of words, pick them out. But what I also like to do is I also like to look at people's lives and say, okay. Let, let's draw a line from the beginning of your life through to where you are now. And above the line, let's put experiences which were positive, things which stand out for you as being really highlights of your life. Under the line, put things which were less good. The things which were maybe traumatic or frustrating. And now, just write some words. Just, just what, you know, what comes to mind. And That will give you an idea of the kind of words that you use to describe your experiences, and there'll be patterns which come out as well. There'll be things which appear and you'll go, ah, that's important to me. And even down to that question, what's important to me? I mean, I, I have, I have three very simple values, which are, well, they were love, learning, freedom, and fun, and then realized that learning was a bit of a trap, and I was just trying to prove that I wasn't dim as a, as a, as a, uh, at school. So for me, there is love, however that's expressed. There is freedom. And fun and fairness. In fact, love comes into it less. Now, maybe love is expressed in different ways, but fairness. Fairness is a huge thing for me. I, I get really twitchy when I see things which aren't fair. I get really twitchy when I'm not getting the freedoms that I want. And if I'm not having fun, just, yeah, we, we, we are not, we're not gonna play. I'm, I'm gonna be disruptive. I'm gonna be a pain in the asrs and I'm gonna, I'm, you're gonna wanna put me in the corner or throw me out. But when you start to explore those values more, you will try a value on. And he'll go, yeah, okay, this seems quite right. But then you might find out that it doesn't fit. So when, when I was looking previously and, and learning was, was a big one for me. It wasn't just about what could I learn, it was about how can I work with other people to help them grow and develop. It was, it was, it was development and education and learning, not just for me, but, but for other people. And how I expressed that the. Freedom for me is, is in many ways is about choice, being, choosing to be able to do this on a Thursday morning. You know, choosing to be able to get up and go to the gym in the morning. All of those things which, which fitted with my values, but have taken time to get to that point. I mean, values is, is something you can find out quite quickly, but to truly test them and retest them and, and see if they're right, requires you to actually, you know, put the jacket on and wear it for a while and see what, see what happens.

James: 44:55

My values are freedom, love, growth, um, wisdom, and there's one more, I can't think of it.

David: 45:05

But yeah, it's um The fifth one isn't memory, is it? That would be a

James: 45:11

Ha ha ha ha! No, it's um, quite Because I do live by them. I do live by, you know, freedom, like, freedom. I want to build a business where I can go and be where I, where I want, when I want, and not have to worry about, uh, money or anything like that. There's that, that's, that's freedom to me. So I could, literally doing an online business, you can be, I could be in New Zealand. Obviously the time difference, but it's, um, yeah, it's that, there's that way of living. And then for me, love is all about allowing myself to love myself, to, and then to kind of project that out to other people. And is it, is the idea of growth over the last 10 years, growth's been one of the biggest things I have done. I would, I'm, I've realized now that I'm never going to stop growing. Because with growth comes understanding who you are, it allows you to become, to be better, to take responsibility for your life, to take the steps needed to grow, and yeah, and finally, the, the other one, um, I can't even remember where I was. Wisdom. Wisdom. Yeah, it's We live in a world that's probably in a lot of non wisdom, but when you feel proper wisdom, you're like in awe of it.

David: 46:44

Yeah. Yeah. And I love those. I love those values. And whether those values resonate with me or not is irrelevant. What resonates with me is the is the freedom that you're taking to go. These are my values. I'm going to live by them. And it's okay for those values to change. And I think this is this is where the there is a permission which comes with all of this that to turn around. I mean, I still remember being being younger and people going, Oh, you're a bit of a Bit of a geek, bit of a nerd, and it was, it was something which was considered bad. Now, you look at it now, consider being a geek or being a nerd is, I mean, I had a phrase on my computer for ages, which is, geek shall inherit the earth. Because it is, it is something, geeks and nerds express themselves in, in ways which are just. just so beautiful to look at, you know, for me, it's cool that I like Star Trek and I like Star Wars. It's cool that I like, you know, I'm a 51 year old man who, who will quite happily play with Lego, but it's also absolutely okay to get exquisite joy and happiness and contentment from sitting on a Saturday afternoon in a coffee shop, reading a book and it can be a fantasy book. It could be whatever it is. And, and, and it's. In many ways, it's, it's finding joy in, in the smallest experiences. Because we're so conditioned to go, well, it's more, more, more. So, you know, company earns more money. Well, we want to earn more money. So we, we work harder to earn more money. So we can say that we've earned this much money. Cool. But what about that beautiful thing of saying, I, I can get happiness and contentment from a cup of coffee, sat in a coffee shop. Reading a book for an hour that that for me is it feels like it's the ultimate happiness and freedom To be able to take a small thing and get joy from it No, and and and it's I think about this in terms of you adding adding sugar to to a cup of tea Is that initially you'll add one one sugar and you go? This is nice But then a few weeks later doing that it won't be enough You'll have to add two and you know, this is nice and then a few and then three And there comes a point where you have to keep increasing the, the dose, increasing that medicine, and then, but being able to actually sit back and go, but actually, what if I was to just focus on this moment, and this is the presence thing again is, well, what if I was, what if I was to just, Look at this moment in time and instead of going all on board or I don't know what to do Tap into different things and this is where the mindfulness and meditation stuff comes in We're talking about it last night Talk about expanding your your focus from from the breath to the body to the feeling of the clothes on your skin because how many? Times two people sit there and go I can feel the clothes on my skin Yeah, the blanket they're wearing, maybe the eye mask they're wearing, to the temperature in the room, to the sounds of other people in the room, to the noises of the traffic going by, to the flicker of the candles through their eyelids. All of these things where it's, instead of going outwards and going, we need to have bigger and better things, but actually going inwards and going, what can I feel in my experience now? That, that, you know, the breathing, the, if you ever do, you know, meditation, you need to do a guided meditation and you realise that, Quite often, the in breath and the out breath are of different lengths. And the gap between the in breath and the out breath is a bit, it's, it's like that moment as you drive along a road and you go over a hump and you just feel yourself, gravity, gravity's gone, I feel like I'm floating and then you come back down again. But you notice these things when instead of going out and going, I need more stuff, I need more sugar, I need more cars, I need more money, and going in and going, actually, what, what's here? What's in, what's in this moment? That, that for me, that, that, that gets me, that gets me excited. And, and to be honest, I love that, but at the same time, I can't do that all the time. Sometimes I do need to watch Netflix. Sometimes I do need to, to go and, you know, do a bit of retail therapy. I do need to buy something and, or, or buy chocolate, whatever it is. But it's that ability to be able to move between those different states. And that's where the presence comes in as well, is going, well, what do I need in this moment? Or what do I want in this moment? Or what should I do in this moment? It's, it's fascinating and fun. And as you can tell, I get all geeked out about it, which is why I just monologue about it whenever I get the chance. But it's just cool stuff to work with.

James: 51:06

Yeah, it's this, it's the idea that, with presence, and the ability to slow down, literally, Because we live in such a fast, fast paced world that we're always on the go, go, go, go, go. And there's this idea of literally just slow down. You know, I catch myself quite often throughout the day. And I'm just in my head, just like going from one thing to another thing to another thing. And there's, there's no enjoyment. There's no happiness or joy from going from one thing to another thing. I feel like you're almost doing it. You're doing it just through the endless pursuit of, um, doing. And there's the, with presence, there comes this idea that, um, Just the other day I was, um, working with inner beauty. So I realized that I sometimes project my beauty onto other people. I might see a beautiful woman and I'm projecting my own beauty onto them. So I bring my beauty back into myself, allow myself to feel that inner beauty. And the other day, yesterday, I was walking and literally allow myself to feel that inner beauty and allow myself to observe. The nature around me. And even just the other day, I was on the back of a fire engine, and That was random. I was on the back of a fire

David: 52:36

engine.

James: 52:37

I've done I'm 14 years into fire service. That explains

David: 52:41

it. I was gonna say, I've just now got this vision of a fireman going, James, just get off the back of the wagon, I've told you this before.

James: 52:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so, yeah, real life fireman Sam. So I was under the fire engine, and I just allowed myself to observe going through a town. Now, I wouldn't usually see a town as beautiful, but because I was observing my own inner beauty, I was allowed, I was able to see, as we're traveling around, the beauty of the built up roads, the beauty of the houses, the people walking, and yeah, that's just through being present in our own body, and being able to really enjoy that moment.

David: 53:30

Oh, I lost your sound, then. Can you hear me now? Oh, sound, yeah. Sound's gone, can't hear you. Can you hear me?

James: 53:38

Uh,

David: 53:38

yeah, I can hear you. Oh, there you go, you're back now. You're back now.

James: 53:40

It's working. Um, my internet's unstable, hold on. I can pull, I can take out all this, this bit. Not an issue. Uh, hold on. Oh, my internet's back. It's alright.

David: 53:55

There you go. It's on in a moment.

James: 53:58

It's all good. Can you hear me now?

David: 54:00

Yep, can hear you now.

James: 54:01

Okay. So Yeah, there's just this sense of presence. And Being present in that moment that gave me that joy and that beauty and it was a profound experience because I've never really had that before.

David: 54:22

Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it? It's beautiful and it's and I know when I when I teach the guys mindfulness of meditation I talk about the breath and I saw about the breath the fact that the breath is there all the time We just don't notice it. It's it's doing its autonomic nervous system thing going along keeping us alive But if you ever need to anchor yourself on something that the breath is there and I have lots of conversations of people where they Go, I can't meditate. I don't know how to do that I can't calm me brain down and it's like well the aim is not to calm your brain down The aim is to recognize your brain And actually, the shortest meditation is an in breath, a hold, an out breath, a hold. That, that, that's a meditation. But being able to, to notice things around you and have questions. And my girlfriend's really, really curious. She's far more curious than I am. I don't ask enough questions and go deeper on levels. She is like a surgeon. She's just like, ooh, what's in here? Ooh, what's underneath? And, and sometimes it's just like, no, no, no, stop asking. Just, just, I, I need a bit of a break. But it's really interesting where she gets curious. And you ask questions like, if you, you know, who, Um, who first thought about how to lay bricks for a house? What, what was, what was the, what was the thought process they went through? What was, what was the discovery? You know, what, where they went, Oh, if you have a brick of this width, this size and this material that we can make it and what, what needed to happen to get to that point? Because you, we walk along here is a huge building over there. It's a council, um, Car park, which is which is closed. I can demolish it at some point. It's fully brick. I've got bricks on the wall here Who kind of went? Oh, these bricks all fit together in this way. And if I use this particular Material made up in this way and I put it here and I leave it for a set amount of time All these things who you know when you're when you're on the back of the fire wagon Who was the person who decided? How long the ladders have to be, how those ladders fit together, the mechanism, who, who then stress tested it. And one of the things when you talk about fire, and I didn't realise about the fire stuff, which is really interesting, there's a, there's a story, and I'm, I'm assuming this is a, this is a true story, and if it, if it isn't a true story, it's an urban legend, I, I don't care, I still love it, is that there was a, a fire chief who turned up at a, at a fire. And just before they were about to go through the door, he, he, he stopped and said, no, everyone back, and they, they, everyone stepped back, and then a few seconds later, there, there was an explosion in the building. And somebody came to him afterwards and said, why, what was it, what was it that made you do that? Because there was no, there were no signs at all. That, that, that was going to happen. There was no, no warning at all. And yet you went, no, everyone back. And, and there was an explosion. You know, did you plan to bomb? It was, it was that kind of thing. And, and the guy said, well, he said, the thing is, he said, I remember as a, when I was, when I was, you know, very early on in the fire service, I remember a very similar experience. And there was something which changed in the air, which I was very aware of it, the air almost like changed direction a little bit. There was a subtle shift he said, and I instantly in that moment recognized that, that that was probably going to happen. And, and I just, just made that call. A very intuition pattern recognition thing. If, if he hadn't have been present for that, how many people might have died. And like I say, I dunno whether that's a true story or not. I, I like it as a story because you know, how many times do we. Do we miss out on things, or do we make decisions which aren't great because we're not present? How many times do we moan about being stuck in traffic? But actually, the very fact we're stuck in traffic at this point, which adds an extra five minutes to our journey, might mean that we miss being in a crash. Whereas if we were rushing through, we might be in a crash. It's all those little what ifs and curious questions and Uh, my, my, my poor, my poor brummy brain doesn't have space for all of these things most of the time, but occasionally it just catches me and I go, Ooh, what if? Who invented that? That's a bit weird, isn't it? And, but even just your, you know, your, your on the back of the fire wagon driving down the street, and you think about In every house there is at least one person, and that one person has a number of years experience and a life and stories. And then you start to look at the scope of that. How many stories are there? How many lives? How many of it overlaps? How many things are different or new? How many people And this was one of the things which I, I really remember from, from working in the nursing home, one of my first jobs, was that you saw this person as somebody whose mobility wasn't good, probably was going to drop food down, may well be demented, may well be confused, may well be incontinent, unable to care for stuff, but if you only ever If you only have dwelt on that, you forgot that they'd got decades of experience where it was love and loss and commitment and achievement and choice and control. And they got things going back to a time in the world which which I Which only you ever read about in history books. Yet you have this living, breathing person in front of you. Who, if they are confused, probably remembers more about Haha, just thought now of a guy called Bert I used to look after who, who reminded me once of, I think it was like someone like the 1935 Beauty Queen from um,

James: 59:31

from Wolverhampton called

David: 59:32

Queenie Braun. It's, it's amazing what you remember. But all these memories and all these experiences which you don't tap into and those are all out there. But while we're in this pursuit of more money, faster cars, nicer Internet, more beautiful clothes, all of these things, I think, are absolutely fine. And I think we should earn money so that we can have that base of support, but it's what we do on top of that. AI, beautiful, love it, use it most days, it knows more, know more about me than my therapist, it is wonderful. But if we only ever use it to do things faster and quicker and to make more money, we're missing out on what it can do for us so we can be more human. That's my, that's my view, I could be wrong, that's a hill I'll die on, and, and I might be wrong, but we shall see.

James: 1:00:20

It brings us back actually quite nicely to the question, uh, of what is, what is happiness, what is joy, and how does that incorporate in our life? From what we just spoke about, I feel almost as though we answered our own question there, because underneath the surface of present and being present, there's that idea that we have all these senses, all these, um, all these, um, so hearing, smelling, touching, our intuitive, uh, senses. And when we combine all of them, there's almost that sense of like, I'm smoothing my hand along my, um, Uh, Mike, touching my desk and there's all them senses and it's almost like in that enjoyment, that, that joy of actually witnessing our surroundings. But in this present moment, it's almost like drinking a glass of water, that smoothness of water going down across your mouth, through your tongue, down your throat. There's almost that sense of. Curiosity of discovering new things about not just our surroundings, but about ourselves, and understanding that happiness and joy is just something that we have right now in this moment, and it's something that we can, we can have in an instant, but it has to be a level of Deeper understanding of who we actually are.

David: 1:01:59

Yeah, and and they there's a phrase which is, you know, happiness is a choice or happiness isn't in a game. And I'm totally on board with that. The caveat I would always add to that is it's much easier to be happier when you have enough money to survive. And that's because of the society around us. I mean, my friend Alex, Alex Williams, when we did our podcast, we talk about this a lot is, you know, it's, it's, it's almost like. I, I see all these people on, on social media who turn around and say, you know, you must look after yourself. You must take time for yourselves. But they're usually the people who, for many years, haven't looked after themselves, haven't taken time for themselves, and now we're in a, a privileged position where they can do it. The, the real, the real goal for me is that your, your average individual is able to take the time which they need for themselves because happiness is a choice. It isn't in is it isn't in a game. But there are certain things which are stacked in our favor for that. And there are certain things which are stacked against us. What I always find amusing with, with, with happiness is that happiness is, is correlated to income, depending on which studies you read. If you read, there's a, there's a study from about 2010, which shows that it's, it's correlated with income up to a certain point and then afterwards it makes no difference. There's another one which shows it is correlated and it continues upwards. And when you look at the, you look at the research in a bit more detail, what it, what it suggests is that it's not about pure happiness. It's about absence of worry. And those are very different things. If I don't have to worry, that doesn't mean I'm happy because you can be in a situation where you don't have to worry and you can be very unhappy. Mm-hmm So it isn't in a game. It it, it's a choice. And start, start small by looking around you. I mean, I, I. At one point, I am going to find a way of peeling off a post it note and sticking it on something where it doesn't curl up at the edges. That, that, in fact, that could be a lifetime. That could be a focus for a lifetime. But it starts small. Start with, start with the little stuff and find the, find the joy in that. And if you don't find joy in that thing, find someone else. You find joy or something or someone and, and, and just work your way through until you find something and then go, that gives me joy. I'm going to enjoy it. That makes me happy. I'm going to enjoy it. That makes me sad and angry. I'm going to avoid it. You, you, you get to decide and you get to choose. Not some social media influencer on Instagram who's trying to sell you a, you know, a 97 product to make you happy and telling you what happiness is about. It's all in here.

James: 1:04:22

So it leads us on quite nicely to the probably the last bit. When it comes to people going through challenges, how can they Explore that idea of happiness being an inner game. What kind of things can they do daily in order to step into that feeling?

David: 1:04:46

That's a really good question. I think one of the The first thing I'd say is that people are not alone with these things. We think that our experience is 100 percent unique and no one ever feels what we feel. And that's not true. So there will be other people out there who feel what you feel and be around them. The other thing is, for me, it comes back to a lot of A lot of the simple practices, it's look after your body. Move, get good sleep, get good nutrition, all, all of the things which are not sexy and are dull and boring To make sure that you are, you are clear, clear on who you are, the authenticity piece of values Know, know who you are, have some kind of control or choice over what you do So, so make sure that if you, if you're choosing sometimes you're in the day to do something and controlling that you, you, you You have that for you and then connect, you know, connect back to yourself Some people that's meditation and mindfulness, some people that's exercise, some people it's cooking, some people, whatever it is, but also be connecting with other people as well. I quite often think that, and I saw this a lot when I was, when I was nursing, is you find people, people who, who choke, they swallow something, they choke. What they don't do is they don't go out in front of people and go Help me out. I'm choking. They actually move themselves to a place where they're away from other people because I don't want to be a Bird and they're embarrassed by it And I think that seems to happen quite a lot with with how people feel People want to move if they're not feeling great I want to move away from other people because I don't want other people to feel what they're feeling And actually the best things they can do sometimes actually move towards other people because you probably got to find that you're not alone And someone can help And that, that's, that's where I, that's where I'd begin and I'm always open for the fact that all of that stuff could be wrong and you just have to find out what works for you.

James: 1:06:31

There's a level of, um, acceptance as well of where you are. Yeah. So one of the things I've come to realize over my journey is that if, for example, I'm angry and I try to run away from that, it's just going to run after me. So the best thing I've come to realize myself is that Just almost face it and take it and almost open arms, accept it for what it is, it's anger, just come here anger, come here, let me, let me give you a bit of love and attention.

David: 1:07:10

Yeah.

James: 1:07:11

And I've done, I know I've done it for many years this, but I've realized that if I allow this feeling or emotion to come into me and to accept it for what it is, it disappears. And I get something better on the other side, but if you run away from it, oh, it chases you down the alleyway, you know, and it's, and it's, it's never going to leave you. So the more that we turn and face these things, even, even dread, despair, frustration, overwhelm, procrastination, all these things we should head straight, you know, we should accept it with open arms. And then once we've accepted it, and taken a few deep breaths, you can ask yourself, What's the one thing I can do now, to step forward?

David: 1:08:00

Yeah, and even, even if, even if you can't face it head on, which is okay, even if you just kind of stand sideways and know it's there. And there's a, there's a phrase I love, which is that, um, that thinking isn't the problem, it's the thinking about thinking. Anger isn't a problem until you take it into another direction. And I've heard all kinds of things where, you know, an emotion appears for 20 seconds and off it goes, it dissipates. But when we hold onto it, that's when we turn it into something else. You, you, you do make that choice, and I also acknowledge that there are times when, there are times when making that choice is hard, and there are times as well when, I've had recently, I've, I've, the phrase I use quite often when people ask how I'm doing is, I just want to throat punch the universe, I just, just feel like, I just feel like, I just want, I want to lash out at things, and I'm, I'm very lucky I've got people around me who've been able to, to, to, um, To create an environment which has been really good for me, and they've they've let that run through and give me a different viewpoint when I've needed it. But sometimes you just need to, you need to be in that space where you're feeling things which aren't great, and that's okay. But also having the emotional intelligence and the curiosity to go, Well, okay, how do I want to? How long do I want to feel this for? Because it's okay to feel bad or grief or whatever in the moment. The question is, how long do you want to feel this for? And, and that's where if you, if you're, in my opinion, if you're, if you're not careful, a, anger for me in particular, anger became an identity rather than emotion which passed through and I had to change that, that relationship with it, even to the point where somebody actually once said, well, you're just an angry person. I turned around, no, that's not true. I said, anger is an emotion which I experienced. So we can drop that label of labeling me as angry. I said, because you get angry as well. I didn't, I didn't like that very much and that's okay. But you, that acceptance, the, another favorite phrase of mine is don't argue with reality, because reality will always win. You, you play with it. It's fun. It's, it's like holding an egg. You hold it too tight, you break it, you don't hold it enough, you drop it on the floor. It's just right. You've got to, or if, or if all else fails, you just boil it or scramble it.

James: 1:10:08

What is it that you do?

David: 1:10:10

What do I do? I Now, I I help people I help business owners and leaders to speak with authenticity, fun and confidence. So I take people who want to be seen and heard whether it's part of their business or have a message to share and I help them with the skills while maintaining who they are. So for me it's about amplifying who you are with some speaky skills on the side in order to do that. And that's one of the things I do. Other stuff I do, host events, do keynote speaking and then a bit of stand up comedy and stand up comedy hosting on the side.

James: 1:10:40

Thank you very much. It's been an absolutely incredible conversation. I even went off script and just let the conversation flow. So

David: 1:10:47

yeah. Yes, we've had fun and freedom. No, I really appreciate it, James. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invite. It's been a delightful conversation. It really has. This is lovely. This is the kind of stuff I live for is conversations like this. So thank you.

James: 1:11:05

Thank you.