How to Be Happy and Successful
Guidance for and from the mildly incompetent on how to be happy and successful.
How to Be Happy and Successful
Ep. 1: What Is This Podcast?
Why have I created this podcast? Where did the ideas come from? Why is it for and from the incompetent? Get answers to these questions and learn the most important rule: past failures don't determine your future. I'll discuss the goal of persistent progress as opposed to an endpoint. I'll explain what I call the mantra: you matter, this work matters, and you can do this work.
Hi, my name is David Murphy, and welcome to how to Be Happy and Successful a podcast for and from the mildly incompetent. And welcome also to the first episode where we try to answer the question what is this podcast and why is it for and from the mildly incompetent? I mean, that does not sound like a compliment. It's not a compliment to you or to me, so let's try to figure it out Now. This the website and this podcast are essentially my attempt to achieve one of my life goals. If you read the article or listen to the podcast episode about setting goals, you see I recommend doing life goals and five-year goals and one-year goals. One of my life goals is teach people something important, which is as vague as it sounds right, what am I going to teach and who are the people I'm going to teach it to? And you might have heard already that when you set goals, you want them to be specific, and that is true. I'll tell you right now and this is more for the setting goals episode but it's okay when you are setting a goal that you know is going to be far in the future, it's okay to be a little vague. You're going to figure out as you get closer to it.
Speaker 1:So I had this goal and some years ago, after spending decades stumbling through life like many people, I decided to put a little effort into trying to learn, first of all, how to be more successful in achieving my goals you know I was hit or miss a lot of the times and also learn are there ways or the behaviors we can do to be more reliably happy and reliably less unhappy? I was actually, I think, compared to many people, already a fairly happy person, but I wanted to learn more. How do you make us a persistent feeling and experience? So I started exploring what was out there and I learned a lot. I learned a lot from a lot of the resources that are out in the world and so well, you know, one of the things I learned is to set goals, set goals consistently, and so somewhere along the way, while I was doing my practice of writing and rewriting and rewriting my goals, which I talk about in the set goals episode I decided to end up building a website and a podcast, passing on some of these things that I had learned, not realizing at all how much work it would be. But here we are. That's what this podcast is. It's my attempt, because it's all about me to fulfill a life goal of mine and check it off, and hopefully you can get some good out of it as well.
Speaker 1:Now, as I said before, you know to repeat myself as I will do, I didn't invent this material that I am putting out on the podcast or in the articles. This isn't some secret system of mine. Sometimes, you see, if you ever open a personal development book, you'll see in the introduction the author say this is my system that I have developed over decades of work, not me. I got the material from resources out in the world, like the Happiness Lab podcast by Dr Laurie Santos or the Waking Up app from Sam Harris or Jim Rohn's personal development articles and videos. Those are great resources. You should be listening to them, not to me, and there's a lot of great resources out there and there's a lot of great ideas out there, and not one of those people claims that they invented what they're teaching. This material is there in the world, it's just that still, for some reason, many of us don't know them and I'm just trying to be a voice expressing them more, hopefully in a way that's useful to you. I am glad that this isn't something that I invented. You should be glad of that too, because then you can know it's just not some guy's nonsense, you know. Imagine you walked into some chemistry class and the teacher said first day hey, this is my chemistry, I created it just for you. Get right out of there, you don't need that, you want the chemistry that has been proven to work already. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Now also, I'm not talking to you from someone at the end of the path, if such a place exists, even if such a place to be at the end of the path of happiness and the end of the path, if such a place exists, even if such a place to be at the end of the path of happiness and the end of the path of success, if those places exist, well, I haven't gotten there yet. As I will say in a little bit, I think we shouldn't obsess about trying to get to some final, totally enlightened, blissful destination. You can think of me, if you think of me at all, as someone who's maybe a little bit ahead of you on all of these skills or some of these skills. You know it's okay with me if you're, you know, more successful than me, better achieving goals than I am, but want to learn about how to make yourself a happier person. Or it's okay with me, it's great with me if you're already fantastic at treating people well and you know helping your happiness in life in that way, but want a little more help on treating yourself well, with self-compassion or with achieving your goals. Just think of me as someone again who probably has learned some of these ideas, maybe a little better than you have. So I'm here to pass on what I have learned from others Now, other than it being a life goal of mine.
Speaker 1:Another reason I wanted to do this podcast and build a website is that as I started to work on myself, my own happiness, my own success and ability to achieve goals, it just became more and more obvious to me how many people aren't nearly as happy and successful as they should be and successful as they should be and I don't mean should in some moral sense, like they owe it to somebody to do that, but they as happy and successful as they could be and they want to have those things. And people so often do the opposite behaviors to achieve success and in some sense, it's really pretty straightforward, you know. To give you a quick primer to be successful, achieve your goals. Here's what it is. You set goals that make sense, you figure out what behaviors you have to do to get to those goals and you stick with those behaviors. It's just that simple. It's not necessarily easy, but it's basically that simple, and for happiness it's maybe not as straightforward, but fairly so you appreciate what you have in life, you treat yourself well and you treat other people well. You get those things done, you're going to be a pretty happy person.
Speaker 1:There's more to say and I will say it, but what I saw is that people so often just sabotage themselves and that it makes you want to shake them sometimes, and I'm not allowed to shake people, and that it makes you want to shake them sometimes. And now I'm not allowed to shake people, and I don't really want to shake people, but I want them to see what they're doing. There's a saying in business or in deal-making that you're leaving money on the table, you know, and it means that you are missing easy opportunities to make more money. You're just you're being foolish and overlooking opportunities here. The money's sitting right there, so pick it up. There are people in the world who are very good at making money and starting businesses and doing well with them, and they must look at the rest of us and go like, what's wrong with these people? They so often just don't know how to pull it together and they leave money on the table all the time. Now, I'm not like that with business. They leave money on the table all the time. Now, I'm not like that with business.
Speaker 1:But when I look at people, it seems so clear to me how much opportunity to be happy they miss just about every day. All the time we miss opportunities to treat each other with kindness and compassion. We miss opportunities to spend time with other people. We miss opportunities to give ourselves confidence instead of criticism. We miss opportunities to see what good fortune we have in our lives right now. We miss opportunities to follow through on the things that we start. I see these failures in myself and in just about everybody around me, and so this podcast is about getting people not to leave so much money on the table. You know, pick it up. There's this 8th century Buddhist monk who said that we hate suffering but we love its causes, and that is related to this that we want to be happy but we do the things that make us unhappy, and we want to succeed, but we do the things that make us fail. So we want to go the other way and I'm hoping, through this podcast and through the website, to help turn people a little more in that right direction.
Speaker 1:And I'd like to add I don't see any contradiction between working on happiness and working on success. People often think there is a contradiction, at least in their minds. You know, the images seem to contrast. You're either going to work on your happiness, which means that you're over there meditating and going on nature hikes and spending lots of quality time with your family and going on nature hikes and spending lots of quality time with your family, or you're working on success, which means that you're putting your nose to the grindstone, or working lots of hours or reading books about how to be more organized and productive, or maybe working and going to school to develop your skills, and you pick one or you pick the other. Now look, there's no doubt there can be what you might call seasons in life where you choose to emphasize something like quality time and personal happiness over something like working on your career, but there is no reason you cannot put effort into both aspects of your life at the same time, at least to some degree. In other words, there is no reason why, in any given year, month or even day, you can't spend time improving behaviors that make you happy and spend time improving behaviors that make you more successful.
Speaker 1:Now, I do, on the website, separate the articles and podcast episodes that are about happiness and the articles and podcast episodes that are about achieving success. I don't want to give the impression, by doing that, that I think you have to pick one or pick the other one and work through them all, and then you can go back. When you've mastered other happiness or success, you can go back and work on the other idea. That's not the goal at all. You can do both. You can work on both ideas at the same time. Okay, let's learn something. Even though this is the introductory episode, not necessarily the teaching episode, let's learn a point this is probably the most important point to learn and that is that you do not need a history of success in order to succeed, and you do not need a history of being a happy person in order to make yourself a happier person. Your history does not define or decide what you're going to be or do going forward. The purpose of this podcast is not teaching success. To the successful. I say hello, successful people, let's expand your success. That's not the idea at all.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not just being nice or positive or motivational when I say that your past does not define you going forward. I do want to be motivational and I do think of myself as a nice person I try to be, but I'm just talking the truth here. Your ability to make yourself happier and your ability to achieve your goals is based on your behaviors ability to make yourself happier and your ability to achieve your goals based on your behaviors. And you can change your behaviors, starting now, starting today, or, if you really want a day off, start tomorrow. But you can make adjustments in your behaviors and those adjustments will help you become happier or help you become more successful. So do not think that the mistakes you've made, the flaws you've carried a day ago, a month ago, a year ago, 20 years ago, those are defining and deciding how you're going to be tomorrow or in five years. The key to this work is choosing good behaviors and persisting with them, which means that this work is about the future and not about the past.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get to the controversial side of this podcast? Why am I calling both you and myself incompetent? I mean sure it's cool because it's edgy, but is there a bigger purpose to it? Well, I'll tell you. I once took a class on acting Shakespeare from a guy named Rob Clare and, as an aside, I am not promoting the idea of taking Shakespeare acting classes as a path towards financial success. You can learn that lesson from me rather than doing it yourself. One does not lead to the other. Anyways, rob, great guy and a very good teacher, and he told us in his class that he had once taught a class that was called Shakespeare for the Nervous and it got a lot of signups. Now why? Well, it's because so many people are nervous about reading and acting Shakespeare and they liked having that up front, right in the title of the class.
Speaker 1:Now I know that there are many of you listening out there, and when I say many of you listening, I mean all three of my friends who are listening to this podcast out of loyalty. Many of you have feelings and have voices in your head telling you that you're incompetent, incompetent generally or incompetent in some aspects of your life, and you might worry. These voices are right, or maybe you're convinced they are right Now. I'll talk more about the voices in your head later, and especially in the episode on self-compassion. But just know for now you're in the right place. You have those voices telling you you're incompetent, it's okay. This is a podcast for people who feel incompetent. And are those voices right? No, well, maybe, yes, maybe some Surely you're bad at some things and that's okay. You're in the right place and you can change your behaviors and learn to be better at things.
Speaker 1:Here is another big point to get into your head. The first big point was you don't need a history of success to be successful or a history of being a happy person to learn how to be more happy. Next big point is you are never going to be perfect, and the upside is you don't have to be so. The bad news is perfection is out of your reach. Good news is perfection is not required for you to be a happy and successful person, and I will talk more about that later. For right now, let's talk about me and my own connection to incompetence.
Speaker 1:More particularly, there is a motivational poster in the world about Abraham Lincoln, which you may have seen, and it goes like this it gives a long list of setbacks and failures in his life. And then at the bottom it says became 16th president of the United States of America or became the greatest president of the United States of America. So it's setback, setback, failure, failure, setback, setback, failure, failure became president. And I a number of times in my life have seen that poster or thought about that poster and said to myself you know, I'm just like that poster, except I didn't become president at the end. So I'm still waiting for my vindicating moment, so waiting to overcome, I can't even say the setbacks, but the many failures, the many mistakes I've made in my life and thinking where is my chance to shine? And I know there are many people who wish for the same thing. They wish for an opportunity to overcome all of the mistakes and failures they've had and to demonstrate to everybody just how valuable and competent and in fact great, they are.
Speaker 1:So if you have any kind of feeling like that, you should know that you're not alone and also understand that that poster it's a perfectly fine motivational poster. You know the idea is clear, right Do not give up. Despite setbacks, despite failures, keep going and then eventually you will succeed. If you don't keep going, then you cannot succeed. That's a great lesson to learn, but the poster does not actually carry the whole story, because the truth is Abraham Lincoln was not a total failure until he became president of the United States. He had many successes in his life before that moment. Now you're not Abraham Lincoln and I'm not Abraham Lincoln. We are not Abraham Lincoln. But the same idea applies to us, that we are not simply a collection of our setbacks and our failures. We have in there as well, successes and achievements and lots of good moments.
Speaker 1:So here's another important point for you to learn. We've had a couple so far. The first was you don't need a history of success in order to move forward and be successful. And the next one is you will never need to be perfect to be successful. And the next one is that you cannot tell yourself that your failures are all what define you. You can't look back over the last month, the last year, the last decade and just see it as a highlight reel of mistakes and disasters. That's just not accurate. Not only is it not nice to yourself, it's not the truth about things. And I'm not telling you to look away from your mistakes. I am telling you to embrace the label of incompetent, but always be willing to give yourself the good as well as the bad.
Speaker 1:Now let me be honest for a minute. Let me admit my false advertising here and say that, in truth, this podcast, instead of being called how to Be Happy and Successful, it should be called how to Become Happier and More Successful. You see, it's really about progress, because there is in fact, no logical endpoint where you cross a line. You say aha, now I'm happy. Or ta-da, now I'm happy, or ta-da, now I'm successful. There's not a particular number of episodes that you can listen to and then you'll get your certificate that says now you're a happy person or now you're a true success. That's not the way it works.
Speaker 1:Now, it's not that it's a meaningless thing to call someone a happy person. In the same way, it makes sense to say that someone's a tall person. That's not meaningless to say that person is tall, but there's no line that you can cross, there's no particular number you can say well, at this point the person becomes a tall person. Below that, they're not a tall person. It's even more vague for happiness, obviously. Now there are parameters that I think are worthwhile For happiness if you spend a good deal of your time enjoying and appreciating the experience of your life and you treat other people well and develop good relationships with them, well, you can call that person a happy person and for success. Well, if you're talking about financial success, if you're able to earn a good income, pay off your debt, save for the future, I'd call that person a successful person. If you're talking about health, if you're able to eat generally healthy food and exercise regularly and stop smoking and get yourself down to healthy weight parameters, that would be a success. So there are particular factors of your life that you should go after, but it's not like you get 90% on a test and now you are an, a student. So it's not about an end point, it's about progress and that's enough.
Speaker 1:One idea I talk about in the what Is Happiness episode and article is that you never need to reach perfection. As I talked about already, you're not going to. But if you are somebody, let's say, who receives some kind of an insult from someone in your family or someone at your job or someone in public and you let that bother you for a whole day, or let it bother you even for an hour, you know, if you learn to let that anger and frustration and embarrassment and anxiety. Let that go after just half an hour. Well, now you've saved yourself a lot of unhappiness and produced for yourself, frankly, a lot of happiness. If you can cut that hour down to 10 minutes, you've made more progress. You've achieved much more happiness for your life, and this is the kind of thing you want to do in many aspects of your life.
Speaker 1:It's just keep making progress. And the truth is it's a long road. It's a lifelong road. That's a good thing. It's not like psychoanalysis where people would see a you know, a Freudian therapist for 20 years and finally, I think I'm making progress. That's not the idea. You can make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. But realize that to really internalize and make second nature the behaviors you need to really make yourself a happier and more successful person, it's going to take, frankly, years of work, and that's good. So just get into your head the idea that you're going to spend your whole life learning about yourself, learning how to make yourself happier. But of course, you don't need to wait for the end of your life to start feeling those benefits.
Speaker 1:Now, when it comes to feeling these effects, do realize that you're not going to feel them every moment or every day. You know, if we take somebody who, let's say, is leading an unhealthy life right they drink too much, they smoke too much, they eat poorly and they never exercise right it's not a good collection of habits when it comes to your health. And let's say, they make changes so they improve on all those aspects, that's terrific, but the truth is that, overall, they're not only going to have better numbers, you might say. When they have their blood drawn and get their labs taken, they're going to feel better overall too, but they're not going to feel great every day. That is sometimes a myth. You see, in commercials or on YouTube videos that promote whatever it is, they say oh, I feel so refreshed all the time. That's not how it's going to be.
Speaker 1:When you make healthier choices, you are still going to feel exhausted. Sometimes You're still going to get sick. Sometimes you obviously could still have injuries and illnesses. That is the truth of things. It does not mean, though, if you are making good, healthy choices and you then have an illness or you have days where you feel exhausted. You should not give up the project of making healthy choices and making healthy behaviors part of your life. It's the same with everything in all this work that you're doing. If you are working on your happiness and then you have bad days, which you will, and you have stressful, unhappy moments, which you will, that does not mean you give up the project. Understand that. Going in and you know, I kind of I've said this already several times in this episode and I will say it in the future like, get this point into your head. Yes, here's another important point to learn You're not always going to feel the progress you're making and you're not always going to have a great day or even a great week. That does not mean you're not making progress. Accept that. Keep doing the work and you will get healthier and better, happier, more successful.
Speaker 1:And I know that part of the ambition or the goal when we come to a podcast like this or we read a book on personal development or start, you know, regularly reading someone's blog about how to do things better. A lot of times the goal is to create a whole new version of ourselves. I'm going to create a whole new me. That's what I want to do, because the old version of me is just not getting anywhere and I'm sorry to tell you sort of sorry to tell you that's not what's going to happen. You're not going to create a whole new you. In a way, we're creating new version of ourselves because we're changing our behaviors. You're going to slowly learn to make better behaviors and your behaviors are really the most important part of us but in another way, we're going to be the exact same people. We're going to be people with the same faults and a lot of the same inner voices, and I know that can sound disappointing, but I want to be up front here.
Speaker 1:You have to get out of your head any idea you might have that you're creating a whole new you, starting right now. And, as I've said, get out of your head that you have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You, the version of you that's listening to this can go on and make better choices to become a happier person in six months and two years and 10 years, and make choices that can lead you to be a more successful person over those same periods of time.
Speaker 1:Now let me introduce here something that I call the mantra though it's not really a mantra, because it's not a word or phrase that you repeat yourself over and over as you sit on the floor cross-legged and meditate. It really should be called a catch phrase, I guess, because that's what I wanted. What I wanted to do was create a clever phrase that also gets to the point, you know, so it carries a lesson, that's you know, reminds you something important, but also it just, you know, sounds smart to say. You know, you could say to somebody else remember what David says. I know no one's going to say that, but you know you could. That's what a good phrase it would be. And so I started to brainstorm a catchphrase for the site and the podcast, and almost right away I came up with something that is not in the least bit clever sounding. It's not pithy at all, but unfortunately it captures exactly what I want you to learn and remember, and so I knew I'd have to go with it, okay. So here's the phrase.
Speaker 1:It is you matter, this work matters and you can do this work. I'll say it again, then I'll break it down you matter, this work matters and you can do this work. As you can see, not in the least bit enjoyable or clever, but it's really. It's important if you can get these ideas into your head. So let's take it a step at a time. You matter. So you have to take it right up front. You have to accept it as a given that you have value already.
Speaker 1:I talk about this a little bit in what Is Happiness that people regularly say well, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to let myself be happy after I've achieved a certain set of goals. Number one those goals will make me happy. And number two I don't even deserve to be happy until I've achieved those goals. That is a very poor way to make yourself happy in life. And further they will say, even without realizing it and I say they, I mean you, I mean me, all of us we say I'm going to have value, I'm going to be a worthwhile person after I get to those goals and achieve these things. Cut that out. Obviously. I want you to go after your goals. I'm telling you to set goals in life and go after them. But do not think that's when I will have value. You have value now and get that into your head. And again, this rule is not just a way for me to be nice and encouraging to you. It's a rule that applies to people in general.
Speaker 1:I have a three-year-old daughter. She has not achieved a lot in life, but she is and I'm sorry to tell you this much more valuable than any of you listening. That is just the truth of it. And I have a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old as well. I guess they've accomplished more than my three-year-old, but that is not what gives them their amazing value. Well, the same applies to you and other people in the world. You come with value. Understand that and just grant it to yourself, even if you don't feel it. Just tell yourself okay, I matter, starting right now. Okay, part two this work matters. Now. If you matter, if you have value as a person. Well, that means your happiness matters, your happiness in this moment, your experience of happiness as it goes through your life, and also your success, your happiness with your life overall. Those things matter. I guess if you were meaningless and worthless, your happiness would not actually matter and your success in life wouldn't matter. But since we just covered the fact that you do matter, as you are, then, promoting and improving your happiness, it does have value and that's important. It's important to understand that you're not trivial or selfish for doing this work. We can often feel this work it's the kind of thing we should hide a little bit, because it does seem trivial to some people. It's not you matter and this work matters. And, finally, you can do this work.
Speaker 1:We've already talked about the feeling of incompetence, and this is where it does the most damage, because it tells us that, you know, I've tried again and again at this particular aspect of my life. Sure, I'm sort of good at some things, but when it comes to whatever, when it comes to figuring out my money, when it comes to being in a romantic relationship, when it comes to improving my health, I'm just never going to get there. Okay, get that out of your head. You know it is not the case. You can do it because you can change your behaviors, and success in all those fields are based on your behaviors. Is it going to be easy? Probably not. If you have had many failures in some aspect of your life in the past, you probably have a misunderstanding of how to succeed and you probably have some bad habits there.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's going to take work to change your understanding and to change your habits, but you can absolutely do that work. So, to sum it up you matter, this work matters and you can do this work. It's not a catchy saying, unfortunately, but it's important and you should say it to yourself regularly. If you never listen to my voice again on any other episode or read anything I've written, get these ideas in your head and repeat them to yourself, because you do matter and this work to improve your life does matter and you can do this work and any work that comes up that helps you make yourself happier and more successful, and connected to the idea of the third part of the mantra, that you can do this work. Understand that it's not too late to do this work, even if you feel that it is. You know, wherever you're at in your life.
Speaker 1:If you think, well, I've already made so many choices that have sort of controlled my life and are going to decide the future of my life that I can't go change them now. Well, you're right and you're wrong in that you cannot go back in the past and change your choices. But, again, you can learn new behaviors. So, when it comes to learning the ideas of happiness that I'm talking about on this website and this podcast, the ideas of focusing more on gratitude than on your anger and anxiety and treating yourself with self-compassion and treating other people well, living in the moment, you can learn those behaviors if you're 82, and they will help you make the rest of your life happier. And whatever point you're at, it's likely. Not only do you have ways you can make yourself happier, but it's almost a sure thing that you have goals that are worth going after. And if you need help on setting and achieving goals, then you can do that work too. So you could do this work and you can do this work, and it's worth doing this work, whatever point you're at in your life.
Speaker 1:I myself am nearly 50 years old and I know that a lot of my peers feel well, my path has been decided and my patterns have been set. You know again, you cannot go back and change the last 50 years of your life, but remember those 50 years. Do not define and decide the next one year, five years or 50 years. Okay, if you have made it this far in the episode almost to the end, congratulations. You have already heard me repeat myself, and if you listen to any more episodes, you're going to hear me repeat myself again and again. That's what repeating is all about. That is by design, and not only are you going to have to put up with me repeating myself. I encourage you to listen to the episodes again and again and it feels funny to me to tell you hey, listen to me over and over again. It doesn't have to be me. If you want, go listen to the Happiness Lab and listen to Laurie Santos talk about gratitude. Listen to that episode again and again.
Speaker 1:The first thing I ever heard by Jim Rohn, who teaches personal development ideas or used to, was a video on YouTube from 1980 and a seminar he taught then. I don't know how many times I've listened or watched that video. Many, many times. Sometimes the whole thing, sometimes in sections. When you're trying to learn things, you've got to hear them again and again. I don't know if I've ever learned anything in life after hearing it just the first time.
Speaker 1:It's very easy to get a book that teaches lessons and read a chapter, totally understand what it's talking about. Think to yourself that's a good idea. I'm going to start doing that. Who knows, maybe write some notes down about it and then move on to the next chapter. Same thing you get it. You think this is great. Move on to the next chapter. That's easy and natural.
Speaker 1:Or with a podcast series, to listen to an episode. Think that makes sense to me. I'm going to do that. Listen to the next episode, listen to the next episode, and so you hear a lot of things that are worthwhile, but you, in fact, will not do the work to internalize them, and so I'm not telling you not to continue reading or continue listening to more episodes, but I am telling you that if you actually want to do the work and internalize the material, it's likely you're going to need to hear things again, both to understand them more fully or just to encourage you, just to remind you that it's worthwhile to do the work, and this need for repetition is just part of being human. All right, a little more about the site and the podcast. And then we're done. So.
Speaker 1:With every idea I talk about, there's going to be an article and a episode that matches. So there's an article titled what is this website and why is it for and from the mildly incompetent, and then there is this matching podcast episode. There will be an article about gratitude and there will be a podcast episode about gratitude as well. The article is not an exact transcript of the podcast episode. That would make my life too easy. Obviously, they're very closely related. You can either read the article or you can listen to the episode, or you can do both. They're just there to help you and I know some people learn better through reading, some people learn better through listening. The plan is for me to put out a new article and matching episode every two weeks. I might have some little shorter extra episodes in between that. I don't know. No promises there, but I will work hard to get out new content every two weeks. Get out new content every two weeks. There's going to be a lot of content coming.
Speaker 1:When I first conceived of this site and then a little while later said I'm going to add a podcast, I actually thought it was going to be. Well, here's three pieces of life advice. Do this and you're going to be happy and successful. And I was very wrong about that. It's not that there aren't things that you can prioritize and should prioritize, and I try to put what I consider the most important things up front in their early episodes. But I just realized, as time went by and I thought about things that will contribute to your happiness and your success, that if I didn't add things like focusing on developing good sleep habits, being honest, valuing time, affluence, if I didn't teach a lot of different things that really do matter for your happiness and success, then I wouldn't actually be doing the tasks that I set out to do here, and so there's going to end up being a lot of articles and episodes. Now I encourage you, if you find it useful, read all of those, listen to all of those.
Speaker 1:Understand that when it comes to you becoming more happy and becoming successful, it's not about having to do all of them. You can have a couple of choices. You can listen to each of the ideas and you can work on all of them, and as you do that work, it will make you happier. If you work on, let's say, becoming happier, if you work on becoming a more grateful person, if you work on improving your self-compassion, if you work on living in the moment instead of thinking about the future and the past all the time, if you work on treating other people well, if you exercise regularly, and on and on, if you do all of those things, you improve all those parts of your life in some way. They will each contribute to your happiness. On the other hand, if you say I'm really going to focus on working on my self-compassion and treating myself fairly and kindly and I'm going to work on treating other people well, I'm just going to really emphasize those two things. Working on just those two aspects of your life will also improve your happiness. Those two aspects of your life will also improve your happiness.
Speaker 1:You can decide whether to work on a broad range of skills or to work on just a few. Perhaps the best route is to take on a few that you focus on and when you feel you're starting to internalize them and work on them regularly without having to remind yourself a lot to do that work, then you can start to take on more skills. Find yourself a lot to do that work. Then you can start to take on more skills. Now all the articles on the site and all the podcast episodes are free. If you want to support the work, I do have a Patreon page. This works through the website and the podcast. It takes more time and effort than I had anticipated. I don't currently have any different membership levels or member perks. What you get right now for supporting the show is my appreciation. Later on I might start to add perks that come with membership, but, like I said, that'll be later on.
Speaker 1:If you listen to more of the episodes and you think this material is worthwhile, if you think it helps you terrific. You can go support the show, but you're certainly not required to. I'm happy just to have you here listening to the episodes, or go to the site to read the articles. I also talk about coaching on the website. If these ideas make sense to you and you think you'd like my help trying to implement them in your life, reach out to me and maybe we can find time to work together. Whatever you do going forward, I sincerely wish you the best and I hope that you remember that mantra you matter, this work matters, and you can do. This work. You can.
Speaker 1:All right, this has been the how to Be Happy and Successful Podcast. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, or just one of those things. I would just take one. That'd be great. As I said, we don't need to be perfect all the time. We'll just do our best.
Speaker 1:So if you're interested in reading an article that goes with this podcast episode, you can go to the website. The website is wwwhappy-and-successfulcom, so it's happyandsuccessfulcom, but there's hyphens in between the words. You can read articles there. You can also sign up for the mailing list there, so when I put out new content, you will get an email saying hey, there's new content. Go listen or go read. If you liked the episode, please go write a nice review about it wherever you listen to it. And if you didn't like it, well, you can just keep that to yourself. And if you really liked the episode and the podcast in general, feel free to go to the Patreon page and become a supporter. That would be awesome. If you have any questions or comments or complaints, go to the website and send me an email. I will do my best to respond, though frankly, I barely have time to put this thing together, so I won't promise, but I will try. Okay, I think that's it Until next time, thank you.