Why Happiness Isn’t Just a Choice || Adam Brownlie

What if happiness isn’t something we choose—but something we cultivate?

In this episode of Pebbles of Light, Anne Maxson sits down with Australian author and philosopher Adam Brownlie to explore the deeper science and psychology behind happiness.

Adam shares insights from his book Happypedia, where he outlines six essential pillars of happiness:

• Food
• Sleep
• Movement
• Social connection
• Novelty
• Hope

Together, Anne and Adam discuss how our past experiences shape our decisions, why hope is essential for mental health, and why forgiving ourselves may be one of the most important steps toward peace.

You’ll also hear insights on:

• Why happiness isn’t simply a choice
• The role of brain chemistry in well-being
• How new experiences can spark hope
• Why self-forgiveness is often harder than forgiving others
• The balance between ambition and gratitude

If you’ve ever wondered why happiness sometimes feels out of reach—or how to let go of past mistakes—this conversation offers a thoughtful and hopeful perspective.

Learn More About Adam Brownlie

Connect with Adam:

Adam’s Book, Happypedia - https://amzn.to/4uimGhc 

Website - https://adambrownlie.com.au/ 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/whistler570/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/adam.brownlie.902 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-brownlie-a443031b/

Other Resources:

Russell M. Nelson, Joy and Spiritual Survival “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If we look at everything we do, we do it in the pursuit of happiness. Everything we do, we do in the pursuit of these three hormones. In the pursuit of serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. We go to work because it gives us hope. The idea of getting a paycheck, the idea of achieving some goal gives us dopamine. We socialize because it gives us oxytocin. We eat because it gives us all of them. Everything we do is in the pursuit of these hormones. So basically we we live to be happy. We're not here to have a bigger house. We're not here to have more friends. We're just here to be happy.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Welcome to Pebbles of Light, where we highlight the everyday people who bring hope, comfort, and light to others. I'm your host, Ann Maxon, sharing meaningful stories that help you find light in your journey. If the messages shared resonate with you, please follow, share, or support the podcast through Patreon to help keep the mic on and spread the light even farther. Hey friends, we are almost at 50 episodes of Pebbles of Light. Can you believe it? I have loved this opportunity to share these stories. And I want to hear from you. At the top of the show notes, at the top of the show notes, there's a link that says text or voice message the show. Please reach out and share about someone who's placed a pebble of light in your path.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Now, on to today's episode. Welcome to Pebbles of Light.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

In the last episode, successful businessman and author Calvin Bagley opened up about his journey from a childhood without formal education to building a life of purpose and leadership. His story showed how healing often begins when we stop hiding and start recognizing how our past has shaped us. The pebble for that episode was to think about one challenge in your life that shaped who you are today. Take a moment to write down how that experience may have strengthened you in ways that you didn't necessarily see at the time. Today's conversation with Adam Brownle builds on that idea as we explore the six pillars of happiness and why forgiveness, especially of ourselves, may be one of the most powerful tools that we have. My guest today, Adam Brownley, is an author and deep thinker on forgiveness, neuroscience, and the quiet architecture of happiness. His work gently challenges the idea that joy is something we chase and instead shows how it's something we cultivate. Adam, thanks so much for being here. Please take a moment to introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, hi Ann. And yeah, thanks for having me and giving me an opportunity to share what I've been writing about. I just spent the last three years writing Happy Pedia, so really keen to get the messages out of the book.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

And in that book, you talk a little bit about six pillars. And when we were talking just a minute ago, I was like, I feel like we could do a podcast on every single one of these. So the pillars are food, sleep, exercise or movement, socializing, and the importance of connection with others, novelty or that introducing something new as well as hope. Can you share a little bit about each of those and what kind of surprised you as you write were writing the book?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, so these six pillars, so they're they're all pretty obvious until you get to novelty and hope. Most of them are just like, well, they're all just keeping healthy. Basically, the healthier we are, the the happier we are. Yeah. So eating well, pretty obvious. Sleeping well, also generally obvious, exercising, socializing, like sometimes we don't prioritize that enough because it doesn't seem essential. It seems like something we can choose whether we want to have that or not, but really it is essential, as essential as eating well and exercising. Then novelty is a bit of a surprise, I guess. So when I was researching happiness, I was looking at what gives us serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. And when I first came across novelty, I was really surprised. So I sort of just put it aside as one of those, you know, not so important things. And it just kept on coming up. Like there's so much, so much about novelty being a source of happiness, but not just a source of happiness being essential for our happiness. Uh like without it, it's it's really hard to maintain that. So yeah, it's it's having new experiences. It's basically learning. Our brain wants to learn, but not just wants to learn, it needs to learn. Otherwise, we get bored and depressed. So, yeah, that's novelty. And then hope is also a challenging one. Like all the others are kind of black and white. You know, you eat or you don't. Like they're they're you know, you socialize or you don't, you you exercise or you don't. They're they're kind of very black and white almost. Whereas hope, it's simply a judgment. Like, hope is the judgment that we're gonna we're going to continue or soon have something good. And we might be both heading towards the same endpoint and you judge it as bad, and I judge it as good, so I've got hope and you don't. So it's not black and white. Like, there is nothing that is universally good. It's simply our judgment. And if we have that judgment that it's good and it's we're gonna get it, then we have hope. So hope is a huge, huge topic. And again, it's essential for our happiness. Eastern traditions, uh, eastern religions are becoming very popular, and a lot of people interpret them as to mean we don't need hope. Like we shouldn't even hope for something. We should just be content with what we have. But like no one, no human has ever survived without hope. All the research shows that if you lack hope, something, a judgment that you're gonna continue or soon have something good, you basically become depressed. Depressed people have nothing they really want. They have nothing to hope for.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

And nothing to live for, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah. So hope is essential to avoid depression. And it's essentially it's as essential as food and sleep and exercise and novelty. Uh, we need it as much as we need our sleep. So there's lots of misconceptions, and that's one that would be great to to overturn that we can live without hope. Because once you n once you accept that you need it, then you can be like, how can I get this? As long as you're trying to say, I don't need it, I don't need it. Are you not going to put in the effort to get it? You're not going to get it.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

So, what would your advice be for someone who maybe is feeling, I don't have anything to be hopeful about?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Our experiences. So we literally can't choose to want something. Hey. Say you're lost, you don't have a purpose, anything you really want at the moment. Your friend wants to, I don't know, build a rocket ship, and that's what they're working towards. You can't just choose to want to build a rocket ship. Like, you either have a passion for it or you don't. Like you can't just choose to want to save the whales. If you've got no passion for wanting to save the whales, you can't just be like, you know what? Today I'm going to start wanting that and believing it'll be good that if I if I get that. So we can't choose to want something. All that all we can do is have an experience that creates that desire within us. So you might be out on a whale watching expedition and hear a story about, you know, what is making it hard for them to reproduce, and and then that lights a fire in you to then want to change the world in this way. But until you have that experience, then you can't just choose to want that. So if you're lacking hope, the answer is to have experiences. Have as many experiences and like diverse experiences as you can until you have an experience that lights this fire in your heart that you're like, this is what I want. And also, this is what I want, but this I believe I can achieve it. So just wanting something isn't enough. Like, you know, we could all want, you know, to win the lottery, but it's not going to give us hope unless we also believe that we're going to get that. So we need an experience that says, this is something that I want and believe that I can achieve.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah. And I can see how that ties in then with that idea of the novelty side of things, right? Like that can help you have some experiences and try new things and find things you like that maybe you didn't necessarily know that you liked. Is that is that tracking correctly?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Well, that that's 100%. Like that the the pillars are all interconnected. Yeah. Some people say what is the the one thing like for for happiness? And there's no real answer to that because it's different for for all of us. Like we all need the six pillars, but the answer is going to be different for you than the next person because like you might be nailing these five pillars, whereas someone else is nailing a different five pillars. So the one you need to focus on to lift your game or to lift to go to another level is going to be different. But they all like interact with each other. So if you've got, if you're eating well and sleeping well and socializing well, it becomes easier to uh go on adventures and find these new experiences. But if you're not, then you really don't have the motivation to go out and do things like you're almost like I couldn't be bothered doing new things, it's too stressful doing new things. So yeah, they're all tied into together. And as you build some, it makes it easier to build the others. But yeah, novelty, yeah, seek seeking novelty can definitely help you find your purpose.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah. I mean, for me, that was kind of the podcast, right? In some ways, I was just like, oh, sure, I'll I'll give this a try. It's during COVID, right? So it's like, sure, I'll try this podcast thing and found something that um has been really fulfilling. And it was definitely new, and it's still new. I feel like there's always new things coming out on the kind of especially the back end side of things, as well as getting to talk to people all the way across the world or you know, wherever. It's it's such a cool, cool opportunity. I love also that you brought in, you were talking about neurotransmitters, the serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine. Why was it so important to you to make sure that you had that scientific research backing based on what you were studying?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

It's just my personality. Uh I'm the type of person who is driven by logic. If something doesn't make sense for me, it's hard for me to buy into it. I'm not big on superstition and um, you know, things that are outside of of science. So when I went into this writing a book, it was just natural for me to be like, what is the scientific answer to this? And so, yeah, I had to find a definition of happiness that it was it was such a big thing writing this book is like defining everything. Because so many things relating to happiness, they're sort of just like concepts that just sit undefined. And when they sit undefined, it's hard to then work towards it if it if if you don't really know what it exactly it is. So happiness, I started off it's this positive feeling, right? And then went down the track. Well, what is it that causes this positive feeling? And we could basically say it's these chemicals: serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. That's what makes us feel good. If we don't have those, we just don't feel good. Like everybody's the same. Every human across the universe is the same. We have those chemicals, we feel good. We don't, we don't feel good. So basically, happiness is when we have these chemicals in the right level. Yeah, we we could think of it like, yeah, it's just a chemical state, like like a battery is in a chemical state of charged when it's got positive ions here and negative ions here, and we're in a chemical state of happiness when we've got these three hormones. So, yeah, that that's what drove me, I guess, is just a personality that just wanted the logical answer.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

The science behind it. And I love it because I'm kind of a science geek a bit. And I feel like there's a lot of books about happiness that don't draw on that scientific reasoning and you know, evidence-based studies, I guess, is kind of the term that I would look for to demonstrate where you can find happiness. So as an Australian and observing different cultures and things like that, what do you see where different cultures have in common in regards to happiness and maybe certain cultures don't have in common as far as happiness or things that maybe limit their ability to find happiness?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah, I guess to answer that would be how those cultures manage the six pillars. So we've got these uh places in the world, I think are they called blue zones or something where these people live forever or they're meant to be quite happy. Uh I it'd be great to do a study there to see if they're nailing the six pillars. Like, are they eating well? I think most of them, they're like communities where they, you know, junk food isn't a big part. They don't have high-fat diets. They have, you know, time to to exercise, they they're usually, yeah, it's communities where they socialize. And I wonder if there are also communities that have strong foundational beliefs. So foundational beliefs are how we explain the unexplained. There's there's two key foundational beliefs. It's like what causes things to happen as they do? Like, is it uh like when we can't know for sure what caused something? Uh was it just bad luck? Was it karma? Was it destiny? Was it God's doing? Like, was it part of his plan? Or was it the laws of nature? Like, was it just always going to to happen? And when we've got these strong foundational beliefs that we we deeply believe, it can really help us find acceptance. And then that can help us manage lost hope. So, like when something goes wrong, if we believe, like, because this is something we choose, our foundational belief, it needs to be something we believe strongly. If we believe we know what caused that, it usually makes acceptance a lot easier. And then if we can accept it, then it it doesn't weigh us down so much. Uh so beliefs can play a massive part in how well we accept things that go wrong. And if we can accept things that go wrong, we get less stressed and we're healthier and happier. And so yeah, I wonder if these communities that are particularly happy have particularly strong foundational beliefs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Yeah, I've done a couple of interviews with people who have lost a child and but yet they're still happy. And for them, I know they're both very religious, and that idea of deity and you know a a heavenly father, not just a god, but a heavenly father who loves them and loves their child and wants to support and help them has been absolutely paramount in them being able to cope with that and continue to be happy and move forward.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's so powerful. You talk to any like one who's got a really strong religious background and they've had something go wrong, quite often they they use that as a tool to manage it. The challenge is in our like educated society, there's less and less people attending religious services. And it's really hard to have these really strong beliefs if you don't participate. Like these things you need to strengthen these beliefs by continually talking to people about it, participating in services and ceremonies and reading about it. If you don't do this, you your beliefs just aren't strong enough to give you that acceptance when when things go wrong. You know, nowadays people might say, Yeah, I believe in God or I believe in karma, but it's just sort of, you know, they've just they they just want to believe in it. But without participating in these practices to strengthen that belief, it's just not strong enough to give them that strong acceptance that someone who religiously practices these traditions. So what I talk about in the book is adopting science as a foundational belief for those people who don't participate in religion. Because a lot of people find it hard to participate in a religion because we're taught at school about science. And science is often incompatible with these religious beliefs. So we kind of believe in religion because we want to believe in something, but we kind of don't because we kind of know that it's just a supernatural thing and it doesn't align with what we're taught at school. So for those people who haven't been able to, you know, fit into a traditional religion, I recommend like understanding how science explains what happens and using that as your foundational belief.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

I heard a talk or an address not too long ago where the person who was speaking talked about the idea of a tree representing our individual lives. And then the branches on the tree were kind of our our different pursuits and responsibilities. So work or school, sports, hobbies, all those things. But and he was a religious leader and he talked about the roots being the relationship with deity and how if you are struggling with that root connection, there's no way your tree can survive. And sometimes it takes some reassessing of your branches, even if you have a good root system. Sometimes you have to kind of reassess the branches and where you're spending your time and your energy to make sure that things are aligned to keep the core and the trunk of the tree strong. One of my other faith leaders said this quote, he said, The joy we has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. And how does that, I feel like you talked about that a little bit, but how does that tie in as well? That idea of it's not so much our circumstances, but our focus.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Yeah, well, I think what the way I would understand that is it all it all depends on your judgment of the situation. Like we said before, like you and I could be in the same situation and you judge it as good and I judge it as bad. So uh in that way, it doesn't really matter on the situation we're in, it matters how we judge it. And so if we are like some things, it's just hard not to judge as bad. Like if we've just broken up with our partner, like it can be really hard to see this as a good thing. So in these situations, it's it's great if we've got this foundational belief that we can lean on and we can say, look, this is destiny, this is part of God's plan. And then it it becomes bad but unavoidable. And then it doesn't weigh us down as much as something that's bad and we could have done better, or like it's our fault. Yeah. So yeah, how we feel is 100% our judgments of the situation. And if we can have if we can find a judgment that shows the situation to be good, amazing. Like if we can see that this relationship breakup is good for me, then it's not going to cause us any stress at all. But if every way we look at it, it is bad, then yes, it's it's bad. Then we need to show that it was unavoidable. And then that can just lessen it. So it just becomes something that makes us sad rather than something that stops us from sleeping at night or zaps our energy and makes it hard for us to focus.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

So thinking about how different circumstances look different to different people. When I was in college, I did uh a trip, like a three-week trip down to Mexico, um, to this little town called Cornovaca, which is outside of Mexico City. And I went to the Catholic college and we were there to just provide service to different groups in the community. And we went to a little squatter community and went to visit some families that lived in the squatter community, and they were destitute, you know, like their home was a couple of, you know, sheets of tin that were kind of balanced together and with a little tarp over the top. And they had, you know, four or five kids and they would try and fit everybody in there and dirt floors and all the things. But they were so happy. And so from my perspective, I thought, how can you be happy? But they were so happy because to them, you know, the most important things were were their family, right? And being together. But it made it complicated when I got back home, back to the States, right? My my college roommate and I, we were all excited because we're in a bigger city and we're like, oh, let's go out for dinner. And we were sitting at dinner, and I was like, wow, I feel kind of guilty for, you know, being able to live the life that I have when there's these other people who are living the life that they are. So how do you kind of reconcile those two beliefs?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, well, what we judge as good just depends on our past experiences, right? So if you have lived this uh really wealthy life and you've always been able to have what you want when you want it, you know, eat where you want, live where you want. Uh if you lose that, then you're gonna judge that as bad because you're comparing it to what you had. So for something To be bad, it needs to be better than something. If someone else has never had that experience, they're not necessarily going to judge it as bad as what they have, because what they have is probably better than what they had, you know, 12 months ago. So that's why what is good for you is not good for me, because we've both had different lives and different and all these experiences that we've had has wired our brain to judge different things as good. So there's no problem judging something as good. Like that's what we do. That's what our brain does. It's judging everything. Is this good? Is that good? And we can't we can't blame ourselves for what we judge as good because we didn't choose those experiences that we had. Like we didn't choose to grow up in this wealthy family that, you know, provided a good education. We didn't choose to be sent to a good school to land a good job. Like we didn't put our resume in, and then the employer chose whether to give us that job or not. And since all these things happened to us, they made us have certain judgments. So we shouldn't feel guilty for what we judge as good or bad because it's not our doing. Our past experiences made us have those judgments. The fact is, now we judge these things as good. If we lose something that we judge as good, it's going to be stressful. And we it can be really hard to change that judgment. Then that's where acceptance comes in and forgiveness. And then when we find acceptance of this bad situation, then we've got more energy to go out and do what's required to build a good future. You know what I mean? If we're stuck, if we've got this burden on our shoulders of like how terrible it is that we lost our job and all these mistakes that we made, then we don't have the energy to go out and improve ourselves and get the next job. But if we can find acceptance of all these mistakes we've made, then we've got the energy to think clearly and to make good decisions to take us to a good place.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah, the idea of for forgiveness, sometimes it I feel like for me anyway, it's a lot easier to forgive others than it is to forgive myself. Do you have any insights in what you've learned, Sarah, insights as to why that is? Because I I think that's kind of a common thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

So why do you find it easy to forgive others?

SPEAKER_02 24:24

I don't know. I guess I just I think the best of them in some ways, or I I hope that they are doing the best they can with the knowledge that they have. And so maybe that leads to being more judgmental of myself.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

And so you find it easy to forgive them because you believe they did the best with what they had, right? They maybe they made a mistake because they didn't have the opportunity to teach them otherwise. Why are you different? Like, let's say you made a mistake. What's different about you? How come how come this other person couldn't have done differently?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Like, you know, they did the best with what they had.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Didn't you do the best with what you had?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Of course. But I don't think of it that way. I I always think, you know, I should have known better. I should have, you know, done this differently.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

This is the crux of forgiveness. When we can see, when we know why we are not to blame, then forgiveness uh becomes easy. And this is where our foundational beliefs become really important. So I think for you, you you said you find it easy to forgive others and harder to forgive yourself. Like, I think some people are the opposite. Like, I think some people forgive themselves instantly. Like, it's not my fault. Like, but you, you shouldn't have done that. Like, you could have done better, and they always blame everybody else. But it doesn't matter what your situation is, whether you find it easy to forgive others or forgive yourself. The solution for both is the same. The solution is to know why what they did was unavoidable. Like you said, the other people, you find it easy to forgive them because you know that they did the best they could with what they had. Like they made a mistake because they didn't know better. And they didn't know better because no one ever told them. But they never had an experience to show them the better way. And it's the same for us personally. Like the reason we made a mistake is because we never had something that set us up to have that thought that we needed to have to make a better decision. That thought never came to our mind. And that's not our fault. That's our past experiences' fault. Like all our past experiences determined what thought came to our mind. And if a different thought came to our mind, we would have made a different decision, but that thought never came to mind. And we didn't choose what thought came to mind. So, yeah, there's a lot of exercises that we can do to uh strengthen this. And there's a lot of things we can do to reinforce this belief that what we have done was unavoidable and therefore not our fault. And then when we know that, when we believe that strongly, then we will stop regretting our mistakes. We will forgive ourselves for our mistakes because then we know what happened was was unavoidable. We can basically prove this thing wrong. So what you said before about like you think that you could have done better, like that's a a misconception which we can prove wrong through our experiences. And then the more experiences we have that prove that wrong, the less we will believe that. And if we don't believe that we could have done better, then we won't regret it. We'll forgive ourselves. It's a massive, like hearing this can make people feel like uneasy in the stomach because we've been told our whole lives that we are free to do whatever we like. So this idea that what we have done was completely unavoidable can feel really wrong. One exercise that I recommend people doing is that they take the time to notice their thoughts appearing without our decision. So this is like people often liken this to meditation. It's not meditation, it's a similar practice, but if we just take the time to notice, like if we just clear our mind and then just wait for our next thought to appear, and then it appears, and then we reflect on that, we'll notice that we had no idea what that thought was going to be until it appeared. Everybody generally knows that it might be a thought of tomorrow, like what we're gonna do. It might be a thought of what we did yesterday, it might be a thought of like right now, like, oh, it's a bit cold, or but we don't know what that thought's gonna be until it appears. It was completely unavoidable. Like there's no way we could have avoided having that thought because like how can you avoid something that you don't know what's coming? It makes sense. That thought makes sense when it happens. Like if I have the thought, you know, gee, it's a bit cold in here, it makes sense because it's cold in here. Or if I have a thought about, you know, what someone said to me in the shopping center yesterday, it makes sense for me to have that because like that was an emotional situation. Like it makes sense that that thought would come back. But that doesn't make it something that I chose. I didn't choose to think about that. Like it just it and so this is a basic exercise to start with.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Yeah, I read a book. It's been a while. I wish I'd read it more recently so I could summarize it better. But it was called Weakness is not a sin. Um, and it it's kind of that sim a similar idea of if you have a weakness, it's not necessarily a sin. You're not intentionally trying to do something bad or or remove yourself further away from God. It's just you have a weakness and it kind of crept up on you. And so you need to be forgiving of yourself and allow yourself to learn and grow from that experience so that next time you know better, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So these these thoughts that appear, when we start noticing that they appear uh and our decisions just appearing, but since we can't see the mechanisms in our brain that cause that thought to appear, uh, we can explain their appearance uh based on our foundational beliefs. As in, like, we could explain it was caused by our will, or we could explain that it's caused by God, like maybe God wanted us to make that decision. Or we can explain it by the laws of nature, like you know, a sodium ion was on this side of a neuron, and so it had to move to the other to make it balanced, and then that created a positive charge, and that sent a charge down a neuron, which then created a another hormone to be released, and it allowed us to have this thought. But regardless of how we explain it, whether we explain it through science or religion, we all experience our thoughts appearing out of the blue without our without warning, without our choice. So we can experience this and then strengthen that belief that it was unavoidable.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Thank you for that insight.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Another question for your to get your thoughts on is what about people who are stuck in conditional happiness or conditional unhappiness? The the idea of, well, as soon as I achieve this or do this or buy this kind of car or this house or whatever, then I'll be happy. What would be your advice for for people who are stuck in that kind of conditional side of things?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Well, like we talked about before, we need hope, right? We need something that we want. And so it's great to want a bigger house, a nicer car, more friends. But it's also it's all about balance. So we might be able to draw an analogy with food, right? It's good to have food. We need food. But too much food is can be a burden on us. And so can wanting too much. So if we want a house, that's good because we need to want something. Otherwise, we'll become depressed. But wanting a house this year and a new car and to improve our relationships might be just too much. And then that is becoming a burden. Just like eating too much can become a burden. So it's all about finding balance. We need to exercise the right amount. Like if we exercise too much, that can be bad for us. If we sleep too much, we're not going to have time for these other things. We need to get all the pillars in balance. So the foundational purpose that I recommend is to be happy. So, you know, this isn't just because I wrote a book on happiness. This is like if we look at everything we do, we do it in the pursuit of happiness. Like everything we do, we do in the pursuit of these three hormones. In the pursuit of serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. Like we go to work because it gives us hope. The idea of getting a paycheck, the idea of achieving some goal, and that gives us dopamine. Like we socialize because it gives us oxytocin. We eat because it gives us dopamine, serotonin, it gives us all of them. Everything we do is in the pursuit of these hormones. So basically, we live to be happy. Once we understand that we're not here to have a bigger house, we're not here to have more friends. We're just here to be happy. Then it becomes easier to let go of wanting so much. Like so having a perspective like this can help us balance how much we want.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

I think maybe another part of it too is the idea of gratitude and recognizing being grateful for what you have and not necessarily, you know, if you're like stuck in this this, you know, rut of saying, okay, I'll be happy when this happens or this happens, to sometimes take a moment and be like, wait, I can be happy now because I have taking some time to think about all the things that you do have can be important too.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it can be. If you can you can do that. So yeah, one way we can do that is by knowing what makes us happy. You know what I mean? Like, if we know that these six pillars is what makes us happy, and we know that we can get those six pillars, if we know we're gonna have food on the table, we're gonna have sleep, we've got time to exercise, we've got a book we can read or a new place we can go to for some novelty, then we can have hope of having having those. It gives us something to hope for when we may not have this bigger thing that we that we want. But yeah, gr gratitude can be a bit of a trap to quite often when we're feeling down, people might tell us, just be grateful for what you have. And it's like everything we've talked about before, like we can't choose our purpose, we can't choose what we judge as good. We can't choose to be grateful. We can think about the good things, but it's not gonna make us feel as good as if we genuinely like genuinely believe that what we have is really good. And like if you imagine yourself after you've just achieved something good, like maybe you've just uh recorded a podcast and published it and you've just got a heap of views, a heap of positive comments about it, you're gonna be feeling really grateful. You've been gonna be like, How good is this? Like, I just nailed that podcast and everybody's appreciating it. You're not gonna have to like look at a situation and be like, like, let me look at this as a good thing. Let me be grateful for that. It's just gonna happen. You're just gonna be grateful because but if if let's say the podcast went bad and people were like, I'm sure this never happens to you, but let's say people were like complaining, like, how could you say that? They were sending you private messages saying, I can't believe you said that, then being grateful is gonna be harder. Like, it's hard to judge that situation as good. You can look at the sunrise and think, oh, how beautiful is the sunrise. And it might lift your spirits a little bit, but deep down you're still gonna be, you know, a bit frustrated.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, frustrated about what you might have said on that podcast. Uh so yeah, just choosing to be grateful, you know, it's it's not bad advice, but it's just uh I don't think it's that we should spend so much effort trying to choose to be grateful, but rather identifying how to get what we want. Because when we identify how to get what we want, then we'll actually be grateful. And that's feels so much better than trying to focus on what we have.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Manufactured gratitude in some ways, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

So I've got I've got one last question, which is always the last question. One of the purposes of pebbles of light is to celebrate those relationships that have help helped to brighten our path and in turn help us light the paths of others. And could you share about one or two people who've placed a pebble of light in your path and helped guide you along?

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Yeah. Yeah. So many people. Everybody plays a part, hey. Like everybody. So I guess the people who have had a bigger part in my life would probably have had the biggest uh shaping of my life. So that'd probably have to be my family and and the friends that have been with me the longest. I've been really lucky to have such a great upbringing. House that my parents raised me in, like not the physical house, but like that home that I was raised in. It was just set me up to make happiness easier down the track. And then yeah, I managed to have some great friends along the way, you know, that sort of help support me in the right direction and not, you know, take me in the wrong direction. So yeah, it's hard to to to say one person in particular. I feel like everybody's played their little part. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Yeah, it's it's impressive when we when we take a minute to think about it. And if I remember correctly, did you grow up on a farm? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah. And so I feel like there's so many lessons about hard work, resilience, and patience and those things that are important for cultivating happiness that that come through from that experience of growing up in that type of a home, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yeah, yeah. Uh I think what's really important from my research is having a low stress home. Our brain is really susceptible to stress. Like the younger we are, the more susceptible it is. And unfortunately, the more stress we're exposed to, the more danger we see. Like it's just the way our brain works. Like, the more uh danger it's been in, or it thinks it's been in, the more prone it is to look for danger. And then the more danger we see, the more stressed we get. So it's just like this spiral. And so if we can keep our kids away from or protect them a bit from stress when they're younger, then it can help them be more optimistic when they become older. It's a it's a balance though. Like obviously helicopter parenting is known to have its its uh downfalls. So it's not helicopter parenting, it's just not well, the biggest one is fighting in front of kids. Like kids find that extremely stressful, just seeing particularly their parents, like seeing their parents fight. Uh yeah, it's just not exposing them. Like we wouldn't put our kids in a war zone because just seeing that is stressful. And it's the same with seeing our parents fight, like that's stressful. And like just knowing, just having that security, that safety net, like knowing that your parents are there when you need them. So, you know, if you don't know if your mom's gonna be home or if your mom's gonna run away, or then it it's scary and and stressful. But if you're if you always know that your parents are always gonna be there, then that takes that stress away. So it's not necessarily protecting kids from danger. It's just not exposing them to stressful things. Like we don't let kids watch MA movies because it's stressful and it damages their brain. But why are we stopping them from watching MA movies and keeping them out of war zones, but then giving them these other stresses? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

I think it's important, yeah, for for kids to feel like home is a refuge, right? That that's something that we as our family has really tried to cultivate for our kids is to know that your home is a refuge. It's a safe place for you to be. You can always be yourself, you can always, you know, know that you'll be loved and and supported in whatever it is that you do. Adam, thanks so much for being here. Take a minute and let people know where they can find out more about you.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Uh yeah, if you just Google Adam Brownley, I think you'll find my website, adambranly.com.au. Yeah, you you should also find Happy Pedia. So that's the book that I've just published about about the six pillars, about the importance of our foundational beliefs in finding acceptance and and forgiving ourselves. And uh yeah, you'll also find my last book, The Last Gods, which uh is a science fiction science fiction book. But yeah, uh it should be all online. Amazon is where you can get the Kindle version or paperback, and uh you can also get the audible version from Spotify. You can listen to the audiobook.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Thank you again for being here, Adam. Really appreciate having you on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Yeah, well, thanks for having me, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what I've been writing about.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Today's conversation with Adam Brownley reminded us that happiness isn't something we simply chase, it's something we cultivate through daily habits, meaningful beliefs, and the courage to forgive others and ourselves. We learned how hope, new experiences, and our foundational beliefs shape the way that we see the world and ourselves. This episode's pebble is to take a few minutes today to reflect on a mistake you've been holding on to. Ask yourself, what experiences led me to that decision? And see if you can offer yourself the same compassion that you would give to someone else. If you'd like to learn more about Adam and his work, check the show notes for links to his book and website, as well as social media. And you'll also find ways there to support the podcast through Patreon and Bud Sprout. As always, I thank you so much for being part of this community. Thank you for tuning in. My hope is that something helped you feel seen, encouraged, or inspired to bring light to someone else. If a name or moment stood out, don't let it pass. Reach out, express gratitude, or take that next step. You can connect with me anytime on socials at Pebbles of Light or at AnnMaxxon.com. If this episode was meaningful for you, please follow the show, rate or review, and share it with someone who might need a lift today. And if you want to go a step farther, you can support the show on Patreon. See you next time.