Dr. Tim Thayne talks about the paradox of finding happiness. He shares his insights about how happiness is found when you quit looking for it and instead you start giving it to others. His story of a humble bishop serving a family in need will inspire you to look at the people in your own life and find ways to help them.
Dr. Tim Thayne talks about the paradox of finding happiness. He shares his insights about how happiness is found when you quit looking for it and instead you start giving it to others. His story of a humble bishop serving a family in need will inspire you to look at the people in your own life and find ways to help them.
There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world. But there is one way to parent that wins every time. And that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired, find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr. Tim, Thayne, author of the book and host of the podcast, not by chance, I believe that a family's success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Everyone, today's podcast is going to be different from my usual podcast. This one is not about parenting, or mental health, per se, though this topic greatly affects the way we would parent, our mental health, etc. I want to go down a few layers deeper than that and ask the question of who am I and who are you, I want us to think about the core of who we are, are our true identities. And I'm going to share with you maybe some my own beliefs about that, that you might or might not align with in terms of what you think. But I hope it can be helpful to you. Now, this time of year, when many Christians around the world are are focusing and remembering the birth of Jesus Christ, His life, His ministry, his teachings, it's a great time of year to, to examine ourselves and, and to think about ways that we can live at a higher level. But before I go there to this lofty place, I guess, of understanding our true identity and what we can do to bring us the greatest happiness. Let's start with the common mindset of most of us here in the United States, we tend to be a pretty self focused individual, me my mind society, it you could say that we can be self indulgent, greedy, self focused. And I have to say that I fall into that category more often than I wish I did. We talk about loving ourselves. But I asked how can this go wrong? I don't think loving ourselves should equal indulgence, for example. I think that's actually against our true identity. I think loving ourselves has more to do more to do with knowing our true worth our true identity. And understanding that we're in alignment with that, even when we're not in alignment. Understanding that we we don't define ourselves by maybe what other people might say negatively about us. I want to jump into maybe one of the ways that most of us can relate to maybe a self interest focus in our life. And that is in our careers. It's a good thing to pursue our career with passion and gusto, and to to earn a good income. But what we need to understand is that money is definitely not going to make the difference in our happiness, especially if we have enough. There was a study back in 2010, by Princeton University and the researchers found that people's day to day happiness didn't necessarily increase with income, after they'd made about$75,000, maybe the cost of living has gone up. So that could go up as well. But basically, there wasn't going to be a great amount of happiness increased after that, no matter how much money we make. But yet, if we are pursuing happiness through money, or trying to find it that way, I think we're going to find out that it's, it's a dead end, I had a professor at BYU who said to to the cat class, and it's one of the few things I can remember almost word for word, what the professor said. He said, you can never get enough of the things you don't need, because the things you don't need can never satisfy you. So in other words, the pursuit of filling a true need, with counterfeit things, things that don't really fill that need. It becomes an insatiable appetite, trying to fill it with the wrong thing, and it never works. And so the pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of knowing who we are and understanding from that perspective. What do we need to do that would feel like an enlightened alignment with who we really are? I believe that we are children of God, and that He loves us perfectly and he wants us to have joy in this life. And I believe that we since we're all children of God, we're brothers and sisters, and that we have a relationship one with another, even strangers really do in an eternal in a eternal perspective. I don't always treat people like they're my brothers and sisters. And that's where I'm not in alignment with the true relationship that should be there, I've got a long way to go. In other words, now, once in a while, I think we get that experience of where we've served one another in a way that is in true alignment, and we feel joy. In our church, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For really, as long as I've been alive, there's been kind of a system of matching up people to serve each other to look out for their needs, and, and you could call it ministering, that's what we call it. And I had the opportunity to go with each one of my sons as they got to a certain age, we would be able to have one or two families that we were kind of watching over, wanting to help in whatever way we could. And we try to meet with them once a month, and go into their homes and see what their needs were. And I noticed that even though we might not have wanted to go, be, you know, when the time came for our appointment, every single time, as we were walking out of the home, we were happier. And when there's a little bounce in our step, I could see it in my kids as well. And we built these relationships, these people that that endured, and felt like we were connected. And we've truly brothers and sisters. And that gives me along with many other experiences over time, view into the things that actually bring true happiness. And I believe that serving others is one of the greatest things we can do. That is counter to the societal trends that we're in, it's probably counted to many of us as patterns every day. And I just invite you all to think about who you are, why you're here. What's your relationship with the people around you? And how can we align with with that true relationship of being brothers and sisters, in a previous area where we lived, the bishop of the ward was a man that I looked up to a great deal. I watched him from the day we moved in, how he reached out to our family helped us with the sprinklers helped my wife hook up her washer, because I was out of town. And this is a man that had a full time job. And he was doing this on the side. But it turns out, this was his nature. I am sure when his time as bishop was over, he didn't stop doing that. That was just his nature. One year, the neighbor right across the street from us. It was a sad time is around Christmas time they had a little girl who had brain cancer. And, and her health was failing. And it was clear that she was not going to make it. Well, the neighbors we all cared about this family, we love them dearly. And, and most of us sat there kind of wondering what we could do to lift their burdens. And I was one of those. Christmas came and laughed. And the days, days moved on. And then it was New Years. And still, I hadn't really done anything to serve this family. I think it was probably New Year's morning, I looked out my front window. And I saw that this this good Bishop of our congregation. What he had, he had taken his ladder up the street, set it up by their house and he was standing on the ladder, taking down their Christmas lights. He'd done that quietly. He didn't ask them. Can I come and help you? He didn't ask how can I help? He simply looked and thought, I'm sure they're so distraught at this point, there's no way they're probably even looking at their lights is probably depressing, because they know they need to take them down. So instead of wondering what to do, he went took action. I have seen many examples of this kind of service and throughout my life. And I can tell you that anytime I have emulated that in any way. It has brought me great joy. I get the opportunity to work with good people as well that have a mission to serve other people and help other people and and forget themselves. I have a guy that I work with a co founder in an app we're building his name's Jim. His personal mission is one that humbles me because I'm far from the US, I need to develop this level of of selflessness. But his personal mission is to help good people do good things. And that is what I want to do more of. I hope that you have an amazing season holiday season this year. And whether you're a Christian or any other faith or no faith, I hope that you will find joy in this season, especially the season of giving and forgetting ourselves in the process. Parents, your time is valuable, and I'm grateful you spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long term effects. Ask yourself, What am I going to do because of what I've learned today?