Name: How To *ACTUALLY* Stop Wasting Your LIFE! | The No.1 Happiness Expert
Uploaded: 2025-11-14T16:37:43.000Z
Duration: 8 min 43 s
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Participle clauses

Carl Jung said that the basis of happiness is figuring out what you believe and acting according to it, living according to it.

That the basis of unhappiness is living not in accord with your own morals.

Adverbs of manner

In other words, I believe these things are right and wrong and I'm systematically violating them.

When I talk to a young woman or man and I say, for example, what do you think is a decent way to treat a member of the opposite sex when you're on a date?

And they'll tell me, and I say, are you acting according to that?

And like, no, I said, that's why you're unhappy.

According to Carl Jung, but also according to common sense.

Once you know what that is and say, I'm gonna start acting and living according to my own principles, your life starts to change.

Say someone right now is, for example, cheating on their partner, but they know and they're against cheating.

It's because everybody's against cheating, by the way.

Everybody's against betraying somebody you love.

That's making them unhappy because that's doing violence to their own sense of propriety.

You know most ancient wisdom traditions and religious traditions when they talk about sin, you know, in Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism and name the religion, there's a concept of sin.

Sin in almost every religious tradition is not offending God.

You're doing something not in accord with the way that you want to live.

And in so doing you're weakening yourself.

You're making it harder for you to understand, understand yourself as a good person, as a person of integrity, as an upright person, which we actually need.

Go back to the social psychology research on this.

It goes back to your point as well about helplessness and agency.

I can't seem to stop myself doing it, I'm telling my that I'm low agency and I'm helpless.

And so this is one of the reasons that people will be like, I hate how I eat.

They're not saying that I hate, you know, I mean, like, I'm a sugar fiend.

It doesn't offend my sense of propriety, to be sure.

But I could get to the point where I'm so unhealthy that I hate that about myself because I'm actually hurting, hurting myself, but

This getting in line with your own views and making a plan.

And this is where the New Year's resolutions about taking off the weight actually makes sense.

It's about being morally consistent with your own view of the person that you want to be is what this comes down.

But you can't do it till you lay it out, until you actually put it in black and white.

Write down your moral philosophy and say, make a plan to start living according to it.

The second part is a contemplative tradition, is contemplation.

You need more contemplation such that you can experience transcendence.

Now, there's a bunch of different ways to do this.

This is why everybody wants to do mindfulness meditation.

That's all that is basically, is sitting still without your phone and focusing on being alive.

My colleague Ellen Langer, if you had her on the show.

She actually was the one who brought the concept of mindfulness to the west about 30 years ago.

She was the first woman tenured in the psychology department at Harvard.

She's phenomenal, and she's just absolutely frustrated.

And she says that mindfulness is best practiced if you're sitting on the train by putting away your phone, putting your hands in your lap, and

Can they listen to this podcast while they do that?

Because now you should listen to the podcast, but

not during those periods and start with five minutes of just simple contemplation of life.

Prayer is a really good way to do it, too.

Religious traditions are excellent at doing it, but people in a distracted world don't do that at all.

You need to stop distracting yourself and systematically stop distracting yourself.

Because in your default mode, network, you'll actually start to think about things that actually matter, including the things that are in the fundamental moral basis that you've started to formulate.

I don't know why I was thinking about this, but this is how weird I am.

I was thinking about why I don't pray anymore because I grew up in a Christian faith until the age of about 18.

And every time we had dinner for my whole childhood family sit around the table, one of us would pray and we'd just basically get thanks for things we're grateful for.

And I stopped praying because I no longer have the Christian faith.

But I was thinking last night, it doesn't mean I need to give up the prayer, which is just an exercise in gratitude, to be thankful for the nature of my life.

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How To ACTUALLY Stop Wasting Your LIFE! | The No.1 Happiness Expert

weird

incredibly

decent

basically