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Happiness is right here, right now, and it’s not about chasing after big thrills or fancy things. We dive deep into the idea that happiness isn’t a destination; it’s a feeling found in the everyday moments. The podcast lays out how we often look for happiness in external achievements or pleasures, but really, it’s about embracing the mundane—like doing the dishes or taking a deep breath. We talk about how happiness is actually about the absence of both longing for pleasure and pushing away pain. So, let’s explore together how to recognize and appreciate the simple joys of life that keep us grounded and fulfilled.

Finding happiness isn't as straightforward as we might think. It's not a destination we reach or a prize we win; it's a feeling that lives within us, often hiding in the mundane moments of our lives. In our podcast today, we dive deep into this concept, exploring how happiness is frequently mistaken for external achievements or pleasures. We discuss how people often attribute their happiness to things like promotions, new relationships, or social media validation, but the truth is that true happiness exists on a different level. It's not found in the highs of life but rather in the simple, everyday moments that we often overlook. We challenge listeners to consider what happiness means to them, emphasizing that it's about the absence of problems and pleasures rather than the pursuit of them. The episode encourages a shift in perspective, inviting everyone to find joy in the present moment and recognize that happiness is not something we need to chase after, but rather something we can cultivate right here and now.

Takeaways:

• Happiness is not a destination or an external thing; it's a feeling we have within ourselves.
• Many people confuse happiness with temporary pleasures, but true happiness lies in the mundane moments of life.
• To find happiness, we need to focus on the absence of both pain and excessive pleasure, embracing the ordinary.
• Recognizing that happiness exists in the present moment is key to feeling content and fulfilled in life.

Okay.

Where is happiness?

Try to pinpoint where happiness is right now.

I'll just give you a few seconds.

It's quite a simple question to ponder upon, and it's something I've been thinking about recently.

So where is happiness?

It's not so easy to locate, is it?

It's not a place, it's not an object, it's not somewhere out there.

It's not a place you need to get to.

It's a feeling.

It's a feeling.

Right?

So what is happiness?

Let's answer that question on today's podcast.

I'm Stephen Webb and this is Living Deeper Lives and also Stillness in the Storms podcast.

And this podcast is for you.

If you have an active mind and you have a busy life and you don't have time to sit and meditate for hours every day, but you still want a little inner peace.

So happiness, what is it?

Where is it?

How do we get it?

We all want it.

As children, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Well, I want to be this, I want to be that, because we think it's going to make us happy.

And as parents, whenever you ask a parent what you want your kid to be when they're older, they might say a doctor or something like that.

But above all, they always come back and say, I would like my child to be happy.

And I think that's what we want for our partner, our children, our parents, everybody.

We want them to be happy.

But what is happy?

What does happy mean?

What does it mean to be happy?

If I asked you when you're happy, so why are you happy?

You're very often might mention something on the outside world, well, I've just got a job promotion or I've just got a pay rise, or I just passed an exam, got a new car, just started a new relationship or something, or just got out of a relationship, perhaps more than likely mention something externally, you won't look up and say, I just feel happy.

And then if you say to other people, well, what will make you happy right now?

What will improve your circumstances right now?

They say, well, if I had a bit more money, if I was a bit healthier, if I lost a bit of weight, if I gained a bit of weight, if I had a bit better tan or nowadays lipo suction, lipo fillers or fake eyebrows or whatever, I don't know what.

I'm not really up on the modern stuff, but a few more likes on Facebook, A few more like I remember on Facebook, it always used to be likes to it you put up a picture, how many likes will I get?

And now it's like not interested in likes.

I want the love and I want the funny and I want all the other things.

You know, the likes are not that interesting.

And this is really funny.

And I talk about the happiness line.

And if you imagine a piece of paper, draw a line right in the middle of the piece of paper.

And then if I say to you, that line is your center line, that's the line when you feel normal.

You're not excited, you're not in intimate moments, you're not cuddling anyone, you're not feeling any kind of excitement or enlightenment or spiritual bliss or any of those things.

And below that line is everything that going to the doctors, find that you're ill or cannot pay your debts, or you're feeling lonely or you're feeling depressed or anything like that is below the line.

And depending on whether how far up or down on the scale, above and below the line you go, you know, if you're going on holiday, you're quite high up above the line.

If you're in bed and having an intimate moment, you're having sex with somebody, you're quite well up above the line.

And then the moment you climax, you're like top of the paper, off the paper, off the scale.

But then when you go to the doctors and you suddenly get diagnosed with something that isn't that good, or you hear someone has, and suddenly you're down below the paper.

But I want to come back and focus on the centre line.

I want to come back and focus on the center line.

When are you at that centre line?

We might call this the mundane line.

When we're doing the dishes or when we're doing the hoovering or picking the kids up from school or meditating.

The thing is, that centre line is what I believe is where all the happiness is.

Happiness is not having the things below and not having the things above.

It's the absence of problems and the absence of pleasures.

That's where your happiness lies.

And if you take away everything, all the pleasures above and you take away all the things you do not want from below, the anti pleasures, whatever you want to call them, the down bits, the things that make you feel awful.

If you take away all of them things, what you have, you have right now, you have this current moment, you have this breath, you have a feeling of normalcy, normalcy, normalness.

You have a feeling of normalness right at this moment.

But the problem is everybody thinks happiness is above the line.

Everybody Thinks happiness is in the pleasures, and it's not.

Happiness is not sitting in the concert listening to the most impressive tune.

That's just the energy of the concert and listening to your favorite music.

And that's.

That's the pleasures.

That's the great things in life.

Happiness is not those things.

Happiness is not the new relationship when you're in the honeymoon.

Happiness is not the cuddling in bed, the getting the new car, the new house, the pay rise.

They're the pleasures in life.

They're the things that are like, yay, I want them.

They're good, let them come.

But we cannot stay there.

They produce endorphins.

And the problem is with endorphins, you have too many of them, you want more of them.

And we spend our life trying to trick our bodies and the world into just giving us endorphins, these artificial highs.

And we think we take shortcuts, and that's why we have chocolate, and that's why we go to the fridge and things like that.

At any given moment, most people are, when they're on the normal line, they want to improve it because they think the normal line is boring.

What's the point of being on the normal line?

I don't want to be here.

I want to be in the realms of everything that's cool and theme park utopia kind of world.

Well, the problem is that would become your new normal and therefore you wouldn't enjoy it.

And you want even more.

You want to know what the secret of happiness is?

Realizing that happiness is in the mundane.

Happiness is in the mundane right here, right now.

Listening to this podcast, you.

You haven't got why you're listening to my words while you're listening to what I'm saying, why your subconscious mind is like, he might have a point, or, nah, he's full of it.

Whatever.

Whatever your subconscious mind is conjuring up to trick you into whatever next, same as mine.

You've got the absence of all the pleasures and you've got the absence of all the pains.

And while you've got the absence of the pleasures and the absence of the pains, that's happiness.

That's happiness.

It's not all the great things.

See, we can easily see the pains that aren't happy, that aren't the mundane.

They're the pains.

We recognize that.

And the problem is, if we feel depressed quite a lot and we feel lonely quite a lot, we'll think that that line is our center of compass and it'll become the normal.

And then when you're feeling that way, when you're just able to pay the bills, you'll see that as happiness.

So we need to pay more attention to where this centre line is, where this mundane, what you might call it, the normalness line, because that's where you're happy.

When the car starts in the morning and you drive out your drive, when you can pay your bills, whether or not you got money left over doesn't matter.

But when you can pay your bills, when you just sat there and take a deep breath and have a little time out, that's happiness.

Happiness is the absence of longing for anything pleasurable and the absence of pushing, pushing away anything that's painful and that's worth repeating because I really want you to get this concept.

Happiness is the absence of longing for pleasure.

It's also the absence of pushing away anything that causes pain.

Happiness is in that deep breath right now.

Don't think it's in the concert or in the alcohol or perhaps in the drugs.

All of those are highs.

All of those are the endorphins.

And guess what happens when we have too many endorphins?

We cannot function.

That's why we cannot stay in the honeymoon period for too long.

That's why men leave the Lucy up.

To stop those endorphins coming along too fast and to make sure after three weeks or so that.

That the partner sees that we are dumbasses and we're pain in the ass in the relationship, too.

It's to reduce those endorphins.

So we're actually doing you a favor.

I'm joking.

I'm going to get in so much trouble for this.

I'm joking.

We're just stupid men.

We do stupid things.

We're not stupid.

Okay, I stand corrected.

But happiness is in the mundane.

It really is.

You cannot pinpoint it.

It's not a place to get to.

It's right here, right now.

You have it right here, right now.

Just take a deep breath.

Listen to the bells of the local church.

Hear the wind, listen to the birds singing.

Recognize that you're alive and you're well in this moment.

Because this moment will change.

Always will.

And if you're listening to this podcast, you're doing all right.

You're really doing okay.

So right now, find your level of mundane, what you class in your life as mundane.

Because the problem is, if things suddenly go wrong in your mundane, you so want to just get back.

Do you know what?

I can talk to so many people that say, I just want to get home and do the dishes.

Just do the hoovering, just do the vacuuming, I think you call it in the States, don't you?

Just go home and do the vacuum and the brushing up.

Because something's gone wrong in their lives and they just want to get back to the mundane, the happiness.

And then when you're above a line, you just fear, oh, I want this to stay.

I want this to stay forever.

Will you hug me forever, please?

Never let me go.

Oh, I just want all these things, you know, like everything, like every single thing above the line.

If you think it's the new norm, you want to up the ante every single time, you know, intimacy in relationships, you up the ante every single time until you cannot up it anymore.

Money, you think, well, I'll be okay with $10,000, $20,000.

And then when you have that, you want 50 and then 100.

Then the millionaire wants 202 million, and the billionaire wants 2 billion.

It's because we think we get.

We go to that level higher and we become happy.

And then we need to stay there.

But that's not where the happiness.

They're the highs, they're the pleasures.

Enjoy the pleasures when they're there.

Enjoy the pleasures when they're there.

Know that they're only temporary and you don't need to keep hold of them to stay happy.

And equally with the pains, recognize that they're temporary and they won't stay there forever.

I hope this helps.

I hope you look at happiness in a different way and reframe it.

And it means you can enjoy the hide in life a whole lot more.

You can really look forward to them, but don't think you need them to be happy, because you don't.

If you're happy now with what you have, you'll be happy with what you get.

If you're not happy now with what you have, you won't be happy when you get more.

Because you will always want more.

You're already happy right now.

You just got to realize it, that's all.

So I go back to the very first question.

Where is happiness?

Right here, right now.

Happiness is in the mundane.

The running, the kids to get to school, the walking the dog, paying the bills, talking to your mum on the phone, cooking tea for your partner, eating tea.

All those other things, they're all.

They're all the mundane, the chores.

That's where the happiness is.

Because at some point, that's all you want to do when you cannot do it.

Take care.

Have an amazing week.

There's a new podcast every Monday and remember I help people with active minds and busy lives have a little inner peace.

And you can head over to stillness in the storms.com where you can download my meditations.

You can also treat me to a coffee if I help you.

Take care everyone.

Thank you for the reviews.

You are awesome.

Thank you for spending this little bit of time with me today.

I love you.

Thank you.

Sam.