Why Choosing Peace Is Better Than Chasing Happiness

We pull apart the myth that happiness arrives from outside events and share how peace offers a steadier baseline for joy. Through stories, reframes, and a simple visualization, we explore language, control, and how to subtract what blocks our natural state.

• shifting focus from external triggers to inner states
• redefining goals from happiness to peace
• recognizing cultural programming in career and status
• realizing joy as a natural state beneath mental noise
• using the whiteboard eraser visualization to lighten the past
• building language precision beyond the word happy
• moving from emotional roller coaster to steady baseline
• micro-reflection and subtractive daily practices

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

We are on the line. Coffee jerping in the background. And Les is thinking.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Sounds like the perfect description of my life.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Always coffee jerping in the background.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

And I'm sitting thinking.

Chasing Externals Vs Inner Peace

SPEAKER_00 0:30

So yeah, this morning we are before the weather report, Les is just grabbing his coffee, putting cream in it. But yeah, this morning we are going to look at this idea of always striving for something outside of us to happen so that we are happy. And that's it. Les weddings. That's it, guys. See you later.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Hear you talk now.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

No, I knew not.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

It's a great idea. Passed along from Barb suggestion for the podcast. I think it was gonna turn into its own trilogy. But it is an overcast day. The river's wide open and we're expecting snow.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Lots and lots of snow.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Which doesn't matter. Doesn't mean anything because I could be happy anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah.

unknown 1:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Cooperative word being can, I can be happy anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah. I think I like that I don't have to go anywhere until tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

After the snow's already on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

After the snow, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, happiness is an interesting thing. When when clients come into us and a lot of the a lot of them, including us, like we're the we're all the same. They ask on their goal list, I want to be happy. I want to be have happiness in my life. And we try over the course of sessions to help them, instead of having happiness as their goal, to have peace as their goal. And we'll get to that. But as the beginning of the podcast sort of suggested from Barb, it is it's really hard to keep that happiness in your life when it's something that is externally motivated.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

I think that's the magic words today.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Externally motivated?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Mm-hmm. What do you think about externally motivated?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

There's so there's so many, I think, perspectives to approach this question with. And I think that I always think of things as choice and control. And if I require control, I'm ultimately never going to be satisfied. If I require external control of things, I'm just I might get lucky, but I'll probably get disappointed. And it's likely that the best times of my life, if I'm completely focused on the external, the best times of my life will be complete surprises.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

That's interesting, yeah. I never thought of it that way. But you're right.

Books, Constitutions, And Happiness

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Oh, you know, there's so much to talk about, so much to think about. I'll start with uh one of the first things about happiness that I read in my life, and I've read a lot about happiness. There's a number of good books on happiness. They're good in that they sort of explain the human condition and our and our constant pursuit of happiness. I mean, it's in the American Constitution, right? The pursuit of happiness. Like the highest thing you can be doing as a normal human being, every human being, it's in that American Constitution that you know, we're we're we're free, we're life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is protected by the Constitution. You know, this is the lawyer in me talking. And the and the lawyer also knows in Canada it's life, liberty, and security of the person. Very different perspective.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

I don't hear peace from you.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

No, no, but I think we're again happiness peace, these are going to be things that we're gonna talk about over the next few days. It shifted me when I read that Dalai Lama wrote everyone is in pursuit of happiness, everyone just wants to be happy. And you know, I I sort of embraced that idea, but I didn't give up my knowledge as a hypnotist. We get programmed to think certain things should make us happy, certain things can make us happy. We're out there looking for specific events that would make us happy. I think there's a lot of truth in the idea that every human being in every aspect of their life just wants to be happy. It's a universal pursuit. It is no different for anybody, I think. Now, how what we mean by happy and how we describe happy and what makes us happy, those that's quite an array, but there's there's a there's a singularity to it, I think, a uniting principle to it. And when you acknowledge that, you know, no matter what your neighbor is doing, it's all in their pursuit of happiness. I don't think it answers all the questions, but it shifts the way you look at it. So for me, you know, that that idea that everyone, everyone in everything they do is just trying to be happier. I think that's a good way to interpret what's going on around us.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

You know, you can get into, you know, deep criticism of what makes other people happy. You can go off on a long conversation about selfishness and you know, sort of mistaken pursuits of happiness. Things we think are gonna make us happy and they don't. I mean, there's a there's a good little exercise, I think, a mental exercise to engage. Think about the times. Try to find in your memory the times when you thought some experience, something gonna happen was gonna make you happy and it didn't.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

For me, it's usually work-related. So not the work I'm in now, but the work I had before. I remember, yeah, just feeling like I was manifesting like crazy. I manifested this job. I did everything in my power to manifest a specific job, and I got it. And not long into it, I I remember sitting on the couch at home and just feeling like I literally have everything I want, and I am so un Yeah, just not I don't know if I was unhappy, but I was just like, Duh, you know, why aren't I excited for each day? Why why do I come home and like go, oh gosh, I gotta do this the next day, and you know, it's funny how that works. You think my ego was driving that that want though for that specific thing that was gonna make me happy. The the only thing, really, when I think back on it, that made me happy was the idea of saying out loud, I am a this, right? I am designer, I am, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Uh-huh.

Programming And The Career Mirage

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah.

Hijacked Desires And Reclaiming Agency

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna say something pretty extreme. You know, it's it's obvious that we're always gonna go back and talk about how our programming creates our expectations and creates our behavior. And it's a pretty typical thing for someone to say, I want this particular occupation, or I want this particular job, or I want this particular paycheck. And then I'm going to be happy. I want to be happy, and to be happy, I want to be insert profession here, right? And out of all the things in the world, the limitless, infinite number of things in the world you could choose to be, for some reason, we are programmed to think that it means a profession and a job and an income and a house and a particular car and a particular set of things that we own. And so I'm gonna say this really outrageous thing. Although I think it's innately human to want to be happy and to seek happiness, our desire for happiness has been hijacked and programmed to facilitate a society that serves a very small few. Here we are. It's gotten really political, really outrageous. So let's back away from that position and just say I think that our programming makes happiness very, very difficult because it tries not only to point us at our own happiness, it tries to define that for us as well. And for many, many people, their first day of happiness, true happiness, is the day they reject their programming. Pretty extreme, eh? Shut you up, didn't I? She's looking at me going, oh my God, where do I go from here?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking about like having a day where I reject programming. I'm not even sure I've had that day really solidified in my life. I think there have been instances where I think, oh, I'm gonna try to let that go, or I'm gonna start to think about my mind as just a clean slate, and what do I want to put in my mind?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Maybe a better way to say it is the first day of happiness is the day where I found something else to put my efforts that wasn't part of this program.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

That I found and took a little bit of space in the world for me that actually served my happiness.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, that day is maybe having a good meditation or some some sort of reframe, right? A sudden reframe of life or a letting go of what they've been holding on to for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah, it can be simply finding a new hobby and saying, oh, I love this.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

And giving yourself permission to fit it into your life. The point that I'm that I'm making is that happiness only becomes a pursuit if you're functioning within somebody else's program. Now you're trying to find happiness. Another great thing that I bumped into in my search for understanding happiness and having happiness was a quote by Harrison Ford of all people, Han Sol. He was, you know, when people when he was famous, I think people had interest in him and found out that he had a certain amount of Buddhist practice in his life. And he said that the mistake people make, and I'm I'm quoting him badly, so I hope he's not listening. The mistake people make is they think happiness is a destination. It's not, it's a mode of transport. And I think there's even more truth in that than he even imagined at the time, especially when you take it deeper into quantum physics.

unknown 12:44

Right?

Joy As Natural State, Not Event

SPEAKER_02 12:44

And you think vibrationally. Next really big thing I learned about happiness that shifted me was the idea that happiness or joy is your natural state. To me, this is a big shifter. It's a big shifter. It's as big a shifter as saying that happiness is not about external conditions, right? It's not a thing I will attain. It's not a thing that I will create. It's the way I move through my life. But if joy is my natural state, if loving is my natural way of being, then the real question is what's gotten in the way of that? And this is when I say to people, you know, people, clients will say to me, Oh, I just really like, you know, going out snowmobiling because it makes me happy. And I smile and I say, Well, that's a beautiful thing, going snowmobiling, especially because it takes your mind off all the things that make you unhappy. The happiness naturally arises when you take away the barriers to that happiness. It's your natural state. So the question isn't to seek out something that will make you happy, the question is to go internally and ask yourself, what's interfering with my happiness?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Yeah. When I think about the past, I mean, I think I'm sure I'm sure most everybody has a little version of this from their childhood. Is, you know, can you recall a moment of joy and excitement and jumping around and feeling great? And then someone just shutting it down. Right? An adult shutting it down. Mine was I I can't believe it's uh it's actually on tape, this this what I'm about to tell you. And I watched the tape as an adult and thought, oh my god. So I was jumping on chairs, jumping around. I think I was like maybe six years old. And my grandmother was camcording, right? She was recording, and she said, uh, Hillary, stop that. This instant. That is not intelligent. And you the you you see me drop. You see me drop. And I'm not like out here blaming my grandmother or anything, but it's just an interesting moment that that it is so moving to six-year-old me that I stop, I stop jumping around, I stop being fun, happy go, lucky, joyful, my natural state, right? Because somebody says something. You know? So I think it's worthwhile. I know this is getting into techniques and stuff, but I think it's worthwhile to think back and just think, okay, well, where when did I where did that joy go? Was I joyful as a child? Probably at some point. That natural state was there. And just to know that that, like Les said, like that natural state is always there. It's just a little foggy right now.

The Whiteboard Eraser Visualization

Emotional Roller Coaster And Baseline Peace

SPEAKER_02 16:23

That's a nice way, putn't it? I think that that that was uh, you know, for me, because I have been for a period of time in my life really focused on the concept of happiness, really focused mostly because of how unhappy I was. You know, I can I can look at my life backwards now. It's a great way to look at it because it's just the past. And the past is a program, it's an interpretation and a program. The past isn't real. The way we hold the past in our mind isn't real. It's from a very unique perspective of just me, looking at what happened and interpreting it about me and holding on to that regardless of its accuracy, and turning that into my story, my ego, the story I tell about me. And those kinds of things really weigh us down. They become the lens through which we interpret everything else. You know, every assumption that you make about yourself, every interpretation you have made about yourself, every judgment, most importantly, you have made about yourself is the stuff. If you've been told happiness is something that will happen to me, it's about external events, then all of that stuff is the lens through which you look at everything. And through that lens, it's pretty hard to find anything that would actually make you happy. Yes, maybe that's a this is this is a good thing to do right now. Just right now, imagine yourself sitting somewhere in a beautiful environment. In hypnosis, we call that your happy place. For some people, it's a tropical beach, for other people, it's a beautiful forest, for some people, it's a mountain lake. It's there's there's whatever makes you feel like you're in a peaceful, beautiful place. Imagine yourself there right now. And imagine that the whole of your life is just written out there on the left on a whiteboard. Whole thing. This massive equation, words, and images on this massive whiteboard, and it's to your left, and that's all of your past. And imagine that you're here in your happy place, knowing that the only thing interfering with your ability to just enjoy the happy place is your past. And you can see a whiteboard eraser sitting right there. So now go over to that whiteboard and just erase it. Erase it all, every single thing. Don't judge any of it. There's nothing good, there's nothing bad, it's just the past. It's gone already. Because it's the past, it's gone. There's nothing you can do with it. So just erase it. Just erase it completely. And when that whiteboard is nothing but white, sit back down in your happy place and just see how that feels for a moment. And if the act of erasing that whiteboard has in some way or another lightened you, you can see how your past is affecting your ability to be happy. Because right now you're just in your happy place. This is beautiful, it doesn't get better. There isn't a better place to be. I'm just in my happy place. There is nothing going on. Is your natural state of joy arising? Or has your mind already shifted to worrying about the future? Little experiments with our mind. Take a deep breath. Just see what you learned about yourself in that moment. Little mental experiments, I like them.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, I think when I think about moments of joy and how when we're constantly looking for joy outside of us, life day-to-day can become an emotional roller coaster because maybe we find a joyful moment and we go way up high emotionally. And then because it's externally motivated and because it's fleeting, right? It could be just sitting right in front of you. Oh, I I got a new wonderful, I don't know, cup for Christmas. Happiness. Well, the cup doesn't go away, but my happiness did. So, you know, it's it's really about these moments of ups and downs and and crashes and feeling really high one day, and then the next day waking up and going, oh my god, I feel like a bag of poop. You know, I feel like really bad. And it just means maybe just feeling low. But yesterday you were feeling really high. And why? Why is that? I got my thing, I should be happy, you know. So when I think about that, I I keep in my mind going back to this idea of and maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but like just coming back to peace, right? Just and it doesn't mean that you Never get to be happy again. It's just peace is sort of a middle ground of you have happy moments, but you come back to peace instead of going right down to feeling bad, low. I mean, there's so many example words, but instead of being on that roller coaster every day, you're more of you have a baseline of just feeling good. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

I think that one of the difficulties with this topic, the the primary difficulty with almost any topic is that it's trapped within the way we use language. We're communicating, we're trying to share ideas, we're trying to exchange perspectives, and we're trying to understand and be understood. And language itself really gets simplified. And I think we're we're living in an era where as humans we're resistant to the idea of having a large vocabulary that makes us sound thoughtful and intelligent. I don't I don't want to be a show-off. I don't want to be a know it all. I don't want to be, I don't want to sound like one of those smart alecs who think they know everything. And I don't want, I want to control what people think of me. And so I control the kind of language I use. And we we create, I mean, every generation creates their own colloquialisms, the ones that make their communication unique to them, right? So that if you know they're talking with their friends and then they hear their mother or father use the words that they use, it it upsets them because they're not supposed to use those words. Those are our words. And mother and father use a set of words that are unique to them, and they have their sense of self and value based in those words. I think language is not as widely accepted, let's say. You know, we we use words differently as a as a business professor teaching a set of language that I learned about business and listening to the way my students changed that language to fit the way they would speak. And then finding myself thinking, well, here I am, I'm an expert in this stuff, and I don't understand what they're saying because now my expertise is dated and it's old, and it's old because of the language that it uses. It's the same concepts, it's all the same meanings, really, but it's different words. So what happens then is there's this, I think, and it's it's generational, it's technological, it's expertise-based. The problem is we use words and we don't mean the same thing by them. And we simplify some things and use one word to mean a whole lot of things, and that's really where I'm driving at here. We start to take positive emotional states, and there are a lot of them, but we call them all happiness, and we simplify this very complex emotional state that we're seeking. We simplify it into, I just want to be happy. And then we even take the word happy, right? And we turn it into something else, because that's the word of the day. And although that makes that makes for a lot of fun, that makes for a lot of specialness for ourselves and for our group of friends, although that makes for a lot of happiness to take control of your language and make it what you want, the difficulty then is all of that starts to interfere with the ability to communicate. And when you're trying to work with somebody alongside of somebody, and they're saying, I just want to be happy, right? And you're trying to help them reframe that.

unknown 26:37

Right.

Nuance Exercises For Self-Insight

SPEAKER_02 26:38

I mean, there's a lot of dimensions of reframing we've already talked about, the external to the internal, the reframing of the past compared to the present, the reframing of getting as somehow being. You know, we're reframing a lot of ideas around happiness. And I'm gonna say that when we talk about peace, right, what we're implying is that there's a greater state than happiness. Now, we don't all use the word happy to mean the same things, and that makes it hard to communicate about happiness. That's a long-winded way of saying happiness is a big word, has a whole bunch of meanings depending on who you are and where you are and what you think. There's value in subtlety, there's value in precision and accuracy, and there's a difference between peace and happiness, and there's a difference between joy and happiness, and there's a difference between elation and happiness, and there's a difference between pleasure and happiness, and so all these things that we use somewhat interchangeably with happiness are of themselves worth considering. And it's in that calm examination of the subtle but broad spectrum of this thing we call happiness that we start to discover our own uniqueness as we approach the idea of happiness. So there's a value in us all using language similarly, because it actually allows you to understand yourself individually and then communicate that.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah. And I also did this exercise, I don't know, it feels like a year ago now or so. Because I was really struggling with this idea of, well, what what actually brings me joy? What brings me happiness? And so I encourage listeners to think about their word. You know, like you said, it's different words for people. And then try to remember what is what does that feel like in the body? And what I noticed with happiness, for me at least, it was excitement. Oh my gosh, this is happening. And it was over the top, like it, like I like it was almost into fear, you know.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

And to me, that's incredibly insightful, right? It's incredibly insightful to see how excitement is positive anticipation, and there was a fear somewhere in there that it would never happen. And on top of that, there is a personal interpretation that can be, oh my God, what happens if it happens? And I have my fear around my ability to cope with it. Right? You know, one of the exercises I do a lot with my clients when they're sitting in the chairs, they'll use words like beautiful or perfect or happy, and I'll say, tell me more, right? What are some other words? They'll say, I'm feeling angry, and I'll say, Well, what else? Because anger never comes along. Right. And so it's it's like, well, what else? What else do I feel? What else is going on? And then the language comes. I mean, we all have the language when we search for it, it's there, and we can start to notice for ourselves the subtlety. And often that's all you need, right? I don't need to do any hypnosis work now. All I've done is had them reframe their anger by taking the time to sit with it, examine it, look at its dimensions, look at its various aspects, look at its origins, look how it's progressed, look where it's going or not going, because it needs to flow, and it needs to bring you to action, and you're paralyzed with it. So now there's this incredible insight by just being prompted to better describe it with more nuance, with more degree and hue, with more dynamics, because it comes and it goes and it moves and it stays and it all does all kinds of things. So taking the time to expand your awareness of something that you quickly respond to. Oh, that made me happy. Oh, that made me angry, that made me sad. Well, what else? Take the time. What do you mean by that? I think we don't take advantage of the information that's inside us that we could access if we wanted to. There's a certain amount of reflection, I think, that becomes a good mental habit, a strong mental habit, a mental habit that actually helps us at the end of the day in how do we react to what's going on around us? And grabbing those few seconds and those odd questions, it takes you further. So, you know, if you wanted to engage a really good exercise today, you know, what does happiness really mean to me? What are the component parts of happiness? What are the emotions of happiness? What are the things that historically I would have said made me happy? Go deeper. What then must be going on for me inside that this somehow shields me from, takes me away from, detaches me from? How does this take this state of whatever anxiety, frustration, anger? How does this activity take me away from that and allow the natural joy inside me to just rise up and be present and be the prominent experience for me?

Closing Reflections And Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Yeah. Yeah, to that point, as we wrap up here, uh, I think happiness, we we use the word, we throw it around onto so many things. And I think if you really think about something that you associate happiness with, and you go there in your mind, I bet you there's way more, like you said, with the words and all the different words, there's way more complexity to what you're feeling. Maybe it's just this feeling of love and compassion and the oneness and connectedness, and yeah, there's tons of different words. Sometimes we'll someone will be crying in hypnosis, and I'll I'll ask, like, it are these tears of what are these tears of? Because you want to know. And usually it's something that they would associate with happiness, but they're actually feeling like deep compassion, you know. Anyway, so it is worth going into your mind, checking out times in your life that you think are associated with happy, and just seeing what other words come to you. Does anyone have any questions? Nope, I'm happy. So have a good day, everybody.