Deplorable Cult Nation- Happiness part 3

fantastic returning guests. This is kind of episode three in our little chit chat that we've been having, and I'm super excited about today because with the things going on in the world right now, I think that a lot of people benefit from our conversations and hopefully people can share what they've learned here with other people and make the arms of the octopus grow longer, if that makes

any sense. So welcome back mister John Lindhardt from floss dot com and mister Edmaybrey from Faith Byreason dot How are you gentlemen today?

people have probably never thought of before. So when we did our last one about bullying an unconscious confrontation, the next step is happiness in the grand scheme of things, and so I would like to get into that today and hopefully give people and indication of what they can do to not only know who they are, know what drives their behavior and their mannerisms, but how they can change their unconscious reaction to things around to actually make

happiness for themselves. So that John, we will start with you.

I can tell you there's only one of four answers that you can have, and so basically they align to the four thought processes. So the first answer is what basically a narcissist or the dysregulation thought process would say, is I need something bad to happen to an enemy, or something bad to happen to my competition. I need my competition. You know what make me happy? If my competition go bankrupt? You know what make me happy? As this person falls down a hole and dies.

The parents loved how much their kids loved to play for me, and the parents really wished I would move up to ninth grade because there were two eighth grade teams and the ninth grade coach had left, and so I went for the ninth grade job, and the coach of the other eighth grade team, who was terrible, got the job. There's nothing I could do about that, but I, you know, I would say, no self esteem. This is like a no self esteem position in this area. I

was no self esteem. I wanted to see bad things happen. So as a parent of a senior of varsity player, I had to sign up to do stuff. I signed up to run the chains at every home ninth grade football team, so I got to stand on the field with the opposition and watch that team play, and I would follow them away and I'd sit there and watch them, and this team just fell apart. They're jumping off sides.

They looked like a third grade team. And then i'd walk through the stands or i'd go to the varsity game and walk by the parents, and the parents would go, my son wishes you were coaching them, And I just couldn't get enough of that. I made sure I walked throughout all those parents and they all told me, man, the team is such a mess. You would have done such a better job that my son really wished he was playing for you. Yeah, so I'll admit it. I have had I have been in this thought process.

you sustained happiness? And I think in your case temporarily or even with John's case and myself, I've had the same thing where wanted bad things happened to people who did bad things to be You're happy for a moment, but that's not really solving. That's not giving me sustained happiness because that's okay, great, that's done, and now you now it's going to come from you. What is going to make you happy?

thought process are you habituated to for your happiness? Which thought process do you go to for happiness? So people who are narcissists, they will say this would make me happy if because ED and ED gives ways that really happiness is your brain releasing pleasure chemicals in response to your context. So I'm really asking you what context do you want to get your pleasure chemicals from? Right? So,

and this is not sustainable, like I said too. So the second area is basically, you want to have no tension, you want to win the lottery, you want to be sitting on the beach under a caban drink in my ties. So a lot of people call this retirement. And so notice a lot of people when they say retirement will make me happy, if their definition of retirement is I have no tension at all, that's this second thought process. It's really an addictive thought process. And so people go

to that. We would say they're low self esteem, but they go to I just want to avoid tension type of thing in the Bible that was Solomon. Solomon had zero tension and he fell apart. Because what we're going to learn about these pleasure chemicals is that if you don't experience any tension, then if all you have is the release chemicals, you get used to them, and then pretty soon you can't be happy, and then you go to that first level. People in retirement who have no

tension turned into the narcissist. And one of the points I make about a narcist, if you've ever seen anybody yell at somebody, hey, get off my lawn, and then they smile, It's like there's that first thought process. Their brain is releasing chemicals in response to being mean to people, and so you really have nowhere to go. If you go for the no tension, you're going to end up there. The third answer is to achieve something. It is to

embrace the tension. The third answer is I want to get a degree, I want to win an award, I want to get a promotion. I want to you know, I'm going to achieve this thing. I'm going to accomplish, build this business, do this great thing. So that's what we call the human thought process. That's no pain, no gain. And so now what you're doing is you're introducing a little attention so that when you accomplish it, you get this big bump. And that's really what a lot of

people would say is where everybody wants to be. You have a thought on that, D.

I had money, but then what next. Let's say you do have the money and you can buy all the cars and houses that you want. That's not going to that's not going to be self sustaining happiness. And I told John the story before that I'm not going to give the person's name because he's a never give me permission to. But you know the school I went to. I went to college in LA and the college I went to had, you know, certain celebrities would child actors would go there because it was it was a high

level university. And I saw one who's very popular, and I happen to see him sitting on a bench. I walked by and I said, hey, you know, I saw you. I saw your TV show, big fan of yours, and he said great things. He started talking to me. I know you just felt open, and he really talked about how unhappy he was. Now, this is the person who had everything, just like Solomon. He had everything the world

told him that he should have to be happy. He had fame, he had money, he was well known, he could have, you know, girls like him because because he was an olrich and famous. But he wasn't happy. Because he had everything that the world told him he should have to be happy, yet he still wasn't and he was completely miserable because if you have everything that's supposed to make you happy and you still aren't, where do you go next?

I retire, I don't know what I would do. I don't have hobbies. I don't like to talk to people. I don't you know, he's not a tinker, he's not a handy person. He's like, I don't know what I would do at all to fill up my day. And he's like, you are literally always busy. You're always working on something, making something, creating something, interacting with people. And he's like, I don't have any of that or a desire to do any of that. And he's like, honestly, like work is what makes me happy.

He was rich, he was famous, he was respected, he was wise, and he was never held accountable for his actions. That's what everyone wants. But again, then Solomon wrote his last The last thing he wrote was the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is honestly the most depressing book in the entire Bible, because he in that book he says, I know what the answer is. The answer is to put God first. But I tried everything to make me happy. None of

these things outside myself made me happy. I guess you not to be happy, you got to turn yourself over to God. But it was not said, and it was it was said as a point of frustration. So he was he was pretty miserable. But the entry same thing is that Solomon had what we think heaven should be mm hmm. And and it's actually a kind of a straw man heaven because it's not real. It's not And

I we'll talk about this later. I really want to talk once we get past well, once you give how some definitions of happiness and things like that, I want to talk about how that equates to our eternity. But the idea of heaven, if you ask people, what is heaven like, Oh, we're just going to be sitting on a cloud, you know, worshiping God would just be happy all the time. But it's very, very vague. It's just

this time of no tension. That's what they think heaven's going to be, because we can't imagine enjoying tension for eternity.

the law. She said, okay, great, Well if you, if you really want to follow me, give away all of your stuff that you've achieved and you'll have treasure in heaven. He didn't want. He went away. He couldn't stand that because he could not he could not get his mind to the point where he could. He felt he could be happy giving up his achievements because that's what he

thought made him happy. I've done all these things, I've obeyed the law, I've a mass of riches, and now this guy is telling me that I have to give all of that up and and and follow him blindly and follow what I think John's going to tell you the next answer for happiness is And he could not find his way to do that because he was all about achievement.

it works for all of this. So you buy something for fifty thousand dollars again, you're gonna enjoy it less than the first time you bought a fifty thousand. If you play a video game and you win the game, you're ecstatic. If you play it again and win it, you feel great, but not like the first time you want it. So, now what do you have to do? You had this high for fifty eight thousand, you did fifteen and you didn't get that high. How do you get I want this high again? Well you have to

spend one hundred thousand. So now you buy something for one hundred thousand, you'll all right, yeah, there's that high, there's I'm happy again. Well, now what do you have to do to do that again? Two hundred thousand? And that's why it's like, wait, if you stop this, you can't get your brain to release any chemicals and you'll have money. Or you chase that high and now you don't have your money again. But you got to feel happy along the way. So that's how your brain actually works.

So what happened to Solomon? When people talk about signing their soul over to the devil, it's really what Solomon did, because what that really looks like is is Solomon habituated to this second thought process. Like ed said, And if you read the story of Solomon, he also had a thousand wives. And God said, well, it's said in the Bible not to bring horses from Egypt, not to make silveris stones, not to marry a bunch of women, because

they'll take your heart away towards their gods. Solomon was supposed to make a copy of the Law as king, and he would have seen those commands, and there's a verse under Solomon that contradicts the verse and the law. He brought horses out of Egypt, he made SILVERI stones, and he married all these women, and it took his heart away. So it was stayed in the law of this would happened. He absolutely did it. So then God says to him, you have put up idols to other gods.

Take them down, and I'm going to give you, you know, a nation, an enemy, but he'll never come into your borders. So even when God wanted to give him an enemy. It never got into Israel, it was in his borders. But so Solomon needed to take those things down. Like Yad said, he writes Ecclesiastes, and at the end of it he says, let me tell you the whole thing. The only way to be happy is to do what God's says. He knew that, he never did.

to serve others, but yeah, I don't want to. And then that that chronic question of why do all these bad things happen to me repeatedly, over and over and over again, And that's your answer the thing.

which is this addictive thought process. And this is what happens is to addicts that he, like Ed said, he did this big proof to try to find another way. And he proved to himself logically, which is that third process, the achievement one. He proved himself logically, this is how to be happy. But he couldn't bring himself to do it because he had he had wired his brain to the point that he had no longer he had valued stuff so much he could no longer get the energy

to do the right thing. Hundreds of years later, Josiah took down all of those high places that Solomon put up, so they stayed up for hundreds of yours. Solomon never took them down. Solomon opposed God, and so that ends right. Ecclesias is a really sad book, because Solomon had everything we think would make you happy, which is in this third achievement thought process, and then he realized, Really, Ecclesiastes is saying, I was in Joe, I was happy building

God's house and building my house. But while I was building him, I thought I'd be happy living in my house and having my house. And now that I have my house, I realize building it was more enjoyable than having it. And so now what do I do? And he had wired his brain to the point that he's essentially given up the soul. He just could not make

the choice to do the right thing. So that's really what's going on with Solomon and everything when Ed talked about that third level of achievement and then the rich man, so he goes, I've done all these things, and Jesus said, okay, if you want to be perfect, which really in the Bible means maximum profitability. If you want the most profitability, sell all that you have give to the poor. And

I have asked people all over it, pastors, everybody. I actually saw someone preach this on television and they put the verses and I say, complete descent, Sell you have given the poor and then everybody else then follow me. And I saw a guy preach it, and on the verses, that's what the verse was. But if you look at the verse, that's not the verse. Jesus said what Ed said, Cel you have give the poor, then you'll have treasure in heaven, then follow me. So Jesus is offering exchange

spiritual value for physical value. And this guy was so committed to the physical he couldn't see the spiritual, he couldn't value it, and so he couldn't make the jump. But it's amazing people when they quote that first, they'll leave out the part that Ed put in is they don't even know that that's an option. So so everything we've we've covered so far is looking for happiness outside of yourself. Something bad happen to this person, no tension,

tension by achieving this stuff. The ultimate answer is I want to want to I want to respond to every situation by being more of myself, bring in more of myself out. Now that can sound like the second step or the third one, you know, so when I talk to people, it's like why, Like I get the feeling from you. Janet, You're not putting this podcast on to try to win a bunch of awards and make a million dollars. I get the question, you do this because it gives you a chance to.

cannot believe the things that you shared. And I'm like, I'm in a position where God wants me to share that because God, all through the Bible used people that you know, were centers, that were prostitutes, that were all of these things to achieve, you know, to overcome and come out the other side a better person. And sanctification process is so important, and I can't be who I truly am, who God made me to be if I if I bury any of that.

talk long enough for me to engage that. But if he had, if he had been doing the same being, achieving the same things by being himself, he would have been happy. But he spent that time being with another character that someone wrote, which was not him, or.

do other people. They've got the looks, they've got the money, they get a jet set all over the world, they get all of these you know, items and stuff, but they are so sad because people don't see them for who they truly, genuinely are. All they see is that right shiny shell, you know, and not not what's underneath that. And I think that's a huge thing in our society these days.

the relief you get. So if you have no tension, there's a limit how much relief you can feel. But if you drive the tension up and then have this relief moment. You watch a movie, it's ninety minutes of tension and everything's bad, and then the last ten minutes it all works right. It's that difference. So the key to happiness is really and the key to having this big moment is how much tension can you safely handle? Those first two levels The first person's causing tension other people.

The second levels is trying to avoid tension. The third is like in charge of the tension. But the problem with the achievement path is the same as that second path, which is you climb this mountain, well, you're not gonna be happy. Letch you climb a bigger mountain, and then you're not happy to you climb a bigger mountain, and eventually you're gonna run on the mountains to climb or something's gonna be too hard, and then you'll drop back

to that second one, that addictive one. So really, if you don't learn how to jump to this fourth thought process, that third one. I always look at these quotes from all these people who were like that third, like Lance Armstrong. You see when I go into the classroom, you see these quotes from Lance Armstrong or some of these other very famous people like do all these great things, try strive all the stuff you read their autobiography. It never ended well for those people.

It's actually pride when you get down to it, because you're because if religion worked, if you could do stuff to get you to heaven, then when you got there, you say, hey, God, look what we did. Know the point of the Bible is very clear that Jesus finished the work on the cross. You know, tell Usty it is finished in Greek, it was done. It's not okay, I'm gonna do my part. Then you do your part because if that's the case, and you can share in

the glory. And no, that's not the point. The glory is with God alone, because God, through through his son Jesus, God performs salvation. Our job is just accepted or not so when it's so. But what religion does. It gives us into a thought process where we feel like we are achieving something and that will make us happy if

you do. I mean, I'm not gonna at the risk of offending any Catholic listeners you may have, but that that is a huge crux of the catechism about all the things that you have to do on the official doctrine is that the cross began your process of salvation.

The rest of it is up to you. You have to take the Eucharis, You've got to do about several prayers, you have to confess to a priest, you have to give indulgences, you have to do all these other things, and at the end of your life you probably want achieve it, so you got to go to purgatory and pay for it there for a little while. Then you're letting into heaven. That's all about. So the majority of that is stuff that you do. Why is that appealing?

It's appealing because it speaks to our pride, to our ad thought process, our achievement thought process, and thinking, look at what I'm doing to get there. But the problem is, you can never on your own achieve that. There is no There is no mountain you can climb high enough to but you keep trying, but you're going to be miserable. But your unconscious knows that you can't ever be perfect, just knows that no matter how how much stuff you

do in the name of God. So your unconscious is always there telling you this isn't gonna work, This isn't gonna work. And then and then you go. I've known with Catholics that go one of three ways. They either realize that this is not what God wants. I still believe in God, but I don't believe in doing this stuff. My wife's an example of that. She was raised Catholics as well. Yeap, and thankfully they took they made the right choice and they said, no, God is real, but

this stuff isn't real, or they double down. Have a friend of mine who's very devout Catholic, and we've had discussions about this, and he says, hey, I know that it doesn't make logical sense, but it's what I've been told by my priest. So I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do it harder. I just you know, when I start to doubt what I'm doing, I feel guilty, and I'm going to address that guilt by going even harder.

it was not dressed as splendidly as these. So so Solomon was not even as in God's eyes, he didn't even compare to a weed with it because his own achievement. That pride that God, you know that that God does not want us to have. Because again, pride is contrastive thinking, which is the opposite of humility, which is what God wants from me. Because that's the only way you can interact with God is if you are humble enough to say that I don't know everything. I don't have all

the answers. On the other hand, if you're a comparative thinker, I'm sorry, yeah, if you're If you're a comparative thinker, contrastive means I don't know everything you know, I could be wrong. Comparative thinking or pride is saying I have all the answers. Well, if you have all the answers, then I can't interact with you because that's nothing I can teach you grow right, you can't.

because and this is the beauty of God. He weeds your garden of things that you don't need, right, Okay, So loss of relationships, loss of money, loss of a job, loss of home, whatever, it's because you are so focused on worldly materialistic even worship or praising your children, you know, putting them above your love for God is a problem. And he can take your children away and all different

kinds of aspects. But it's like all of these things that are preventing you from growing and from knowing your true authentic self that God made you to be. He has to get rid of things in your life for you to be able to move forward.

on the right course. But I want to jump back to something you said, Jennet, because I think I think this is interesting because you talked about sharing and being authentic and these people going, why would you do that? I think I think what they may be saying because Jesus talked to all these people who had crashed, the prostitutes, the ill they had crashed, they had everything had gone bad, and they couldn't go anywhere but up. And I think when people say to you, why would you share all that?

It's not like you crashed, Like, why would you share that if you don't have to? And I think that's one of the issues is that is that I don't consider it evangelism to talk to a bunch of people who are crashed and introduced in the gospel. Now, it's great to do that and they need it, But to me, evangelism would really be helping people realize that before they crash.

people so that they know they're not alone. There is somebody else that has been through the same stuff or has felt the same feelings or whatever. And how do you go about changing your life from where you were? You know, and the mindset, the unconscious way that you react to things, how do you get out of that and change that? And like, it's a world of difference between who I was then and who I am now.

you go come over and you talk to you. You pull them out of where he's happy at the second thought process. You bring him to the third and you ask a bunch of questions and then he goes, is that it? Are we done? Is that it anything else? Are we done? Great? And then now he's playing his video game. So that's the thing is when I look at people, the first thing I'm trying to do is figure out what level of thought processes have habituated to.

Because what you just said is what I'm trying to do is I can't take him to the top one. I can only take them up one. So if they're in this addictive thought process, I want to bring them up to the achievement thought process, and then I want to bring them up to this long term healthy happiness thought process. And so when they understand where they're at and how their brain works, that's half the battle. Then

you can help them do the next one. But I think we've now led into another definition, actually two more definitions. So happiness, like I said, is really pleasure chemicals that your brain releases in response to your context. You find twenty dollars in the parking lot, your brain kicks out chemicals. After you're out of that context, they're gone. Joy is your brain kicking out those plement pleasure chemicals regardless of

the context, meaning it's always doing that. So when people say to me, I'm not a genuinely happy or a generally happy person, what I'm saying thinking is they don't have joy. Everybody gets Everybody can say they're happy because they're happy according to one of those fourthought processes, and this is how they have wired their brain to get the pleasure chemicals. So everybody's happy. But the people who have joy, their brain's kicking it out regardless of what happens.

And the key to joy is love. This is bring up, bringing up, because you already said it. The definition of love is giving to somebody without expecting anything in return from that person that he gave to. So you say, i'm work service. You're giving to people and you're not looking to get anything back. And when you do that, your unconscious kicks out chemicals all the time. So that's one of the keys. One of the keys to experiencing joy is whether you love so us men love affirmations.

And I think I've shared this on this show before, but it's so easy to get a man to do what you want a grown man. And I do this. Pay attention because I've done this so many times. Whatever you want this guy to do, find somebody who's doing it. Don't look at that guy and affirm that person in front of them for doing it. I guarantee this will work. But you can't look at and you can't make them conscious.

It's called an unconscious confrontation. So you sit there and go, wow, I think it's so great that you did less than five and got through that, and you're just really amazing for having that amount of diligence. I can't get this guy to do less than five. All of a sudden, guess what he shows up next week? He got blessed five, done it took you three months and now all of a sudden you did it because you saw an affirmation.

So one of the questions I love to ask guys, and you can ask this of guys and it it puts a little hitch in their gideop because they they can't answer the question. So I say, imagine you're in a coffee shop. Now this is to a guy. This isn't to you, Jennet, So you got to You gotta have like a fifth of the brain you have in order to understand it. So imagine you're in a coffee shop and a guy walks in the front door, and he every guy in that coffee shop he starts affirming him. Hey,

that was an amazing basketball game. You played that so great. Hey, I saw your podcast. That was an amazing point you made about that artist. Hey, And he's affirming every guy as he walks to you, question, do you want this guy to affirm you? Or do you want to be that guy? They can't answer that question because they want that guy to affirm them. But their unconscious knows that guy's a man. Everybody else here's a boy right now, and that's a man, And unconscious goes really you're gonna

say you want the affirmation. You don't want to be the man. You don't want to be the guy with the pocket full of affirmations. You want to get one of the affirmations out of that guy's pocket. And I've done that in groups of the room, groups of men. You don't get an answer, and you see these guys

look at each other. Come, I can't answer this question because you should want to be the guy given out affirmations, because that guy is happier than the person getting If you get an affirmation, you will be happy for as long as your short term memory works, so forty eight to seventy two hours. And so what a lot of guys do to women is they go, you know, Janet, I really feel happy when you affirm me. I think I could be happy if you would spend all your

time affirming me. What do you think there are guys out there like that?

being the guy affirming everybody. So when my son was like thirteen fourteen, he had moved away in middle school during the last year of middle school, and they actually his friends invited to come back for the prom, you know, for their dance, graduation dance, because he had grown up with all these kids and a buddy of mine, this guy Jonathan, I do a lot of his training with. He told my son, he goes, listen, you should be

go there and be an affirmation sniper. He goes, trust me on this, because the fourteen year old boy doesn't want to do this. But he said, when you walk in, don't look for everybody to affirm you. You find a reason. You don't just go you're great, You're great, you got it's affirm him for a reason, right, Affirm everybody trust me on this because because my son told him, Yeah, I can't wait to go back and tell me they missed me and this and that. And he's like, don't

be that guy. Be this guy. He walked into the gym and the DJ was over at one end. He walked into the gym and just started affirming. Everybody walked past the DJ to the corner, got done affirming. People turned around. There were all these guys following, were following for more affirmations. So he's an administrator. Now you had a group. He got them going, He got the DJ to play what do you wanted? And he took over

the whole party. He came back Johnson, he goes you, whatever you say, I'm just gonna do it from now on. You have the best advice. But it's like that is really how you're happy affirming others. You really short term happy getting affirmed, and then it will leads you down this track of going well, then I expect everybody to affirm me all the time. How can I be happy if you guys aren't going to affirm me. That's that's not sustainable, right.

I'm going to go sit in the car because he knows, he knows how I am. But I think for a lot of people, giving someone else an affirmation is really hard for them to do. It's like almost impossible for some people because they're afraid of being judged. They're afraid that what they say to somebody else, that person is going to receive it wrong. They're going to take it wrong, they're going to get angry, they're gonna, you know whatever.

And that's such a huge, like vicious cycle. Like you can't be nice and say a nicety to somebody because you're letting fear take control of your mind and the chemicals that you're going to release in your brain by doing so, so you're suppressing those because of your your worry or fear that someone's going to judge.

or something. And my first thought was to go up with her and say, wow, you look really nice today. But I didn't because I'm like, well, maybe she's gonna think I'm a creep or that I'm hitting on her or something.

I used to be so shy and I got bullied all the time and picked on and whatever, and I had zero self esteem. And now it's nothing for me to be out in public and be like talking to somebody and be like, I just want to give you a hug. Is it okay if I hug you? And and people are like, well yeah, And people need that. Not only do they need your words of affirmation, but they need your like that physical connection and that physical touch. It's so important for people to grow.

walk away that way, there's that way she knows. Oh, he wasn't trying to get something from right, He just said, you know, but that's a really beautiful dress. Turn away, keep walking if she if she says thank you, you can turn back and smile. I have no problem. But when you do that, you've taken away any type of pitt an agenda. So that all he was doing was

being kind and he wanted nothing else from me. And so now she feels truly affirmed without any other possible baggage that might have happened, because you know, some guys can be creeps and and she was an attractive lady. I'm sure she's had other guys who were creepy, but this would have made her feel good. And knowing that it wasn't any type of there wasn't anything else to it other than that.

don't even know affirms you, you feel great. So that's what these likes are. That's what these social media people are doing. A bunch of people are affirming me. They have no idea who I am. And I don't know if you ever saw the movie soap dish at Sally Field in it years ago, but she was this actress and the soap opera and she was low self esteem, and her aide said, whenever she's feeling low, she'd take

her out on the street downtown New York. She'd take off her head scarf, take off her glasses and go, oh is that so and so? And a mob would come and Sally Field sign autographs her character for an hour and she feel good about herself. Well, now I feel good about myself that all these people I don't even know thought well of me. Mid Self esteem is when somebody you look up to. You feel good when someone you look up to affirms you. So this is

what parents are trying to do. They're trying to get their kids to mid self esteem, don't you you know, low self esteem is their peers if you jumped off the bridge, would you jump off a bridge? These kids are knuckleheads and you want their affirmation. What are you doing versus why don't you care what your teacher, your coach, your pastor your parents think of you? So that's mid self esteem. We raise kids to go. You should feel good when somebody affirms you. But there's a finish line there.

If a great basketball player tells me I'm a good basketball player, I don't need to get good ever again. You know, if I were to sit here and say, hey, you know Lebron James told me I was a great basketball player, I'm done. I'll live off that forever.

Ed said, we have an area. Whereas when someone affirms me in it, I'm not saying I don't feel good, but I don't feel better. I don't go yeah, I go no. I know that. I'm so confident in that ability, but I'm amazed you saw it. And the example is Jesus. So the centurion comes to Jesus and said, I have a sick person, you know, And Jesus goes, take me to him. The centurion goes, wait a minute. I'm a man in authority. People under me. I know if I say a word, it happens. You're the son of God.

You say a word, it can happen, So you don't need to come to say the word. And Jesus turns to his disciples and he didn't go see that seeing I'm amazing, see that I got affirmed. I'm awesome. Jesus turned to disciples and said and it says Jesus was a stop and amazed, and he says, I haven't seen this kind of faith in all of Israel. So the centurion affirms Jesus. Jesus doesn't feel better about himself. He actually feels better about the centurion and brags about the

centurion to the disciples. That's high self esteem, right, not looking what he could get out of it, and even benefiting from it. And that's what you're doing in the supermarket, Janet. You're not looking for what you're going to get out of it. You're looking that other people. You know that you feel better, that feel better about others.

it really really brought this thing out. You know what I think better, I know that I'm good at this, but oh okay, you actually have some some skill here, some talent of your own. You you recognize you know that I did this subtle, nuanced thing that brought out the flavor. I think better of you now. I'm fine.

gets it. I love what I do. This is the love. I love cooking, and this person gets it. He's not just like shoveling the food in his mouth. He actually appreciates something about it. I want to come out to him and talk. I've had that I've had, like famous chef U Bear Keller has says, came out and he's he's the famous chef. He's well, he used to be in a start school's in Vegas.

so it should be easy to remember. So happiness is experiencing effects exceeding expectations, and you can write that in two halves. Experiencing effects as one half of it, and exceeding expectations is the other half.

this thing. It's something happens to us. Something as an effect happens to us. So now whatever that effect is, it's got to exceed. It's got to be above. Now we get into the quantitive side, it's got to be above what we expected. So I like to say, you know, if you gave me twenty dollars and I was expecting forty, I'm not happy. If you gave me twenty dollars and I wasn't expecting anything. Both cases, you gave me twenty dollars, my happiness was all what I was expecting. It wasn't

what you gave me. So the experience, the effect, you can see it as the environment that it's the tangible world. So the problem is is that when you start to expect more things, it gets harder and harder to be happy. That's why a certain amount of money gets you out of the hole and can make you happy. And then it's called the prosperity paradox. When you start making too much money, you can't get happy again. And so what happens is is this thing is called a conjunctive. We

need both halves of this. One half is going to do it. So there are people who try to achieve all this stuff and make all this money. They're not happy, and then they go, fine, I'm maybe a Buddhist, I don't want anything. Well, if you notice, half of happiness is something experiencing an effect is something like you said, the twenty dollars, But where was your brain before you experienced that? That really is what's determining your happiness, not what you got. But you do need to get something.

Somebody needs. You need to receive something, and then it needs to be above your expectation.

we think Jesus is. We think he's like the nicest guy who ever existed, and he was just nothing but Sweden loving and you never got angry with anyone. I said, well, that's a straw man. That's not who he was. Biblically speaking, he was actually you know, he called his disciples, you know, idiots in the binacular. He says, you got a slow of learning. How long will I be with you? He got it frustrated with him and said, you guys aren't getting it. You know, when when someone when when the

money changes in the temple were cheating people. He didn't just he just said, oh, please stop, I'll pray for you. No, he went and intentionally made a whip and beat the crap out of him. I mean, he tried to probably spend in an hour just thinking I'm making this whip. This was premeditator, and he did. So my point is

that I was a straw man. And so we try to live up to this Jesus that didn't even exist, that's in our head in our pop culture, and we try to be officially nice to everyone because we think that's what Jesus was like, and that he would never get angry and that he would never stand up for himself. And so we make ourselves into this milk toast caricature, caricature that we that's unsustainable.

I won't sugarcoat something for someone. I will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, because you have to have that realization that somebody cares enough about your well being to make you look at your behavior, you know, see how your behavior affects other people, you know, and then hopefully they adjustments accordingly and psych yourself to by that situation.

expect you to not ever say another cussword. That is not realistic in God's mind because you are still going through sanctification process. He's still trying to read your garden of you know, all the bad stuff. And so you know, if you have a word come out of you every once in a while, you know, especially at the beginning, it's okay, because we're not perfect, but people expect that, they expect that from If you're a Christian, you should never ever falter.

wrong thing, you know, all of that stuff. We're going to respond to things from our subconscious in a manner that is not appropriate, right, and it's up to us to catch that and be like, oh wow, next time that happens, I could probably address that a lot better. But that's only through God's help because we can't do that stuff on our own, right.

to kick out these chemicals. Now, before I go to the other thing that blocks this, I want to I want to take a moment to talk about what you're saying, because, again, how is our brain designed by God? Our brain was designed a specific way, and what we're really trying to do is help people understand how their brain works so that they can be in line with what God has. So our brain is made that we say something and then our unconscious here's it. Our unconscious speaks to us,

and our conscience in our unconscious speaks to us. So it could say to us, hey, that wasn't right, and it'll send a message. That message will get to you as a feeling, and that feeling is called guilt. Guilt is information. Our brain is made that we try things, and when we make a mistake, we find out and then we repair it. That's why I say a bad person is not somebody who does something wrong. A bad person is proven by how they respond to the wrong.

If you do something wrong you don't fix it, then you're bad. Versus if you do something wrong and you fix it, you're not bad, right, and that's the way God made our brain. But people want to say we're robots. Nothing should come out of you. So one of the things when I talk to people, I go, there's three differences between a computer and AI and our mind and brain, and one of them is what you just said. A computer doesn't. A computer assumes what it said was perfect.

A computer never checks what it says after it says it to see if it was perfect. We're not computers, right, and so when we try to hold people to that computer standard, we're going against the way God designed our brain and the way we're supposed to operate. So that's really dangerous. And that's why a lot of people are having mental and emotional issues is because they're buying into the perfection. They're buying into being a computer, and they're

blocking their happiness. So what's the thing that would block happiness on the other half of this equation? Experience and an effect. When I go into the classroom, one of the things I'll do to the kids is I'll take something like a pen and I'll slowly go to give it to them. And usually because the kids I'm dealing with have trauma, they'll grab it right out of my hand. It's really tense for them to open their hand and let me place it in their hand, Let me love them,

let me give to them. They're taken. And so the thing is is it's because they can't stand the tension and they take control. And control is a cause. An effect is giving up control. So if you focus on more control, you're blocking your happiness. So control and perfection the quickest way is for a person to block their happiness if they think the solution to happiness is I need more control or I need to be more.

but just doing it different steps, different way. People that have that control things seem to always be that highly super analytical, only see black and white, don't see any gray in the middle, don't see any other way other than how they function. They're acting like that causes so much tension and turmoil and oh, unhappiness.

the future. So when I deal with people like that, I'm like, I, you are just trying to be happy, and I'm talking unconsciously, but I'm talking consciously, and don't wake up and look at you like, wait a minute. They know they're being controlling, but no one's ever put the words to the feelings. And then all of a sudden they look at you and go, yeah, like that's I'm not a bad guy. I'm just trying to be happy. It's like, you're right, you know, Hitler was just trying

to be happy. There are four ways to try to be happy, and I identify them with that at the start, and that's what I end up saying to them. Is look it, you're just trying to be happy. But there are four ways to go about it. You can try to be happy by wishing bad on other people. You can try to be happy by avoiding tension. You can try to be happy by you know, embracing the tension and making this thing try to happen. Or you can be happy by giving up control and just responding to everything.

By being more yourself. You're always gonna there's always gonna be the tension there, and you're always gonna end it with more and not sustainable. And when you pose it that way, the super logical person's like, you know, because I go, which one are you doing? Now? Logically they have to go, I'm not doing a good one, am I? I'm not? What is that?

But I've been doing this for over twenty years, and normally what happens is one of just what you said, one of the spouses, man or male or female decides, you know what, you're blocking my happiness, Janet, you're blocking my happiness. I would be happy if you didn't talk to your friends anymore, be happy if if you would do this for me, I'd be happy. And so I'm going through life convinced that happiness is possible. But you're the person blocking me. And the advice I would give

to you is we call it weed killer. Do ask him exactly what it would take for them to be happy, and do it for him, and I'll tell you what. Do it for him for a week. But I haven't seen anybody make it three days, right, okay. And this last case, they didn't even get to do it because the person said to him, I will do all this and you will put a smile on your face and be happy, because that's what you'd say. John, Are you saying if I stop talking to my friends, then you'll

walk around with a smile on your face? John? Now, remember that's an energy thing, that's an unconscious thing. I can't and what you're really unconsciously confronting me, is John, you have a plan for happiness, Let's find out if it works. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna stop talking to my friends. You're gonna walk around the smile on your face, right John? And after day I'm going to be more upset. Yep, because now there is no plan

for happiness. See I was I was happy knowing you were blocking my happiness and I had a strategy for happiness. When you actually do what I need and I'm not happy, I don't have it. And now on twce is man, I'm like, how could you do that to me? What do exactly what you told me to do? So now I'm never going to be happy. It's like, okay, now do now do you realize it's time to give up control? Now do you realize it's time that this control thing was never going to make you happy? So now you

can start growing. Now we'll find out if you're really good. We'll find out in this scenario if I'm a good person or not, because if, like Ed said, if I'm humble, I'm gonna go Hey, I obviously don't know how what makes me happy versus you know when I went to the UK. This was three years ago. Somebody was buying my book and people were buying my book online that was out of print for like one hundred and forty US, and so we decided to go see what was going

on with people over there. And it was a guy who was coaching all these people based on this information. And he invited all these people over for dinner, and then after dinner, these people stood in his kitchen and dining room and told their story about how they got off of medication, they got off of all these different things, you know. And I'm crying for half the stories. My wife cried for every one of the stories. And when it was done, they were like, aren't you you know

why do you feel about this? John? Basically like, see, it's all because of you. Don't you feel great that you're so awesome? And I said, well, transformation takes three things. Number One, it takes the right information, the truth. Yeah, I gave you the truth. I'll a third of the credit. Second thing is it takes a coach. We're humans. You have to have somebody who's helping you do it. This guy,

Dean did all that. He takes a third. The third thing is his transformation takes a person who wants who's humble, so you all are deserve a third. And then I told him, I said, I don't know how to make myself happy. I tried all these ways to make myself happy, and then I realized God knows me better than anybody else, He loves me more than anybody else, and he has all the information right, So why don't I let God

make me happy? I said, I'm sitting here in a kitchen in Dundee, Scotland happy and this was never in my plan exactly. So it's like, that's the thing is, I don't know how to make myself happy, but I know someone who does, and I've given up control and allowed him to show me that. And that's that's how I stay happy. I try to stay in God's well and I try to take God's direction versus me going, oh, I have a strategy and I'll sell it to you

in a book, and it's not that's not it. So that's where we're trying to, Like, if you understand happiness, you know that's what we're trying to do. You've got to give.

print and you know whatever. It may make them feel good for just a moment, and then guaranteed they're going to have some guilt creeping.

I'll say to the kids, why do you want money? Well, so I could buy this thing. Why do you want to buy that thing? So I can do this thing? Why do you want to do this thing? It'll make me happy? And I say, why not? Just be happy?

your answer. Live in the biggest house, drive the biggest cars, that's your answer. And I said, here's the thing. Are you even in control of that? Really you're not. And second of all, even the people who achieved that, they're not happy, a lot of those people end up killing themselves. Jim Carrey began losing his mind. He said, when he got to Ede's point, when he got what he said would make him happy right and realized it didn't make happy.

So and some of these kids go, well, you never know, okay, but let's just be honest about it. Your strategy for happiness is to try to have so much stuff you exceed this. And even though this isn't in your control, and even though you've seen other people are unhappy, but that's your plan. You know what's in your control, your expectations, your brain. See, half of happiness is the environment, your circumstances,

and half of happiness is your brain. So the short answer to happiness is this, happiness is putting your brain in the right spot before you experience your circumstances. That's really what it is. Are you in control or can you be in control of where you put your brain that is in your control, you know.

So expectations are definitely something that you have to tamp down because think of even in a relationship, like, how can you expect your partner to know how you're feeling if you don't share that, if you don't have that capability to be vulnerable enough to say, you know what, John, what you just said really upset me, and here's why

I'm upset. If you don't have that communication, everything breaks down because the expectations that I'm placing on you as as a mind greater, You're supposed to automatically know what I'm thinking and feeling.

world this way? That's why I think understanding in tangible drivers is so important, so the first step, because it allows us to know how to connect with people, us

to know how to make them feel safe. Ultimately, if you learn how you your uniqueness and how you think, you learn that you will be an expert in putting your brain in the right spot, and then you're always going to be happy, right because you know how to move your brain wron So why wouldn't everybody focus on learning their uniqueness and how their brain works in order to be happy? Why is everybody going after the thing that's not in their control, is never going to happen

and doesn't work anyways. And that's the point I make to the kids, and then we start down the road of understanding ourselves. And that leads right to what Ed was saying, like, what's heaven? It's people interacting with each other in their uniqueness.

no tension at all. That would not make anyone happy sustainably for a few Yeah, maybe for a few you know, years or whatever, you'll be happy no attension, But then you're going to need something because no one's uniqueness is about not having tension. Your uniqueness, it's interacting with others. Your happiness. It's interacting with others. And when you interact with others, you are going to have tension because they're not you, because the other person you're interacting with is

also unique. So there there's going to be tension there. But the happiness comes, like John said before, the release of the tension. So what's going to be happening for eternity is I will be acting in my uniqueness, and I'll interact with you and your uniqueness. I'll give you some of my uniqueness. You'll give me some of yours. That will make us both happy. And then I interact with John. But when John interacts with me, he's not just getting my uniqueness. He's getting my uniqueness plus the

little the value that I got from you. So he's getting like mostly Ed and a little bit of Janet. And now we've interacted. Now John has some of me, some of you, and some of him. Now John can go to someone else and interact now and they will get all of that. And then let's say I meet up with John a thousand years later, and all the people he's interacted with, he could come back to me and we will interact, and I've got all those other uniquenesses and I can take that. And now I can

go to Jen. Hey, Jenny, I've just interacted with John. I haven't seen him four a thousand years, and here's all the things I've learned from him, and all the value that I've gotten from his interacting with other people. And I give that to you. We can keep doing that forever, and we will. The saddest day of heaven

will be your first day. Saddest quote unquote why because every day after that, every moment after that, will be us interacting with each other more and getting more value from each other and growing and growing intention have that tension being released because again, the more unique, the more uniqueness that you interact with, the more tension there is, and the greater the release, so the greater the happiness.

And you can bring that to someone else, and again you can do that over and over again forever, So happiness and joy will increase for ever.

you come look at my universe. I create it because I'm having a problem and I don't understand what the problem is. And in both of these other two universes, everybody kills themself, and God goes to the one brother and says, well, what's going on here? And he goes, well, I designed their brains so that when they experience the greatest thing, they have the greatest feeling. Well, what's wrong

with that? Well, after everybody has that greatest feeling, there's nothing to look forward to, and they eventually kill themselves, and the other brother goes, yeah, I saw that, and I figured out I will never let them experience the greatest thing. I'm going to help them get closer and closer, but they're never going to get to experience that. Well how's that work. Well, when they figure out they're never

going to experience it, they kill themselves. And it's like, what did you do God, and he's like I made our I made their brains different. And it's not the way psychologists say our brains work. If you really understand how our brains work, ninety percent of its unconscious. And the thing is is it's that happiness equation. If you give up control and you and you experience tension by responding to a to a cause to an effect. If you respond and your response is to be more, you

to be more vulnerable. So you've said that too, I just overshare. I'm just vulnerable. It's like we're going to grow in vulnerability, We're going to grow in learning ourselves, and we're going to experience all these different situations. So that's going to keep the tension. Like Ed said, we're gonna have tension and then and then that's what we're gonna do. So the ultimate, my ultimate answer to all of this, like eternity is an AD's helped me a

lot with this. The new Jerusalem is called the Bride. And the thing is is that the word cell comes from the word room, and Jesus said, in my father's house, there's many mansions in revelation. When the new Jeuwsalm comes down, it's called God's House. Now the New Jerusalem is fifteen hundred miles on one side, fifteen hundred miles to the other side, and fifteen hundred miles tall. So that's half

the United States and that high. If we if you had a room that was a quarter of a mile by a quarter of a mile by a quarter of mile, it still would take like a trillion people to fill that.

and it was pretty easy to understand. With all the technology we're now understanding, there's so much stuff going on in a cell that there's a there's a book I think it's called The The Not The Explanation of Absolutely Everything, or something like that, and he explains, if you took a cell and blew it up, you know, to a like a quarter mile by quarter mile type of thing, he goes, there would be no place to stand that

you wouldn't get hit by something. He said, there are things out of the size of a VW bug, like the size of a basketball whizzen through there. And what's going on in this Every cell is two things. Number one, you are we mentioned that communication. All these chemicals are going through the cell to other cells to communicate information. Number two is repair. The cell is constantly repairing, taking

things down and fixing things up. So every cell is in direct communication with the cells next to it, a local area head, and the So every cell is communicating on three levels. So if you think about it, every cell in your body is communicating and repairing. Well, what's the next biggest system up from that? It's an organ.

Every organ in your body is communicating and repairing. Certain organs take like every seven years, you have what a different liver because it was repaired itself and replaced itself. So if you think about it, if if an organ doesn't communicate in repair, you're gonna end up with cancer and die. What's the next biggest system a person. We really need to communicate and repair. That's what we're designed to do. If a person doesn't communicate and repair, they're

gonna end up with mental and emotional issues. The key to helping everybody mentally emotionally is improve the communication what you already said and repair. It's not to be perfect, it's how to fix the mistakes we make. That's the key. Well, that next level upcome, that's a community. If a community doesn't communicate and repair, you're gonna have injustices. And then the next level up from that is the world. And if the world doesn't learn how to communicate and repair,

we're gonna have wars. I had a mentor. He was from India. He died during COVID, But when I presented this model to me, he goes, oh, John, John, there's one word system bigger than all of that. And he's like, if God, our job is to communicate and repair with God, that's ultimately what we should be trying to do. From the cell all the way up to God. It's all communication and repair and if you do that right, it

results in the happiness and talks about for eternity. The key to happiness is communication and repair?

once a week or answer questions. And if you want to level up to the next tier, you can be a part of a live Bible study that I do once a month take where we go through the entire Bible in one in one year from the supernatural point of view, so we really focus on what's going on behind the veil. Because most people think that the Bible is our story, that it's about humanity, and it's not. It's actually Jehovah's story, and that's what that's what it's called.

It's called the Jehovah Story Book Club. We'd read the go through the Bible as if it's a novel. We haven't read before, and we take we get rid of all our preconceived notions and we just go through it that way because that's how you learn about someone by hearing their stories. And you want to learn about about Jehovah and how to walk with him, then you need to know his story, and that's what we do. And again, it's his story and he's in the in the spiritual realms.

We go through it from the spiritual standpoint and there's tons of notes that you'll get and yeah, and once a month we go through it all and yeah, and I've got the response that I've gotten from it has been exceeded my expectations. So it made me happy. A

lot of people for it. And the first the first session is this coming Sunday, so it'd be great if you're if your listeners are interested, sign up for it there on the Patreon, but it will be recorded, so if you can't make the live session, you'll be able to see get the recording there. But it's great if you can because then you get to ask you questions.

So that also on x and uh Facebook as well, but and YouTube, but go faithbout reason dot net and Patreon dot com slash backslash Faith by reason is where I want people to go.