Episode Transcript
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. Today we are going to talk about the ultimate happiness hack. I'm using that word that the kids use nowadays, this word of hack, because it's an idea. The idea of a hack is something that you can get access to easily, right? So how can we get access to happiness easily? And I'm going to use one word. And when I say it, Notice how it makes you feel as soon as soon as I say it, the word is service. Soon as I hear it, something cringes, right? Today we're going to talk about why we cringe when we hear the word service. And that's not all of us. Some of us may be very, open and really love to do things for others. And it's not that we don't like to do things for others. We're going to talk about what the issue is. It's a, it's a happiness hack to have the mindset of service. It's not necessarily about how much you do physically, but it's a mindset. And we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what is going on with us. Why do we cringe? Why do we cringe sometimes when somebody is asking us to do something or something like that? And then how can I. Cultivate this attitude of service. And that's the happiness hack. The happiness hack is that when I have an attitude of service, I get, I feel happy, believe it or not. So first of all, let's, let's define service or having an attitude of service. What does it mean to have an attitude of service? I guess the best way I can, uh, talk about that is to talk about myself and talk about how I used to feel. And very now, it's very rare now that I feel this way, but before working on myself spiritually and doing this practice for over 13 years, so I've done it long enough that I have had some success and I rarely feel this way anymore, but I used to feel overwhelmed a lot. So if I feel overwhelmed a lot. I probably don't have the attitude of service because I probably feel like I am doing too much or I can't handle what it is that I have on my plate already. So think about that. consciousness for a minute. So I, I have too much on my plate. I can't handle what I have on my plate already. So what does that feel like? Well, I can tell you what I felt like. I felt frustrated. I felt sad. I felt upset. I felt exhausted. I felt most of the time, right? And it seemed like there was so much going on. Um, at work or whatever it was I could, I can list the scenario and I'm sure all of us, all of you listening can, as well list all the circumstances in our life and how they're overwhelming and how I'm trying to deal with it and so forth. So if I'm saying in this episode that The happiness hack is to have an attitude of service. How can I get an attitude of service if I'm feeling overwhelmed and frustrated and powerless to change anything and maybe angry and maybe resentful? about my life? Well, the answer is I can't so, but, but I just wanted to tell the truth about that first. But now I want to say what is service? What is the attitude of service? The attitude of service is that I am available because I'm available to do something for someone else or to do something period because I feel okay now inside myself. This is going to be a recurring theme. I'm going to suggest that human beings. We automatically, naturally like to serve. We like to help. We like to do things for others. We like to be sensitive to others needs and help them fulfill them. We like to be cooperative with others to have that attitude, let's say, not talking about doing anything yet, but at least have the attitude. So what keeps us away from that attitude? So I'm saying that the, the, the seed or the foundation of the attitude of service is the feeling that I'm okay now. or that I, you know, I have something to give or I feel okay. If I don't feel okay, I'm not going to feel like I want to give anything. So let me give an example. So before I started doing this practice years ago, if anyone used to say, you know, can you do this or can you do that, I'm at work, let's say. I might have said, yeah, I can do it, but inside I'd be resenting it. I'd be angry at them. So what's going on inside us? Why is there such a constriction of emotions around helping or doing, or if somebody's asking me to do something? I actually had a, um. a colleague that I worked with for a while at work. And this colleague was so sensitive to what she was doing. I think she was so overwhelmed that you couldn't even talk to her. Like as soon as you said, Hey, so and so, like, can you look at that? Like she'd immediately cut you off because she was so overwhelmed that she couldn't even be open enough to talk. How many times have we like not listened to somebody when they are asking us for something or not been receptive? When someone's trying to talk to us, right? How many times does that happen? I'm not, I'm going to say that it's not because we're being mean. We're not trying to be mean or trying to be snippy or trying to be whatever. It's because we feel overwhelmed inside and we feel overwhelmed because we don't feel good. I don't feel good about myself in that minute, in that moment. How do I change that? It's like weird. It's, it's. It's, it's something that's hidden because we're so used to focusing on the circumstances and blaming the circumstances, right? That we're not really looking at the feeling inside. If I'm saying I'm overwhelmed and there's too much going on and I can't handle it, how do I feel? I feel terrible, right? So overwhelm, frustration, negativity, blaming of circumstances, uh, brings a feeling of powerlessness to the self. And for this episode, we're talking about how to access happiness. Now, powerlessness is way far away from happiness, right? But we have to get a little bit of power back in order to feel Like that service attitude. So I'm going to suggest today that when we think about service, I'm going to suggest something to the audience today that we're going to try to practice having an attitude of service. It doesn't mean we're going to do anything in particular, um, or I'm not promising that I'm going to do anything in particular, but I'm going to try to have an attitude. of service. So the attitude of service is when I feel good about myself and my intention or my feelings towards something. So let's say I have a child, which I do have a, um, teenage son, and let's say I, it's easy for anyone to feel overwhelmed when they have children or anything, anything can make anybody feel overwhelmed. So that has nothing to do with the circumstances really. But let's say You know, I, I had to learn to transform my attitude about my son, wherever there was a feeling like burden or it, it was interruption or some, how many we have that, right? How many of us have that? That like interruption feeling or whenever we feel that we feel constricted or we feel like something's a burden or whatever, we're not in touch with our real feelings about that thing. So I love my son, right? I love my son. I'll do anything for my son. I feel, I really feel like I really care. I really care. And I want him to be good and I want him to be successful and I want him to be happy and, and I really love him. So those are the feelings that will get me in touch with the attitude of service. So now when my son talks to me, I am more. Positive. I'm listening. I'm, I'm more engaged. I'm more serviceable or service attitude. Like I'm ready to do something or I'm ready to give, give in some way that makes me feel happy inside or, or content, or at least in alignment with my real feelings. Part of the reason we feel unhappy is that we're not in alignment with our real feelings. And then we get into this overwhelmed blaming of everything else. When we talk about. There's other episodes coming up that are going to talk about that, but for this one, we're just going to talk about how do I get over these feelings of overwhelm and powerlessness into an attitude of service so that I can be happy. So I just gave another example of an example of my son. So here's another example. Let's say I don't like to exercise or like I'm, I'm annoyed about exercise or food or something like that. Maybe take a moment and you could call this meditation, but I'm not really calling it meditation. We could call it reflection. Just, just sit and listen and think, think for a second for yourself. How do I really feel about exercise? Do I really hate it? I mean, maybe I don't like that kind of exercise, but do I really hate it when I'm doing it? Do I hate, no, actually when I'm doing it, I usually feel. Pretty good. Maybe I feel a little tired after where maybe it's not always perfect, but generally I feel good about, I like to move my body. I'm happy that I'm able to move my body. Right. So I can also develop this sense of gratitude, start to try to develop a positive feeling, get in touch with a positive feeling that you have about something. And then that will help you generate an attitude of service. So for, for me, it's service to the body, service to self care, right? Would be exercise. And I can say sometimes it slips in and out, right? We have this thing like maybe I'll be motivated for a while and I'll be, And I can feel gratified that I'm doing something consistently for a little while, and then I won't be consistent. But in this podcast and generally speaking, I'm going to be focused less on actions and more on intentions and more on attitude. It's more important to get in touch with our real feelings. to access our potential and to get back our self respect than it is to do anything in particular. So in the sense of exercise or in the sense of my relationship with my child or my relationship with my spouse or my relationship with work, all those areas where I feel overwhelmed, I want to feel happy in those areas. And I'm saying that the hack for happiness is to have an attitude of service. Now, I happen to be a nurse. That's my profession. And so, I don't do this a lot because I, I kind of made up my mind at work. You know, when you do your job for a long time, um, you feel, I don't know, there's some self esteem that comes from being an expert in the field, let's say. So that's enough for me. Most of the time, like, I feel like an expertise and an ease with what I'm doing. That's enough. But before I started this practice, maybe I would feel overwhelmed with work, you know? And a good thing to always remember is again, the feelings about it. So with nursing, nursing is a very noble profession. And I remember when I got into it, I was very inspired by one of my first teachers. This is a good example and you, you can fill in your own example here. I'm using my example, but you can use your own example. I was in nursing school and in one of my first, main nursing classes, there was this professor who was elderly. She was old, but she had been a nurse for many, many years. And she was talking about how nursing is about not only are you serving the patient, you're responsible for the patient, but you're responsible for the family, you're responsible for the community, you're responsible for the world. And she was sharing this, like, it was so inspiring to me. Anyway, I was completely inspired by this idea that I could make a difference. Like it's so many levels. See, now I'm getting like teary, like I'm thinking about it's touched me so much that, that for me to be aggravated with nursing, I mean, I'm a human being, of course, is going to be moments where maybe, but I can always tap into that. Look, I'm very grateful. I'm grateful for my education. I'm grateful for my, the money. I'm grateful for the fact that I have some expertise and intellectually I feel good about myself. But, and also I feel grateful and. moved by the, the nobility and the scope of the love and care that nursing, the possibility of nursing is. So when I get in touch with that, I automatically, I'm thinking of service, have an attitude of service automatically. So think about it. So many situations in our life are calling for us to be of service. I'm not talking about actions because a lot of times we don't need to do actions. A lot of times people just want to be near us or to be nice to us or close to us. And what kind of attitude do I have? Am I closing myself off because I feel overwhelmed? What attitude do I really have in my heart of hearts regarding that situation? Just checking to see if I forgot anything. Oh, one other thing. When we give, sometimes you'll hear people say, you know, it doesn't cost you anything to be nice or whatever. I'm not even talking about being nice. I'm talking about how you feel inside about that thing. When we have an attitude of service based on our authentic feelings. about that thing, towards that thing, we automatically feel happy. And all the actions that happen from that are natural, appropriate. And everybody, I'm going to say that everyone is, is appreciative and it's well received and everyone's happy because it's coming from a very pure place of the heart. So until next time, I'll leave you with this homework. Think about, I mean, I grew up, I grew up in a Christian background. And there was a service mentality there. Um, but this is a little deeper. I want to say like sometimes, you know, go volunteer at a, at a soup kitchen or something like that. And that's fine. I mean, there are people who love, like they, they take their life and they go on missions and stuff like that. And that's fine. Yeah. For those of us who are not really interested in that, I'm going to say that there's a way that you can be of service within your life without disrupting your life, but without the feeling of disruption. I wrote down here, giving without losing. So the kind of giving I'm talking about, the kind of service I'm talking about is the service that you don't lose anything. It doesn't cost anything. You don't have to sacrifice anything. It's a, it's a completely net. positive attitude that's already in you, but we just have to tap into our feelings, our real feelings about each situation. It's a wonderful practice and I hope you will take it on this week for your homework, but just realize that all of these things are already, it's already in me just like the overwhelm and that stuff. I mean. Thank you. If you think about it, I'm talking about both things now, which feels better? Does it feel better to be constricted and upset and fearful and angry and upset and not be able to talk to anybody and snipping and snapping at my family and all this stuff? I mean, none of us want to do that. We, you know, nobody goes to bed thinking, Oh, great. I snipped and snapped and I can't wait to do more tomorrow. Be irritable and everything. Nobody wants that. So think about this this week. Think about it. Maybe I can be happy. Maybe it's not going to cost me anything. Maybe it's not going to be like I have to go, you know, live in a mountain somewhere or, you know, take a 10 mile hike to be happy. No, maybe I'll just take my life as it is. exactly as it is and take one piece of it and look, how do I really feel about that thing? How do I really feel? Maybe ask the question to yourself more than once. How do I really feel and give yourself a chance to answer from a deep place. I really love my family. As soon as you get in touch with that feeling, I'm going to assert that you will automatically want to start giving. And that makes us happy because it's our natural nature to give. So I will leave it there. I hope that was something for all of you to think about. Uh, remember that our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so until next time, take care.
