‫Now we come to one of my favorite things that you can do to increase your happiness.
‫I've been using this a lot recently, and this is a theory that happiness is always there, like the
‫sun shining.
‫And the only reason we can't always see the sunshine is there are clouds covering it up, an easy or
‫negative emotions.
‫So your happiness is there and you can't turn it up.
‫But what it can do is get the clouds out of the way and get rid of the negative emotions.
‫So we have negative emotions almost all the time, obscuring our happiness.
‫And what can we do about that?
‫Do we have the choice about whether we get angry or we worry or we feel guilty or jealousy or hate or
‫whatever your pet negative emotion might be?
‫It might be self-pity.
‫It might be sorrow.
‫Regret.
‫Do we have a choice?
‫And the theory says, yes, we do.
‫We are actually choosing these negative emotions.
‫So let's say your pet negative emotion is worry.
‫You are actually choosing to worry.
‫Now, I think that for the first few seconds, there's nothing you can do about it.
‫The worry pops up.
‫But you do have a choice about whether you wallow in it and whether you let it become a big thing.
‫You stoke the flames by going.
‫Yes.
‫And what if this happens?
‫Oh.
‫And it could be really awful if this happens.
‫And you allow yourself to go down that rabbit hole of worry.
‫Or do you just think.
‫No, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.
‫So I think we are choosing that emotion after the first.
‫Second, we're choosing about whether we're going to allow that emotion to be there or not.
‫But why would we choose a negative emotion like worry or guilt or anger?
‫And the answer is because of perceived payoffs.
‫We think that there's a payoff to worrying or being angry.
‫And these payoffs are always false.
‫So every negative emotion you have, you are choosing it because of a false negative payoff.
‫Now, that's an amazing theory.
‫And can it really be true?
‫Well, I've thought about it a lot, and I'm pretty sure it is.
‫Because once you realize that you're choosing these emotions because of a false payoff, you can then
‫choose not to have the emotion.
‫You can think, well, I'm choosing to get angry because I think it makes me stronger.
‫But once I realize that it doesn't make me stronger, I can think, well, I'm not going to get angry.
‫Yes, that emotion will well up for a few seconds, but I'm not going to give it house room.
‫I'm not going to think.
‫Yeah, I'm going to get angry.
‫I'm going to think, no, I'm not going to be angry.
‫I'm just not going to go down that road because it's not going to do me any good.
‫It's going to make me unhappy in the short term.
‫And it's not going to get a good resolution of this situation.
‫So in the longer term, it's going to be bad as well.
‫And similarly, worry you're choosing worry because you hope that it will make you take some actions
‫and then the problem won't happen.
‫But actually, you're probably worrying instead of doing something about it.
‫Obviously, worry gives you an excuse if it goes wrong later, because you say, well, yeah, I did
‫worry about it.
‫But surely it's better to push worry out the way and take some action instead.
‫And even grief has a false payoff.
‫So absolutely experience it for a short time.
‫But if you decide to wallow in grief for months or even years, then that's going to make you unhappy
‫and you're not going to get the payoff because what is the payoff that you can bring that person back
‫into your life or you can somehow change the past because you can't.
‫You have to move on from it.
‫And would that person want you to be unhappy if you were grieving over, let's say, someone who's died?
‫Would that person want you to be unhappy for years and years and years?
‫Probably not.
‫I would hope not.
‫So I'd like you to ask yourself now, what is your pet?
‫Negative emotion.
‫I found that guilt and worry are the commonest pet emotions that people tell me about.
‫But what's your pet?
‫Negative emotion.
‫What's the payoff that you're telling yourself that you're getting from that emotion?
‫And do you really get that payoff?
‫Because I bet it's a false payoff.
‫And then you can start to say to yourself, I'm going to push that emotion out of my life.
‫Now, I've made a downloadable that lists all the negative emotions that I could think of.
‫And what all the false payoffs are.
‫So I hope that helps you to work out how you can push negative emotions out of your life and make more
‫room for happiness.