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Episode 173 · 2 August 2026 · 18:23

Happily Never After

What if the thing you keep chasing is the exact reason you cannot catch it? There is no happily ever after, and that is good news.

Subject: Working with Emotions

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Stillness in the Storms · Episode 173

What if the thing you keep chasing is the exact reason you cannot catch it? There is no happily ever after, and that is good news.

Picture the ox with a carrot on a stick fixed above its own head. Every step forward moves the carrot forward. That is happiness as most of us run it. And it is not a design fault, it is evolutionary genius, because if you settled the moment you got something you would never go further. The man who loses everything is miserable on day one and fine two years later. Happiness is an emotion. It arrives and it leaves, like all the others. It was never going to move in.

One thing to try: Catch yourself saying I will be happy when. Pause there and notice how much of life you just skipped.

In this episode

  • (4:10) The ox, the stick and the carrot above its own head
  • (5:19) Stop chasing and you see what you already have
  • (6:28) Why this is evolutionary genius, not a fault
  • (7:47) We would never run faster or try again
  • (9:07) Halfway up, turn around and look at the valley
  • (10:13) Everything becomes normal in the end
  • (11:16) The man on the park bench, day one and two years on
  • (12:54) Happiness arrives and leaves, like every other emotion
  • (16:27) I will be happy when, and what it costs you

Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for listening.

Steven

The question this answers

Why am I not happy yet?

You have been running a sentence for years. I will be alright when the credit card is cleared. When the results come back clear. When I lose a bit of weight, when the job changes, when the children are settled.

I have been running it since I was about six, when I was certain that learning to ride my bike would sort me out for life. I learned it at my nan's, pushing the bike up a slope and rolling back down until I got the pedalling. The sorted feeling lasted until roughly Monday.

The heart of it

  • The faster you chase happiness, the further the carrot moves. Stopping is what brings it back.
  • Happiness is an emotion. It arrives and it leaves. Contentment is the thing worth aiming at.

Picture an ox pulling a cart, with a stick fixed to the cart and a carrot swinging off the end of it, right above the ox's own head. It walks faster, the carrot moves faster. That is happiness the way most of us run it.

When you stop chasing, you realise the carrot will return and it was there all along.

Here is the part I want to defend, because I do not think this is a fault in us. It is evolution being clever. If getting the thing made you permanently content, you would have stopped at the first one. One gold medal and never another Olympics. We would still be in the caves, warm enough, and that would be that.

Everything becomes normal. That is not me being cynical, it is just what happens. Take a man who loses the house, the car and the white picket fence. On day one he is destroyed. Give it long enough and he tells you he could do with a blanket and the nights are getting cold. Hand the same windfall to somebody who had nothing, and before long he is fed up with people asking him for money and thinking about a different car.

It's a fairy tale. It doesn't exist, and it brilliantly doesn't exist.

So happiness is not a place you move to. It arrives, it does its bit, it leaves, the same as sadness and excitement and all the rest. Contentment asks a different question. What is enough for this day?

I am not being daft about it. If you cannot pay your bills and then you can, life genuinely does get better. There is a floor. Above the floor, it is mostly the carrot.

One small thing to try

Catch yourself saying I will be happy when. That is the practice this week. Just catch it.

Then look at what you were about to skip to get there. In the film Click he is given a remote control and fast forwards the boring bits, the family barbecue, the ordinary days, and by the end he has skipped the parts that mattered most.

Halfway up the mountain, sit down and turn round. Look at the valley. Most of what is behind you is something you once wanted badly.

Questions people ask

Are you telling me not to want things?

No. Wanting a deeper practice, a better job, more peace, all of it is worth having. The trap is only the bit where you refuse to be alright until you get it.

If happiness never lasts, what is the point of it?

Contentment lasts better, and it is available now rather than later. Happiness still turns up. It was just never going to move in with you.

Is this a miserable episode?

Not at all. Disney gets a telling off, there is a detour through Dirty Dancing and Grease, and I end up admitting I was in the school play.

Read along

The transcript

It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.

happiness · present-moment · acceptance · gratitude

Read the transcript

The present moment is a portal out of suffering and into something much deeper than any concept of happiness.

Eckhart Tolle, what if the one thing you keep chasing is the reason you cannot be happy, is the

reason you cannot rest?

So we imagine happiness as something that's waiting for us once we get to our next milestone, once we get

a pay rise, once we get a better job, once we sort out our health, once we lose a few

pound once we just get that credit card paid off or something. We're always looking for that bit that, I'm

happy now, and we know realistically it will never actually happen. Because I remember, and I told this story on

an older podcast that I can remember thinking when I was about six seven years old that I would be

totally sorted the moment I could ride my bike. And I went to my nan's. I stayed there for a

few weeks. I learned to ride my bike by just pushing it up a slope and just rolling down. And

eventually I started pedaling around the corner. And, yeah, it lasted into the evening, maybe even a few

days, until I probably got back to school on Monday when I went back home. And it didn't last much

longer.

That's happiness for you. And I think it's a brilliant evolution thing, the fact that we are not happy most

of the time. Hi, I'm Steven Webb, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms. Today is about happiness

and about can we ever achieve a sense of happiness. This is a podcast that helps you through some of

the most difficult times in life and just helps you see life in a lighter way so you suffer a

little bit less. And my whole ethos on the spiritual journey is if we're suffering a little bit less, then

we're doing okay. It's working.

So I want to talk about happiness in a way that is not the fairy tale version. I think

Disney has a lot to answer for. I think Disney has ruined a our love story and our romance that

in about an hour and a half, okay, Compressed lightly, you end up incredibly happy. And all you gotta

do is walk off into the sunset and you have a brilliant relationship forever. And no one ever sees the

bad sequel. Unless It's Dirty Dancing 2 or something like that, or um I don't know if you ever watched

Dirty Dancing. Brilliant film. Originally. Whenever they try to recreate an original classic like that, it's never the same. Like

greece 2 um I don't know if you ever had that in America anyway. Yeah, of course you did. It

was right out high Of course it was American. I was one of the People in the play once when

I was at school. Anyway I I go off. So today I'm talking about the Happiness Never after.

And you'll see what I did that Happiness Never After. I like that title. I think it's pretty cool. But

just before we do that, a thank you to everyone who supported my work this week and supports and

keeps these podcasts free. Tim, Patricia, Jess, Cheryl. It genuinely means a lot to me and I know

to everybody else that listens to these podcasts and doesn't have to put up rabbits and we can just get

on with it. The same as the Inner Peace Meditations podcast and with no adverts whatsoever. If you want to

reach out to me, message me, join the Weekly Calm or support any of the work I do, just head

over to StevenWebb.uk.

So what is happiness like and the way we chase it? Think of the story. And I kind of. I

think I made up this story in my head at some point. I don't think it's a Zen story. I

don't think it's anything but. Just imagine like a horse or an ox or something like that. And it's got.

It's walking along, it's got like some kind of carriage behind him, and over the top of him is a

big, like, stick with a little be a string and a carrot on the end. And that carrot is

the happiness. So that ox or the horse or arrows marching slowly towards the carrot because it wants to get

to that carrot. And the problem is the faster it marches, the more it goes towards it. The carrot moves

with the cart which it's towing, so it never really gets there. And the problem is with that

is the faster you go, the more you march, the more you try to reach it, the further away it

gets. At some point, your best thing you can do, and I love ant analogies like this, the best thing

you can do is stop. And then the carrot will swing away from you, maybe even go out of sight.

But if you just wait long enough and you stop chasing the carrot, it'll come right back and you can

take a bite. And this is what happiness is. When we sit down and stop chasing it,

we'll end up seeing the happiness that we've already got. And I know you know that, I know that. We

all know that. We know that from teenagers, really. But we don't live it. We don't embody that

feeling of, no I I'm okay, I'm happy now we'll always look into that bit at the top

of the mountain that Holiday, that good diagnosis and we're always fearing the bad ones.

Or that, like I said at the beginning, pay the credit card off and once I'm out of debt, once

I've got my new car. But all of these things, you think back, did anything that ever happened to you

make you permanently happy ever after? No. Not even when you started dating? Not even when you got to 18

years old and you're able to drink? Not even when you pass your test in a car? Not even when

you met your dream partner it Just nothing lasts forever because it becomes normal. And that's

just the way it is. But I think this is evil genius. It's absolutely brilliant for

evolution because if you did not have if you did not have happiness settled down to

exactly what you've got right now, and you had that baseline and happiness wasn't something that you had to

desire, we'd still be sitting in caves, we'd be still grunting along with the Neanderthals and everything

like that. We would still be in loincloths or whatever they're called, marching around or walking around um

forests because we would have no desire to improve our lives. We were just well, I'm cold, so I need

to warm up or I'm hungry. I need to have that. So that basic desire to improve and be happy

and to get to the top and to achieve something is a brilliant evolution trap that we're in. It's

just the way it is. And I think it's brilliant because it keeps us from stagnating,

it keeps us from sitting back and not achieving anything. Otherwise we would end up achieving that

one gold medal. We'd never go back to the Olympics. We would end up achieving that one result at school

and would never go on and do more. We would never want to beat ourselves

in the next prize. We would never want to run faster or achieve more. We would end up just being

purely happy with a lot So here's the the

problem and the genius part of it. So it's like a paradox. The more you realise you're happy in the

moment, the more happy you'll be. But you also got to realise that this moment isn't all you can have.

It's like you need a purpose in life, but recognising your purpose in life is to do whatever you're doing

right now. And it's that paradox of wanting and recognising you still have.

And you can desire more peace, you can desire a better meditation, you can desire deeper meditation, a

better spiritual journey. All of these things and is worthwhile desires. But

if you're not happy until you get that, you will never be happy.

So a good analogy would be you want to climb to the top of the mountain. You want the best

job but you want whatever you it is you desire. But halfway up, take a seat, turn around

and look at the valley. Look how far you've got. Look at how much you have achieved and Take stock

of what's in your life right now. Take stock of how much you've achieved. It may not feel like it

all the time. You may sit up debt you may set up

issues with whatever it is that's really bugging you and getting you down at the moment. But if you think

how far you have come and how much you have achieved, how many things that you desired at one point

that you wanted and you ended up getting that you thought would make you permanently happy. And I know

you know this, like I said earlier, we don't live up to that. We don't actually practice. So when we

sit down to do a meditation, we want a good meditation. Or when we put on our headphones and parts

of music, we want it brilliantly clear. I'm rejected now because I've got bored my headphones and I'm really

fancying a new pair. And that's what we do, that's what the body does. Everything becomes normal in the end.

I think there was a story I heard, I read it in a book about a person that had his

house. He had his wife in his car and he had this nice picket fence, white picket fence, and

everything was going really well. And someone said to her, how are you doing so yeah I'm okay I I'm

working too many hours. I don't get enough time with the family and things like that. I could do with

more money. And

then they asked the same to a homeless person I did not have very. I had very little. And he

said to him, how are you doing? He said, yeah, I'm okay. I could do some more food to eat

and it's coming in cold and all that and you know I'm doing okay. But I could do with these

couple of things. And

then they imagine the roles reversing. So that guy that had everything loses everything and ends up on the park

bench. And you go to him on day one, how are you doing it's I'm absolutely miserable. I hate my

life I Yesterday I had all these things and now today I've got nothing. I've lost everything. But

then if you go back to and you speak to the one that was homeless and has now gained everything,

it'd be like, I won the lottery. I am the happiest person in the world. My life is amazing you

I just cannot believe my luck. But then you go to them again in six months time. The person that

won the lottery say how you doing? Yeah, I'm okay. I'm a bit fed up with people asking me for

money, you know, it's. I'm looking at buying another new car, the car I bought the other day a few

months ago. That's just. It's okay now. So the life become normal for them and the same as

the person that had everything and ended up homeless. You speak to him in six months time how you doing?

Well, I could do with some more food, you know, I'm a bit tired and you know, the nights are

a bit cold. I could do have a blanket. Because that's what happens to us in our life. We become.

I

don't know, it's not complacent. I'm trying to look for another word in it, but it becomes the normal. And

I think happiness is an experience the same as joy, the same as peace, the

same as a feeling of depression or a feeling of sadness or excitement. They're all

experiences of emotions that arise and fall away. But we look at happiness as something

that will come and stay. And that's why I love the title Happiness Never after. Because there is no happiness

Ever after. It's a fairy tale. It doesn't exist and it brilliantly doesn't exist.

That's why that's why I think the Buddha's laughing you've got the the bigger Buddha with all the jewels all

over him and he's just laughing because it's all a joke, it's just all a game

and it's all.

No matter how much you have, you'll be in a similar position then. Don't get me wrong, if you don't

have enough money to pay your bills and you do get a job, there's enough money to pay your bills.

It will make things easier and make things happier. And if you don't, and if you have a lot and

you lose a lot, it will make you miserable um I'm not completely delusional that,

you know, everything's fine and everything's normal and everything's just the same kind of bumpy road.

But on the face of it, it is true. You can only have so much money to make you relatively

comfortable. And the idea is not to get too comfortable where you are, but to become comfortable

enough.

And that needs to be on to a brilliant question. What is enough for this day?

What is enough right now for you what would make you content. And I think that

contentment is the aim. Aim to become content and then enjoy

experiences of happiness, of joy, of you know desires and

excitement and real good experiences and also embrace the bad experiences,

the loneliness, the sadness, because

they're experiences that come and go as well. So just before I wrap up and give you a practice for

the week, it's just a matter of in still enjoy the journey. I know this is just normal advice,

everyday advice. Enjoy the journey. It's all part of the journey but that's the reality That's how simple it is.

We complicate everything we We genuinely think that if only life

was a bit more like that Disney movie

as children. We do think that it could be like that. And it's just not. Life is mundane.

Life is about becoming content. Life is about enjoying the day,

seeing the butterfly land and seeing the little leaf bend down as it does, seeing the dirt on the ground

and the smell of the rain and all those little things that, you know, as you get older, you appreciate

a whole lot more because you stop chasing. And when you stop chasing, you realise the carrot will

return and it was there all along. So, one practice for the week. When you hear a sentence

or anything similar to I'll be happy when or it'll be okay when, just pause on

that and just recognise what you're doing. Recognise how much you're trying to skip life. There's a wonderful

movie, and it's called Click, where he gets given a remote control and he can skip parts

of life that he doesn't enjoy. The family barbecue, he skips it and all the different things. And it's an

old enough movie now that you know the endings I'm not going to ruin anything. But basically, at the end

of the movie, he realizes that he skipped all the really important parts because he thought those important parts

were the mundane, boring parts. And that's the reality. So when you find yourself trying to want to skip the

next moment or skip to something that's going to make you happier, just take a step back and breathe and

enjoy this moment for what it is. Just one small little moment. Opportunity to be peaceful. Opportunity

to have joy in the moment. I'm

going to leave you with one of my favourite quotes my tick that hand Happiness is present right

in the present moment if you know how to stop and live deeply. I

just want to say thank you to everybody that supports. Thank you for being here this week. Thank you for

hanging in there with me when I had my wobbles. And yeah,

take care. Have a wonderful week and I love you.

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