Why does happiness keep moving the moment you reach it? Because you are chasing an experience and calling it a state.
My whole life ran on once I get this. A better microphone, a better chair, a better whatever. Then you get it and the bar moves, because the goal was only ever a slight improvement on right now. The universe did not look at me and think, he is paralysed, we will let him off the bills. A concert is an experience. That last encore is not what life is, it is one wonderful thing that ends. When you stop trying to make the encore permanent, you stop being disappointed by the rest of it.
One thing to try: Name the last thing you were sure would make you happy. Notice where the bar moved to afterwards.
In this episode
(1:29) Currently the Mayor of Truro, and a busy life
(2:48) Once I get this, I will be happy
(4:11) The goal is always a slight improvement on now
(5:16) The universe did not let me off the bills
(6:50) The concert, the new songs and the oldies
(7:47) This feeling. This is happiness. Except it is not
(10:26) Life as a collection of experiences
(11:50) Everybody tells you their highlights, never their Tuesdays
(15:21) The faster you go, the faster the carrot goes
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Why does happiness keep moving the moment you reach it?
Because you are chasing an experience and calling it a state. I have wanted to be happy since I was a boy, and I am nearly fifty, and I still want to be happy. That pattern is the episode.
The heart of it
Happiness is not the good bits. It is the mundane line running through the middle.
Every goal is only ever a slight improvement on right now, so the bar moves with you.
You cannot want happiness and have it at the same time.
My whole life has run on once I get this. A better microphone and the podcast will be better and I will be happier. The new wheelchair. Whatever it is. And it works, briefly, and then it settles back to normal. Every single time.
People ask why I seem happy, given the circumstances. The universe did not look at me and decide that being paralysed was enough, so I would be excused the bills and the other illnesses. Those all still turn up.
My answer used to be that I choose to be. Then it was that I am grateful. Now it is that I understand the difference between happiness and an experience.
Think about a concert. They hold the famous one back, walk off, wait for the crowd to shout, then come out and play it. Everyone sways, lighters up, and you think, this is what life is about.
It is not. It is a wonderful experience that ends. So are the first three months of a relationship, when they ring and there is two feet of snow and you walk three miles without thinking about it. Six months on there is an inch of rain and you are suggesting they come to you.
Happiness is the line across the middle. It is the day where somebody asks how it went and you say, yeah, all right. It is the hoovering and the dishes and nothing much happening.
And here is why the comparison hurts. Nobody posts their four hours waiting for the washing. My own feed is all the interesting bits. Then you measure your middle against everybody else's highlights.
One small thing to try
Name the last thing you were certain would make you happy. Then notice where the bar moved to afterwards.
There is a picture I use for this. A carrot on a stick out in front of you. The faster you go the faster it goes. At some point you stop, and stopping feels like failure, and the carrot carries on away from you.
Then a while later it swings back, and you take a bite.
Questions people ask
Am I not supposed to enjoy the good bits?
Enjoy them thoroughly. They are the cream on top. The trouble only starts when you decide they are the thing itself and try to make them permanent.
How do I know if I am chasing?
Ask what you are waiting for in order to be all right. If there is an answer, that is the carrot. Wanting the thing is fine. Needing it before you can settle is the chase.
Does this mean settling for less?
No. It means noticing you are already carrying most of what makes you content. Take away your bed and your quilt tonight and you would feel the difference immediately, which tells you they were doing the job all along.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
In this episode
happiness · joy · acceptance
Read the transcript
When I was a young boy, I remember wanting to be happy. And I remember thinking about what would
make me happy.
When I was a teenager. I remember going to careers at school and thinking about relationships and my future family.
And I wanted to be happy. And if anybody asked me what I wanted to be when I was older,
I wanted to be happy.
The odd thing in my life would make me happy temporarily. And if anybody would ask me what I wanted
for the next few years, I would kind of say in a roundabout way, I would say, I want to
be happy. Okay, that might have included an item or included some kind of project that I was trying to
complete at the time, but essentially I wanted to be happy. And that's a true story.
And Now I'm nearly 50, and I want to be happy. How funny it is. And I think this is
a pattern throughout our lives. And I want to discuss the paradox of being happy, the paradox of happiness on
today's podcast.
I'm Steven Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms, and welcome to, really a new season, because I haven't
done it for a little bit. I'm currently the mayor of Truro, so my life has become really busy at
the moment, but I'm loving the privilege of doing the job. And I'm going to get back into recording more
podcasts. So here. Here's one of them, really. And I'll be sharing some of the things I'm doing on the
job as well as still, about the inner peace and the meditation and things like that. But, yeah, this is
a podcast that helps you to think a little bit differently, to help you become more aware and give you
more inner peace. So the paradox of happiness, you know, what is it? Well, in one sentence, the
paradox of happiness is you cannot be happy and want to be happy at the same time.
You cannot want something and have something. And the problem is, we spend our whole lives thinking that
if I get my job promotion, if I get a partner, if my children will be a little quieter or
if I just had, if I was less ill or I got a good diagnosis or I could run just
a little bit quicker, lose a few pound, or, you know, all these things are going to make us happy.
You know I my whole life has been based on, once I get this, I'll be happy. Once I get
a new microphone for my podcast, my podcast can be better and I'll be happier. Once I get my new
electric wheelchair, I'll be happier. And the reality is it works for a little bit. I feel a bit better.
I Have a wonderful experience of getting it, but it comes back to normal in the end. Every single time.
It comes back to normal. Really. One thing I've learned, nothing will make me happy. Nothing will make you happy.
There's not anything out there that's going to come into your life that's going to make you happy. You're not
going to become that state of happiness, and that's okay for the rest of your life. It's all done, sorted.
Because something's going to come along and you're not going to like and you're not going to enjoy, and then
your life's going to be a little less happy again. And then we. We're going to look for the thing
to make you happy. So this cycle all the time of, you know, I want to be happy, I'm happy,
I'm okay um And happiness is really a relative term to how you're feeling at the moment. You know, if.
If I'm freezing cold, putting on a jumper or getting my hat, that makes me happy. If I'm hungry, somebody
coming along and giving me my lunch makes me happy. If I'm thirsty, a drink, you know, if I'm tired
falling to sleep makes me happy. So it's relative. So basically the end goal is just a slight improvement on
our current lives. And I was having a conversation with my daughter the other day about this exact thing, and
she said, well, you're always happy, though you always seem to be happy. How come you are? And this question
has come up so many times in my life by so many people, and my answer has changed. And I
don't know whether my answer over the years has got wiser or more ignorant. I really don't know. But why
am I happy? I'm paralysed just below the neck. My got limited arm movement. I suffer from autonomic dysreflexia that
can strike at any minute. That makes me incredibly ill. That could result in a stroke or death. It's a
medical emergency um It's not as bad as it sounds. If you look it up on the Internet, it's like,
oh, that's freaky. Or that's quite, like um really bad. It's not that bad. I've lived with it for 30
years and I've got all the same issues. You know, the universe didn't go, oh, he's got enough problems, he's
paralysed. You know, I still got all the same. I still got to pay my bills. I still want to
do all the other things that are mundane in life, you know, all the things I still got all the
other illnesses as well, you know, it doesn't let me off all the other illnesses. In actual fact, they all
stack up a little more. But I'm relatively happy. But. So why is that? And years ago, I used to
say, well, I choose to be. I choose to be happy. And there's some truth to that. And then
a few years later, I'll be, well, I'm grateful for what I have. Well, there's some truth in that, too.
And now when someone says, well, what makes you happy? It's because I understand happiness. And I understand
what I suppose is the best way of explaining it is the paradox of being happy. Now then, life is
full of experiences. Every moment of every day. In your waking state, you're having an
experience. You could argue in deep sleep, you're having an experience, but you're not really aware of it. So let's
stick to the things that we're aware of. So if you're cold, you're having an experience of discomfort. If
you're. If you can't pay your bills and you're worried about your house, you have an experience of, you know,
all kinds of things, shame and all that. And you're just feeling dreadful. You could be feeling ill if you
just had a bad diagnosis from the doctor or something like that, you're feeling quite awful. It's an experience. If
you go to a concert and you have a wonderful feeling and, you know, you notice during a concert, they
play a few of their new songs and then they play a few of their oldies, and then a couple
of news and they build it up right to the end, until you get to nearly the end of the
concert and you're wondering, why haven't they played their most famous hit yet? Because they walk off stage, they're waiting
for everyone to go, encore. More, more. Because by now the crowd's really loving it, really loving it. They're slightly
disappointed that they haven't played the song. And they come out and they sit down and they jam to their
most famous song, their number one, may have been their only number one. And you just feel amazing. They've given
you this extra bit of time. They've left the best until last, the end of the thing. Everybody's quiet, you're
swaying, you've got your lighters in your hand, burning your thumb. You know, I've been there. And you just. And
you sit there and go, do you know what this is, what life's about? This feeling, this uplifted, wonderful experience?
This is happiness. But it Isn't this is the thing that's a wonderful experience, an
amazing experience, no different than the early months of a relationship. What an amazing experience that is to be in
an early relationship. I remember it well, you know, in the first couple of months of my relationships when I
was a teenager, if they phone me up said you want to come over tonight? And it was two foot
deep in snow I'll be like, yeah, I'm there. Three miles walk. I don't mind. My feet can be falling
off with cold. I'm there because it feels so good. The experience and being with them feels amazing. Give
it another three months now. Sorry. There's an inch of snow out there now. Sorry, it looks like rain. I
don't think so you have to come over here because the experience is not quite so high at that point.
But we look at the first three months of relationship as that's a relationship. It's not um We look at
the. The last encore song as that's what's amazing about life. So we go out and walk in nature. We
stand next to the ocean and we go do you know this is life. This is happiness. And we want
to recreate that feeling, that experience in everyday life. I want that while I'm going to work in a traffic
jam, I want that while I'm sat waiting in the doctors, I want that wonderful feeling two years into my
relationship. And the reality is, you're not going to have that. Because if you had that at all
points, you would want more. It's always wanting more. You know, you take anybody that gets addicted
to anything, they want more, and they want more. They always say, oh, just one will do. It's never enough.
And you take intimacy. Let's be. Let's be really, really, really blunt here um
When you start a relationship If you just, like, experiment a little bit, that's all right. That's like amazing. Three
weeks in, it's like, yeah, we're still doing the same kind of thing can We try this now seven years
in. Really, we need to find something new to do. This is like, I can't keep doing the same thing.
You know, we're always trying to up the ante, you know, and we think when we up the ante, we'll
be happy, but we won't be because it'll be just an experience. So go back to that question
of why am I happy? Why am I tend to be happy? Because I recognise the difference between happiness
and experiences.
And when we see life as a collection of experiences, whether it's a Mundane or a
bad experience or a great experience. We recognise that happiness is right in the middle.
Happiness is that line across the middle that nothing much is happening. that you feel calm
and you're just One of those days that when someone says, oh, so how was your day? It's like, yeah,
it was all right. That's happiness. That's good. It's not bad, and it's not an amazing experience.
It's right there in the middle. It's doing the hoovering, doing the dishes. It's living the normality of
every day. That's where happiness is. So the next time someone says to you, are you happy? Really?
Consider what happiness is. Next time someone says to you about experiences or what you really enjoy,
relive them in your mind and share those experiences. But don't misunderstand them as those are the
things you need to be happy, because the more you get attached to that, those are the things that make
you happy. The more that attachment will make you miserable because the more you'll think your normal life compared to
others, because whenever you meet others, they'll tell you all their wonderful experiences and you're like, yeah, that seems so
much better than mine. Your life is so much more happier than mine. No, it's not. They're not sharing the
mundane four hours that they were waiting for the washing to go around or waiting in work or just
doing the mundane editing or whatever you. Whatever we do in life, we don't share those with our friends. And
Facebook's made it even worse. You look at my Twitter or my Facebook, I'm sharing all the cool stuff. I'm
not sharing. Sorry, last four hours has been really boring. I haven't really done much. The weather has not been
that exciting. No one would follow me if I did that. So we wouldn't have very many friends if we
shared the reality of real. So we end up in this paradox of, I
want to live like them, I want to be happy, I want to have better experiences, and I want them
all the time. You know, I want that intimacy that gives me that wonderful, glowing, burning enjoyment
inside. And I want it 24 hours a day, all the time. Please. And when we realise that that's not
possible and we enjoy those as temporary highs, then we can sit back and
go what you know what? I am happy already. I don't need them to be happy. I'm just going to
enjoy them. You know they they're like the cream on the happiness. They're not happiness itself I
Hope that makes sense, you know, Contact me, go to my website StevenWebb.com and send me a message. Does that
make sense? Leave me a review on the podcasts They really help. They. They really make my day. A. They
give me feedback on am I in the right direction, am I helping you, and am I helping you to
think a little bit differently? And plus, they just. I was gonna say they make me a little happier. No,
they give me a wonderful experience when I read them. So if you can do that for me today, that
would be incredible. Amazing. Just leave a little review on the podcast. Whatever platform you listen to this podcast on,
leave a little review. And if you're feeling really awesome and happy and you've had a wonderful experience, please
share this podcast. That'd be awesome as well. Yeah, Think of. Think of happiness in a little different way. Happiness
is in the mundane because if you're bad news, you just want to be happy. And that's the middle line.
If you have a really good experience, you try to hold on to that experience. So, you know,
just reframe happiness. And
when you do that, you'll end up not being attached to, needing that happiness. I'm going to leave it with
one analogy about happiness. And it's not dangling the carrot in front of you. So you imagine a
stick that comes up from behind you, out over the front of you, out over the top of you, and
it's dangling a carrot in front of you. And the more you move forward, the more the carrot moves forward,
and the faster you go, the carrot comes slightly closer, but it never comes quite far enough.
So you're always chasing the faster you go and the faster the carrot's going. And then at some point, you
give up can do it. I'm going to stop right here. I'm not going to chase the carrot anymore. And
the problem is that feels quite miserable, that feels quite down. So you have an experience of, ah, my
life sucks, maybe, and the carrot disappears because it continues, and it continues
off ahead of you. And then something amazing happens when you stop chasing happiness. At some point, the
carrot comes back to you, swinging back, and for the first time, you grab hold of it and take a
bite. Lucky. I like carrots. Actually, that's the analogy. The more you chase something, the more it'll be
further away. The more you want it, the further it is away. So if you stop chasing happiness and just
enjoy life's experiences and don't become attached to it, so you don't need anything to make yourself happy,
you're already happy. Take a deep breath. Sit there.
If I came into your house tonight and took away some of the things that you really enjoy, your quilt
and things like that to give you a good night's sleep you'll be less happy than you are now. So
I challenge you to think about that. You're already happy because you've got the things that make you happy already.
And there's the paradox of happiness. You already have everything. You're already happy. It's already there.
You don't need anything to make you happy. When you get more things you will end up with more experiences,
more happiness. I hope that helps. I hope that helps. I hope that helps you to reframe happiness.
Take care. Have a wonderful week. And I will be back next week with another podcast. And if you do
leave a review, that would be incredible and amazing and the best thing you can do for me right now
