For Those Waiting for Happiness

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]How many times have you heard this? You need to go to the gym in order to be strong. You need to go to school in order to be smart. You need enough sleep in order to be energized. Yes, all of these things are essential to well-being. But what about happiness?

[00:00:12]Where do we find it?

[00:00:16]Guys, the weather right now is so amazing. For the past couple weeks, I feel like we've been flip-flopping from like, is it winter? Is it spring? Is it winter? Is it spring? And I feel like today is like the first day it's officially felt like spring. Winter is officially done. I do still have a lot to do. But also, meanwhile, I wanted to talk about a topic today that is very important to me, which is happiness. I feel like naturally, I'm a very smiley person. I dance my whole life. I've been a performer. I worked at Disney. Like cheese ball energy. And one of the most asked questions on my channel is, are you really happy all the time? Like it seems like your life is perfect. I think smiling and happiness are not necessarily the same thing. However, I do feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about happiness and what it means to be happy. I feel like we have been taught that happiness is conditional on external factors. But if you let the external world control your happiness, you will never be happy. And in the same way that we can be accountable for our sleep habits, our nutrition habits, we also have agency over our own happiness and over our own brains. Brains are so powerful. And there's three main things that I've done to have agency over my happiness. And it all leads back to peace. Number one, desire. Even though desire is something that is very much in human nature, desire is kind of like a contract. I will not be happy until I get X, Y, or Z. Now, these boxes could be anything. I'll be happy when I have a girlfriend. I'll be happy when I lose 10 lbs. I'll be happy when the weather is better. And maybe this doesn't sound inherently damaging until this happens.

[00:01:45]You finally tick these off and then you just want to start adding more. And that's just in human nature. We want the things that we can't have. And from a neurological perspective as well, desire gives us a dopamine hit. It feels good to want something. But in reality, the more that you limit your desires and practice gratitude instead, the happier you will actually be.

[00:02:11]And next, we have number two, which is preparedness. I think for myself, this is a skill that I developed when I was very young and I didn't even realize it.

[00:02:18]So today I am at Sam's apartment and I would say that they have a very cute space. Maybe cute is not like the best word, but look how big and spacious this is.

[00:02:26]>> Welcome to my crib. This is Samuel Donner's crib. Handcrafted by me. I did this. I can actually paint this. Well, this is a guitar. I learned these chords recently. They kind of sound good together.

[00:02:43]Oh, maybe not right now. We have these speakers if you want to DJ. can't.

[00:02:50]>> Um, this is a place where we work. This is a place where we work and play board games sometimes.

[00:02:54]>> Yeah, that's it.

[00:02:55]>> Welcome to my crib.

[00:02:56]>> Yeah, the vibe is very different than my apartment. I would say mine is very like light and airy. And this is very much more like >> boy, >> boys. We just did our first dinner party and it was super cute. And I would say it transformed from a a little boy's pad to >> a little boy.

[00:03:13]>> A little boy's pad.

[00:03:15]>> Little boy.

[00:03:16]>> No. No. No, no, no. A small. No, I didn't.

[00:03:18]>> What? A small boy. I'm a I'll have you know that I am 6 foot tall sometimes. I am not a little boy or big boy.

[00:03:28]>> I've been doing competitive dance since I was 8 years old. And every single competition we went to, we had to audition for scholarships. And I just never got one. And I think I just got so used to the pattern of when I do these things, I'm probably not going to get it. that when I did finally get my first scholarship, it was such a surprise.

[00:03:46]Fortune falls heavily on those whom she's unexpected. Devastation, the feeling that we're absolutely crushed and shocked by an event is a factor of how unlikely we considered it in the first place. I find this one so interesting cuz I feel like it's somewhat controversial. By expecting the worst, does that mean you're kind of manifesting negativity? And for me, I feel like no, not at all. Like it's not like I'm wanting these to happen. I'm not really speaking it out into the universe like this is probably going to happen, but I'm mentally preparing for all possible outcomes so that when they happen, I just don't get rattled by it.

[00:04:18]Going back to the quote from earlier, a happy person isn't someone who's happy all the time. It's someone who effortlessly interprets events in a way that doesn't lose their inner peace. If I thought of all possible outcomes, including the negative ones, and it happens, my inner peace is way less likely to be disrupted. And I'll give you guys a couple examples. Example number one, I love wearing the color white. My personal preference is that I love light colored clothing, but every time I go out, I'm already mentally prepared. I'm probably going to get spilled on today. I'm probably going to end up eating spaghetti and tomato sauce is going to ruin my outfit. If I already have these things going on in my head, it's not going to absolutely crush me.

[00:04:55]And another example, which is very applicable to me in my life, is traveling. Traveling is one of the most unpredictable things you could possibly imagine. Like people love to plan things to a tea, but things will never go exactly as you imagined. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to have that mental flexibility of things are probably going to not be what you expected. The weather isn't going to be perfect every day. You're probably going to get lost. I didn't want to be jostled by things, and I just wanted to enjoy whatever experience ended up being in front of me. The first time I ever went to Rome, I was completely by myself. So, I knew going into it like something is probably going to go wrong. I was on a normal cellular plan that had like international coverage and it completely dropped when I was by myself alone in Rome. I wasn't actually really jarred by this, which is also really helpful with problem solving. When you become stressed, anxious, and upset when you're in a pickle, like you're not going to be able to assess the situation very well.

[00:05:45]Having a cool, calm mind is very beneficial to like a positive outcome in the end. For me, in this situation, I was able to be like, "Okay, I just need to find a place with Wi-Fi, find a new solution." And that was actually the first time I ever used Aerlo, which is like an eim brand. It has coverage in over 200 countries and regions, which definitely helps to eliminate situations like this happening at all. It's kind of like buying a SIM card and putting in your phone, except it's all digital. All you do is open the app, you pick the country that you are going to be visiting, and then there's a bunch of different data packages to choose from.

[00:06:13]I was on a cruise, so I just picked like the entirety of Europe for mine, but it's definitely helpful. Then you just press installs. Honestly, super easy.

[00:06:20]It's 100% online and a super easy way to get internet when you're traveling. The only thing you have to be wary of is to make sure you turn off your own personal data to make sure you don't get charged extra fees. Yeah. But then you're good to go. If you haven't used Arllo, you can use my code Ali3 and or click on the link below to get $3 off. Having an EIM is super helpful when traveling to make sure issues like what I went through don't happen to you. All that to say, the goal is to protect your inner peace.

[00:06:43]You are a peaceful person, then anything you do can be a happy activity. And now to number three.

[00:06:58]Three years ago when I was working on ships, I was in the Mediterranean and we had gelato every single day. Got my gelato.

[00:07:05]>> Gelato. Gelato.

[00:07:06]>> Gelato. Gelato. Usually it was like a lemon chocolate combo. So that is what I ended up getting today. I am going to be going on a Mediterranean cruise actually in about 2 weeks from now. Oh, we're getting ready.

[00:07:23]We've done a quick change. Okay. Tonight we have a very exciting event going on.

[00:07:28]Tonight we are hosting a slam poetry potluck >> and we're late.

[00:07:33]>> Yeah.

[00:07:34]>> Yeah, we're a little bit late. I can absolutely clean up.

[00:07:36]>> Clean up here.

[00:07:37]>> Yeah.

[00:07:38]>> Okay. We've been using Sam's Place as like a hosting venue for different activities and so far we've done like a dinner party and a potluck and today we are combining potluck with slam poetry.

[00:07:49]So the attire is all black glasses encouraged and guests are strongly encouraged to bring a poem and some food. People come quite soon. Currently 7:06. This is this is not great news.

[00:08:02]People will be arriving in about 25 minutes. So that means I don't have too much time to get everything together, but we're making it happen.

[00:08:13]And last but not least, we have number three, which is complaining. I feel like in our society, complaining has been very normalized, but I don't think people realize how bad it is for us in our brains. For my potluck contribution, I'm going to be making a salad. I made a salad that was pretty good for our dinner party. So, I'm pretty much just going to be recreating that. From a neuroscience perspective, when you complain, you are training your brain to continue to have negative thought patterns. It'll just end up being this reoccurring cycle. So once you have a negative thought, it's not just done.

[00:08:43]You will continually keep looking for all the negative things in your life.

[00:08:47]There's also a bunch of studies that have shown that complaining or like venting like you know like just need to get off my chest is not actually something that is helpful for us. It unless you rewrite a story about it in the end. So, this is something I didn't actually even realize I was doing. But when I first started doing gig work in LA, it is just a series of nos. Like, you auditioning sometimes multiple times a day and being told no multiple times a day. And I had this journal that and every single time I would go to an audition, I would write about my experience, whether it was good or bad, like how I felt about it. And at the end, I would write like what did I learn from this experience? I didn't realize it at the time, but I was training my brain to see the bright side of a situation. So, for example, if I went to an audition and completely ate it, like my shoe just completely slipped out from under me. I fell flat on my face. It was definitely like an embarrassing experience for myself. I didn't just walk away feeling like, "Wow, I had worst day ever." I walked away thinking, "This is how I can approach things better next time." And that can be the situation for pretty much anything in life. There are a million things in the world that you can complain about. In the same way, there's also a million amazing things around you. And by continuing negative thought patterns that are reinforced by complaining, you are just choosing to disturb your peace.

[00:10:07]Going back to that peace concept, another great potluck >> in the books.

[00:10:13]>> Another one for the books. What is interesting about these events is I am always scared because usually I hand invite people like and so right before the event I'll get like 10 cancellations and so I was like a little nervous know it was coming and people came and it was like such a great collection of people um people brought homes my parents came like there was at one point there was acupuncture going on in one corner of the room a jam session in another. The primary reason that we started doing this is because we both have a lot of friends individually and we've crossed paths with many people in our lives, but there's just not enough time in the day to see everyone to have like intentional one-on-one coffee dates with like every single person, you know, like it's just like not realistic. So, creating these kinds of events where we can all just come together, have community over food, and in this case also, we had like our slam poetry night and everyone wore black.

[00:11:09]>> Yeah. And people stuck to it. It was pretty great.

[00:11:12]>> It was super cute to look around and everyone's doing their snaps. No one missed the assignment.

[00:11:17]>> And I did not eat anything this entire pot.

[00:11:22]>> I know.

[00:11:23]>> There's definitely some things that I feel like are baked into society that we've deemed as acceptable. And complaining is definitely one of them.

[00:11:30]Even in just the subtle small talk about random things like uh about the weather being bad or or even about like each other's spouses. Like I feel like in some ways it's become cool to complain about things like that, but our brains are so powerful in the same way that we have the potential to harness this negative loop cycle. We can do the same thing but with positive thought. I saw this quote that I was so inspired by and it was basically like life gets so much better when you stop saying why and start saying wow. I feel like there's also a bit of a misconception that your life needs to be perfect in order for these conditions to be met. But I don't necessarily feel like that is true.

[00:12:09]There there's a stoic concept that things are not good or bad. They just are. And that humans are the ones who put labels on something. It can be a matter of fact that someone failed a test. But the thought that a terrible thing happened, it was the worst thing ever. That is something imposed on by the human brain that it could be turned around. Like he failed his test and he was really motivated to turn his life around. Like we have the power to put the labels on different aspects of our life. It doesn't need to just be one thing. I feel like I could give an example even with this potluck. So, for example, Sam and I both invited a lot of our island friendships. We probably invited close to the same amount of people. However, I only had one person show up. So, the majority of the people here tonight um are actually Sam's friends. My friends never come. Like, people never come through. Like, everyone's so busy. This is so annoying.

[00:13:01]that is training my brain to find the negatives in this situation. But the way I can perceive this is this is an opportunity to meet so many awesome people. Like Sam has so many wonderful people in his life. People are busy.

[00:13:14]They're busy. It's not a big deal. I would say a lot of like my friends in the city are dancers and I feel like dancers are just like super busy people.

[00:13:20]We have like lots of jobs, lots of auditions. Classes are often at night, side jobs are often at night. But why would I get caught up in that when there was so much beauty around me? Like people were sharing art. People had written their own poems, sharing like a piece of their heart with all of us.

[00:13:34]Like coming together around food. Like how beautiful is that? Like how can you be be mad at something like that? I feel like it's quite funny to end a video about happiness in my all black attire.

[00:13:45]But thank you guys so much for watching.

[00:13:47]I feel like today's topic is something that has been on my mind for such a long time and something that I've been wanting to share with people and I think it is something that could also like help reframe the way that people see um their life and the world and their own minds. Yeah. And I hope you guys enjoyed hearing about it.