Can You Learn to Be Happy? Insights from the Dalai Lama

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hi, I'm Richard from Early Retirement Wonderlust and it's the first Thursday of the month again. So, it is well-being Thursday where I take a little bit of time out of the channel to think about all things to do with well-being and early retirement. What if I said to you that happiness was absolutely nothing to do with money, success, or even early retirement, but actually something that we can cultivate from within us and something that we can control almost within our souls. Well, in this video, I want to introduce you to a book that I've been reading over the course of the last month in terms of The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. It's a unique blend of Eastern philosophy and modern psychological thinking. It is a bit of an old book, but it is undiscovered. I've really enjoyed reading it, and I think you'll enjoy it. So, I want to take you through the best bits of that book.

[00:01:00]>> [music] [music] [music] >> So, welcome back to Wellbeing Thursday.

[00:01:17]It has been a while since I've done a book review, and I have had quite a few comments of people asking where they've gone, but I just wanted to take my time and to find some good books to review for you. And this one is an oldie, but it's quite unique and it's a book that I've really enjoyed getting stuck into.

[00:01:34]It's not necessarily an easy read, but it's something that I've really enjoyed over the course of the last month. And it is The Art of Happiness. It is quite a unique book because I think when you're thinking about welding and wellness books, you can think of them on two opposite scales. So, in using Jackie's terms, you can have hippie- dippy books which are all sort of philosophical and quite out there and not very practical. And then you can have on the other end of the extreme quite scientific books um and which are quite regimented based on theory and again don't really give you much practical advice. Whereas this book the art of happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Culler is a unique combination of the two. Obviously, the Dalai Lama brings a great deal of wisdom to the world in his teachings and his philosophy mainly based on Buddhist philosophy from the east. Um, and yeah, if we looked at that as the sort of hippie- dippy way, then sometimes that can be a little bit deep and a little bit hard to sort of shoehorn into modern life. And then the co-author is Howard Cutler, who is a clinical psychologist.

[00:02:46]And you would think he would come at it from the point of view of purely sort of scientific and um psychological aspects and again quite hard to relate to. But this book was written by the two of them in part due to conversations over the course of a 2-year period where they discussed what they thought was the roots and the origins and the essential aspects of happiness. And by getting those two perspectives, you get some really practical advice that's balanced across the spectrum and things that you can definitely take away. So, what I want to do in this video is to very briefly just caner through the probably top five or six things that I've taken away from the book, then look at some top tips that we can apply into our lives tomorrow or today uh to really sort of enhance the level of happiness in our lives, which is something if we're all honest, that's what we're after in life. The first biggest takeaway for me, and it's a massive reassurance from the Dalai Lama, is that happiness is the purpose of life. It's why we're here. It's why we are on this planet. We want to seek out that happiness and at the end of the day all we want to do is to find that happiness.

[00:03:57]Now the great reassurance from the teachings are that happiness is nothing to do with your wealth or your status or your possessions. It's to do with your inner feelings and therefore it's something that we can actually go out and control. And the Dalai Lama assures us and reassures us in some respects that happiness is a skill that we can develop and there are things that we can do to practice that to enhance that and because it's within it's absolutely within our control. Now sometimes in this mad crazy world it's it's a little bit hard to sort of comprehend that we are actually in control of our happiness. But with a little bit of practice and a little bit of training, the Dalai Lama and this book and clinical psychology suggests that we can actually control our own levels of happiness and we are masters of our own destiny. In terms of that, this next biggie is probably associated with the first point in terms of happiness comes from within. If we think about all the external factors in our life that we probably value, things like the amount of money we've got, the amount of luxuries we've got, the the stuff that we have within our life, the amount of recognition we get for our status and for what we do, they're all external factors and actually the happiness that they bring is quite short-lived. If we're after a more fulfilled and extended and uh genuine happiness, then we've got to look within. And that's to do with our mindset and our general feeling of contentment in life. And all of that is within our own head. So just as we try and train our physical body to be healthy and active and we're trying to prolong our life and prolong our fulfilled life physically, we can do that mentally as well. And we can train our body by doing certain things to become more positive and to become more happy. And what I really liked about the book is it came with some real practical things that you could do to practice every day almost like exercises. So things like meditation, gratitude, showing empathy, being positive, bringing that caring, just being kind to people. All of those things are things that we can practice on a daily basis and are going to bring more genuine happiness to our lives. Compassion is the foundation of joy. Now, this one sounds a little bit like common sense, but it was just really nice to see it written down from both a scientific and a philosophical background. We all know that if we are kind to people, then it makes them feel better. It makes them have a better life. It makes them feel good about themselves. But I think if we're really honest, equally important is if we are kind to people, there's a feel-good factor that grows in our self.

[00:06:45]And this book just absolutely emphasizes the importance of showing compassion for other people. And it talks about a ripple effect. So it's not just that immediate relationship of being kind to someone and them feeling better. So if I give you a practical example, if you're in a coffee shop and you are um really kind to the barista who makes you coffee, asks how their day is going, thanks them for the service, then that's going to make them feel better. But it has a knock-on ripple effect because because they are going to feel a little bit better from that interaction with you. Then they are more likely to pass that on to other people. So they are going to offer a greater service to those people throughout the day. So your little touch of compassion and kindness to that one person is going to have a knock-on effect to loads of other people in society. And if we obviously all do that, then there's going to be a feel-good factor of happiness sweeping across society and making everyone that much happier. Perspective shapes our reality. Now, I really like the clear way in which the book makes a direct link between what's going on in our head, so our psychology and our thoughts, and how we feel, so our emotional responses. So if we want to change how we feel about things in life then ultimately we need to go back and change how we think about things. So if we look at problems that occur in life.

[00:08:09]If we see problems as problems, things that life has thrown at us, things that are getting in the way of things, then that is naturally going to have a negative effect on our emotional response. Whereas if we see problems more as challenges and more as a natural thing that happens in life, accepting that life isn't going to go smoothly, but actually the path of life is made up of a series of problems that we overcome, then that's a much more positive mindset. And if we've controlled that aspect of our mindset, then we're going to have much less uh negative emotional responses to what we might once have perceived as problems.

[00:08:51]And linked to this, one of the things that I was really reassured about in the book, and it's something that really we should know for ourselves, is the fact that we share this connection with every other human being on Earth. So all of these emotions and all of these challenges that we're dealing with, everyone else in the world is dealing with similar problems. And I think sometimes we can be a little bit selfish and just think it's all about us and it's only us that are having to deal with these issues. Well, no, it's not because every other human being on this planet is having to deal with problems.

[00:09:24]Many people are having to deal with so many more challenging problems than what we're having to do. and finding that perspective and understanding that that's a natural part of life. I found that quite liberating from the book and again it is something that we should have known naturally but it takes eastern philosophy and clinical psychology to come together to actually explain it to us. Now I know I've talked about this a lot on the channel but it was just really reassuring to see it written down in the book in the fact that suffering is an inevitable part of life. And I think sometimes we can be thinking that life should be a life of rainbows on unicorns and we should be skipping off into the future with no problems and no challenges. And life is hard. Life is tough. Life throws us some incredible curve balls. And we've just got to accept that life is part of suffering. Now the Dalai Lama goes a little bit further in the fact that he talks about the fact that when we are born that's when our suffering begins because we're born into this world of suffering and that when we die that's the only time that we get true reprieve from that. Now that is a bit of a head fry moment for me. But if you think about it in those perspectives and you've got that perspective that you know life is going to be tough and there are going to be unpleasant things that we have to deal with in reality when we've come out of the other side of those tough horrible things then we actually come out of it stronger and better because we're here today and I'm a 55year-old and I've had to deal with some pretty horrible things in in my past but I'm actually still here. So that is a real positive out of that in terms of we will overcome those things.

[00:11:14]Life will not suddenly say well done you you're done you've you've dealt with all our problems. It is going to keep coming at you and understanding that you know that suffering will continue. It's not necessarily um a resignation or a pleasant thing to think about, but it's just a reality that if we can get that clear in our mind, we're in a better position to deal with those challenges when they come along. Comparison is the thief of joy.

[00:11:41]Now, I've heard this said a lot, but it was really nice to hear it from both a philosophical and a scientific background that if we compare ourselves to others, then it's only going to suck the joy out of our life. If we're after true happiness and contentment, we need to think about the things that we are grateful for, the many, many things that we have in our lives, the progress that we've made over the course of our life, and only really be comparing ourselves to ourselves because that's the only thing that counts. If we are constantly thinking about the things that we don't have or the things that other people have or the successes that other people are having, then that's only going to suck the joy out of our life. And we don't need to look much further than social media. And I read something somewhere else, I think it was in a blog somewhere where they were talking about the fact that when we looking at social media, we're comparing our normal everyday self with our limitations and our insecurities and our worries that are all up there in our head that we don't share with anyone else. And when we look on social media, we're comparing that with people who are putting out versions of their perfect self. And it's an unfair comparison. Social media does encourage us to compare ourselves with others. And I think it's something that we can all get pulled into subconsciously without knowing it.

[00:13:04]Whereas actually, we just need to look within and be grateful for what we've got. We be grateful for all those amazing things that happen in our lives.

[00:13:13]and where we've come from and where we're going. And that's the only comparison we need to do. We don't need to compare ourselves with others. Now, if you choose to read this book, there are so many practical takeaways and tips that you will get from the book. I've been frantically scribbling them down as I've been going through the book, but there are a few big ones I think that might help you in terms of what you could do right now today in order to bring a little bit more happiness in your life. The first one being practice daily gratitude. Think about the things that you are really grateful for. It might be that you are sitting down at the start of the day with your coffee and you just want to think about those things. I prefer to do it a little bit more sort of regimented because I like to get it off my mind and onto paper. So I write three things that I'm really grateful for at the start of every single day. If you think about that, that's nearly a hundred things in a month that you are grateful for. It could be something as small as um waking up without aching. It could be the fact that you really enjoy your morning coffee. It could be the feeling of the sun's rays coming through the window and beating down on you as you're writing in your journal. It could be anything, but we've all got things that we want to be grateful for. And it helps promote that positive mindset right off the bat at the start of the day. Thinking about the ripple effect of kindness to other people. When in your day can you do a random act of kindness? Because it's going to make you feel better. It's going to make the person that you're giving the kindness to feel better and then that's going to ripple out across all their future interactions in the day and it's going to make the world a happier place. So our simple act of holding a door open for someone, thanking someone for their service or just complimenting someone can have a huge effect not just on us but them and also everyone they come into contact with thereafter. Reframe how you see and you perceive challenges. It's something that we all have to go through in life.

[00:15:09]You're not alone. Everyone else is going through challenges and we can all get through those challenges because we've all got through loads of challenges previously. So, [snorts] it's not something that's unique to you and it is a natural part of life and it is something that we can deal with. find small moments in the day where you can be a little bit more mindful, a little bit more grounded and a little bit more present because modern life will do everything to try and distract us from that. And in reality, we do need those moments to just slow down, take stock, and to think about our own thinking because it's only in those moments that we can actually be aware of what's going on in our own head. And unless we are proactive in finding those moments, then modern life is just going to sweep us along. So it may well be that you're just going to take a minute out of your day to just do some breathing exercises or you might have some time to do some journaling or some guided meditation.

[00:16:07]But find that time for yourself to slow down, stop, ground yourself, and be present in what's going on around you.

[00:16:16]And the last top tip I've taken from the book is to take time and effort to invest in the relationships that bring you joy and thinking about those meaningful relationships that you want to enrich throughout your life. Those don't happen by accident and they do take time and effort and commitment to be maintained. And if there are people in your life that you genuinely love and they bring you joy, then find time for those people because that's only going to enhance your joy for life and it's only going to enhance your happiness and it's also going to help them as well because that's obviously going to be reciprocated. So finding time for the relationships that are important to you in life. So that's it for me for this week and another well-being Thursday book review. I really hope that you've enjoyed my little synopsis of the art of happiness by Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. As I said at the start, I've really enjoyed reading it over the course of the last month and I think it's brought a unique perspective to happiness. It takes all the wisdom of the Dalai Lama and Eastern philosophy and combines it with the scientific and the psychological aspects of science.

[00:17:27]And by doing that, I think that blended approach brings something for everyone within the book. There's definitely something that you will be able to take away from the book, and there's definitely something that will resonate for you in terms of understanding your own happiness. In terms of comments, I'd love to know whether some of the points I've raised from the book have resonated with you. And what do you think true happiness comes from? And are we genuinely in control of our happiness or has the book got it wrong? Please pop your views in the comments below because I do read them all and I do really enjoy responding to those. But that's it from me from Well-Being Thursday. I'll see you in a month's time on the first Thursday of the month next month. But until then, see you later. Bye-bye.

[00:18:17][music] Heat.

[00:18:22][music] Heat. [music]