How To Be Happy Under Any Circumstances | 62

Did you know that you don't have to like all of your circumstances, but you can still have a very happy life? I'm Dr. Betsy Guerra, and I have spent 26 years of my life teaching people how to be happy, and I am going to do that today in this podcast. I had a speaking engagement a few weeks ago in Ohio, And the company that hired me was Ultimate Solutions. I love this company. This company has a beautiful culture. They care a lot about their employees, their purpose, their mission. So I love speaking. They've hired me a few times. I love speaking for this company because I am surrounded by purpose-driven people. And before I had this speech, I called a few employees of the organization to just hear them out, hear their stories. I wanted to learn what they loved about the business, what they were struggling with, to make sure that what I brought to their company was something that really supported them and elevated them. And I had the best conversations with these people. I was inspired by them, moved by them. Gosh, I could tell you so many stories, but I'm gonna protect their confidentiality. But I will say one thing that I think he won't mind me sharing. One of the members of the company, when I was interviewing him, he said, you know, in Ultimate Solutions, we have this quote or this slogan that it's 80% attitude and 20% knowledge. Interesting. In other words, like, the culture matters. Like, the attitude, the way you show up, the purpose-driven, service-driven perspective and attitude towards what you're doing is 80% of it. We show up with love. Like, that's the majority of it. And then 20% is like, okay, we know a lot of things. Many of them are engineers. They're very well educated, very knowledgeable. bright people. But I, I thought it was beautiful because this particular person I interviewed was like, you know, we have a slogan that says we're 80% attitude, 20% knowledge. And I have to say, in ultimate, what really happens is we are 100% attitude and 100% knowledge because we have a level of excellence that is second to none. Our people are the brightest. They're determined. They know what they're doing, and what they don't know, they ask for help and they learn it. They're dedicated. But then there's also the 100% of the culture. They're giving. They help each other. They connect. They empathize. They love. They do things with purpose. And I was like, oh my gosh, if I were the CEO of Ultimate, I'd be crying right now. Like, I did something right. 100% attitude and 100% excellence is what he said. So I decided for the speaking engagement that I was going to use their, their, their name, the business name Ultimate, as the acronym that I was going to use to teach whatever I was going to teach to them. And the E in Ultimate is the last E, well, the only E, is excellence. And the A is attitude, and it came from this conversation that I had with, with the gentleman that I was speaking to. But I was like, man, do we even know what attitude means? We talked about reframing a few weeks ago, and I explained that reframing is how we change everything without anything around us changing. But in order to reframe, we need to have a certain attitude. You're not going to reframe if you are being a victim. You're not going to reframe if, like, oh my gosh, life sucks. You don't know how to do it in the first place if you're in that place. So I figured maybe I'll give you the definition and the explanation of attitude that I gave them so that you understand what needs to happen first So that you then have the ability to reframe, to tell yourself different stories about the thing you're interpreting as, as negative in your life, and to find the lessons, the blessings, and the opportunities in every experience that you're having in this present moment. So I'll say that from a psychology perspective, attitude is not a mood. Oh, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm joyful, whatever. Like, attitude is a system. It has 3 different components. It has the emotional component, it has a cognitive component, and it has a behavioral component. So it's the ABC. A is affective, that's the emotional. B is behavioral. C is cognitive. Now, the affective component of attitude Is what do you feel? If if you're you know for them, I was like, are you thinking oh my company doesn't care about me because they're making me work long hours, or the world is rigged against me, or because you know it's it's conspiring against me because I couldn't find a parking, and then when I got off it was raining, and I didn't even have an umbrella, and then I left the keys in the car, and I had to turn around, and like. Like, how do you, how do you feel? Like, do you feel like a victim? Do you feel like the world is against you? Do you feel like sad? Do you feel angry? Do you feel frustrated? Do you feel annoyed? Do you feel like, like you're being treated unfairly? Like, what do you feel? What is, what is the affective experience that you're having with life as you know it? If if you're sick, oh, this is bad luck. You know that actually that's the cognitive side. I'm totally jumping ahead. The the thought is this is my luck, and then the way you feel is unlucky, unfair, unhappy, frustrated, right? Like so the affective is the feeling. Then we have the behavioral, which is. What do you do because of how you feel? Well, since you feel unlucky, you can wallow in your misery, have pity parties, complain the whole day. I don't know, lay in a bed, be pissed off at the world and everybody that comes to try to help you. Like, you— that's probably what you would do. If that's what you're feeling, then you act accordingly. And then the cognitive side is, is what do you think? And I'm going to pause here real quick and I'm going to remind you something that I already taught in a previous episode. If you want to know what that episode is, there it was a couple of them and they're really, really, really good, very powerful. So I'm going to put them here in the show notes and also in the, in the screen right here, right now. When the cognitive side of the attitude is What do I think and what do I believe? And I'm gonna re-explain what thoughts and beliefs are. Thoughts are just sentences. They're sentences that pop up in your mind. That's a thought. Can you believe that? We give a whole lot of value and energy to a sentence with subject and predicate. That's it. There's no value to the sentence other than the value you give it. The interpretation, right? So a thought is a sentence that pops up in your mind or that someone put in your mind, or what— they don't have the power to put it, like you welcomed it into your mind, but it came from someone else. The more you believe those thoughts or engage with those thoughts and you repeat them in your head, the more you're like, I'm not good in math, I am not a morning person, I can't wake up to work out. I am not athletic. I can't sing for my life. I am not good enough. He doesn't love me. I'll never find love. The more you repeat those things, the more they will become significant. And like, the repetition accumulates and creates something more powerful, which we call belief. So the more you engage with a thought, the more it becomes a belief. So if I'm thinking, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, it's gonna get to a point where I'm like, I am not good enough. And this can then, guess how you're gonna feel? Not good enough. You're gonna feel unworthy. You're gonna feel insignificant. You're gonna feel imposter syndrome. You're gonna feel all of that because this thought that was a sentence became now a belief. And what happens is when you repeat a belief, like when you've engaged with the belief for long enough, you manifest it and it becomes reality. And it's not because I knew it. That's called confirmation bias in psychology, by the way. There's a term to define what you've experienced. When you say like, I knew it, I knew that I wasn't good enough because look, this guy dumped me, or that one didn't hire me, or they're not looking at me with respect, or my kids don't care, or my husband prioritizes other things, like I'm not worthy enough. When you confirm that, it's called confirmation bias because it's a bias and you're going to manifest it. But try confirming that you are worthy, by changing the thoughts and beliefs you engage with, and you will confirm that too. Confirmation bias. So since you're gonna confirm whatever you choose, whatever stories you tell yourself, yes, it's not reality, it's your reality, it's your story. It was proven, I have facts. Hmm, what came first, the chicken or the eggs? Did you create that reality? Did you manifest it? That's called self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology. Prophecy means you say something's gonna happen and it happens. Self-fulfilling implies that you contributed to it happening. So all these negative things that happen to you, hmm, may be the result of your thoughts, of your beliefs. But Betsy, how? Like, I didn't cause a cop to stop me. And give me a ticket. I didn't cause for my spouse to leave me. I didn't cause XYZ. Maybe self-fulfilling prophecy, and it all comes from attitude: affective, behavioral, cognitive. What do I think? What do I believe? And then based on what I believe, how do I act? What do I do that is manifesting my physical reality? And while I'm at it, how do I feel the affective? You create reality, my friend. You are the producer and director of your life. And for those of you thinking like, no, it's God, it's God's will. Well, when I say you are creating your reality, I am talking about all of you. The you that is— the part of you that is separated from God and is getting all these glitches in your life that you're producing, because that's definitely not the part of you that's connected to God. The part of you that is separated is creating these glitches. The part of you that believes you're not worthy, the part of you that believes you ain't got this. The part of you that believes that you're just waiting for the bomb to explode or the shoe to drop because that's the story of your life. Whenever something's going really, really well, you just wait for something to go wrong because it's what happens in your life, right? Like, you can never be worthy enough of a very happy, fulfilling, joyful, peaceful life. Is that what you believe? If that's what you believe, the shoe will drop. I promise. But if you trust that you're worthy and that God created you to His image and likeness, and that life is beautiful and great and holy, and you get to enjoy and indulge in all of the moments it brings with it, then If what anybody else would interpret as the shoe dropping happens, then you look for the lesson or the opportunity. I have to tell you this story. There was a project, some experiment. I wish I knew exactly who did this so I could quote them, but let it suffice that I didn't come up with it, although I wish I would've. But there's this story about 2 kids that were very different in their attitudes. One of them was like, Rainbows and butterflies, life is great, everything is beautiful. He lived in gratitude, was joyful, full of peace, all the things. And then there was another kid who was like, life sucks, complaining, this toy is not pretty enough, my parents suck, they don't love me, and everything was negative. Negative Nancy. Hi, if your name is Nancy, don't take it personally, I love you. Um, So it's a super negative kid, right? So they were like, hmm, let's see if we can change their attitude by changing the environment. So what they did is that they put the kid that was miserable in a room full of toys, all the colors, all the sizes, all the styles, all the things. They did research on what this kid loved and they Put it all in there. This kid was in this room, like it was like a happy room, super happy room. And then they put the very happy kid in a room full of manure, caca, poop, mierda, right? Like no bueno, stinky manure. And then they left him there for a few minutes, and they watched them on the you know in a on a camera. And then after a few minutes, they went in and they saw that the kid that was in the room of toys was like breaking toys and super pissed off and complaining. And they're like, well, what happened? Oh, my favorite toy is not the color that I want. And this doesn't work the way I need it to. And I don't even have anyone to play with. And this Sucks, and they were like, yeah, okay. So then they went to the other room, and the kid, the happy-go-lucky kid that was in the room full of mierda of manure, was like, like you know, like going searching through the crap, literally. Like so he was all full of poop from head to toes because he was like just like. Like, it looked like he was kind of playing with the poop, but no, he was like excavating, excavating like through the poop. Like, you know, when you go to the beach and you start excavating the sand and doing like a hole in there, that's what he was doing. He was like just excavating, excavating. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? It was super stinky. They could barely stand the smell. And he was like, Well, there's so much manure here that I figured there must be a pony somewhere. So this kid was looking through the crap for the pony, and he was so excited about finding the little pony. Like, he was looking for the blessing. He was looking for the lesson, for the surprise God had under all that pile of manure. That's how we want to live our life. Last week, we spoke about how to fast forward the unpleasant situations by understanding that they only last five minutes in comparison to to the goodness that awaits. This kid knew that. He was like, okay, five minutes of getting full of mieda, of of poop. 5 minutes to then find the horse that I am going to play with and have as my pet and ride and all the things. Attitude. Your coworkers don't have to change. Your job doesn't have to change. Your boss's mentality doesn't have to change. Your financial situation, your health, Your marriage, the person you're married to doesn't have to change. Your kids, your sister, like nothing has to change externally. You don't have power over that anyway, in case you were trying to control it. You don't, you don't, you don't have power over that. But you have power over your attitude. ABC, affective, behavioral, cognitive. What are you feeling? What are you doing? What are you thinking and believing and manifesting? You have power over that. And if you have power over manifesting— and there's another really good podcast at the beginning of this year, 2026, in January, I'll put it here also— that talks about what that even means, manifesting. But if you have power over manifesting because you do have power over your thoughts, whether you engage with them or not, whether you believe them or not, whether you instill them as a belief that then becomes the manifestation, becomes your reality, the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have power over that, you have power over your life. And you may not be able to change your, your boss, but maybe the way you show up with that attitude inspires him or her. To show up differently. Maybe you don't have power over your health, but like enjoying peace may recenter your body and allow you to respond to treatment more successfully. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe you don't have power over, but if you change within with your attitude. If you show up with gratitude, if you show up with joy, if you show up with acceptance, then, my friend, you can change everything. So I invite you to do this exercise. Grab a piece of paper and write the ABC model of attitudes. A, affective. B, behavioral. C, cognitive. I don't like that order. I like to start with cognitive. affective, and then behavioral. And if you've listened to the Be-Do-Have model that I shared in a couple podcasts also, you understand why. But start with the cognitive, like what are some of your beliefs that are preventing you from having the right attitude, the one that will serve you? Having an attitude of joy, of gratitude. Like what is— what are some of the thoughts that are not serving you? And what thoughts would you need to believe? Would you have to like buy into, repeat enough times so that they can actually be anchored as beliefs, but with intention, not unconsciously, not because you inherited them from your life and your family and the people around you? Well, what if you did this on purpose? So write a list of the thoughts that prevent you from, or the thoughts that you would want To believe and buy into. And then see how each one of those thoughts, the negatives or the positives— I'm saying negative and positive, like, meaning the unwanted and the wanted ones— like, what, what kinds of emotions do they yield? Do they yield peace, relief, joy, love, or fear, resentment, frustration, unpleasant emotions? And then what would you do? How would you act if you thought, believed, and felt in those particular ways? And then notice how you have the power to change everything without the people and the circumstances around you shifting. When you do this, shoot me a message, like make a comment. Just let me know. Go to my Instagram, Better with Betsy, and let me know how you are choosing to change your life right now before all these other people and circumstances come to their senses. I hope this blesses you, and I hope that you share it with someone you love. I insist, please share the love. And remember to like and subscribe and make comments and all the things. So that it helps us be found by other people who need this message. I love you. Have a beautiful day. That's it for today's episode. I loved, loved, loved spending this time with you, so thank you for joining me. If somebody came to mind while you were listening, bless them with this episode. Send it to them. And if you may, please subscribe and leave a review. Those are really helpful to help us spread the message. And if you want to grow in faith and wisdom, join me at faithandgrowth.com. Thank you for spending this time with me. Love you. Bye.