In this episode of the Love Life podcast, host Matthew Hussey shares a personal story about rediscovering the joy of reading during a holiday and reflects on how labeling activities as "work" can strip them of enjoyment. He argues that happiness is largely determined by the context we create rather than external circumstances, critiquing the common self‑help advice to constantly change one’s situation. Hussey emphasizes the skill of reshaping context to experience enjoyment in any activity, whether it has become laborious or was once playful. He concludes by inviting listeners to a five‑day retreat designed to teach hands‑on techniques for increasing daily enjoyment and living a happier life.
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This is Love Life and I'm your host, Matthew Hussey. It's so exciting to hear feedback from women who say things like, Matt, I tried the advice from your podcast and I met someone incredible that same night. But occasionally I'll hear something like, When something finally starts to go right in my life, I have trouble trusting that it's real and I just can't enjoy it. If you can relate, I want you to stay tuned until the end of today's show. because there's something really exciting I want to share with you that has the power to change your way of thinking forever. But first, let's get to the episode. So I went on holiday recently, and I took five nights to go somewhere and just relax. I found myself at the beginning of this trip getting back to something that I really love, which is reading. And there's something interesting about this for me, because when I was a teenager, I used to read a lot of self-development books. That would be the thing that I would steal away from my homework or steal away from class to read while everyone else was, you know, reading a comic book inside their English textbook. I had a self-help book inside my textbook, and I was reading it and learning about people and human dynamics. Now, the thing about that was I enjoyed it. I saw it as fun. It wasn't work to me. That was my hobby. That was something I did for enjoyment. And as I got older and began to realize that ambition of actually becoming a coach and working with people, increasingly I found that reading those same books became a chore because I started to associate it with work. I started to see it as work. Have you ever done something that was fun to begin with. And then as soon as you started to give it the label of work, it became work because of the label. And I got to thinking about this subject while I was on holiday because one of the things I did with my reading on holiday, I said to myself, I'm going to read something that I purely just want to read for fun. And none of these were books that you would associate with being on holiday. None of them. And I had so much fun. reading them. I can't tell you. But it brought to me a very fundamental lesson. It brought home to me a very fundamental lesson, which is that happiness is 90 context, not situation. I didn't have the choice of saying, I don't want to read anymore. Right? I don't. I'm. Reading has worked to me. I don't want to read anymore because I know I couldn't do that in my life. I need to read. It's something that I use to fuel myself, not just for enjoyment, but to enrich my mind. So I knew I couldn't just give up reading. And I feel like we're taught in our society these days, we have a kind of. this culture, especially in the self-help world of, well, if you don't like your job, quit. If you don't like where you live, move. And it's all this emphasis on changing your situation. But the truth is, the most important skill in life is understanding how to shape the context. The most important skill in life is learning how to derive enjoyment from any situation. Learning to experience the situation in a better way. Because guess what? You're always going to move to things that have the potential to become laborious, or, or monotonous or feel like work. But we have to be careful how we Define things. If I Define reading as a chore, I won't read anymore. If I Define it as fun and enriching my mind and growing, I will do it every day for fun. No one will need to tell me to. No, no work pressure will have to condemn me to writing a book from reading a book for me to read it. I will just do it because I enjoy it. And I'm telling you now, I've had the privilege in the last few years of meeting people in some of the coolest jobs in the world, jobs that everyone fights. jobs that people want the world over or think they want. And you know what they do when they, when you talk to them, they complain about that job. They tell you how it's hard. They tell you how it's difficult to keep going. So often, people will give you the negatives before they give you the positives. Doesn't mean they never appreciate it, but it means that once they come to define it as work, it changes its meaning. Happiness is 90% context. And if you can understand how to create enjoyment again, in things that either were always work and you want to start to associate with play or growth or. Or feelings of appreciation or excitement, or something that was play that has become work, that you want to get back to feeling like it's play. If you have that skill set in being able to change the context of your situation, not just changing the situation itself, which very often is just escapism, you can be one of the happiest people on Earth, no matter what you're doing, no matter where you are and where you're living and what situation you're in. I'd love to help you do this, by the way, if you don't know how and you want to experience happiness on a far higher level than you are right now, not just by changing everything all the time, but by actually learning to experience your day more and enjoy it more without having to change anything about your situation. Come join me. I have Retreats every year. They're five days long, and we work together in a Hands-On way on every part of your life to get you more enjoyment out of it. Because you know what? Life isn't just about hitting goals. Life is about enjoying the journey. I hope to hear from you soon. If you want to apply for that program, go to lovelifepodcast.com/retrieve. Go and apply and perhaps on one of the few occasions that I run it this year, we'll be joining each other for five days in the sun. I look forward to seeing you soon, my friends. Take care.
