Matthew Hussey argues that happiness and love are different: you can love life without liking it all the time. He compares your relationship with life to a romantic partnership, saying forgiveness and acceptance matter more than constant positivity. His retreat program teaches you to change how you respond to inevitable struggles.
There's a certain kind of person that often bugs me and it's the kind of person that when you have a problem or you're down about something, you're going through something difficult, their response is smile, be positive, be happy and they want to list out all the reasons you should be happy. Especially the self-help world encourages us so much to, you know, we feel inadequate if we're not happy. Like, you should be happy all the time. And life, isn't it amazing? Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it the most incredible thing? You should be happy. You should be happy. And it's like, maybe today I'm not that happy. Maybe today there's things going on in my life that are making me really sad or depressed or angry or anxious or frustrated. And that's human. It's human to feel those things. It's almost like there's the people who think life is amazing. And then there's these people who think life sucks. Like life is a hellish struggle. And both sides are arguing for which is true. My response is why can't both be true? What if life wasn't good or bad? What if life is a lover? And as a lover, we go through many different experiences with life. Sometimes we like life, sometimes we hate it or we're angry at it. Sometimes you feel like you're gushing with love for that thing and at other times you feel like that thing has wronged you. And the thing that I started thinking to myself is, what is it that's fundamentally true about my relationship with life, with my relationship with life, the lover? And it's that deep down underneath all of the problems, I love life, but I don't have to always like life. in order to love it. But when you decide, you know what? I do love life. You know, despite the fact that we decided to make a video outside today and it is pouring with rain and it is far from ideal, I love life. Don't always like it, but I do love it. What is it we need to do to strengthen that relationship? And if you think back to your lover, you know, what is it you need to do to strengthen your relationship with your lover? You need to get good at forgiving certain things. you know, there are certain things that life has done to you that you need to get good at letting go of. There are certain things that you need to accept about life to say this is the way life is sometimes and I accept it and instead of wishing that my partner were different, I'm going to accept certain things about them. Sometimes it's about looking at the best side of life and understanding that there, yes, there's also a worse side of life. There's also life has some really bad habits but I am gonna focus on the best parts of that partner. Sometimes it's saying, I'm gonna be proactive about what I bring to the table with life instead of being entitled. So many people complain about what life isn't giving them, about what they're not getting from life instead of focusing on what they can bring to life, how they can nurture it, how they can be generous with their energy and give more. Sometimes we need to learn how to argue better. You know, not all relationships are about eliminating arguments. It's about arguing better, arguing more productively. You know, if I'm in a fight with life right now, Am I focusing on, you know, what I hate about it or am I focusing on what I could actually do to improve it? You know, life, I believe life is beautiful. I wouldn't do what I do if I didn't believe life was beautiful. But I think life's far from a perfect partner. I think there are two choices we get to make. One, and this is where we really have power. This is where we really have agency because we can't control life, but we can choose to stay. If I love life, I'm gonna stay in this relationship. We can also decide to bring as much as we can possibly bring to that relationship to make it as good as it can possibly be. And I think that's what's really important. And as I was thinking about this concept, I started thinking about my retreat program and, you know, that has been in my lifetime the most special thing that I have created. The retreat is like the ultimate vow that you take to work on that relationship with life. I mean, it works on two relationships. It works on your relationship with yourself, but also your relationship with life. And those are the two foundational relationships of everything else you do and experience in life. So many of the physical parts of life we cannot change. We can't change tragedies, we can't change disasters, we can't change unpredictable events in our lives day to day, we can't change our own aging, we can't change some of the certainties of life, which are the uncertainties and the way time moves on. But what we can change is our emotional experience of those things. And ultimately, it's the emotional experience we have of life that determines the quality of our lives. I love life and I choose to stay. And because I choose to stay in that relationship, I would be a fool not to make that relationship as good as it can possibly be. So my plea to you today is to try the retreat program so that you can change your experience of that relationship. Life is a lover. What relationship will you choose to have with that lover? That is going to determine everything in your life. And I promise you, investing in that relationship will be the best investment you ever make. Thank you so much for watching. This video is brought to you not by someone who is always happy, not by someone who always feels positive, but by someone who loves life in spite of its flaws and is committed every single day to working on that relationship. I hope you're doing the same. Click the link to try the retreat and I will see you as always in next Sunday's video.
