Simon Benn argues that parents can't simply choose happiness because past conditioning creates an inner critic that dictates mood unconsciously. He compares the mind to a clean wall covered in graffiti: the wall itself is unchanged, but negative thoughts from childhood and society keep us from seeing it. Recognizing this gap between you and your conditioning is how you reclaim control.
Hello, good morning everybody. I hope you are absolutely fantastic this morning. I'm here today on the 3rd of July with day 3 of 31 Ways to Be a Happier Parent. So today we're talking about choosing your mood, choosing your mood. So people say that happiness is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Well, if that's true, then most of us aren't choosing our mood most of the time, are we? Because we are worried about our kids, we are worried about the weather, we are worried about what people think of us. We are worried about whether we're making enough money. We're worried about whether we can pay the mortgage. We are worried about the future. We are worried. So we are not choosing our mood, clearly, most of the time. So why is that? Most people would look for How do I choose my mood? Well, when you're in a low mood, when you're feeling unhappy, somebody tells you to pull yourself together and shake it, shake yourself out of that low mood. Does that work? No, it just makes us a little bit more grumpy, doesn't it? Well, it does with me. Maybe it's just me. Somebody telling us to buck our ideas up doesn't tend to work. And telling ourselves that, to do that, trying to tell us, pull ourselves together and do that, does that work? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Everybody's obsessed with the how-to, the how-to, that— but the how-to tends to just lead us into a spiral. Well, how, how come I don't know how to be happy? How come I need to fake it? How, how can I fake it until I make it? How can I, how can I— And it just gets more and more complicated. What changes then? So what changes for us is when we understand what is choosing our mood if we're not choosing it. And in a word, it's the past. It's the conditioning that we've picked up in the past. Conditioning sounds a bit psychological, doesn't it? It's the rubbish that we believed unconsciously, we've taken in unconsciously from the outside world and believed it's true. So for me, it's, um, I'm, I'm not good enough. For me, it's I'm ugly. For me, it's I'm not a good enough entrepreneur. I'm not a good enough businessman. I'm not a good enough son. Have I ever had that? No. I'm not a fast enough learner. I'm rubbish at DIY. I am barking up the wrong tree with all this kids' happiness stuff. People tell me that all the time, um, and sometimes I believe that. Sometimes I believe that. So we are not choosing our mood most of the time because we're believing the rubbish from the past, and it is as simple as that. But we don't know that. When we know that, that sets us free. We are not choosing our mood most of the time because the past is choosing for us. It's as simple as that. And that realization, getting that in your, in your bones, this can only really be experienced Listening to my words, I can I can only point you in this until you understand that kind of in your bones. Then the logical kind of the the logical part of your part of your brain understanding that well first off it's gonna it's gonna be arguing it's probably gonna be arguing. With me. You're probably gonna— you're probably gonna say Simon is making it far too simple. Um, he doesn't know what my life is like. He doesn't know what I— look, you were born without any of this. You were born without that inner critic. You were a perfect— I'm looking around for a You were born a perfectly blank piece of paper, and then yeah, so you you were born a blank piece of paper, or you were born like a perfect perfectly clean wall that's just been built, and then loads of people wrote horrible graffiti on that wall. Here's the thing. You are the wall, not the graffiti on the wall. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Weathering Storms With Joanne Morales, Jennifer Hartwig and Rebecca Dominguez
