BITESIZE | A Monk’s Guide to Finding Happiness (Even When Things Don’t Go Your Way) | Haemin Sunim #649

Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Bite-size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 476 of the podcast with Buddhist monk Heyman Sunim. Heyman is a Zen. Buddhist teacher and the author of two Sunday Times best-selling books, including The Beautiful When Things Don't Go Your Way, Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times. In this clip, we discuss the crucially important notion that we always have a choice in how we interpret and respond to life's challenges, even when things don't go our way.

I guess most people think it is a good thing when things do go their way. But one of the central cases you make in this book, and it's a provocative title, I really like it, is that we don't always want things to go our way, because when they don't go our way, there's real opportunity, isn't there? Yes. And we don't know whether we'll be happy, you know, if everything goes away like the way we wanted.

Like for example, you know, uh somebody who just fall in love and and imagine that uh if I get to marry that person, then I will be happy forever. And then actually this person gets to marry and only after two, three years later they are getting divorced. So you don't know. Just because things are going like the way you wanted, this is going to bring happiness to you. We are we simply do not know.

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