Dr. David Lieberman: The Psychology of Happiness - Project Inspire Convention 2016

So we'll begin by saying good nice to see you all here. Uh I think this is Torney time. So as always we thank them for their amazing streaming capability and I actually give a weekly talk in Lakewood where I live and Torney time uh is in charge involved with doing that. So if you go to torreny time.com and punch in my name you'll see all the uh shim on there. Nice to see you. Okay. So I like to make these talks as practical and as useful as possible as you move along. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know. I'd like for you to know before we begin that um some time ago I was in Muny and I was speaking at Shabaton and they asked me to introduce myself and I said I'm a little uncomfortable introducing myself but they said you know we don't have anyone to introduce the speaker. I'm sorry. So they asked me if one of my kids would do it. So I asked one of my kids thinking not in a zillion years they would. And one of them stepped up to the plate, introduced me and he's been doing it ever since. So with your permission, I would like to ask Aron Shim to introduce me and then I'll begin speaking. You want to stand in a chair? What? Want to stand on the chair? Sure. Okay. [Applause] Go ahead. Go ahead, Dr. Billy women is an incredible speaker and award-winning author with a renowned insight to the human condition book which have been translated into 26 languages and included to your time best sellers have sold more than 1 million copies worldwide. [Applause] Ah gosh delicious. All righty. So, I'd like to make these talks as practical and useful as possible as we move along. If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, anything is on your mind, feel free to fire away. Anything except home improvement, as my wife will acknowledge, uh, it's not my forte. Let's start with the following question. Why do we care if somebody's rude to us? Somebody embarrasses us, somebody tells sit down, be quiet, somebody doesn't return our phone call or text message or email, or you're driving along and you let someone into your lane and they don't give you that nice. Anyone else bothered by that? You're driving, you let someone in, and you just want them to do this or wave or nod, something, and they just ignore you completely, right? Doesn't it bother you? Right? Okay. How is it somebody else's behavior, someone who you don't even know, may not even like, may never even see again, can cause you to feel an emotional pain, cause you to feel hurt, frustrated, embarrassed, or angry. Right? Fair question. And two, why is it that our response is not always consistent? You know that sometimes you're in the kind of mood you wake up, it doesn't matter what anyone says, you're looking for a fight. Ladies, you're looking to cry, right? The person doesn't say the wrong thing, you're just going to pretend that he did, right? Other times though, you wake up in the morning and you're feeling emotionally bulletproof. Nothing is going to throw you off your game. Nothing is going to bother you. So, we have two questions on the table. Is this going to be difficult if I keep pacing back and forth for you? Are you sure? Okay. So, two questions. One, why do we care? How is it somebody else's behavior can cause us to feel an emotional pain? And two, why is our response not always consistent? And if we understand the mechanism that causes us to care, we can dial it down and not find ourselves hurt or frustrated or embarrassed by difficult people again. And that's the objective in the next 20 minutes or so. Worthy your goal. Go team. Okay. So, here's how it works in a nutshell. Human beings are wired by Hashem to have a sense of self-esteem. We're wired to like who we are. The million-dollar question is, where does a person go to gain self-esteem? If we had more time, we go back and forth. And I hear some very good and some not good answers. But in a nutshell, here's how it works. There essentially three forces within every person. You've got the body, the ego, and the soul. Body wants to do what feels good. The ego the horror wants to do what looks good. Our soul on ashama wants to do what truly is good. The alarm clock goes off in the morning and they all battle it out. Anytime a person overindulges in the body eats in excess excess sleep excess entertainment temporarily it feels good. How do you feel about yourself afterwards? Blah. Right? Answer with the ego. Anytime you buy something you can't afford. Make a joke at someone else's expense. Think of the ego by the way as a projection machine. A movie of how you want the rest of the world to see you. And the wider the chasm, the bigger the difference between who I am and this image, the more draining it is. And you know this is true in your own lives. Whenever you try to put on errors, whenever you try to put on a facade, put on a show, do something, twist, contort, change, move away from who you are and what you are merely to accommodate somebody else's perception. When you sell yourself out so that they'll like you, do you like yourself in the end? No. Do they like you in the end? No. No. Nobody likes somebody. Nobody respects somebody who gives up their beliefs, their values merely to win the praise and approval of other people. And that's what the Yates does. It's an image. It projects an image of what we're not, but how we want people desperately to see us. And the self-esteem, the real me and the image are in a seessaw. When one goes up, the other goes down. So the more I generally like me, the smaller the ego. The less I like me, the bigger the ego. The ego exists only to compensate for my own feelings of insecurity, embarrassment, shame, inferiority. It's an illusion. It's there to protect me. Which is why you can never have a person with high self-esteem and a big ego. They don't go together. A big ego, the loud, obnoxious person. He's got to tell the world how great he is because they'll never find out on their own. But real true self-esteem produces humility. We'll see why this comes in handy in a moment. So you have the body wants to do what feels good. The ego that wants to do what looks good. And now we have our soul and a shama that wants to do what truly is good. When we make a choice to do what's right and responsible in spite of what feels good or looks good, that is how we gain self-esteem. When we make a choice to do what's right and responsible in spite of what feels good or looks good, that is how we gain self-esteem with this beautiful gift that we call free will. And only human beings are endowed with free will. Right? A horse can't look at a bail of hay and think, "Hey, that looks good, but I've got a wedding coming up." Right? Only human beings are capable of feeling like doing one thing and instead choose to do something else. And that is a Torah definition of freedom. The rest of the world definition of freedom is being able to do whatever you want, whatever you feel like doing. Taurus says, "No, real freedom is being able to do what you want to do, really want to do, what your nishama wants to do in spite of what you feel like doing in the moment." That's real freedom. As perkyavo says, who is strong? A person who can rise above their nature. So very nice. What does this have to do with whether or not I'm annoyed or frustrated by other people? And the answer is as follows. We said that human beings are wired to have a sense of self-esteem. So if I don't like me very much, where then am I turning to feel good about myself? If I'm making poor choices and I lose self-resect for me, where then do I turn to make me feel good? Yeah. That's when I turn to the rest of the world and I insist that you like me. I demand that you respect me. And if I don't get it, what's my response? Anger, frustration, resentment. or turned inside. Guilt, anxiety, and depression. See, make no mistake. Everyone likes people to like them. Right? When I'm done speaking, of course, I like a standing ovation. The question is, the question is, if I don't get it, will I become upset, enraged, never come back? I personally think why risk it? But see, make no mistake. Look, everyone likes people to like them with few exception. But if you don't get the praise and approval, what does it mean? See, we too quickly attach a meaning to what this person says and does and give it a relevance that it doesn't uh that it that it shouldn't have. Let me give give you an example. Let's say you're driving along and this time somebody cuts you off on the road, right? Somebody just cuts you off. First of a show of hands. Who here wants to see what that person looks like? Nah, some honest people. You. Yeah. Okay. Who's going to bother you more? A nice old lady driving like this on the way to her own Levia or a young guy driving with a beer bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other, steering with his knee. Nice old lady or young guy? Shout it out. Young guy. Now, there's only always one person that says, "Old lady, where are you?" I am that old lady. You are that old lady. Nonsense. I have shoes older than you, right? Because I used to live in Boca Raton. I get it. Shouldn't be on the road. Why are we more bothered by that young guy the chairs? I'm sorry. There's a few seats up here. Um, I'm sorry. You have to uh Yeah, there's a couple seats up here. They're a little extra priced, but you know. Okay. Thank you. Oh, it's very nice. Oh, we can use these chairs, too. [Music] Yeah. Oh, well, I don't know. You put your feet up, right? [Music] No, I'm fine. Thanks. So, why are we more bothered by the young guy than the nice little lady? Cuz we assume that the nice little lady probably what? Didn't even see our car, right? Let alone dashboard of her own car. But the young guy did it to me on because he doesn't. Look at the insanity of this. You're driving along, then you almost get into an accident, then you speed up, risking your life to see what this person looks like, to see how angry you should be. Who's the crazy one? See, the truth is everyone should get put in that nice little lady category. But when our own ego gets engaged, right? It doesn't happen. We can't see the person's fragility, the vulnerability, the helplessness when we are too ego oriented. Now having high self-esteem and a low ego doesn't just allow for us to be happy. It allows for us to be sane. And let me explain why. The med says that Adam the first man could see from one end of the earth to the other with perfect clarity completely unfettered. What that means on one level is before the yates entered man's perception was completely clear. Only once the ator the serpent incarnate became internalized did man begin to see through this cloudy lens of eye. The degree to which we accept responsibility for the quality of our lives. We purge ourselves of this ego. It's the ego that blocks perspective. Perspective is synonymous with sanity. When a person loses perspective, it means that he's lost his s his sanity. Perspective is my ability to see, accept, and respond to my world. The eight sahora does is it colors our perception. It doesn't want us to see. If we see, doesn't want us to accept. If we accept, it doesn't want us to respond. And that's what being emotionally unhealthy does. It keeps us from seeing reality. I gave this uh example. It's in the book. I gave in a previous talk. Those of you that in the talk, please forgive my indulgence. I happen to love this mush. It takes two minutes and it's about zombies and you can't beat zombies, right? Who doesn't love zombies? So, there's a man who woke up one morning insisting he was a zombie. He turned to his wife and he said, "Kyle, I'm a zombie." She said, "You're not a zombie. Go back to bed." He said, "I'm telling you, I'm a zombie." She said, "You know what? I'm going to get your mother on the phone." Now, you think that would be enough to shake any guy into reality, but not enough. So, gets mom on the phone. Mom says, "What's the problem?" Says, "I don't have a problem." Well, she says, "Your wife tells me you think you're a zombie." He says, "I don't think I'm a zombie. I know I'm a zombie." She said, "Okay," she's getting nowhere, but she said, "Don't you think I would know if I gave birth to a zombie?" He says, "No, I became a zombie later on in life." Okay. Goes down, makes an appointment psychiatrist who doesn't take Obamacare, so it works out. As we all know, Obama and Ebola, same gamatria. Interesting food for thought. Little Torah in there, people. So, it goes down. Psychiatrist says, "So, what's the problem?" Once again, the man says, "I don't have a problem." Psychiatrist says, "Okay, let me ask you a question. You think you're a zombie?" "Okay." "Do zombies bleed?" Man says, "Of course we don't bleed. We're the undead." Psychiatrist says, "Okay." He goes over to his desk drawer, takes out a pin, walks over to the man, takes the man's finger, takes the pin, and goes. The man is staring at amazement at his finger in four or five minutes in complete silence. And then finally he looks up and he says, "Well, what do you know? Zombies do bleed." Moral of the story, some people will do anything to avoid facing reality. I want to tell you a true story, Mish. I was speaking to a woman who I was just just she was I was just getting nowhere with her. And I said, "You know what? You are delusional." So like any reasonable person, she hangs up on me. And so she she calls back later on and she said and my wife always tells me you know when you see their tears welling up with stop talking that's what she said. So she calls back she goes I want you to know Dr. Lieberman you really offended me when you said that I was delusional. She said I almost fell right off my unicorn. Now I didn't know if she was serious or not. So what do you say to that? You can't laugh but you can't ignore it. So I just said oh I got to call one second on that one. and just that's how we left it. Um, but another like a lot of funny stories about this woman, but we'll skip them for now. Anyway, people will twist and contort. They'll change. They'll do everything to avoid accepting responsibility for their obligations. But that's when emotional illness sets in. And we know this is true in our own lives. Whenever we try to escape from reality, we end up paying a bigger price. Hashem is the ultimate reality. Torah is the ultimate truth. If we move away from that, we move away from emotional equilibrium. You can't be healthy and solid if you ignore your responsibilities. We know people that try and divorce themselves from life. They say, "I don't want any pressure. I don't want to deal with the stress and the strain." And they move away from the swift current of life. Are they not the most neurotic people that you know? Right? Because real mental health comes from engaging life. Not just mental health, but pleasure. Somebody said in a previous talk actually it was uh Yako Solomon Rabbi Solomon in the uh at the keynote yesterday Rav Noak Weinberg would say what's the opposite of pleasure right it's not pain it's comfort real pleasure is living life comfort is an escape from life real pleasure is engaging life anyone here play a sport thanks 500 people two hands go up one is my son thank Paddle ball. You go, girl. Twice a week. You wear goggles, right? Important. Tuesdays and Thursdays. I play football every single day. You pay four ball. Okay, fine. 40 years. For 40 years. Okay. Oh. Oh, wow. We won't repeat that. But that was funny. So, you could you could take somebody's playing a sport and they could be battered, bruised. It's like, you know, his arm is hanging like this or it could be over there and you don't feel the pain when you're engaged in life. But you're sitting on the bleachers watching a game. I want you to know everyone clutches about everything. You're sitting on the bleachers, the guy next to you sneezing, this one's coughing, this hot dog tastes funny, maybe it's going to rain. Everyone's complaining when you're sitting on the sidelines. Real engaging in life, living life, right, is not only pleasurable, but it keeps us sane. It keeps us normal. See, what does Hashem do to help us keep moving in the right direction? He attaches pleasure to meaning. Which means then that the more inherent meaning something has, the more pleasure you can extract from it. Again, the more meaning something has, the more pleasure you can extract from it. Less meaning, less pleasure. Sitting on the couch, eating cheese doodles, flipping through the magazine is comfortable. It's not pleasurable. So, how long can you do it before you go completely insane? There's no real meaning, so there's no real pleasure. It's an escape from life. It's not living life. Rabbiti Felheim, who's here, one of the speakers, fantastic. He gives a great marshall. He says, "Look at any retirement ad, whether metaphorically or literally, they all have the same theme, a glass of lemonade and a hammock. What are they selling? Be out of pain. Be out of pain. Forget about living a fulfilled life. Forget about pleasure. Forget about satisfaction. Just they're selling. Be out of pain." There is a product on the market called Tylenol Goabs. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Tylenol goabs does that regular Tylenol does not do? Nothing. Well, no. Good guess, but it does something. What's that? I don't have to take you have to take with water. Excellent. Very good. Sorry. Yes. Hey, we ever met before, by the way. I'm kidding. You don't have to take it with water. God forbid you can't find a cup of water fast enough. You can chew it'll dissolve. Where can't you find water? But they cater to people's fear of being in pain for two seconds. I know somebody that takes concert, which is for ADHD, which is fine. It helps him to focus, but he also takes ambient to fall asleep at night. And I said, "But you don't have a sleeping problem. Why do you take ambient?" And he said, "Well, otherwise it takes me like 15, 20 minutes to fall asleep." And I thought, "How lazy can a person be? [Laughter] You don't want to spend 15 minutes falling asleep. But this is the culture. This is the culture that everything is easy and comfortable, disposable, personalized, customized, streaming to my fingertips. Chair's not comfortable, get another one. Too hot, turn the air conditioner, too cold, turn on the heat. Spouse is bothering you, get another one. That's not a heter, by the way. I got in trouble once with that. Woman came home said, "Sorry, honey." The doctor said, "Yeah, we were at a pace program some time ago and my delicious four-year-old, not one of these guys, my girl was watching. We don't have a television at home, but every once in a while when we go away, it's, you know, the hotel you can uh put on something." So was Dora the Explorer. My my daughter's a big fan of that. And she needed a little restroom break. So she said, "Daddy, can you stop it?" I said, "I can't stop it. It's it's live television." Concept didn't exist for her, you know, cuz you have a DVD. You could stop it. The idea that Dora wouldn't wait for her to go to the bathroom was completely foreign. In other words, why can't everything be? But you understand as adults, that is the the theme that we have in our heads. And we equate comfort to happiness. The more comfortable something is, the happier we should be. And that's insane because if you only see comfort, you'll end up shortcircuiting your ability to gain self-esteem. Because where does self-esteem come from? It comes from doing what's right and responsible irrespective of what feels good regardless of what looks good. It's what is good. That's how you gain self-esteem. There was a slogan back popular in the early 80s. If it feels good, do it. What sheer insanity and complete anathema to Torah values. If you want to feel good, do good. Okay. Any questions? Okay. Now, you want to talk about happiness, you have to talk about the opposite cuz I'll say that in order to understand something, you have to look at things in contrast. You understand darkness from lightness, sweet from bitter. So, what's the opposite of joy of pleasure? Depression, right? I know you're thinking, "Wow, I thought this was supposed to be unhappiness. Why is this getting a little heavy?" H how do people describe depression? Being in a rut. My life is going nowhere on a treadmill. Cuz I'll say depression is like a taste of death. And the reason is because in 120, maybe a little less depending on how much you've eaten the shabatone. That sounded funnier in my head. You should know before I said it out loud. But it's true. Yes. Some of the best truths are Yeah. In 120 plus years our soul and ashama will separate from the body that the next world alam haba is a world of being. Alam haz this world is a world of doing. So when we are not moving our lives in a meaningful productive direction that feeling that we get of depression is that feeling of that separation between an shama and our body. That feeling that we're just stuck because we're not moving. See, Khazal explained that we're wired for growth. We're wired to move. There's no such thing as the status quo here in this world. You're either growing or dying, living or decaying. So, when a person isn't moving their life in a meaningful direction, depression is a failsafe mechanism to wake us up. It is an emotional pain in much the same way as we have physical pain receptors. If I put my hand in a hot stove and didn't have physical pain receptors, what would happen to my flesh? It would burn. and I wouldn't even know it. So depression isn't Hashem saying, you know what, you're not being responsible. You're not doing what's right. I'm going to add salt to that wound. I'll make you depressed on top of it. No, it is a mechanism meant to alert us that emotional pain to wake us up, to shake us up so that we realize we've got to be doing something different. We've got to be making a different type of choice. Now, we're painting with a very broad brush here. You need candid shot. Thank you. You're welcome. My wife always wants to know that every picture of me in the paper has me with a fork in my hand and food in front of me. So now there's one picture without food as the coffee cup is calling to me. Okay. When a once again we're painting with a broad brush. So we can never look at another person and say, "Oh, this person is is unhappy. They're depressed because they're not making good choices." God forbid. We're not saying that at all. There are different types of depression. What we are saying is for most of us who are reasonably healthy which is most of you with the exception of a few of you which I've noted right here if you can see me afterwards uh the more good choices we make the better we feel about ourselves and our lives and and that's that's not aish but the problem is people don't put it into action you know I wrote this book as you could see it's not as self- serving as it sounds since they were given away for free but it's on free will it explains it explains the blueprints to to understanding what free will is but the half second half of the book is all on galvanizing our willpower setting goals uh focusing self-control because you can intellectually understand what you need to do but unless you're able to take it to the next level it's useless so when a person what's inspiration when a person feels inspired that's their nama that's their soul speaking to them saying wow I really feel inspired and at those moments of inspiration you feel like you can do anything you could start a new job, move to a new city, clean out the junk drawer. But then that moment of inspiration fades because when we become inspired, that's our shama. Our job here is to capture that inspiration and bring it to life. See, we're not the religion that says spirituality here, physicality here. No, we say take the physical, infuse it with spirituality and elevate it. We make a braha on an apple. You walk out of the bathroom, a braha, see an old fan of braha. You elevate it. You bring it to a higher level. When a person becomes inspired, they have to take action in the physical world. And then what happens is that next window opens and that next window and that next window and Hashem sends us these moments of inspiration, moments of perfect crystal clear perspective. Let me give you a great analogy to explain this. Let's say you've got a person driving along and they get into a severe car accident and after months of surgeries and re rehabilitation they're able to walk out of the hospital. What would be their level of joy? Ecstatic. Now take the rest of us. You're driving along from point A to point B. Somebody cuts you off. Maybe the nice old lady. Maybe you. Sorry about that. And you moved to Oh, you moved. Oh, you moved your seat. Thank you. Right. And you get just a lap full of hot coffee. You narrowly averted an accident. Like, ah, thank you, Hashem. How long does that last? Two seconds. Now, let's say you're driving along from point A to point B. And nothing happens. You say, "Thank you, Hashem." Huh? How is it that the more pain, the more effort, the more challenges, the more we endure, the more deep and lasting our gratitude? You think it'd be the other way around? You think that if we arrive, we wake up in the morning, everything's working good, we say, "Thank you, Hashem." How is it that that guy walking out of the hospital ends up with a more deep, lasting, permanent sense of gratitude than the person where nothing happens? Doesn't that sound backwards to you? Somebody went over to Rab Shak and said, "I'm making a little kittish. My wife had a baby girl." And he said, "Oh, very nice. Why a little kiddish?" The man said, "Well, I'm just making a little kittish." He said, "Let me ask you a question. If it had taken you 20 years to have this baby and you went through endless tila and surgeries and procedures and expenses and investments and after 20 years you had a baby, how big would your kittish be? He'd make a grand huge kittish. So Rashak said, "Let me ask you a question. Hashem saved you from all of that and you're making a small kish. Shouldn't it be the other way around? But that's us. We are so just darn selfabsorbed. We need to be shaken by the root just to appreciate what we have. And now I want to walk you through the psychological mechanics. If you lose me, it's in the book. So you'll get it there. But understand what perspective does. Again, perspective, right? We gain perspective from the quality of our choices. The more good choices I make, higher self-esteem, ego shrink, ego blocks perspective. So, if the ego small, I see reality clearly. Reality is synonymous with my sanity, my ability to see, accept, and respond to my world. That's perspective. So, I have a wide perspective that instantly leads to humility. And anov, the definition of anov means undistorted. It means a perception void of personal bias. I see clearly. That means I have suddenly have an intense sense of deep humility. That humility leads instantly to gratitude because I appreciate all I have. And gratitude is intimately linked with what emotion. Ah sima right joy. Think of the people in your life who have a deep sense of gratitude. They are the happiest of all. So again perspective, humility, gratitude. Simka. Simka. Now look at it the other way around. I make poor choices. I'm a lousy human being. I don't do what's right and responsible. Self-esteem decreases. Ego increases to compensate for those feelings. Right? It wants to make up for me feeling badly. Why should I feel bad when I can blame you? Ego engages. So my ego is big. I don't have humility. I have what? Arrogance. Arrogance produces what? Ingratitude. I'm always one thing away from something that'll make me happy. Ingratitude produces a miserable human being. Now you understand your friends and family. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. Which means then that ultimately sim joy, happiness is in our hands. And the research bears this out. I'm not going to go through the studies now. Harvard University shows right here 90% of a person's happiness is completely up to them. Kazal will say let's bring that closer to 100%. Now I in no way shape or form am I saying a person that has difficulties has challenges right in that moment can and should be and will be happy. But think of an take an average day where you had a lot of obstacles, a lot of issues, a lot of stuff to deal with and you rose to the occasion and you dealt with it and you worked through it and at the end of the day you're like, "Wow, that was a great day. Now think of a day where nothing happens. It's just nothing going on and you're just bored." End of the day, you're like, "That was a lousy day." Now, you think the day where there's no challenges, no tribulations, no trials would be the better day. But it's not because we're not wired for that. We're wired for growth. We're wired to move. We're wired to triumph. We're wired to overcome. Okay. We just have What time do we go to? Did anyone know? Does anyone know? 8:40. Yikes. Okay, fine. So, let's just see what we will uh get to and what we won't. I know. I appreciate that, but the next speaker is not going to be fine. Okay, fine. Okay. So, all right. We'll we'll do the best we can. Perkyos. Ethics of the fathers talks about four desirable traits. Who is wealthy? Who is honored? Who is wise? Who is strong? Right. According to the rest of the world, who is honored? The rest of the world. Rich. Rich. Right. Powerful. According to Torah, who is honored? He who honors others or humble. Good. According to the rest of the world, who is strong? Person who can lift weights. According to the to who is strong, a person can rise above their nature. According to the rest of the world, who is happy? I'm sorry. Who is wealthy? He has a lot of money. According to Tor who is wealthy, right? Appreciate. But by the way, you have to know your audience. We were at a Shabaton, which we do a lot as you can probably tell. And the my little guy, not not this one, was complaining that his sister had gotten a bigger cookie than he did. So I see the rabbi walk by and I said, "Ah, here's my chance to show him how brilliant his scholar and residence is." So I kneel down next to him. I said, "Sweetheart, it says in perkyos, ethics of the fathers. Who is wealthy? He who is happy with his lot." And he looks at his cookie and he looks at me and says, "I don't have half a little. Who here can tell me the striking distinction between the Torah definition and the rest the world definition between wealthy hon and strong and wise. What jumps out at us? Ego. I'm think it's in my head. People who can read minds here? Anybody? Ego. Ego. Good. Yeah. Ego. By the way, in my house, you can't grow with ego. Why'd you eat your sister? Ego. Why'd you do that? Ego. Ego. Ego. Ego. Ego. Right. Why you late for school? Ego. Can't buy your shoes. You're not in the closet. Ego, ego, right? Can't go wrong. One is the rest of the world. Contrast and comparison. I can feel strong, wise, wealthy if I compare myself to somebody else. Right? The Tora says, "No, it's not self-comparison. It's self-rowth." Because if you want to feel good about yourself, build yourself up by comparing yourself to other people, what happens when somebody wealthier you walks into the room? Where does your self-esteem go? Poof. Because it wasn't self-esteem. Who is an inflated ego? Real self-esteem. Who is wealthy? A person appreciates what he has. Who is strong? Person who can rise above their nature. Right? This is not about you and me versus me. It's about me. Me. That by the way is how a narcissistic opera singer warms up. [Laughter] Me once again sounded funnier in my head. It was good. Okay. Fine. Thank you. Please explain to the person next to you. Okay. All right, we have to wrap up. But Lameisa, the Olympics have three places. Gold, silver, and bronze. Do you know the research shows that the silver medalist is actually unhappy while the bronze medalist is thrilled? Why? Right? The silver guy is thinking so close. The bronze guy is thinking, "Woo, I was almost with those losers." So even in a system that sets us up by contrast and comparison is still doomed to fail. Which is why the Ram Khal says envy rots the bones. Because if you're busy focusing on what this person has, what they want, you're looking, seeing what they they've got that you want. I got news for you. If it was good for you, you'd have it. You want to be happy? Make good choices. It's so easy to blame. It's so easy to blame the rest of the world for who you are and what you are. Circumstances, parents, conditions. One second, please. And you know, I just want to talk very very quickly about this idea with parents. I used to start off my parenting class the following way. And I stopped. I used to say, "You're going messed up your kids, just a matter of how bad." I stopped and one time, I kid you not, a teenager turned up, turned around, pointed to his mother, and said, "I told you you messed up my life." And I stopped doing that. You know, somebody that grows up, it's important to understand is that you can only give what you've got. Right? So a parent that isn't able to give to a child, right? You give respect, you give love. If you don't have it, what do you have to give? Right? We see sometimes that how somebody treats us is a reflection of our self-worth. It's not. It is a confession of their character. It is a symbol of their own midos. It is emblematic of how they feel about themselves. And I'm running out of big SAT fancy words, right? We treat people based on how we feel about ourselves. You give love, you give respect. Once again, Rev Noinberg, that's how I used to say, "If you don't love you, don't love me." Tomorrow, we're going to be talking about, I hope you'll join us for successful relationships with difficult people because it's important to understand one thing to work on ourselves. And we think, "Wow, okay, fine. I got the blueprints for happiness, but here's the problem. I've got crazy people in my life that are making it miserable." So, tomorrow we're going to talk about that and we'll take one quick question. Go ahead. You answered it. I answered it. Okay. Okay. Fine. Very good. So with that, let me thank you all for joining Mr. Sham.