Quit Being Miserable: You Have a Right to Protect Your Peace – Why Are We Still Doing That?
No Vacation Required
Protecting Your Peace: The Art of Curating Your Joy
Why do we allow external forces – from holiday obligations to social media drama – to dictate our moods and steal our joy? We dive into the "passive misery" often accepted during the holiday season and challenge the tradition of staying loyal to situations that no longer serve us. We explore the tools needed to build resilience and choose fulfillment by viewing life through the lens of a curator.
From understanding the "negativity bias" of the brain to shifting the way we view obligation, this episode provides a psychological roadmap for protecting your peace. Learn how to use positive psychology to broaden your awareness and why being highly selective with your energy is the key to building a life you don't need a break from.
Onward and Inward,
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Why are we still doing that?
(01:21) Mind Share: Challenging holiday platitudes and "joy-stealing" advice
(04:02) The holiday stress trap and fractured relationships
(04:59) Evolution of selection: From holiday "running around" to selective travel
(07:42) Living Deliberately: Curating your life like an art exhibit
(10:46) Negativity Bias: Why our brains focus on the cracks
(15:28) Positive Psychology: Flourishing despite the "unpleasant"
(22:51) Worth the Time: The power of a specific gratitude journal
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
You Are the Curator: Your life is a gallery that you have the authority to manage, which involves both "culling" things that diminish your joy and being "additive" by bringing in what fulfills you.
The Cost of Poor Curation: Staying in unhealthy situations out of obligation often perpetuates problems; doing what works for you gives the relationship a better chance of functioning for everyone involved.
Broaden and Build: Positive emotions like joy and gratitude broaden your awareness, making you more creative and better at connecting with others.
The Five-Person Audit: Examine the five people you spend the most time with and prioritize those who leave you feeling better than when you arrived.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Why are we still being loyal?: https://novacationrequired.com/blog/the-no-vacation-required-podcast-episode-11
Why are we still not quitting?: https://novacationrequired.com/blog/the-no-vacation-required-podcast-episode-12
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Kent
Welcome to the No Vacation Required podcast, where we break down tired traditions and outdated thinking by asking the question, why are we still doing that? It's all about building a life you don't need a break from, being more present and fulfilled, and showing up in a complicated world that needs your voice and unique talents.
We've spent the last few weeks talking about quitting and why we stay loyal to things that don't serve us. Now, right before the stress of the holidays hits, we're asking a fundamental question. Why are we staying miserable? Why do we constantly let external forces—the 24-hour news cycle, a frustrating family member, social media drama—dictate our mood and steal our joy?
Well, we're done with passive misery. We're done letting fear or obligation take all of our time. So this week, we're talking about your absolute non-negotiable right to protect your own peace. We're diving into the tools you need to build resilience, choose fulfillment, and finally, confidently say yes to what serves you and no to what doesn't.
Caanan
It's time for Mindshare, and I don't actually have one for this week. I've kind of been focused on this episode, so I hope you have something.
Kent
I do have something. I almost didn't have something because I think I realized just this week that when I think about Mindshare, I tend to think about the podcast ideas we have swirling around. So then I notice everything that aligns with the podcast we're going to do. It's the old, like, you tell your friend you never see a red car, and then all you see are red cars.
But this one is too infuriating to pass up. And in more funny news, I think it's the exact same thing I brought up a year ago, whatever that podcast topic was, but I saw on social media somebody with a bajillion followers talking about how you just need to get together with your family and make the holidays work because life is too short. Everybody's going to die. All of this unhealthy stuff, which like every other thing we talk about is a million potential podcasts and these things will come out in podcasts. Right. Just you wait until you hear what we have in store for you. But just this stupid platitudinal old school, you know, they raised you so you owe them everything, period or whatever, or it's your uncle.
Caanan
I have no patience for it, but I'm going to resist sort of popping off because it's so like on topic that I'm going to reserve comment except to say it's so basic. I have no patience for it.
Kent
Yeah, I want to say though, the reason this is worthy of my deciding to do mind share, which is really just what we're talking about this week, it makes me really, really sad because you and I are joyful people. People deserve joy. And family in particular gives so many people so much stress. And this message of it doesn't matter, they're your fill in the blank, parent, uncle, brother, whatever, is so damaging to people. And it's what leads to this constant sense of guilt and this stealing joy, which you and I are loudly proclaiming, let's move past that.
So why are we still staying miserable? We know so many people with fractured relationships with family and friends. And as the holidays are upon us, I think we talked about this last year too, it becomes such a big deal for people. Heck, we even get into this with our our clients wondering how to use their personality to successfully navigate uncomfortable decisions and family dynamics and all of that.
Caanan
Yeah, because this is a joyous, supposed to be a joyous time, but it's actually pretty fraught for a lot of people who don't have great relationships with their family members. So I'm glad we're getting into it again.
Kent
Oh, for sure. And really, this could be, this is appropriate for any time of the year. And I could use personal stories from any time of the year. But since it's the holiday season and people tend to ask us for advice and help regarding this kind of thing, we're going to use a holiday example. And I'll just say, you know, when we first got together, we did the typical, you know, running around to see everybody for that we could for every holiday and that whole thing. But we quickly, quickly kind of said like, that isn't good for anybody. If we're running around, the people we're seeing don't feel fulfilled, we certainly don't feel fulfilled. We feel crazy. So pretty early in, we started being selective about who we would see when. And we started dividing up loved ones, family members. We'll go here for this holiday. We'll go here for this holiday.
Caanan
Yeah, this is kind of like classic first level selection process. The people we'll go through, like I'll divide up the family.
Kent
For sure, that's not uncommon. But then we got to the point where, because we're so about joy and lightness and all of that, like why put yourself in situations that are stressful and why be around stressful people where we would decide to travel over certain holidays? I remember one year we went to Europe over Christmas and New Year's and people were so mad at us, but it's ridiculous because I know some of the things we're going to get into. If your family thinks holiday or if you think holidays are the only time for connection or meaningful connection, I hate to disappoint you or them, but it's completely wrong. Connection can happen when it needs to happen, when you want it to happen, when everybody's comfortable with it happening.
So we've been through this whole range up until now where we're totally, you know, selective and as we've talked about recently, free agents, even in this regard. Right. If our relationship, if your, if our relationship with you serves us and all that stuff, we are more than happy to carve out time, but we are not feeling obligated to spend time with somebody just because they're an uncle or whatever. That kind of thinking is ridiculous and it's joy stealing. And we're always just trying to help people understand you have a choice. You can be selective.
Caanan
Last week we talked about that experience where if you try to quit something that doesn't serve you, people get really angry, even though their behaviors are contributing to your sort of unpleased experience, the experience you're trying to get out of.
Kent
They want you to be uncomfortable right along with them.
Caanan
Exactly. And that plays in big here with the whole holiday thing. This sense of obligation to do things that don't serve you and don't feel good and that you get guilted into doing if you try to step away. So we're here to say, as you just said, Kent, that you are completely in control of your own experience and you are allowed to step away from those things. And we call it, in our life, we call it living deliberately, which I think is a great term for being selective about where you put your time and energy. But I think it's maybe even easier if we kind of call it curating your life, like looking at your life like you're putting together an art exhibit.
Kent
Yeah, you said that phrase to a client recently and it really, it really made sense. Like look at it like this way, this is yours to curate. You're a curator.
Caanan
It's not a Pulitzer Prize winning metaphor, but it works, right? So looking at your time and your joy and being highly selective with where you put your energy because you want to create the most enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling life you possibly can. So I think it's really important to look at your time and energy like you're curating. I want to make it clear, like this podcast, what we're talking about today is not a "choose happy" podcast. We're not Joyologists.
Kent
Don't even. Okay.
Caanan
It's simply a call for you to protect your joy and what is fulfilling to you so that you can be happier and healthier and feel like you have the authority to remove things from your life that no longer serve you.
Kent
But wait, we are going to be Joyologist-y. Yeah, it's the holidays. I hear that holiday music in the background of where you're listening. We are going to be a little joyologisty and talk about this. You know, why do we let people steal our joy? And so many people we talk to and so many clients we work on these things with, work groups and individuals.
Again, this is not a holiday thing. Your best investment is knowing yourself. With YouFinder, you'll uncover your natural strengths, talents, and values through a quick assessment. You'll then get personalized insights to help you on your path. Get started at novacationrequired.com.
It is a year-round thing. People dreading the whatever at work or the conversation and the relationship or the having to go see who... Look at this as we're using the holidays as an overlay for something that's happening constantly. And this is about people, situations, obligations, stealing our joy, stealing this beautiful life, this gallery we're trying to curate, as Caanan said. Why did we let that happen? Well, I made a couple notes. Negativity bias. Our brain naturally pays extra attention to the ugly and the bad and the cracks, which then overwhelms the beautiful things that you have going on, the beautiful items, say, in your gallery. What we give attention to can tend to just bloom in our minds. So we start to create a set point that doesn't really match who we are and most importantly, how we want to put that into the world.
Speaking of that, emotional set point, we all have different baselines for everything, for affect, for happiness. And I think there's so much pressure on these sort of landmark moments, like the holidays, when there's all these people with different emotional set points colliding together, curating. You really have to curate your emotional set point. Like what is going to allow you to have a good experience with these people that you're choosing to spend time with. And sometimes it's not the whole full week holiday blitz. Maybe it's just a weekend or an event or whatever matching how you can thrive, how you can have joy with the situation that you're walking into.
Caanan
Yeah. And to that point, that sense of obligation—like you're supposed to show up in the exact way that other people have determined is correct, and you're supposed to perform in the way that they have determined is correct—is completely unfair. And we've got to just remove that from the gallery we're curating here, because that sense of obligation essentially is like outsourcing your curation. You're letting other people determine how you're supposed to feel and how you're supposed to show up. So really flipping that. And really, if somebody that you care about doesn't appreciate that you want to have a healthier relationship or do something that makes you more joyful in their presence, then that's something to really consider.
Kent
Yeah, so there's a huge cost. What you're talking about is the cost of this poor curation. I think so often people buy into this idea, "I can get through it." We know a lot about that, don't we?
Caanan
Yeah, I'm an expert in "we can get through it."
Kent
Yeah, we can get through it. I think, you know, we'll get into a lot of this stuff at another time, but in my own family, people have flown home early from holidays because there's been such volcanic problems. And the next year, "wait, you're coming back? Do you remember what happened last year? You left early. You flew home early." So there's a cost to this. And if you keep telling yourself, this is what you do, or this is who she is, or this is who they are, you're just perpetuating a problem. These things are not good for anybody. And again, this isn't about not having the relationship, or I mean, it could be. It's doing stuff in a way that actually works for you and therefore gives it a chance of working for the other people involved. It is curation.
Caanan
Yes. And I can start to sound kind of heavy because I get impatient with this because I hate this sense of obligation and people putting their stuff on you and creating really unhappy, unhealthy experiences. Because you and I are very joyful people. It may not sound like it sometimes when I get going.
Kent
Nope, it always sounds.
Caanan
A sense of lightness and ease about us that we're very protective of. We all have the capacity for joy and lightness, and we have to protect it. So look at everything in your life. Free yourself of obligation and consider that you're the curator of this beautiful life that you have the potential to experience. And take it very seriously, very careful with it because you deserve to be happy and you deserve to not have that joy and the lightness diminished.
Kent
So there's several tools rooted in positive psychology and a little more context or some context on positive psychology. It's not about ignoring problems or pretending everything is perfect. It's just a different way to look at things, to look at life, where traditional psychology spent decades kind of diagnosing and, you know, talking about maladies, et cetera. Positive psychology looks at things a different way and asks, how can you flourish? How can you be great, despite the negative things—or the phrase they use in positive psychology is "unpleasant"—despite the unpleasant things that we all encounter and deal with in varying degrees.
So it's about things that make life worth living, human strengths, not just weaknesses, not just focusing on problems and maladies. Positive psychology looks at specific practices, relationships, and institutions that help people build resilience, find meaning, and cultivate authentic happiness. So how does that apply to this? Caanan, do you want to take the first one?
Caanan
Yeah, well, I'm going to just touch on that curator theme one more time because what you were talking about, positive psychology, fits here so well because being a curator is not just about removing things from your life, but it's also additive. So I'm removing things that are no longer serving me, but I'm also bringing in things that fulfill me. And I think this is a key, and this explains a bit better the way we approach life and what brings us joy is bringing in things that make us happier, that make us more fulfilled, so that our life is full of those things and maybe less focused on eliminating things that we don't like, because it's a very sort of negative way to approach. Important, but you need that balance.
So the first tip we have is to kind of rework this idea of obligation that keeps us stuck in situations that don't serve us. Look at your life and find things that either exist or could exist that bring you joy and shift the way you look at obligation so that you're focusing that sense of obligation onto those things. And this means scheduling time for those, blocking out time in your day or your week to do those things as if you had that powerful sense of obligation that is making you do things you don't enjoy. Does that make sense?
Kent
Yeah, flow and engagement, flow and engagement, like seek that out. It is soul nourishing.
Caanan
And naturally, if you're doing that, you're going to have to make some more room in your life to focus on those. So you will naturally start culling things that don't bring you joy or that bring you down?
Kent
Yeah, this also makes me think of positive emotions. And positive emotions are so huge in the talk about positive psychology because they're believed to broaden our moment-to-moment awareness and they build long-term psychological, social, and physical resources. So when you're experiencing emotions like joy, gratitude, even serenity, the research data shows that your mind opens up. And this expanded awareness, because of those positive emotions, makes you more creative, makes you see more possibilities, helps you to solve problems, helps you to connect with others, which leads us right into this whole dilemma of the holidays and how we're spending time. So you really want to be putting yourself in situations where you can experience positive emotions and curate situations that are likely to give you positive emotions because you're going to feel it. It's going to broaden and build, as they say. You start doing that, the more you're going to do it, even in the moment. So if you're in a situation that is enriching for you, have positive emotions. And in that moment, you know this in your life, that perfect coffee date, that perfect whatever, it just starts to swirl within you, the positive emotions, and it emanates then to the person or people you're with. It becomes contagious, and you're filling yourself up with this, and you're putting it out as well.
Caanan
Yeah, and you know what? It also helps you deal with the things that are scary, because it's scary to say no to things. It's scary to move on from things that you once felt obligated to do that don't bring you joy. It's scary to set boundaries, but if you're curating these positive emotions, it makes it easier and easier and easier. You're building up your natural ability to comfortably and positively say no to things that no longer serve you. And I think, you know, we're talking about going into the holidays, and this is a perfect time to do my next tip, but this is applicable to your entire life.
Kent
Yes.
Caanan
And that is to really curate the people in your life. So we suggest listing the five people you spend the most time with—family, friends, co-workers, whoever it may be—and really examining those relationships and asking yourself, does this relationship enhance or detract from my joy, from the beauty of what I'm curating.
Kent
Something that's out there with many experts, many books, et cetera, is some of the best advice, and that is spending time with people who you leave feeling better than you felt when you showed up. So much of the work we do with people in work groups, it's amazing how much time people will spend with people who drag people down. It's just unbelievable. And we've got this kind of—we kind of got into it a little bit earlier—we've got this kind of like sick fascination, like "I'm going to fix them" or "I'm the problem." It doesn't matter. Look at the people who you feel better once you've been around them, not worst, and put them in your life more and other people in your life less. Yes, even family.
This holiday season and year round, you're going to focus on curating the kind of vibe that you want. Say you're Joyologists.
Caanan
Maybe we are officially Joyologists.
Kent
I think we are.
Caanan
I should—we should own the title.
Kent
Say you're Joyologists, Kent and Caanan. Now is the time. So we're at "Worth the Time," where we like to give a kind of entertainment rec, frivolous or tied to something more meaningful. And because this is a very special Joyologist holiday episode of the Why Are We Still Doing That podcast, I'm going to say worth the time, 100%, a gratitude journal. Back to the core concepts of positive psychology, a life well lived, doing a gratitude journal. And right now is such a great time to start a gratitude journal. Because it's the end of the year and you're reflecting on what and who and how and all those things you're grateful for. It is such a great thing to do. Go buy yourself, whatever you think is a cute looking little place to write your gratitude blurbs, do it several times a day, do it once a day, do it once a week, whatever. What's worth the time is a gratitude journal.
Caanan
Yeah, it's something you and I both do and we've done for a long time. We actually do it every morning as part of our morning routine. Hot tip: maybe don't do it while you're drinking your coffee because every day you'll just want to say you're grateful for your coffee.
Kent
This warm cup of coffee that I'm cupping it.
Caanan
I have to fight the urge every morning to say "this oat milk latte."
Kent
But how many times have I later in the day, you've caught me with a little glimmer in my eye and you've said, "oh, what are you thinking about?" And I'll say, "I'm still thinking about whatever I was grateful for." Like I just got that in my mind and it just makes me so happy. I'm so grateful for it.
Caanan
And your gratitude journal, it doesn't have—you don't have to journal about big things. It can be anything in your life. In fact, sometimes it should be small. They should be specific. I think it's important that your gratitude journal is specific. But, it can be the pen you're using to write your journal because it's a really nice pen and it brings you a little bit of joy. Or it can be, you know, somebody in your life that brings you joy or makes you happy or makes you feel safe. It can be anything. So don't resist doing it because it feels like a big thing to add into your life. It isn't that, but it is a very powerful thing to add into your life for sure.
Kent
So as we head into the traditional holiday season, if you celebrate any of this stuff, promise us you're going to get your gratitude journal and you're going to have a better holiday season than you did last year at whatever level it was last year. It's going to be a better one for you. And then you're going to set yourself up for a year ahead that's better as well. We want that for you. Happy holidays.
Thanks for listening to the No Vacation Required podcast. For more information, including services designed to help you build a life you don't need a break from, check out novacationrequired.com. And if you found this information helpful, please subscribe.
Would you like me to extract a list of the specific advice and "tools" mentioned in this talk?