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Life Isn’t Supposed to be Good… All the Time | Molly Countermine | TEDxPSU
21,950 views•Mar 10, 2021

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After experiencing some unexpected obstacles in life, Dr. Countermine went on a
journey of personal growth, learning that it’s okay to not always be happy. She
discusses how our brains aren’t wired for constant positivity and how we can live a
fulfilling life through mindfulness. In her talk, Dr. Countermine redefines what it
means to be happy and how we can achieve this sought after state. Note: this talk
was recorded according to local and national COVID-19 safety guidelines without a
live audience (clapping was added in post-production). Beloved Associate Teaching
Professor, Musician. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference
format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
https://www.ted.com/tedx
Transcript

00:05
[Music]
00:09
if you're happy and you know it clap
00:11
your hands
00:12
if you're happy and you know it clap
00:14
your hands
00:16
clap along if you feel like happiness
00:20
is the truth i'm feeling so
00:23
cool top to the bottom just cool
00:28
when you worry your face will frown and
00:30
that will bring everybody down so don't
00:33
worry
00:34
be happy do more of what makes you happy
00:39
have good vibes only turn that
00:43
frown upside down
00:46
the most important decision you could
00:48
ever make
00:49
is to be in a good mood from preschool
00:53
through adulthood we're taught a very
00:55
clear lesson over and over again
00:58
just be happy because when you're happy
01:02
life is good sounds simple right
01:06
maybe not since 2013
01:09
sales of self-help books in the united
01:11
states
01:12
have doubled and according to the world
01:15
health organization
01:16
rates of anxiety and depression around
01:18
the world
01:19
have increased by almost 20 percent in
01:22
the past two decades
01:24
these numbers are even higher for teens
01:28
it seems we've never had more guidance
01:30
on how to be happy
01:32
yet we've never been so unhappy
01:36
as a professor at penn state i'm seeing
01:38
this trend
01:39
in my classroom too i started teaching
01:42
in 1998 when no one had a smartphone or
01:45
a laptop
01:46
email was more of a novelty than a way
01:49
of life and
01:50
students never came to office hours even
01:52
though that was the only way they could
01:54
get in touch with me
01:56
these days my colleagues joke that i
01:58
need a bench outside my office because
02:01
my students are literally lined up
02:03
outside my door
02:04
waiting to talk to me and they're not
02:07
asking me about class material
02:09
they're telling me about how much
02:11
they're struggling in their lives
02:13
they're wondering why they're not
02:14
happier i don't need the world health
02:17
organization to tell me
02:19
people are more stressed out i see it
02:21
every day in my students
02:23
but i've also felt it in myself too
02:27
see most of my life i've struggled with
02:30
anxiety
02:31
mine manifests as an existential dread
02:34
that something terrible is going to
02:36
happen to me
02:37
or worse to someone i love or the world
02:40
so 2020 as you can imagine was
02:43
challenging but
02:44
long before the global pandemic hit my
02:47
anxiety had gotten
02:48
so bad that i had what some might call
02:52
a breakdown my therapist god lover
02:56
wouldn't wish that job on anyone called
02:57
it my come to jesus moment
02:59
so let's go with that it started in
03:02
2015.
03:04
for 10 years i'd been a professor during
03:07
the day
03:08
a musician at night and a wife and a
03:11
mama
03:12
throughout it all people wrote articles
03:15
about me
03:15
called me wonder woman everybody thought
03:19
i was doing great
03:20
and from the outside it looked like i
03:22
was really happy but on the inside
03:25
every day seemed like an internal battle
03:28
my anxiety was worse than it had ever
03:31
been
03:32
then i began experiencing some unusual
03:35
physical
03:35
symptoms strange flashes of light in my
03:39
peripheral vision
03:40
the sound of my heartbeat in my ear when
03:42
i laid down
03:43
i consulted with dr google and learned
03:46
that these were called ocular migraines
03:49
and pulsatile tinnitus and that both
03:51
might be symptoms of a brain tumor so
03:54
i consulted with my real live doctor and
03:57
she sent me for an mri
03:58
just to be safe thankfully the mri was
04:02
normal
04:02
but my symptoms persisted so
04:05
nevertheless
04:06
i persisted too and then things went
04:09
from
04:10
strange to scary i began having
04:13
difficulty
04:14
swallowing and one night sitting at home
04:17
with my family i found i couldn't say
04:19
the words
04:20
i was trying to say my kids thought this
04:23
was funny
04:24
but my husband and i knew maybe i was
04:26
having a stroke so
04:28
i went to the er and after another mri
04:32
and a whole lot of blood work the doctor
04:34
came back in my room and
04:36
looking at my results he said to me
04:39
you're
04:39
really healthy so this must all be
04:43
stress
04:45
this made no sense to me i'd been doing
04:48
so much more of what was supposed to
04:50
make me happy and my body was breaking
04:53
down
04:53
i decided right then and there that i
04:55
had to learn
04:57
why this had happened to me when all i
04:59
was doing was following the prescription
05:02
our culture gives
05:03
us to be happy i'd like to think that
05:06
fate stepped in
05:07
at this point i was sitting in my office
05:10
not long after that when a colleague
05:12
who just joined our department poked his
05:14
head in to say hello
05:16
his name was dr robert roser and he was
05:18
our new
05:19
professor of caring and compassion
05:22
the greatest title a professor could
05:24
ever have and rob
05:26
totally lives up to it now as luck would
05:28
have it
05:29
one of rob's graduate students blake
05:31
colany was assigned to be my teaching
05:33
assistant
05:34
that semester blake and i often got
05:37
coffee after class
05:38
and one day i felt compelled to tell
05:40
blake about my come to jesus moment
05:43
and he in turn told me about the work
05:45
they were doing in rob's lab
05:48
i heard words like contemplative
05:50
practices
05:52
empathy flourishing mindfulness
05:56
and i learned that rob along with richie
05:58
davidson at the university of wisconsin
06:01
and david germano at virginia had
06:04
designed a new course called the art and
06:07
science
06:07
of human flourishing their goal
06:10
was to teach students how to thrive in
06:13
their lives
06:15
not just survive and they hope to do
06:17
this
06:18
by helping students learn to manage
06:20
their own
06:21
stress i was like sign me up
06:25
i started popping into rob's lab all the
06:28
time
06:28
asking all sorts of questions they
06:30
literally couldn't get rid of me so
06:31
finally i just asked rob
06:33
if i could sit in on the flourishing
06:35
class and he said yes
06:37
and here's where my come to jesus moment
06:41
my breakdown really became
06:45
my breakthrough class began
06:49
every day with an arrival practice
06:52
basically two to three minutes of guided
06:55
thought
06:56
deep breathing an invitation
06:59
to be aware and curious and
07:02
non-judgmental of whatever we were
07:04
thinking or feeling
07:05
in the present moment the class that
07:08
really resonated with me
07:10
was the day we talked about emotions
07:13
now in the social sciences we tend to
07:15
think of emotions as either positive
07:17
or negative positive emotions like
07:20
happiness
07:21
joy love our emotions our culture
07:24
teaches us to embrace negative emotions
07:28
like
07:29
anger sadness and fear our emotions that
07:32
our culture teaches us to avoid
07:35
or at least keep to ourselves rob
07:38
taught us instead to think of emotions
07:41
as
07:42
pleasant or unpleasant because
07:45
all emotions even the unpleasant ones
07:49
maybe especially the unpleasant ones
07:52
offer us something important the chance
07:55
to investigate
07:57
why we might be feeling these emotions
08:00
and then the
08:00
opportunity to really process them
08:04
the writer brianna wiest captures this
08:07
idea perfectly
08:08
she says your anger it's telling you
08:11
where you feel powerless
08:13
your anxiety it's telling you something
08:15
in your life
08:16
is off balance your fear
08:19
it's telling you what you care about
08:22
your feelings aren't random
08:24
they're messengers let them speak to you
08:27
and tell you what you really need so
08:30
this got me to thinking
08:32
if the messages we're hearing over and
08:34
over again from our culture
08:36
are telling us to run from a negative
08:39
emotions and only embrace the positive
08:41
ones then no wonder we're such a mess
08:43
see the human brain wasn't designed to
08:46
make us happy
08:47
it was designed first and foremost to
08:50
keep us safe
08:51
by responding to perceived threats and
08:54
danger
08:54
like a tiger in the bush is ready to
08:56
pounce
08:57
but because many of us in our modern
08:59
lives no longer have to worry about
09:01
being chased by a tiger
09:03
our brains tend to focus on the threats
09:05
that do
09:06
seem real threats like social exclusion
09:10
loneliness isolation not feeling good
09:14
enough
09:14
smart enough pretty enough popular
09:18
enough
09:18
rich enough cool enough or happy enough
09:22
so we do all these things to try and
09:25
make ourselves feel
09:26
better feel happier and often we just
09:30
end up
09:30
feeling worse what's more these threats
09:33
are easy to find
09:35
every day right there at our fingertips
09:39
but our brains have another amazing
09:41
capacity and we call that plasticity
09:44
the human brain was designed to change
09:47
and adapt
09:48
to new experiences like the arrival
09:51
practices i was doing
09:52
every day in rob's class habits like
09:56
deep breathing and being in the moment
09:59
and accepting all emotions have been
10:01
shown
10:02
to increase happiness happiness levels
10:04
and decrease
10:05
stress indeed rob's lab is discovering
10:09
that students who take the flourishing
10:11
course are reporting reductions
10:13
in their anxiety and depressive symptoms
10:16
and greater levels of flourishing
10:19
well for me the proof was in the
10:21
existential pudding
10:24
before my breakthrough i'd been avoiding
10:27
all those unpleasant emotions that are
10:30
simply a part of daily life
10:33
but as that semester in rob's class
10:35
progressed i noticed
10:36
something interesting was happening i
10:39
was developing a new relationship
10:41
with my anxiety when i felt it coming on
10:45
i didn't brace myself i simply paused
10:49
took a few deep breaths noticed what i
10:52
was feeling
10:53
thought about what those feelings were
10:55
telling me and then told myself
10:57
it's okay to not feel okay
11:01
this worked so well for me that i knew i
11:04
had to share it with my students
11:06
so now i do an arrival practice at the
11:09
beginning of every class i teach
11:11
and my students tell me how much these
11:14
practices help them too
11:16
now you can do an arrival practice in a
11:18
number of different ways but basically
11:20
they go something like this
11:21
you can join me if you'd like we get
11:23
comfortable
11:24
we center ourselves by putting our feet
11:26
on the ground we
11:28
sit up straight relax our shoulders and
11:31
we begin to breathe deeply
11:34
we notice our thoughts and feelings we
11:37
acknowledge and accept them for whatever
11:38
they are and then we let them go
11:41
then we offer ourselves some loving
11:43
kindness and compassion
11:45
we extend that compassion to our
11:47
families our friends and the world
11:49
because here's the thing
11:51
life is hard sometimes it's painful
11:54
sometimes
11:55
scary sometimes and sad sometimes
11:59
it's also overwhelmingly beautiful
12:01
sometimes
12:02
and filled with joy and happiness and
12:05
love
12:05
sometimes life is lived in the moment
12:10
but it seems to me that maybe our
12:12
culture has us so focused on the pursuit
12:15
of happiness that we've forgotten to pay
12:18
attention
12:19
to the journey to all the moments for
12:22
better or for worse that happen
12:24
along the way i often tell my students
12:27
it's not rocket science but it's not
12:29
always easy
12:31
the trick to being human is to embrace
12:34
all of life
12:35
the ups the downs the smiles the frowns
12:39
the good times the bad times the happy
12:41
times and yes even the sad times because
12:44
life isn't supposed to be good all the
12:47
time
12:48
it's just supposed to be life but guess
12:51
what
12:52
once we learn to celebrate life in all
12:54
of its big
12:55
beautiful messiness it actually gets
12:58
better
12:59
thank you
13:09
you

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