The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com.

Why the word rational? Why can't happiness come from any other source? Just feel happy. Just wish yourself happy. Just pray yourself happy. Well, you can try all those things, and my guess is that you will be conflicted and unsatisfied because happiness is reality-based. It's an emotion that stems from your using your mind. Clearly, you're using your mind well, not that you never stumble, not that you don't make mistakes, but you learn from them, and you grow your mind. You discover values that are yours. You pursue them, your dreams. And I don't mean gambling and drinking and smoking and the rest. I mean your chosen dreams, your career, whether it's in landscape architecture, or whether it's doing something with film in the movies, or whether it's with engineering. Your dreams, your hobbies, it may be a sport that you love, and that's why my Fauci always focused on, it's focused selfishly, in the most benevolent sense of that word, on your happiness.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

Here is a question I received from Josie, and see what you think about this. This has to do with self-esteem. And she's saying that criminals have high self-esteem. What do you think about that? Here is the question: when someone spends 24/7 thinking about themselves and their feelings and then goes out and robs and vandalizes and hurts others, may I ask you, how you can classify this person as having low self-esteem when they spend all their time thinking about their failings and they never seem to think about others? It seems to me that this is someone who esteems themselves and their failings above all else. Just a little subtext here, what are their failings? What are they genuinely failing? Not what they're faking? Back to her question. After all, no one makes anyone think bad thoughts about themselves. We choose our thoughts. Exclamation point. They got a question that one too, when someone chooses to spend all their God-given time thinking about themselves and worshiping their feelings instead of choosing to think positive thoughts about themselves and what you can do to help others. It's no wonder this world is in the state it is. Exclamation points. Exclamation point. Thank you for your time and for taking my question. Sincerely, Josie. Josie, when you think of a criminal, would you like to change minds with a criminal so that you can have the high self-esteem that you think the criminal has? I don't think you or I would, in a heartbeat, change minds with someone who's vandalized broken windows and slashed tires on cars and maybe bound and gagged people or held a gun to their head. Would you want to be that person? And would you think that you would get higher self-esteem from thinking about how to connive people all day long, how to manipulate, how to steal, how to pull your next job? I don't think so. Instead, there is another word that we use. Those people are very different from Thomas Edison, the Thomas Edisons of the world, the creators of the world. Those people live in self-contempt. If they're focused on the feelings all the time, it's how can I con others if they underneath those feelings, though they have a hideous baggage of earned feelings, and the feelings are anxiety and fear and self-contempt, worried about being found out, always having to lie and continue telling lies. They never, they never can tell the truth because they've just woven a web of lies. So instead of the criminal having high self-esteem, the criminal has a self-made, earned... hey,

I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it, a very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Many romantic partners have complaints like, "I live in the shadow of my husband's life," or "I feel invisible to my girlfriend." These are common complaints, but you never want to betray yourself in a romantic partnership. When both partners value themselves and are lovingly honest with one another, romance flourishes. Discover the secrets to lasting love in this liberating book, The Selfish Path to Romance by Doctors Edwin Locke and Ellen Kenner. That's The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon or selfishromance.com.

So instead of the criminal having high self-esteem, the criminal has a self-made, earned hell for life, because they can never look in a psychological mirror. If they were accurately to evaluate themselves, they would hate themselves, they would go insane. So they always have to fake that they're better than they are. That's what you're seeing—all of that grandiosity, all of that looking like they're in control, is they're really, they don't know how to run their own minds. They've run their own minds into the ground, and they've earned the self-contempt. So they do have a prison sentence. They're always running from themselves in life. Self-esteem is your mind. Self-esteem is your valuing your mind; you're building into your character, lovable character traits, honesty, integrity, being productive, having a sense of earned pride, instead of being humble all the time. Oh, shucks. You know the Gomer Pyle route, and self-esteem is something that takes looking at the facts, looking at reality, not faking reality, like the con man. Now I want to address one other thing that you talk about. You say that people, the alternative to the con man is the doormat that you've, we've all heard people have said, you know, "I've spent my whole life doing for my kids, my husband, my parents, and there's no me anymore, and I'm so angry. I'm so bitter." The do-gooder in life ends up being resentful, and I don't mean the benevolent person who is living their own life and pursues their own goals rationally and never steps on other people, but feels a genuine benevolence towards people who are decent, and those people are the genuine, wonderful people. They form good relationships, they make good friends, but the do-gooder who sacrifices himself for other people only builds resentment. And there is a word for that. It's altruism. The moral code of altruism tells you that the standard of the good is not yourself, but giving up yourself. And that is the psychological killer which poses in the guise of the good person. And altruism poses as a good moral code. It's actually an inverse moral code. It will work against your long-range happiness. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

And please listen to this ad. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

Another virtue that makes you lovable is independence. Independence is your commitment to think for yourself and to earn your own keep. The proper basis for coming to conclusions in any area of your life, be it romance, career, moral beliefs, even practical decisions, is by not going blindly by what your parents, friends, neighbors, colleagues, or religious and political leaders tell you, but going by your own best rational judgment. You may get very useful facts from others, but you still need to judge others' claims for yourself. Independence is your refusal to accept any idea without evidence. Dependence is a mirror of what others want, and as a result, one loses control of one's life and destroys any sense of self. Independence is not only thinking for yourself but also living by your own effort, which means living within your means.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.