Happiness, Self-Actualization & Relationships—Brian Dubow—MensGroup Podcast

In this episode, Brian Dubow and Sean Galla from MensGroup get into how to understand and achieve happiness. We also get into the benefits of self-actualization and why are relationships so important for men.

Today’s https://mensgroup.com/podcast guest Brian Dubow is a happiness coach, blogger, and founder of Hit of Happiness (https://hitofhappiness.com), and he’s here to talk about long-term wellbeing, personal growth, and the value of building meaningful relationships.

CHAPTERS:

00:02:46 A Deep Dive into Happiness

• Everyone is looking for happiness, it’s everybody’s endgame, and actually, everything we do, from having a job, getting into a specific relationship, taking in certain activities, and most of our life decisions are driven by our inner seek for happiness.

00:11:33 SPHIRE Framework

• SPHIRE is a five-dimensional framework that can be a powerful tool to help us spot those goals we can benefit from working towards. SPHIRE is an acronym in which each letter stands for something concrete.

00:31:59 Happiness vs. Pleasure

• Nowadays, people tend to run away from challenging situations and lean towards instant gratification instead, but the reality is that we are actually happier when we’re growing, and this growth can only be nurtured by going through challenging experiences. We naturally avoid difficult contexts since we don’t want to feel uncomfortable.

00:43:14 CHAPTER II – Self-Actualization

• Self-Actualization can be defined as the journey towards becoming all we’re meant to be. We all have our own purpose in this world, and in order to figure out what that is, it’s important to ask ourselves some big questions such as why am I here, what’s my superpower, and how can I add to this world?

00:56:06 Coping with Divorce & Break-Up

• When dealing with a nasty break-up or divorce, we can get to feel quite bitter. On that note, the first thing to be aware of is that bitterness is an emotion that doesn’t do a lot for us. Actually, by feeling bitter at someone else, we’re letting that person win and have control over us, even though we’re passed being in a relationship with them.

00:59:04 The value of relationships

• It’s a proven fact that relationships are the number one predictor of happiness in our lives. Feeling that we’re a part of a community in which we can be authentic and expose ourselves emotionally is key to our personal development. On that same note, having a significant other who we can trust almost anything adds a ton of ease and value to our life. The purpose of a relationship is not to complete each other but to help each other grow – often times other people can help us bring out the best in us and learn things about ourselves that we couldn’t have done on our own.
• A big part of happiness is about giving to others and being aware that it is not all about us. In fact, the more we do for others, the more we do for ourselves. On that matter, when we are in a relationship and we’re willing to do anything at our reach to make our companion happy, that takes us out of our own headspace and makes our personal existence more fulfilling.
• We, humans, are tribal creatures, and as so we’re meant to help each other out and have a specific role in society. Unfortunately, in the last hundred years, mankind has developed a more competitive feature, as each individual is more concerned about their own success than about pursuing the common good.