SPEAKER_00 0:05

Most of us are not unhappy. We are postposed. We have quietly agreed with ourselves that joy is something we'll get to after this project, after this season, after we have earned it. And then one day we look up. The ears have moved, and the joy is still waiting in some future room we never quite walked into. Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm your host, Yusuf, and tonight we are sitting with a question most of us don't ask out loud, but live inside every day. Why are we waiting to be happy? My guest is Ulrika Torkuatu, whose work centers on how we delay our own joy. Why even the big life changes don't always deliver what we thought they would, and what shifts the moment we start noticing the happiness already setting in our ordinary days. By the end of this conversation, you'll have a clearer mirror to hold up to your own life. Ulrika, it's really good to have you with us. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Perfect. Ulrika, this misconception sitting at the center of the way most of us live. The idea that happiness is something we earn. That if we worked hard enough, achieve enough, fix enough, you know, become enough, we'll finally be allowed to feel it. As if joy is a reward at the end of a long corridor. So what is the misconception you see most often people talk about happiness?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Um, I think we put too many conditions to be happy. And uh one of these conditions is really that we need to earn it, that we don't deserve to be happy if we don't have really um achieved something or we have done something to be happy. So happiness is something else for me. Happiness is something that we can choose to experiment, to experience during our day, and we don't need to wait for it because the problem is that if we wait until we really earn this uh the happiness, we will be um we can maybe we'll be old and we yeah, yes, uh times times goes by, and we will never really experiment what life is. Life is so much more than achieving goals because we can achieve goals, we do it um often in our lives, but we don't we don't get happier because of this. We can continue to postpone this happiness to someday, and this earning is not good. I think it's something we learn when we are small that okay, you have you need to behave in a certain way to yes, to earn something, to get it. So we use it also in our lives.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And where does this idea come from? Because nobody sits us down as a child and tells us happiness has to be earned. But by the time we are adults, almost all of us are operating that way. So, what is planting that?

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Oh, there I think there are many causes, but um we have this feeling of punishment um around us, that we need to be in a in a way. I think it's uh so much to the society, too, that we need to be um we need we need to get to things. We need to to work hard, we need to to be famous, we need to be something to really be earn earn this happiness. And if we don't do it, we just continue to punish ourselves, like we do it to ourselves. We see something beautiful in our lives, and we say, Oh, that's good, but it's not important because I didn't earn it. And that's very strange.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, you know, that is important because we did not choose this rule, we absorbed it from culture, from family, from the systems we grew up. Which means changing is not about willpower, it is about awareness. And that awareness is uncomfortable because it asks us to look at how long we have been waiting.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yes, we wait very, very long. It's like the moment we feel something good in our lives. We sometimes we are not there, we are not present. We are thinking about the future or the past, or we are thinking of something that is not perfect in this moment or was not perfect in the past, or something, and then we we are not present, we are not really enjoying the moment. We are just keeping it from us, we are not really there. And another problem is that we also think that this moment doesn't count. It's like we have done this yesterday, we will certainly do it tomorrow. So we just go ahead and don't think about it. So we we really don't see the beautiful things, we don't pay attention. And the problem is that not only that we are not never going to be happy, it's also because we are never going to experiment life, really, what life is. Life is more than just our mind going and saying to us what we need to do to be good persons or uh earn something. But it's like life is more, life is this force we have inside. And when we stop just for a moment to really let in what is happening to us, and then I mean now the good things, because they are, even if our life is not too good, maybe there are problems in our lives, but we all have um a beautiful moment in our days. It can be just a walk in nature or a dog that comes um nearby, and yes, relationships, um something you eat, something you drink, something um you exercise, just everything, the small, small things that you can be happy for. And when you stop and let this in, you will achieve something more in you, you will be more present to yourself, you will begin to understand what makes sense and doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, and you have to talk about how even the big life changes that not always, you know, bring us joy. But you know what you are pointing is that joy is not dramatic, it's not on a beach somewhere, it's woven into our regular witness day. So, but most of us walk past it, like we are scrolling, we are planning, we are already in the next hour. So, what does everyday joy look like really, and how do we miss it so consistently?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yes, we miss it because we don't pay attention to our lives. And I mean, then when we scroll, we are looking in Instagram, we are looking to other people's lives, and then we are comparing our lives to other people's, and we are always like not looking to our own lives, where what is good, what's really happening. So I I also created a small app for this. Uh, of course, you don't need to uh be at your phone the whole time. I think that if you don't use your phone, it's even better. But if you do, do and look at your own life. Like this app is just so you you you get agreed with some categories, and then you can see, oh, what happened in my life today? There was something special. Then you just get a butterfly when you click on this category. So you you are going to be more aware of your own life. It's not about writing down making it complicated with language. No, it's just the small moments, they are small feelings. And these are your own feelings. So you need to connect to yourself. It's this uh that's my takeaway.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I see. But a single noticing repeated is what slowly rebuilds the life, and that is exactly the kind of work we want to walk into next.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yes, yes, because we wanted to make so great things. I have done it in my life, so I I studied medicine, and then I wasn't I was not so happy. It was I thought, no, that's not for me. I was working as a doctor, but I felt, oh, I want to sing. So I began singing opera, studying opera. That's really difficult. So I I I went through many teachers and I had quite a bit of success in the beginning. So it was nice, but it was not like, oh, I now I found my happiness. I thought I would find my happiness, but I didn't. So now um and I grew a little bit older, I don't feel it like anymore that singing would will bring me some kind of happiness. It's more I can do it, but I really care so much about the small moments, and there I found so much more happiness and trying to become something. So I think that is something that um we sometimes uh fool ourselves. We think, oh this move, maybe when I move to somewhere else, I'm going to be happy, or when I divorce, or when I do something, or I study, I finish, I get the promotion, everything. No. It will bring something different to your life. You will learn many things, but you're not going to feel this happiness and this presence that is in the happiness. Because to really get into the presence, you need to take what is around you. What you you you feel your life, you feel alive. And this is not without or things that are outside of us, it's something that happens inside.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah. But this kind of innership where you stop deferring your happiness and start meeting your real life as it is, it does not hold itself forever. Life pushes back, hard seasons come, old patterns return. So, what do you do when the joy you started noticing slips away again?

SPEAKER_02 13:02

That's a very good question because it's not about the joy. I I will explain what I mean. Because life is about bad things and good things. It's like we have hard times, we have time there that our life is so much uh easier. That's it, it's sure that's life. So the small things you can notice even in the bad days. And what is important, what I don't like about some sometimes this happiness talk, is like we put conditions to be happy, and we think that we need to be happy the whole time. No, it's had nothing to do with this. It's like when something is not good, it's not good. And then feel it. Okay, feel the anger, feel everything that you're feeling. But even so, you're maybe going to drink uh a good coffee. Oh, wow, I'm drinking a good coffee, even if my life is not good now. So it's not toxic positivity, it's not trying to make bad things uh feel good, like it's nothing's bad, it is. Don't try to pick it as uh a blessing. Maybe it's not. So what I mean is life is is big. And what I mean really is that we need to be alive. Alive so we are present, so when our life comes to end, we we have really lived, just not run after something that we'll never find. So the the bad uh things they they are so necessary for then we are also going to know what is good because without the bad things you don't know you can't know it.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, and on a day that does not feel particularly joyful, where the postponement is creeping back in and noticing has gone quiet. What's your own way back? Like what do you what you do personally?

SPEAKER_02 15:31

What I personally do when a day is not good or I'm feeling really bad. I try to do something that is not difficult, if I can, and I try not to force myself to feel something else. I try to feel what I'm feeling. That's the most important thing. Like, oh, they there are days like this. Even if I I mostly I'm I'm a happy person, like I I have worked uh a bit on myself, but I feel even that they are bad days and something from the past or something uh yes, in my present day is difficult. I I just stay with the feeling. I stay with it. I stay with it. So maybe it's a day I I can't go from my bed. So it's okay. I I have the patience because I know life is bad things come, feelings come, they change, they are good, they are bad, they are good, they are bad. So that's life, it's a cycle. But what's what is important that we sometimes we f forget that we are um living in a world with all these good things happening to us, that we we don't see them, we just overlook. But they are really important. So even these bad days, okay, I feel my feeling, but then I appreciate when the birds sing. Oh, they are singing now, so ah, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

That is such a gentler picture of the work that most people are sold, not constant happiness, just a just a faithful return over and over to a life that was already here.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yes, old.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Well, if you want to try my app, that's a very simple app. Um, you can go to joy ring.com. It's an app that's uh free. It should just put your email and for to get uh your own um joy collected. So it's very easy to use. Um so you you are going to collect, and when you reach uh 21 butterflies, that uh that means then 21 joyful moments in your life, um, you are allowed to release them. That means you let all these butterflies fly, and then you begin again because life is a cycle, that's nothing that you can hold on to and think it's going to stay forever. So um this is also learning, you can also learn this behavior to really let go, collect, notice, collect, and let go. Notice, collect, let go. And then if you want to work um private with me, I have also some, I offer offer also conversations, then you can go to my website, udrikatorguata.com. Um, yes, and I hope making doing more podcasts and talks. So, because I think that's so important to talk about it, that we need to feel our lives and and notice what is happening, what's all the good that is already there.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Well, Ricard, is there any last message that you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Yes, um I I now I am um making a postgraduation. I'm I'm studying medicine again, but uh more in the psychology part of the uh palliative care. So that's about what happens when people are very sick, almost dying, and the the last moments and what we can do for them. And what I notice when I I read about it when I talk to other people about this, is really that these moments um when people are living life, they really regret, and we know this, that they have not lived so fully as as they could. And the happiness is something that um is about uh that come very often to these people in their minds and they say I I was not happy. Why? Because happiness is is life, so enjoy your life.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Ulrika, this has been such a grounding conversation. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Thank you too. I'm very glad. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

And to everyone listening, if something in this conversation made you pause tonight, I would request you not to scroll past that pause. Sit in it for a minute, look around the rooms you are actually in. Notice one thing that has been there all along. That is the work, that is where the joy you have been waiting for has been waiting for you. You don't have to face anything tonight. Just stop postponing for one minute. That's enough for you. This was Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm Yusuf. Thank you so much, you all, for listening, and I thank my guest Ulrika for sharing your knowledge. Take care of yourself and we'll see you in the next one.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Thank you.