Conscious Happiness | The Good Mood Revolution with Matt O'Neill

0:00 Hello and welcome to Real Men Field. I'm your host, Andy Grant. I'm an author, coach, and healer. You can learn more about me by visiting the andygrant.com. Real Men Feel reminds men that they are human beings and that they have the right to experience and express all of their emotions. We have conversations that most men are not having, but that all men can benefit from. My guest today is Matt O'Neill. Matt is a happiness expert whose work has positively impacted the lives of over 100,000 people worldwide. He's the author of The Good Mood Revolution and host of the Good Mood Revolution podcast. Matt believes that happiness is our natural state of being. Matt opens up about being told as a young child that men don't cry and then doing his damnedest to make sure he didn't feel anything.

0:48 We also discussed the 8 bad moods, what you can do to overcome them, the power of gratitude, what anger really is, and that all of life is inner work. Let's do it. Hey Matt, welcome to Real Men feel. What's up Andy? Man, I couldn't be more excited to be here. Awesome, awesome. That is great to hear you call yourself a happiness expert. So does that mean like as a kid you were just always this happy go lucky guy and just wanted to share that with the world or or something else? Yes, I was. I was super joyful actually, when I was a little kid, my mom said my laugh was so infectious and so contagious and I had this big laugh.

1:31 But I, I think I came into the world with a mission to spread positivity and joy. And you know, the only way that you can really do that is to also experience a lot of pain. And so, well, I've got this amazing mom that was always uplifting me and supporting me. I ended up with a pretty difficult dad who was doing the opposite. He's kind of beating me down a lot. And so I ended up going into a lot of darkness and finding out what it's like to not be happy, to not like yourself, to feel bad about yourself and many times hate yourself. And climbing out of the darkness is that when I went down back to that original joy that I came into the world with and it was on a mission to teach people that we don't have to suffer from bad moods and that there is a way out and we can't get back to that joy. That really is our innate nature. Yeah, I agree.

2:22 So what do you recall? Like what age were you consciously start shutting your happiness down and realizing or let's see, not realizing. But yeah, I mean choosing to to because it in my experience, it was like to navigate life. I can't be this happy. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally makes sense. And you know, you start suppressing your emotions when you're taught to when I was a kid, you know, you, you get sad and you cry. Well then when your dad says men don't cry and you're like, well, I'm going to be a man so I'm not going to cry, you start to say that emotion is not appropriate to feel. I can't feel sad, right? Or you get angry and you kick over the trash can like I did in kindergarten because you got a pink wrapper instead of a blue wrapper and you're a boy and you're not supposed to have the pink wrapper.

3:13 So, you know, so I took my whole cupcake, squished it up, threw it the trash can, kicked the trash can over. Get in big trouble for getting angry and expressing your anger you start to say, all right well I can't express that emotion either I can't express this anger. I can't express this sadness. Well, you start to suppress all of these emotions and when you start to block the negative emotions from being experienced, you also start to block the positive emotions from being experienced at the same time. So it's like you put up all this armor so you don't get hurt anymore by people. Well, you also can't get cool things out and you can't get cool things in and you would get shut down. But this is kind of the macho way of being and the world, especially for men, You know, I know this is real. Men feel you are feeling me.

3:58 This is what you talk about all day long. But it's what happens to our happiness too. We start to shut down our other emotions. We shut down our happiness. Right. Yeah, that's my experience too. Like we, we can't just shut down some emotions. It's like all of our emotions, it's like 1 pole and you can't if you're, if you're cut off, you're trying to cut off the one extreme of it. You're you're cutting off the other side too. Yeah, You know, one of my favorite thoughts about sadness, which was what I wasn't allowed to experience. I wasn't allowed to experience crying or these sad emotions. Is it sadness? The other side of sadness is happiness, the two sides of the same coin.

4:38 And so you can't actually, if you're going to not have the lows, you can't have the highs. Vice versa, if you're going to have the highs, you're going to have to experience the lows. You're going to have to get in touch with that part of you that feels vulnerable and get sad sometimes and know that yeah, man, sometimes things are amazing and I love it and it feels so happy. But it when those things go away, I get really sad, right? We lose somebody we love and care about. If we loved them a lot, it hurts a lot when we lose them. And so sadness isn't necessarily a bad thing. It tells us how much we love life. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah. When when I was a kid and was depressed and in the darkness, I thought normal people who are happy were happiness was this flat high affect. And everybody else just they're all like Ned Flanders, Oakley, Dokley, everything is great.

5:26 Just all the time. That's where people lived. And so I'm on. It's a I don't know phrase. Yeah, I guess I was glad to find out that isn't the case. And probably if someone does live like that, there's probably something else wrong with. That yeah, I I'm, I love the Ned Flanders, right? The Ned Flanders reference. That's awesome, dude. But the, when you're Ned Flanders, you're suppressing a lot of emotion, right? So that that Ned Flanders persona, that everything's fine. I'm always happy. It's not real. Like that's that's not real. So the Ned Flanders type personality is usually suppressing a lot of rage and a lot of anger and that's going to cause some issues.

6:08 So you know what, what we want to do is, yeah, we want to feel our emotions, but know that when we allow these emotions to be experienced, it's just part of being human that we don't have to get stuck in them. They can process and flow through us and we can get back to our, our base state, which is joy. This morning I wasn't super happy. And you know, I had an issue with not wanting to do my, my day job. I did it. I, I was feeling like a victim in my day job and my day job is not, I'm not a victim at all.

6:48 None of us are. But anytime I allow myself to feel like a victim, I'm going to suffer. So this morning I'm like, man, I don't want to go do these meetings. I don't want to go meet this person. I don't want to have to deal with this upset person. I just, I'm just, I just don't want to do any of it. I don't want to do this, this career. I just don't want to do it. And I was suffering and my wife comes in and she says something to me and she's like, you don't seem like you want me to be talking to you right now. And I'm like, you know, I kind of don't. And then she gets upset, but it's not about her, right? So she gets upset with me and, and I'm like, and so when she gets upset, I have to explain what's going on. And this is, this is about how to get back to happiness is a lot of times we don't know what we're upset about, but we do need to figure it out because we're upset about something. We're not just there are thoughts, there are core beliefs that are going on and there are thoughts that are taking us away from happiness.

7:51 Happiness is our natural state of being. It is in the absence of a very extreme emotion that we need to process and feel and let move through us. If we're not feeling happy and joyful and excited, we have a negative belief or a belief that is causing us to feel unconnected with the world. My negative belief was I'm a victim. That was this morning. I have to do these meetings that I don't want to do. I have to meet this person that I don't want to meet and I have to make this call with this upset person that I don't want to make. And so I I'm not liking my job. I feel like a victim to my job. I feel like I have to do all these things. So I just, I just started guessing with my wife. I'm like, hey, this isn't about you. I'm not upset with you.

8:37 I'm feeling like a victim here today about my job. Now, this is me after years of working on expressing myself and figuring out what's going on, right? To get to this point where I can identify very clearly that I have some negative beliefs right now that I feel like a victim and I have to do things. But how do you get out of it? Well, there's totally opposite thoughts to what I was thinking, which are going to make me feel a lot better. The first is I'm never ever a victim. Ever. And if I was a victim, like when I was a kid, I was a victim to my dad. I wasn't big enough. Maybe I was in the past, but in this moment, I'm not a victim. I'm responsible for everything in this moment. I don't have to go to these meetings. I don't, you know, you're like, well, if I didn't go to those meetings, I could be fired from my job. Sure, that's a consequence.

9:30 But no one's forcing me to go to these meetings. If I go, I am choosing to go. I'm not a victim, right? I don't have to call the upset person back. I don't if I don't want to call her back, I don't have to call her. Would there be a consequence? Sure. She might get more upset, but I don't have to do it. This is where you start to say, OK, I'm not really a victim. Every single thing I'm doing today, I, I can, I'm choosing to do. No one's forcing me to. There's no gun against my head. And this is a little trick that the ego plays on us. Like it says you have to do this. No, I don't actually don't have to. So I, I sat with us for a while today and I said, I don't have to go to these meetings. I don't have to call this girl back. I don't have to do meet this guy. I'm like, if I don't want to, then then I don't have to. So I sit there.

10:22 I'm like, OK, I don't have to. What feels better to me? Does it feel better to go or does it feel better to sit home? I'm like, well, I kind of think it's going to kind of feel better to go. That's step one. I'm choosing my life now. Once I chose it, I then asked myself a very cool question, how could I do today and enjoy it? And now things get really creative and you get to start to say, man, how could I enjoy the process? Well, I cancelled one of my meetings. I did. I, I reached out to her. I said, hey, I'm just overbooked today.

11:03 I can't do it. I, I can we reschedule for next week? She was like, sure, we'll reschedule for next week. I didn't cancel the hard call I needed to make because that was one that needed to be dealt with. And if I didn't deal with it, things might have been worse. And I, I said, that's what I have to make. But I cancelled a meeting that I felt like I could push back a week. That was kind to me. I asked another buddy. I said, hey, could we talk this morning so that I can have a break during the day. I can have a lunch break. And he's like, yeah. And then I had lunch with my wife, right? And so I got to connect. So I started to make my day on my terms rather than feeling like it was forced upon me then. Now that the days on my terms, dude, I went in that first meeting and my joy was back.

11:44 And I started to elevate and bring it and bring the energy and the people around me respond to my energy. And I got all this positive influence back and I was out of the funk. So I know I just went into a long tirade there about a negative mood, but this is how it works. Yeah, no. And and I totally agree. And I've had that experience and took me a long time to realize victimhood didn't serve anybody. And because because, you know, I grew up, I was given all sorts of labels. And so I would, you know, I grew up believing something's wrong. I'm, I'm defective, my chemicals are all off and it'll never be the same. So I felt like I was a victim of life. So I grew up hating myself and hating life.

12:25 So what age were you at when you realized shutting yourself down it wasn't working? Yeah, I think we, I think you and I talked about this. I had an awakening at age 25, and it was the book and the movie, The Secret and the and the Secret said that everything external in my life was created because of my internal thoughts and beliefs. Yeah, well, I was blown away. I was like, what? And and it goes so far. It's like every person in your life is attracted by you. Every situation is attracted by you. The every single thing, the money in your bank account is because of the way you think that everything is because of the way you think.

13:12 And I'm like, is this true? Like could this be? And then I just was like, all right, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to believe it. So all the bad stuff that's happening is because I'm in bad moods. So this is I, I don't know if it's 100% of everything in life is created by our thoughts and emotions, but let's say it's 95%. That's a lot, right? But this is the, this is how it works. If I had stayed in that bad mood already, I had agitated my wife because I had a negative belief that life was happening to me this morning. And if, if I didn't have awareness to it, maybe I could have stayed agitated and I could have gone into work and been agitated in those meetings.

13:56 I could have ticked off that person who was mad. Even worse, she could have gotten madder. She could have then retaliated against me. I then could have stubbed my toe, gotten into a car crash, came home, yelled at my kids, started drinking. Like all of this from 1 Bad mood, right? And everything could have spiraled. I wake up tomorrow, I've got a hangover now I'm in a worse mood because I feel terrible and then I go shout at somebody and then maybe I do get fired because this is like the 15th time that it's happened, right? So our thoughts and emotions do create our actions, and then our actions create our destiny. So our thoughts and emotions are our destiny, and if you don't want to believe that your thoughts and emotions attract things like the secret is saying you physically attract them, everyone can understand this concept that the way you feel is the way you act and the way you act creates your destiny.

14:53 Yeah, this. We did talk about this when we first chatted. Then, yeah, the secret blew my mind because, yeah, I was taught I was at the mercy of my emotions and they, you know, chemical imbalance was, was all that that was about. And like, wait a minute, I can, I can choose my thoughts. I'm pretty sure of that. And my thoughts create my emotion. So if I don't like I'm feeling, if I change my thoughts and I would experiment with that like, all day. Like I, it's actually in the first book I wrote that talk about this. But I was, I remember at a time I was feeling very suicidal. And I was sitting in my bedroom looking out the window and I saw a big tree. Every time I looked at this tree, I just imagined myself hanging from it. And I just felt grosser and grosser. And then my dog Homer came in the room and I'd look at Homer, hey, and just looking at my dog just made me made my mood change already made my thought change because my thought was now on him, like, oh, what's my dog up to? And I was like, wait a minute, How did I just shift that quickly?

15:45 So I'd look at the tree again, feel gross, look at my dog, feel better. I was like, this fucking works. This gets I. Focus on. It's the thoughts I choose. What an what an epiphany, right? That's a That's awake. That's being awake it and this is really how it works is you. That story is such a very real vulnerable story, first of all. So I applaud you on being so vulnerable and also just the way it works. Yeah, I'm thinking this one thought that I should kill myself. And then I'm thinking this other thought, Hey, this dog is really beautiful and cool and I love this dog. Even if those aren't the exact words that are coming out of you connection with something and your mood is improved, you go back, Oh my God, that thought, I don't feel good. This thought, I do feel good.

16:34 So but the problem is, is that we have thousands of limiting beliefs and thousands of negative thoughts. And they're programmed from when we were five or two or three. And they're so ingrained in our subconscious, we don't realize that we're the ones that programmed them. We were a kid so that I I told the story about my dad saying men don't cry. I was programmed not to feel sadness. But who programmed me? Not my dad. It wasn't his words men don't cry. It was an internal decision. When I was 5 it said I won't cry.

17:16 So now our work to become happy is through a being unhappy. So every single time we are resisting something or we're upset about something, that moment is our opportunity to unprogram a limiting negative belief or keep suffering from it. If we don't unprogram it in that moment, we will keep suffering from it for the rest of our life until we fix it. And is there a process to unprogramming is just just as it's well at first it takes awareness. You got to be kind of be your own witness and realize the thoughts we're thinking. And then, then, then how do you kind of take apart that negative thought? Yeah, absolutely.

17:58 I mean it there. It's not as complicated as we think. It's really pretty simple. So our beliefs are are just a thought. So, you know, I'll just continue to use the example I've been using. Men don't cry. That was a belief. It was just a thought. It was suggested to me. I made a decision. I'm going to internalize this. And then I started to get evidence that it was true. And so I would collect evidence. I'd see John Wayne in a movie and he looked tough and he wasn't crying. And then I'd see another tough guy and he wasn't crying. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'm going to be a tough guy. So I collected probably 100 pieces of evidence. It supported my thought.

18:39 But then if there ever was a guy that was in touch with his emotions, I would see that and discard it and say that's not evidence. I would say that's not a real man. And so even if I had a bunch of great evidence of super tough macho guys that were crying, I would immediately just discard it and and make it irrelevant because I'd already created a thought and a belief and found evidence for it. And anything I saw to the contrary would no longer even register with me. This is the reticular activator. The reticular activator just looks for what you believe and then serves it to you. And anything that doesn't fit what you believe, it doesn't even show it to you or it comes up with a reason for it.

19:21 Yeah. So there's 8 primary bad moods. There's only 8. There's not a million. There's 8. Those are shame, which is a feeling that I'm unlovable. That's the most destructive one. That's the worst one. And then there's guilt, this feeling that I deserve to be punished and other people deserve to be punished. That's the second most destructive one. These, those two account for really the majority of our suffering. But then there's a feeling of hopelessness that we feel so heavy from the shame and the guilt. That was just hope, man. It's hopeless. I'm not going to be happy. I can't be. And then and then there's sadness, which we discussed.

20:05 Fear or anxiety, lust, the lust for more and more and more that we can ever get out of, and then anger and then pride. All of our negativity comes from these eight emotions. All we have to do is do what you said, get really, really good at awareness of saying I don't feel good. And then the process is really simple. We ask ourself, what am I feeling? What am I believing? So what am I feeling right now? And then what am I believing? At first we're not really good at it. At first we're just feeling in a funk and we don't even know why. We're just like, I'm just in a funk. It is though, created by thoughts and beliefs. 100% it's created by thoughts and beliefs.

20:47 Your story illustrated it perfectly. So, but it's also not that difficult. I, I grab a a pen and a paper and I say, what am I feeling? I feel like crap right now. OK, what am I believing? I don't know. We got to ask again. You got to say if this feeling like crap could talk, what would it say? What words would come out of it? Well, that's how that's what happened this morning. I shared that whole story. It was and I and I'm sure and and Andy, I'll, I'll throw it to you because your story was really powerful when you were feeling like crap and you kept looking at that tree and thinking that you would take your life. What were the thoughts that were going on? What?

21:29 What would it have said when you were in that kind of negative thought pattern? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I was feeling hopeless and helpless. And if I asked that, yeah, it was just do it. Like, you know, I saw myself hanging and the, the, the, the voice, the, the, the impulse was like, yeah, do it. That's the answer. That's that's that's the best thing to do. Yeah, it's it's your highest choice at that point. It really when you're hopeless. That's the thing people don't understand about suicide, is that it was that person's highest choice in that moment. It doesn't make any sense to somebody that's not lost in the emotional hopelessness. And cause and, and the choices, well, if you want to end this pain, if you want to end this feeling, that's the, that's my best suggestion. You know, bad part of me, you know, it's like, let's let's go get get the rope and get to that tree. Yeah.

22:20 Yeah. So the emotion. The emotional hopelessness is is the only emotion that we actually need help. That's the only of the eight that we cannot pull ourselves out of. You were able to that was really profound that you were able to see that you could focus on some positive things and see some some love and light. But if we really are lost in hopelessness, we truly believe we are beyond hope and that the suffering will always be there. The reality is, it's not true, ever. It's not ever bond beyond hope and the light is just behind the clouds. But when we feel like we're beyond hope, we don't believe that there is hope. So in that time, we have to call on help. We have to.

23:05 It's the only choice. We need someone else to help us, and that comes in the form of somebody who loves us. Even if it's a psychologist, a therapist, whatever it's their unconditional love of, then pulling us out of the emotional hopelessness is starting to show us that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know if how you felt about that. Yeah, and for me at that time it was it was unconditional love. It was it was Homer, right? It was saying that wow, he's he still loves me. He wants to go play. He's full of life. And but even though it was weird because like I did, I've done a multiple episodes about dog men and dogs because they I find so many guys that won't tell anyone how they feel, they do tell their dog. And that's what that that loss of a dog can be more impactful because they know all your secrets and you owe them everything and they've seen you bawling if no other, perhaps no human being has ever seen you cry but your dog. Has.

24:01 But yeah, it was that that that's why, yeah, I recommend for when guys reach out and they just really crushed and they're they're alone and they're desperate. Like consider a pet, get something that just is love, right? Yeah, and I'm a really spiritual person and it's I wouldn't put it past God or the universe that they sent Homer in at that moment. Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, no doubt about. It I've had, I've talked to other people who were on the brink of killing themselves and a bird or an animal comes into the picture and it changes everything. Yeah, And then, you know, a friend of mine, Kevin Hines, he's infamous. He he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and and lived and he was walking back and forth from the bridge wishing for someone to smile at him.

24:52 He wanted some kind. He looks so even at that point, and I know every time, you know, I've been on that brink, I'm like, boy, if I just, well, if, if something happens, I won't go through with it. Well, if if one person smiles at me, I won't go through with it. If, if my dog interrupts me, I won't go through with it, right. So there's all these. And that's when I finally learned like, I really don't want to die because I have all these well, maybe, or if I, you know, making all these outs. So that's why when I talk about it now, I I believed I wanted to die as opposed to saying, Oh, I was 18 and I wanted to die. Like, no, I believed I did. But. You didn't really. Yeah. There was a There was a higher desire to live than to die. Let's talk about some things, though, that we can do beyond hopelessness. So if if you're ever you're feeling hopeless, I want you to know that it's life's never beyond hope.

25:35 You can absolutely reach out to Andy. You can absolutely reach out to me. The two of us will surround you in unconditional love and we will help you out of that emotion. There are 800 hotlines you can call. There's people in your phone that love you. There's so many people that like when we get lost in that emotion, we, we, we're like, no, there's no one that can help me, but it's not true. So just know that right now, we're planting the seed in you right now that life is never beyond hope. And to know that there that there are people that will love you and be there for you. Another but but another really common emotion that we go to for men especially is anger. For whatever reason, it's OK for us to express anger and feel anger, but it's not OK to express anything vulnerable. So anger is always coming in to cover up a feeling of vulnerability.

26:29 It's not the real emotion. When we feel anger, we are actually feeling hurt or afraid. But we don't want, we don't feel OK to to feel the hurt or the fear. And so we let the anger come in and be the bully and cover it up so fast that we don't have to like show anybody that we're vulnerable and then we try to overpower them. But that's not going to go well because we can't be angry and we can't be happy at the same time. You can't have them both. You can't be both happy and then angry at somebody. You can't be happy and even frustrated. You can't be happy and annoyed. You can't be happy. And anything has having to do with any hint of anger at all.

27:09 So anger is going to be an aunt is going to be a negative happiness for us. Why do you guys love it so much? Because it looks like it's powerful again, Macho, right? We see TV and the guy, the guy gets angry and then he goes and, you know, shoots 1,000,000 people and then like, wins, wins the whole thing. Or, you know, he gets angry and then he ends up dominating something in sports. That was Michael Jordan's thing is he would just get really angry. And so we think it's macho. What? Man? It's not the real alpha. The real alpha is the person that can stay calm and composed no matter what's going on.

27:52 If you're if you're ever around a true alpha male, anger is not part of it. Go. Ahead. You know when somebody is not an alpha because they're getting angry. And in when you're when you're a true alpha and you know that anger no longer serves, you can see the person getting angry and know that they they don't have the composure that they need. I want to back up a little bit because we, you know, kind of one of the, the first elements was, was awareness, need the awareness to step back and witness your, yourself, your, your thoughts, your emotions before you can start journaling and, and taking things apart. So for me, what raised my awareness was, was it was meditation.

28:33 It wasn't until I had a meditation practice that I felt aware of anything. So I wonder what did you have? What, what did you have and what what tips you have for for raising someone's awareness instead of just someone that if you know, just being sad, just being hopeless, just feel like they're there's that all the time and that's all there is. Meditations is my go to is well, this is The thing is that this isn't all of life is inner work. All of it. My my good friend Matt Michaletti wrote a book called The Inner work. Our entire experience of life is inside our own head. We think that we're having an outward experience. We're not. We see things. Our retina then turns it into images that we see inside of our brain.

29:17 We hear things our brain turns in or our ears turn into signals. We experience in our brain, we taste things, it turns into signals and it tells our brain what we're tasting. We don't actually feel anything. All of it is experienced inside of ourself. And so the journey is an inward journey. We have to go inward and meditation. It's not, it's not fancy. You know what? I didn't know how to meditate. I used to think that it was something that was had to be taught to you. It's just being reflective. It's being reflective and taking time to work on seeing what's going on in your, in your head. Usually we're unconscious. Our thoughts are just racing and we're believing all of these thoughts.

30:00 But we, these thoughts are not real. They're not us. They're served up. They're created by our brain. I like to explain. Explain it like this, Andy, you have a heart and its job is to beat. Tell your heart to stop beating right now. I've tried. Can't do it. Can't, right? You have lungs. Their job is to breathe. Try to tell your lungs to stop breathing for more than 4 minutes. You can't, right? You have a brain, its job is to think thoughts. Try to tell your brain to have no thoughts for four minutes.

30:42 We can't. So meditation is beautiful because we start to say, OK, I'm going to focus on something like my breath and I'm going to not focus on the thoughts. When we're not meditating, what we do is every thought that serves up to us, we just think it's who we are and that's and it's real. It's not A brain is just thinking thoughts, just like the heart is just beating us. His job is just to present thoughts. The thoughts aren't even true. The thoughts are just the brain. It's just regurgitating experiences and different things that you had and fears and anxieties and pleasures and hunger or whatever else. The brain is just doing its job to keep us alive. But when we meditate, we start to see these thoughts and we're like, oh, that's an interesting thought. I'm not going to follow it, but that's an interesting one. And then we start to say, Oh my God, I don't have to believe all these thoughts.

31:35 And this is a game changer for us because we recognize I am not my thoughts. I am a separate consciousness that is aware that there are thoughts and that I can see that not all of them are even true. In fact, none of them are true, but some of them make me feel good and some of them make me feel bad. So now with this like separation meditation gives us some separation between our thoughts. We then can start to choose which thoughts we're going to believe today. Yep, yeah. When one obstacle to me even try meditation was I thought meditation meant having no thoughts and I couldn't do make that happen. But when I realized that, oh, meditation is, is just observing your thoughts again, not being attached to them, not chasing them, not going down any rabbit hole that you think of, then like, oh, well, this is actually easy. It's just being right.

32:28 And the tool that helped me was called Holosync, and that was C DS. You'd listen, I'd listen to these C DS and they would, the technology in the headset would make your brain meditate. It would make your brain go into the right delta waves. I believe it was. But anyway, thinking I, I couldn't do it. So I bought a tool that did it to me. And so if anyone is stuck thinking they can't do something, there are ways that can help them. And, and all, all sorts of technology with binaural beats can put you in a meditative state despite your efforts and beliefs that you perhaps you can't do it. But you know, I, I've, I've met lots of people that say they'd rather be right than be happy. I wonder if if you come across what what do you see people choosing over happiness?

33:12 Yeah, yeah. So interesting is that you can't be right and happy at the same time. Actually. So in in my book, The Good Mood Revolution, the first good mood is humility. And it's because once we're humble and we have humility, we recognize that none of our thoughts are ever right. This is wild. It will blow your mind. I watched the presidential debate last night. I can see how one side that that loves Trump would love every answer he said, and other side that hates Trump would hate every answer he said. And one side that loves Kamala would love every answer she said, and the other side that hates Kamala would hate every answer she said.

34:01 So who's right in the debate? Neither of them, and they're not. It's just a perspective. So then this gets to our own thoughts. Our own thoughts are never 100% right. In fact, you start to learn that the exact opposite of my thought is also right. And that is mind blowing. And that's a big, big shift in reality is that I'm never right. My thoughts are never 100% truth. Truth, like I know this is a little bit difficult to explain, but truth is so big. That encompasses all sides.

34:43 The Republicans are right, the Democrats are right, the Republicans are wrong, The Democrats are wrong. At the same time, both sides are right and wrong. So I could say, hey, I'm a really strong man, and then I could also say I'm a really weak man. I can find evidence for both. They're exactly opposite thoughts right now. Somebody who's extremely analytical would say, well, you know, I could measure this thing and it's exactly 25 inches long. And so I know that it's exactly 25 inches long. And that's right. And I would say even that's not right. Like we could go ahead and and put that thing into some type of a warped situation and the molecules would evaporate or whatever. Like you put it underwater, it measures different. There's just no truth that we can ever really point to. And and by the way, you said it, you know, I, I would say you said inches and then somebody in Europe would say centimeters. So right.

35:40 So like the point is, is that we cannot get attached to ever being right. It's our own thoughts that we cling to that create our suffering. When we want to say my story is the way it should be. It's our story that creates our suffering. And the example I gave this morning, I felt like I was a victim. I, I had a lot of evidence that said I was a lot of things that I, I was clinging to that were saying I was a victim. I also had a lot of evidence that said I was blessed, right? Which one's right? Was IA victim or was I blessed? Both are right. It's just which thought makes me feel better today.

36:23 I know you might think if if you love being right. I loved I used to love. I'm a recovering person who loves being right. You might think that being right makes you feel better. It actually doesn't because you can't be right and happy at the same time, so you have to break the habit. Being right is a this is the 8th bad mood is pride. Being right is the 8th bad mood. It's my way is the right way. I know best. I know what's right. You don't. I'm superior. The issue with that is, is that that when we're feeling that we're right, we're also saying that other people are wrong. And then we have this fear that then sometimes they'll be right and we'll be wrong.

37:04 And we're always in this constant comparison dance in comparison to the death of joy. We can't be comparing and be joyful at the same time. Joy is found in this present moment, loving it exactly as it is. So I love you brought that question up. I again, I just went on a big tirade about it. But no, we can't be right and happy at the same time. So you mentioned the book The Good Mood Revolution. What, What prompted you? What prompted you to write that? Yeah, again, I feel like I was born to write it. I've had these prompting since I was a kid that I was going to write a book and I was going to help people learn how to be happier. Even in the moments I was really unhappy and I was abusing drugs and alcohol on a daily basis.

37:51 And which again, is, you know, making terribly destructive choices. These are this is your my own self destruction. Like that's the path I went down to destroy myself. Even during those times, I would still get promptings. They're like, oh, you're going to write a book and teach people how to be happy. I'm like, I'm not happy. Like who am I to teach this other people how to do this? And but it just kept showing up. And then eventually as I started to get out of the darkness that I was in and I started to learn all these things, I went on like a, a 15 year quest learning all the secrets about how to be really happy. I finally said I'm ready to write that book. I said I was always going to write. And, and then, and then it took me 4 years, took me 4 years to write it because I really wanted to teach from authenticity, like how to get out of hopelessness.

38:45 I had to feel hopeless during the time I was writing that in order to get out of it and teach people how to get out, to teach people how to get out of pride, I had to experience extreme pride and then like how destructive that can be in order to teach people how to get out of that emotion. And then on the 8 positive emotions I write about, I, I'm like, man, I can't write a chapter about living as love if I don't really authentically feel like I'm living as love. So it took me that chapter took me the longest because it I really, I, I needed to embody how to be love in order to teach people how to be love. I wasn't going to write from theory. I had to write from experience.

39:29 And yeah, but it it, it, it's awesome. It's the book change. Even if even if I no one else gets helped in the world, I'm helped, right? Being, being the lessons was the greatest gift in my life. Yeah, yeah. If you really want to know something, teach it right. And if you want to find out that you know what you talk about, yeah, write about it and Share your story. And yeah, the one of the final, my book, still here, How to Succeed at Life After Failing at Suicide. It shares everything I learned the hard way. And I don't recommend this path, but here's what I got from it. And then the final chapter, I, before releasing it, I felt so unworthy. I stopped doing all the positive things I learned until this chapter about like, yeah, I went back down the tubes.

40:14 And I wrote about that and shared that like, how do I, how do I know this will work for you? Because when I stopped doing it, it, everything I talked about went away. Wow, like shit all over again. So I'm. Really curious, what were the positive things that you taught that you stopped doing? Oh, daily meditation, exercise, just just every bit of self-care journaling. I've made a great, I've maintained a gratitude journal since 2008, except for these short periods where I go, screw that, I'm not doing this anymore. What a waste of time. And then I'm like, why do I feel worse? So, and that's always been my first thing when I go into the despair and I've given up on everything.

40:55 The first thing that I do to start coming back to when I realize, all right, I've made this pit of misery, I'm sick of it. The first thing I do is start the gratitude journal again because it's the easiest thing to do. There's no barrier to entry. You can speak it to your phone. You know, just I find that keeping it, just having gratitude thoughts isn't enough. I got to put it on paper, put it into voice it, speak it out loud and into a phone, record it, but you know, make it not just be internal. But if I come up with three to five things that I'm grateful for, that that starts the mood with all energy is contagious. And so when we get our awareness and we change, consciously change, consciously choose happiness. Gratitude is a huge fuel for happiness, I find. And that's just the easiest thing for me to to hold on to and and and ride back up.

41:41 It's exactly what I teach exactly to AT So gratitude is one of the 8 good moods I talk about and it's not always possible to go from a negative mood to a happy one. It is always possible to go from a negative mood to a grateful one. Always. Gratitude is a keystone to happiness. It is it is actually the stepping stone to happiness You you put it really beautifully. I also practice gratitude by writing it down in a journal and have been every day for the last 15 years. And but I, I like, I want to live grateful. I want to live grateful.

42:24 And I love that you said it's contagious. Yeah, whatever we think all the time is contagious or we think more of it. Whatever we do all the time is contagious. And we do more of it is actually whatever we do often we want to do more often. So the more often we do gratitude. And, and so for me, I, I am planning in my day in multiple times throughout the day as I've started to say a prayer of gratitude before every meal. Like we wonder though, man, it takes a lot of time for Andy to do this journal and then and then now before every meal we got to pray. You know, I was out at, I was out at lunch with people I didn't know yesterday. And, and I, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know them well enough to say, Hey, can I pray over our food? I just said a little prayer silently to myself saying thank you, God for this food.

43:16 Right now there are there are people in the world that don't have food. There's there's people in it in your town right now that don't have food. It to be food insecure. Like we don't understand if you always have food, you don't understand what a gift is that you always have food. Saying thank you that you're being nourished today with food. That's gratitude. So now, if you eat three times a day, that's three more chances to be grateful Today. Put that on top of a gratitude journal. We're now starting to live as gratitude, and there's no way if you just did these little tiny things about gratitude that your mood wouldn't improve, because it would. I'll share one more gratitude tip right here. I always carry this yellow pad with me and it's jotting down all the great things that happen each day. So when I'm journaling at night, I don't have to just remember it because it's it's like I capture I found a quarter. Like it's to tiny things that might be forgotten. Like Oh yeah, hey, I found a quarter. Yeah, but whatever it is.

44:15 And sometimes this Pat, sometimes I'll have 5025 things and it's like, if I didn't jot it down, there are things I would have forgotten even with awareness. Just get busy. But like, wow, here's all the great things. Or had a great male lunch, met a new person. Like whatever it is that I I captured in that moment. So. I, I want to, I want to point out why this is so important for happiness. What you're doing it. I also do what you're talking about and so that the person that's listening, this is so key. The reason is, is that our brain is always looking for what's not going right. Always. It always is. It's scanning the Savannah to find the lion that's going to kill us.

44:56 It's beating us up when we make a mistake. It's always pointing out all of our flaws. Our brain is skewed to the negative. I think I I read a statistic that said 80% of our thoughts are negative and repetitive. So if the brains always going to tell us what we're doing wrong, when are we going to tell ourselves what we're doing right? Well, Andy's doing it. And it's not just, he's not just being like, oh, that went good, good job. You found a quarter. And you're not just patting yourself on the back. You're writing it down on a piece of paper that is so powerful, Really, really powerful. We have roughly 60,000 thoughts a day. We say roughly 6000 words a day, but how many words do we typically write in a day?

45:43 For most people, it's fewer than 200. So whatever. Your subconscious pays very, very close attention to words. We write down South, writing down our gratitude. I love that you said, hey, that is more powerful for me than just thinking it. Yeah, it is more powerful. Your subconscious pays very close attention. You don't write many things. Writing down that you found a quarter, it's like, oh, now your subconscious starts to notice, oh, I did that. Well, I did this. Well, that went right. This went right eventually when this is a habit and then you go and review it later that day, you start to feel like your whole life goes right all the time and then you're really happy with your life like you have just described.

46:25 How to reprogram ourselves from a negative mindset to a +1. It's beautiful. Awesome. So I know you have a podcast called The Good Mood Revolution as as well. Tell me about that. Yeah, man, every week I am talking about tips to feel happy. So, you know, it's you, you get into feeling the emotions. For me, it's just like strategies and tips just like you just shared. And so you know that, you know, if somebody's looking for more tips and just says, OK, I want to feel my emotions and Andy's the best guy in the world for that. And then also I want to learn some more strategies like this on how to how to have happy habits.

47:10 Then Good Mood Revolution is a good a good spot for that. Awesome. And what's the best way for people to learn about all the things that you're up to? When Waiter discovered the podcast and the book. Yeah, I mean, if, if someone is out there thinking that they are like, man, I, I want to take this to another level. I do offer one-on-one coaching and, and, and you can reach out to me at mattoneill.com. And will there be information on the podcast and track that like on every platform and yeah. The podcast is on all the platforms. It's also on mattoneill.com, the books on Amazon. Beautiful. Awesome. Well, Matt, I really appreciate the time. I appreciate your growth and your willingness to share it because I find that, you know, my experience, my most potent healing is tied to being of service with it as well.

48:04 So I find, especially for men, the more that that you and I are willing to share, the more we remind other men that they have skills and powers and abilities that they might judge as somehow not being a good, good manly things. And you, you, you can be the Auntie John Wayne and connect with a lot of people and help a lot of people. And yeah, there's so many things you share that I that I really love and the, the notion that we're none of our thoughts are 100% right and that that we're, we're our country thoughts and our, we're both sides of every thought we have. So that's that's some powerful stuff, so. Same, same man, dude like you, the the things that you share or what I write about in my book, like with this truth is truth and you found your way to so much truth and your growth is just so impressive. Your show is so impressive.

48:57 I'm a huge fan of you and it's just been an honor. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Matt. Thanks for everyone joining, listening to us today, visit Real Men Feel for the blog post from this episode. We have various links to all the resources discuss Matt's books, every book we've talked about, you know, heck if the secret's still around, we'll link to the secret. But everything there's, there's lots of tools. There's lots of ways that you can improve your mood, your attitude, your life, and wherever you're discovering Real Men feel Give some love back. Subscribe, follow, like, share this with somebody, post a review or a comment and you can always reach me at realmanfeel@gmail.com. And until next time, be grateful for yourself.