Decide to be happy

Rob Dubin was an award winning filmmaker who owned his own company and travelled the world working for numerous Fortune 500 companies. At 42, he and his wife changed direction, sold their home and bought a sailboat and spent the next seventeen years sailing around the world, studying human happiness and fulfillment.

In his late 60s he then started speaking on happiness and fulfillment and when the great resignation hit in the US, he realised that people were leaving their jobs not just because they were unsatisfied with their jobs but also with their lives.  He now works with corporations on wellness, happiness and fulfillment so they can keep their employees and develop a different type of corporate culture.

Pre-pandemic in the US there was a notion that if you did all the right things, went to school, got an education, got a job, got married, had a family, got the white picket fence, got reasonable promotions along the way happiness would just happen to you. That's not actually the way happiness works. In the pandemic there was a paradigm shift where millions of people started asking themselves were they happy in life, was their life ending up how they imagined it. Lots of people said no its not and resigned in mass numbers.

The second paradigm shift was when people asked themselves questions about their dissatisfaction at work. The HR department always knew the answer was more money and better benefits. Now that people are asking if they were happy in life, the HR departments are at a loss. If compensation and benefits are the solution, the great resignation would be over by now. When people ask themselves the question why am I not happy and how can I be happy, most people don't now how to make themselves happy. In the old world we knew that more money would make us happy. In the new world no one knows the answer because few people know how to make themselves happy.

When Rob and his wife had finished sailing around the world, a lot of people wanted to hear their stories but Rob wanted to leave people with more. He had been very involved in the sailing world and spent considerable time with very wealthy people, millionaires and billionaires who were aiming who high-end yacht races. A short time later they were sailing to tiny islands in the Caribbean and Pacific and spending time with and barefoot villagers. Some the very wealthy people were happy and some unhappy and it was the same for the villagers so happiness is clearly not your circumstances.

Rob feels happiness is both a state and a skill. We think that when zxy happens we will be happy. This is true in a small sense but this kind of happiness only lasts for a short time – we buy a new car, a new house and are happy but a while later we want a different car or house. We get sucked into this idea because it’s partially true but in fact real happiness is just a decision you make to make to be happy. Once we make that decision Rob thinks we need to practice habits or skills of happiness daily over a period of time until they become habits. Once they become habits and part of what you are, happiness becomes part of who you are. Rob uses LIVE HAPPY as an acronym.

L - Learn optimism

I - Invent your new story

V - Value yourself

E - Exert emotional control

H - Happiness is a decision

A - A daily gratitude

P - Practice mindfulness

P - Practice contribution

Y - Your dreams

Rob feels that the way we know when are happy is that we feel a deep contentment that you know your life is going the way you want it and that it is what we thought it was going to be. Our experience of life is our emotions so that's how we describe our experience of life be it happy, sad or worried, these emotions become our life.

The change in direction in Rob’s came a year after he and his wife were part of a group of people who spent five nights in the wilderness after being lost in a winter blizzard in Colorado. People generally only survive one or two nights so after three nights the search for them was called off and they were given up for dead. The search made the news worldwide and when they were found safe, the first call they received was from the President of the United States who congratulated them on their survival. 

The aftermath however though was that Rob’s wife incurred frostbite which led to the doctors saying they would amputate both her feet and most of her fingers. Rob wondered what life was going to be in the future. He left the hospital distraught and helpless but the next morning he woke up feeling powerful. He went back to the hospital where he and his wife refused to sign the papers for the surgery and focused instead on a full recovery. They decided that was going to the outcome and although his wife was in hospital for 21 days and it took a full year, he did make a full recovery. Rob feels their story of resilience has three phases. The first was when they were out in the storm. The second was when they decided they were going to focus on a complete recovery and focus on a compelling future for the future and the third was the story they told themselves going forward – that we can accomplish what we want so lets sail round the world

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more Rob at Robdubin.com