The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

I want to return to Scott's email. Scott was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and he was faking to the world that he's this outgoing extrovert, and he doesn't want to be the drag at some party. So instead of telling people that he's seriously unhappy and on the verge of a mental breakdown, he laughs and is very cheerful, but privately, behind the curtains of his own mind, he is not doing well in college. He feels like his faith as a Christian is something he is violating, and he just doesn't have any motivation to do the things he should do, and he's got lots of motivation to do lust-filled, sinful things.

During the break, my producer said he thought maybe he was self-pleasuring, maybe he wasn't womanizing, but it doesn't make any difference whether it's drugs or alcohol or womanizing or self-pleasuring, which is wonderful; he's doing something that's self-sabotaging. Of course, if he's self-pleasuring on the internet, that can get real nasty and very self-destructive quickly. But I don't see it as an addiction.

So here's some advice. I'm going to assume that you're going to a bar, you're picking up women, Scott, you're having promiscuous sex, then you need to be studying. Now, what's the upshot? Well, sex and drinking can feel really good momentarily. It's like heroin, really good. But the minute your mind clears, you will see that you have self-sabotage, that the sex that you had was not with a loving partner who knows your character. You're not letting people know your character. You're not letting them know that you're in pain. And all the drinking and drugging does is blur your mind, and you're running from facts. You're running from reality. If you run from facts, you can never fix them.

So it's important to feel negative emotions. Now, I have a show, The Rational Basis of Happiness. Why would I say that? Well, it's for the same reason that I would say it's important to know that a hot stove is hot by touch, because we can take protective action. We can pull our hands off of the stove, or if we eat something that, say, poison isn't very bitter and foul-tasting or turned, it's important that we can taste it so that we can spit it out before we digest it.

So the same is true with feeling the emotions. When you feel guilt, depression, anxiety, anger, it's a signal that you need to make better choices in your life, that you need to do a lot of good thinking. You need to know that you said you're a Christian and that you've lost your faith or you're not following your faith. I would say faith is the problem as opposed to rational thinking. Faith is the belief in something for which there's no proof, or belief in something for which there's contradictory evidence. A code that rests on faith and humility and self-sacrifice is many people's problems.

I say instead that the purpose of morality is to help you make long-range choices, choices that give you a good guide to living your life, that lead you to success, to achievement, to personal happiness, that help you make your life rewarding and meaningful, and help you build a decent character, a person who's honest, a person who's productive, a person who has integrity. Most moral codes will tell you to sacrifice yourself.

I don't need to repeat Original Sin. If they have you born with sin, and they then, they expect you to feel guilty for being alive, and that is an unearned guilt that itself is a sin, and you're supposed to atone for that sin by sacrificing what you value most. Now, people can't follow those codes. Nobody can because people want goodies. Even the organizations that promote these have to give bingo or dances or retreats in order to get people to buy into the self-sacrificial code partially, and you feel chronically guilty.

You're told that you can't question this code. Who are you to think? Who are you to judge? Who are you to apply reason and to try to make sense of their irrational or to question it? Who are you to question? That's not a very nice view of man. Instead of man, the achiever, man is small and smutty or puny before the eyes of some deity. And your life becomes not a pursuit of your rational, personally rewarding values, but of duties, obligations, and no wonder why people drink.

They dress it up to make it look pretty, but people rebel against a sacrificial code, then they feel guilty, then they get into a rut that seems impossible to get out of. So here's what I encourage you to do.

Hey, I got to 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.

Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is, The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance, that is interesting.

Then they feel guilty, then they get into a rut that seems impossible to get out of. So here's what I encourage you to do. I encourage you to find some rational thinking skills. You can do it through cognitive therapy. You can do it by going to my website. I have books Changing for Good that are excellent, written by cognitive therapists, some other books that are excellent too. You can also read the novels that I love, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which gives you an alternative, not a hedonistic moral code where you have a me-only do whatever feels good, but a rational moral code where you develop a central purpose for your life.

And if you enjoy something in college, if there's something in college that you've always wanted to do but you find you're not doing it, then you won't be motivated to do what you're currently doing. You need a self-valuing motivation to study, to open the books. If I had to study, say, statistics, which I did, it was very hard for me because I didn't enjoy it, but if I study psychology, I'm passionate about it.

So discover a central purpose in your life and develop a career around that. Realize that the shortcut isn't serving you well. You can get the book I mentioned, Study Methods and Motivation, on my website, DrKenner.com, and adopt a proper moral code, meaning one that will lead to your making rational choices. Learn how to change your old habits. There's also a book, Loving Life. I think it's on my website. If not, we'll put it on today by Craig Biddle. It's The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts That Supported, a very, very good book that can help you turn your life around and enjoy doing it and enjoy living.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner, who’s this?

I'm Mr. Bosnick's anger management therapist.

You're in anger management?

Temporarily. Dissembling is a common tool of the anger junkie. Dave, you have a disease? Would you apologize if you were a diabetic? Of course not. So why do you feel you have to apologize because you're suffering from TAs?

TAs.

Toxic Anger Syndrome.

I don't have TAs.

He's angry. It's a sickness, not a crime. You know, there are those in my profession that like to make every illness—not illness, but every choice problem that stems from choice—into an illness, that you're a victim. You've got TAs, toxic anger syndrome, or you're losing it; therefore, you must be bipolar. And I think that's tragic, because if you tell a person that this is just like diabetes, that your anger, you know you have a depression for life, you have a chemical imbalance, and you just have to deal with it. Or you're an anxious person. You've always been that way; you'll always be that way. You just have to deal with it. If you tell them that, what's the motivation to change? How are they going to seek the skills to discover that you can get over these things?

And that's one of the reasons that I, Dr. Ellen Kenner, love cognitive therapy because it gives people thinking skills to get over their problems.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com, and please listen to this.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

Another virtue that makes you lovable is integrity. Integrity means being loyal to your rational convictions in action. A breach of integrity means acting against your own convictions. Having courage—that is, remaining true to your values in the face of threat—is an aspect of integrity. It also means not giving up your values for a momentary emotional high. A wife may profess to love her husband, but she brushes that off for a quick, mindless affair. A man may know he needs to exercise regularly, diet, and stop smoking, but he suppresses that knowledge for just a moment every day for years. Breaches of integrity cost us our self-respect, not to mention our romantic happiness. When we let ourselves down again and again, we lose trust in ourselves, and others lose trust in us.

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

Hey, Michelle, what did Jamie's teachers have to say at PTA tonight?

Great. Except for math. Jamie's math teacher says that she spaces out during class and that she failed her last algebra exam.

That's a big problem.

We went through the same thing with Kevin, but thanks to Math Made Easy, he's made a complete turnaround.

I've heard about Math Made Easy. How does it work?

They've got these terrific video reviews in all levels of math with dynamic teachers who engage students with easy-to-follow explanations. With Math Made Easy, students control the pace of their learning. Math Made Easy even comes with a 30-day risk-free trial.

Wow, I have nothing to lose, right?

Math Made Easy is a proven tool that will boost Jamie's grades and her confidence. It's an affordable alternative to pricey tutoring.

Here, let me text the number to you. It's 1-800-USA-MATH, or you can visit MathMadeEasy.com. Math Made Easy, 1-800-USA-MATH, 1-800-872-6284.