#424 How to transform emotional pain into lasting happiness, inner joy and fulfilment, with Matt O'Neill.

Have you ever wondered why true happiness seems so elusive despite achieving external success? 

In this enlightening episode of Personal Development Mastery, we're joined by Matt O'Neill, a podcast host, entrepreneur, and author who shares his transformative journey from chasing business achievements to uncovering genuine joy within. Matt reveals his profound insights into the distinction between fleeting pleasure and enduring happiness, emphasizing the crucial role of rewiring our brains for positivity and embracing internal growth.

Emotional pain can leave deep scars, not just mentally but physically. In a deeply personal revelation, Matt shares his struggles, the pursuit of external validation, and that despite outward success, he faced intense physical pain tied to unresolved emotions. By acknowledging and addressing these suppressed feelings, he found relief from chronic physical pain.

Navigating life's inevitable adversities is essential for sustaining inner peace and happiness. We discuss the dual aspects of our being—the eternal soul and the ego—and how true contentment comes from staying connected to our soul. Practical daily practices such as physical exercise and prayer can help maintain this connection, fostering a spiritually fulfilling life. We also touch upon the power of reframing challenges as growth opportunities and recognizing our eternal nature to reduce fear and embrace lasting peace. Join us for actionable wisdom and empowering advice on achieving a happier, more fulfilling life.

˚

𝗞𝗘𝗬 𝗣𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗦

02:19 - Journey to True Happiness

05:30 - Emotional Pain and Physical Manifestation

11:10 - Achieving Lasting Happiness

12:58 - Finding Inner Peace and Connection

18:19 - Power of Prayer in Daily Life

25:24 - Discovering Happiness Through Adversity

28:38 - Transforming Betrayal Through Love

36:26 - Sharing Wisdom for a Happier Life

˚

𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗤𝗨𝗢𝗧𝗘

"I am so freaking proud of you."

˚

𝗩𝗔𝗟𝗨𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗖𝗘𝗦

Matt's website: https://mattoneill.com/

˚

𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗧

I am Agi Keramidas, a podcaster, knowledge broker, and mentor. My mission is to inspire you to take action towards a purposeful and fulfilling life.

Get a free copy of my book "88 Actionable Insights For Life":

https://agikeramidas.com/88

˚

Transcript

Matt O'Neill: 0:35

My actionable exercise is continue to listen to personal development mastery. This show will be your guide to a happier life.

Agi Keramidas: 0:48

You are listening to personal development mastery, the podcast that empowers you with the simple and consistent actions to take that will help you create a life of purpose and fulfillment. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas, and this is episode 424 My guest today is a leading expert on happiness. So if happiness is something that you mastery seeker, are interested in, and something tells me that you are then keep on listening before we dive in. If you enjoy listening and appreciate what we're doing, the quick, simple favor I'm asking of you is to click the subscribe button. Now, let's get started. Today. I'm delighted to welcome Matt O'Neill. Matt, you are a podcast host, entrepreneur and Forbes book author. After building a successful business with 100 employees and 10 million in revenue. You discovered true fulfillment by finding happiness within and you are now a leading expert in happiness education. You are passionate about helping people achieve lasting happiness by rewiring their brains for positivity and choosing happiness even in the face of adversity. Matt, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to speak with you today.

Matt O'Neill: 2:21

Agi, oh, I am so honored and excited and thrilled to be here today talking with you, my friend,

Agi Keramidas: 2:29

and so am I. And of all the topics out there, happiness is one that would probably resonate with the vast majority of people. There are very few, if any, people who are not interested in happiness. So that's the topic for today. And if you want to make any kind of preface before we start, please do Yeah,

Matt O'Neill: 2:54

it is the you're you're absolutely right. Agi, it's the universal goal. Every single one of us has a desire to be happy. In fact, everything we do, everything we buy, everything we say, is all aligned with the goal to be happy. And if we all just want to be happy all the time, why is it so freaking hard to be happy all of the time? It's because we don't know how, in fact, we actually were trained the opposite ways of being happy, and so we seek happiness in all the wrong places, which is what my story was, growing the big company and acquiring all the money, and I acquired a family, a beautiful family, that makes me very happy, but I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was doing it because I was seeking that happiness by these external things. And it is an internal game. So happiness is only when we turn inside that we can truly experience it. You know, there's like this feeling of pleasure. Pleasure is what we like think is going to be happiness that comes from attaining a certain goal, but it's so short lived. You know, pleasure could be from eating ice cream or drinking alcohol or watching a TV show, but it's just fleeting. You know, happiness true, what I call joy, is an internal feeling that just is there when we get rid of all mental blocks that keep it from being experienced. Yes,

Agi Keramidas: 4:24

I really like what you said about the word joy, because joy has more of an internal vibration, rather than something that comes from outside of us, externally, and you talk about happiness and how there are some common misconceptions about it. Before we go there, I would like to hear a little bit about your journey, maybe a pivotal moment, something that really shifted things for you in the direction of where you are. Yeah,

Matt O'Neill: 5:03

absolutely, pain, pain and suffering. The journey to joy is paved on the road of pain and suffering, and it's that way for all of us. I know you said you were listening to the podcast episode I did on good mood revolution, my podcast about the weekend I spent with Eckert Tolle and Eckert said, enlightenment is not a rosy path. In fact, the path to enlightenment is. Through suffering, and that's been my experience as well, is that if when we're really comfortable and things are going really well, we don't grow, we're not seeking ways to become better, it is only when things are so bad and they feel so desperately awful that we say, I cannot stand feeling this way anymore, and I have to make massive changes in a way that I think, that I perceive things and I live in the world, and that's what happened to me, my dad. My dad was a real tough dad. No, you know, no approval ever. And and then he abandoned our family when I was five, and I'd see him sporadically, and every time I saw him, it was like lots of pain and punishment, not physical, just just a tremendous amount of emotional turmoil. And that created a hole in my heart where I felt like I wasn't good enough. I felt like God didn't love me. I actually was really angry at Jesus, because I'm like God loved Jesus and gave Jesus all these gifts, but he abandoned me, right? This was a true thing for me. I had to heal my relationship with Jesus over this over this father abandonment thing, and then and then, because I didn't feel like I was enough, I needed to go achieve. I had to conquer and show the world. I was enough with all of this external success and having the perfect family and the perfect house, and it was all based on pain, and I did it. I accomplished it without happiness. And that's when I said, this is not what I wanted. I actually wanted to be joyful. I didn't want more problems and more stress and more everything, and then and out, you know, I was in so much emotional turmoil pain that it was manifesting as physical pain. I had massive back pain in my 30s, like, crazy amounts of back pain to the point I thought that I needed surgery. And I went to a surgeon, and I, like, limped into his office, and I said, Cut me. Cut me. Fixed his back. My back is completely there must be a million bulging discs and just cut me. Fuse my spine together. I can't deal with this physical pain anymore, and the physical pain was a manifestation of internal pain that I hadn't learned how to deal with and once I dealt with the emotions, all physical pain disappeared.

Agi Keramidas: 8:03

If you enjoy this episode, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you will also be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. And now let's get back to the episode.

Matt O'Neill: 8:20

You know, God's always there, always looking out for us, always providing for us. And I was guided to a solution. The solution was given to me in a book. I was reading the book pointed he had the book was by Ben Hardy, I think it was called, personality isn't permanent. And in that book, he tells a story of a woman who had tremendous pain in her hamstrings, and she walked up to this doctor who a guy named Dr Sarno, and Dr Sarno said, How long have you had that injury? And she said, 10 years. I heard it 10 years ago when I was water skiing. And he said, That's not from water skiing, your pain is emotional. And then she was intrigued by this, and started working with this guy, Dr Sarno, and he taught her that her pain was emotional and her pain went away. This was the story I read in that book. And while I'm reading it, I have an ice pad on my back, I've got an ice pad on my shoulder, I've got an ice pad on my knee. I've got a special pillow in my car, special pillow at my office, like all this stuff to accommodate this physical pain that I was going through. And I thought, what if my physical pain is emotional, and it was that awareness. And so then I went and bought Dr sarnos book. His first book was called Healing back pain, and I read it, and he's and he described what was happening, and what was happening is primarily the emotion of anger that we don't want to express, because when you're a kid and you throw a temper tantrum and you get really angry and you stomp and you throw things, your parents punish you like that's bad, you can't be angry. And so we learn from a young age that anger is not okay. It's not appropriate, so we don't express it. Well, what we do is we stuff it inside our bodies. Well, Dr Sarno said, When you get to the age of responsibility, where you have children and a wife and a career and all these things that you have to do every single day, there's a piece of you that just gets angry and resentful at how much work your life is, but you're not allowed to be angry so and you certainly. Wouldn't be angry about the things you love, like your wife or your kids, so you just suppress all this anger, and then that anger builds and builds and builds until it has to express itself in some way to get your attention that you're doing this to yourself, and it expresses itself as physical pain. And it doesn't have to be back pain. It could be neck pain, knee pain. Could be ulcers. It could be some type of disease that we're experiencing. According to Dr Sarno, 90% of all chronic illness is from emotional suppression, and as soon and so the solution to this, he said, is, once you understand you're doing it, you start to naturally undo it. This is what Michael singer talks about in his book Untethered Soul, he talks about these samskaras and a samskaras the same thing. It's an emotion we didn't know what to do with. We didn't know how to release it, and it gets trapped in our body in a circle, and the energy of that emotion is just circling in our body. And once something happens in the world that bumps that emotional pain we experience all of it again. It's what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body, that something triggers this emotion we never dealt with, maybe this emotion that I'm not good enough, that's that was my primary emotion still is. And as soon as that emotion gets triggered, because I was five and didn't understand that my dad was just not able to take care of children. I thought it was about me that I wasn't enough. That's why he left so some but something bumps that, and then I'm overcome with pain of I'm not good enough. And then what did I do? I went and drank alcohol and did drugs every day and trying to suppress all this pain that I didn't know how to deal with. Then I was like, All right, let's figure this out. And so I read hundreds of books on emotional mastery and on psychology and psychiatry, worked with coaches and psychiatrists and went to conferences and learned to meditate and and now I'm just here to teach people that we don't have to live in pain like that

Agi Keramidas: 12:32

when you get to the point of understanding. Or even better, realizing that physical pain is our body, our body telling us something, I think, the moment you look at it that way and understanding it's a big change in the way you perceive your body and your symptoms. Anyway, Matt, I am going to bring us back to happiness now, and I'd like you to tell us what the common misconception is. Why is it that it's something that everyone strives for and yet very few people actually achieve it, at least the lasting happiness, the real happiness. So what is the misconception? What is the main reason for this

Matt O'Neill: 13:27

awesome question? And it does relate to what we were just talking about. We've got two parts of our being. There's our eternal soul. Our eternal soul is connected to the light, to God, to everyone else. It is unconditional love. It is so compassionate when we are feeling like fully alive, fully creative, fully inspired. Inspired is in spirit, right? We are in our spirit. That is when we're connected to our eternal soul. Well, that's the really cool part of our being that we want to connect to all the time. That's super high vibration emotions, that when we are connected there, we're going to create a beautiful future for ourselves and everyone will never harm someone, ever, will never do anything to harm anyone connected to that energy. And we've got this other part of our being. It's our E, it's our ego, and it is the part of our being that is our survival mechanism. When we were born, we were given this hardware of survival, and it has some things that need you to do to keep your body alive. One of those things is the emotion of pride. It is the pinnacle of the ego. Pride says I have to prove to the world that I am better than everyone else, because the person who's best has the highest chance of surviving. Think about when we came up in tribes, the leader of the tribe, the one that was the strongest, the fittest. And you can see this in the ape world. I like I love to watch documentaries on chimpanzees. The strongest chimpanzee gets the first bite of meat. He gets his pick of the women, right? The strongest chimpanzee is always being challenged, and he always has to be bigger and stronger than everyone else, until one day he's taken down. Well, that's our survival mechanism, and maybe we don't do it by being the most physically powerful. Now we've evolved our brains, and we want to be the most mentally powerful, or in a lot of cases. Are the most successful with the most money, and then we want to show that off, that hey, I also am worthy of great things. It's all just a survival game. We get caught up in this ego game of the money and the success and the awards and the power, that is what happiness is. But here's the crazy thing, it's it's absolutely insane. You can never, ever be happy when you're coming from ego, ever. So anytime we're trapped in pride, the illusion that we have to succeed, we are not happy. And so happiness comes from recognizing these two parts of our being in a noticing when we're trapped in a game of illusion of the ego, and deciding that we're not going to listen to those thoughts.

Agi Keramidas: 16:26

How can one get or stay more connected to this first part that you said, rather than being carried away. As you well know, it is easy to be carried away by the constant stream of thoughts that hijack our attention, and before you know it, we are lost in it. So what's one way to stay connected? It's

Matt O'Neill: 16:54

such a good question, Agi, that this is why you're such a great host, and why people continue to listen to your show at such a high rate. Because there are absolutely daily practices that I do every single day. They are not difficult. That's not revolutionary. It's not going to blow your mind, because everyone knows them. Okay, we're going to go I'm going to go into them one by one. We'll start with the easiest, the easiest way to get out of the ego thinking. Ego lives in the brain, and it never experiences the present moment. It's always thinking about the past or anticipating the future, always so when we're Tony Robbins says a line. He says, When you're in your head, you're dead. So when we're trapped in a loop of thinking, we're not in our spirit, our spirit lives here, right? It's more connected to our heart center, and so getting out of the head, I do it with physical exercise. There's a concept called flow, where physical exercise is just challenging enough that it's a little bit beyond your ability, and you have to use all your concentration to do this physical exercise, and using all your concentration on one thing, like, for instance, lifting weights that are a little bit heavier than you can lift, or playing a sport with somebody that's a little bit better than you are. You can't think about what you said to that person yesterday or what you're afraid of tomorrow. You are engrossed in the present moment of doing what you're doing. This is you hear like a dancer being lost in the dance, an artist being lost in their painting, a sports player that can't just blacks out, and all they can do is just, you know, they had the game of their life, and they can't even remember any of it, because they were so present through all of it. So physical exercise is a way to get out of our thoughts and into our spirit. That's one of the things I practice every day. Is some form of physical activity. Another way is prayer. So we want a direct line to God. We have it every single day. I my highest recommendation is pray every day. You know, God created everything. God's the smartest thing that exists. You look at the intricacies of the human body, there's billions of cells in you that are being regulated. Your heart is being beat without your attention. You're being breathed by God. Your hair is being grown by God. Your fingernails are being grown by God. Everything in you that is amazing that you can't understand is being done by God without your attention. So God's watching you all the time and helping you. All you have to do is just ask questions through prayer, and as we pray, God answers. In fact, I think God's talking to us at every moment of the day, if we, if we open up to it and we start to listen. So prayer is my favorite way to get to get beyond the mind. And so my prayer is usually a prayer of gratitude. I'll start, I'll put my hand on my heart, because, again, this kind of takes me out of my head and into my heart. And I'll wait until I can feel my heartbeat, and then I'll start to say, God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for this heartbeat. Thank you for all the amazing things that happened yesterday. And I'll name them off one by one. And then I'll say, God, I need your guidance today. Guide me. Show me what to see, tell me what to say, put me in position to make a difference. I am your instrument today, and now I don't have to use my head. I don't have to think about what I have to do to control the world or to succeed. I've just said, God, I am your instrument. Meant I have full faith that you are out for my highest good. Whatever happens today, I'm going to accept it as something that you've given me as a gift, even if I don't want it. I'm going to know that it was for my highest good, because I asked you for it. And now there's a tremendous amount of relief here. I don't have to think about controlling the world. I'm already being guided another practical way is meditation. Meditation for me is just simply focusing on my breath, focusing on the inhale and focusing on the exhale. Eventually, when we do this enough, you start to be able to feel your whole heartbeat in your arms and in your hands. And as we're focusing just on the in breath and out breath and the pulse of like life energy flowing through us, we are fully present and we're out of our thoughts. So this, these are the simple ways that I know of. I do all of these every single day, because I do want to get more and more out of the ego and into my spirit.

Agi Keramidas: 21:36

This is great, and I have a couple of comments. The first was the theme of getting out of the head and getting lost in the movement that you said. And the other thing was what you said about prayer, and actually, thank you for explaining how you do it, because you know, for different people, the word prayer and religious concepts in general can have different interpretations or even prejudices. So I appreciated the way you broke it down, let's say as a practice. You know that statement, that I am your instrument, which, of course, implies a surrender, and that surrender, of course, implies a deeper understanding, or a deeper faith, which, as you know, not everyone has. So what would you say to the person who's listening now and who doesn't feel comfortable with the phrase, I am your instrument? How would you adapt it?

Matt O'Neill: 22:56

Such a great question. And as I mentioned, I was very angry with Jesus. In fact, I rebelled so far from religion. I was a I was an atheist. In my 20s, I became obsessed with science. I thought that science had all of the answers. And I studied the Big Bang Theory and Einstein's theory of relativity and how atoms were just made of energy, and how everything could be explained with science. And that's a that's a useful way to go. It's really useful to try to explain the world with science. But even Einstein himself said, the more and more I study, the more and more I realize that God has designed all of this. And eventually you come back around so there's a there's a book that Michael singer also wrote called the surrender experiment. And the surrender experiment doesn't use the word God, because he understands that that word triggers many people in my 20s, it would have triggered me. I would have turned right around and said, This isn't for me. I've been down this route of Christian religion. Christian religion is full of guilt. It always is telling you that you're wrong, that you're a sinner, that you're not good enough, that you're not worthy, and that you'll always be broken. I don't agree with that at all, and it didn't resonate with me as a kid. It doesn't resonate with me now and then, you know, now, I've come back into the Christian religion with new eyes, and I really love the teachings of Jesus. He doesn't say you're wrong or you're broken the Old Testament, does Jesus's teaching, just says, I love everyone, and you should love everyone. And what a beautiful way you know, just to love everyone. This is loving everyone is the path of happiness, just full compassion for the human condition and human suffering. But I'm digressing when we get into Michael singer, surrender experiment. He doesn't talk about God. He says the universe, and he says the universe is so intelligent. And he said what looks like a terrible catastrophe or hurricane that comes and knocks down all the trees. Was really God's design, because new growth now has a chance to come up, and it was exactly what the world needed, was that hurricane. And he said, When a hurricane comes into your life and it knocks down all your trees and it makes such a mess in your life, it was done because the universe wanted you to experience that so you could experience what is, what is coming next. And he said, Your job now is just whatever the universe presents you say yes to it is way smart. Harder than you are. Your little, tiny brain trying to figure it all out. The universe is holding billions of trillions of stars together all at once. So if it brings you something, it's bringing it to you for a reason. Don't resist it. Lean into it. Say yes to it. And that was my first experience of surrender to God. But I didn't call it God. I called it the universe. I was still in my scientific phase

Agi Keramidas: 25:59

regarding what you just said that whatever happens is given to you for a reason. Let's talk about adversity in particular, because it is much more difficult to accept this statement that everything happens given to you for a reason, when your life is a mess, when things are adverse in one way or another, it is much more difficult to accept this statement. So can you give us some insights on how to maintain that inner attitude of happiness, of staying connected to the inner soul when we are facing adversity.

Matt O'Neill: 26:51

Agi this is all. This is everything. That question is the crux that it here's here's the reality. Change is the only constant, and what is adversity but change? We don't want the world to change. We want the people we love to stay alive. They won't. We don't want our body to age and go and get sick. It's going to we don't want our money to be disturbed. It's going to be disturbed. We don't want things to come into our business and hurt it. They are going to happen. Change is a constant, so adversity is life. Until we learn how to be happy through adversity, we will never, ever be happy, because adversity is the only constant, and that question is the crux of conscious happiness. All of a sudden you start so this was me. I said my path to happiness was through suffering. I was suffering through money loss, business problems, too much work, too much on my plate. It was just this overwhelming suffering. I was cracking under pressure. It was all self created, but I thought that all this adversity shouldn't be happening, that I shouldn't have to go through it, that it was unfair. And that's when I started to seek, how can I be happy with this adversity? And this is the truth. The only suffering is from the story you tell yourself. The only thing that can ever hurt you is your own negative story. Nothing can actually hurt you other than your story. It's a bold statement. I'm sure everyone listening, the person listening, is going to try to poke holes in it, absolutely try to poke holes in it. It is tried and true. There is no way to actually poke holes in this. On a grand scheme of things, there's a there's a few things that are absolutely true that I've learned the universe is looking out for you and your highest good. You can call it God, the universe, whatever word you want to say, it is always looking out for your highest good. And your highest good is always leading you to a further amount of surrender and love. So that means everything that's happens to you is happening for your growth surrender, and is happening in a very beautiful, loving way to urge you to be more free and more happy in the midst of adversity and change when you have this knowing all of a sudden the thing that totally upsets you, you know, let's I had somebody that betrayed me, and it was such a deep betrayal. I worked with them for 10 years, and then they went and opened up a new company, and then called everyone in my company, and it felt like they were just stealing everything that I had worked so hard to build. After all I had done was love them. It was like a true betrayal, you know, and I'm like and I couldn't understand it. The pain was crazy. I couldn't understand why someone I love so much would want to hurt me to help themselves and and that's when I had to learn, and I had to grow, and I had to say this isn't happening to me. This is happening for me. My own emotions about this are telling me that I'm not free yet, until I can figure out how to love this person and love this situation. I'm not where I need to be, and it's not easy this. This is where Eckhart Tolle says the path to enlightenment is not a rosy path. It's like, if you want, if you really want this, you're gonna be tested with some super hard stuff, right? Like crazy hard at the exact same time, my stepfather passed from cancer. I was in the cancer ward with him every week talking to the doctor. Doctors. You know, my mom's heart is broken. My heart is broken. They live a mile from us. This is grandfather to my children. They were at our house every week. You know, it's it. I'm going through both of these adversities at the same time, and what it is, is the world urging me to see the beauty in all of life, even in death, because, you know, and this is where, this is where eternal soul and God has to be part of happiness. The truth is, we are eternal. The truth is, is that when we die, we just shed the body and we continue. That's the truth. Until we know that truth, we are extremely fearful all the time. We're fearful of everyone we know dying. We're fearful of our own death, and then anything that would threaten life in the slightest becomes a master catastrophe, and we fall apart, and we can never find peace and happiness until we find this absolute truth. How do you find that truth? You study like you go, you go with people who've already walked this path, and then you find it within yourself. You find your own connection to that eternal peace. And this is we've talked about this with prayer, with meditation, all of a sudden you start to see all these synchronicities and the magic in your own life. And that's how you prove it to yourself that this is what I'm saying right now, is absolutely true. So, yeah, so how do we do, how do we find happiness in the face of this adversity? Well, you know, let's, let's use both of these examples. I'm just going to go into my real life. Opa, so he's Opa, grandfather in Greek. Isn't that grandfather in Greek? Opa, oh. Papoose, okay, maybe it's German. It might be German. Is Opa. Well, we affectionately called John OPA and Opus passing, you know, so sad, such a sad emotion, you know, tears. And how are we going to figure out how to move on from this? And then, why would God take him when life was so beautiful with him here. Well, when, when we lose someone we love, it shows us how much we appreciate the people who are still here. It also shows us that we probably are taking things for granted. I started to love everyone I was around at a deeper level, at that loss, I started to show people I worked with that I loved them even more because I started to notice they could be gone tomorrow too. I started to cherish every moment I got with my mom, with my wife, with my children. You know, these are the gifts that loss can show us, because there are countless other people in our life that are still here after we lose someone we love dearly, and now we have an opportunity to love them more fiercely than ever before. That's the gift and loss the betrayal. What was the gift and the betrayal? Where is this leading me? Well, of course, an opportunity to learn how to have compassion, because I've betrayed people in my life, and this betrayal was just an open an opportunity for me to forgive and have compassion for someone who's doing the best that they can. And it was a it had to be that real. It had to feel that hurtful in order for me to actually get to work on myself. If it wasn't that hurtful, if it was comfortable to go through, I wouldn't have had to work as hard. But because it was so uncomfortable, I had to learn new ways of seeing people to say and now at this point, people do things, and I'll like, just yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine who's going through a divorce, and he calls me and he said, Matt, I was cheated on. She was having an affair with somebody at work, and I've got all these recordings, and I'm gonna get her, I'm gonna get her in court, and my new view is that's not the way to happiness. Doesn't matter if someone did you wrong, the only thing that will ultimately make you happy is compassion and love for this person. Yes, she hurts you. Your heart is absolutely broken, and you won't be happy and you won't have peace until you find absolute compassion and understanding for the mistake that she made. And this was exactly what I said to my friend yesterday. He may or may not take my advice. That's not up to me. It's his path to learn, but he will suffer until he makes that choice, and I only learned that by going through the betrayal and hating and wanting revenge and finding that I was unhappy until I came to the point of seeing this person is doing the very best that they can. Yes, their actions felt hurtful, but I can totally see how they did it, and they're not awful and they're not evil. In fact, if they were working. With me today, I would just love them to pieces.

Agi Keramidas: 35:38

Thank you, Matt. Before we wrap up today, there are two questions that I always ask my guests, and the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Matt O'Neill: 35:52

Personal development means to me, growth

Agi Keramidas: 35:57

and hypothetically speaking, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him? ,

Matt O'Neill: 36:06

I've done this. I've done this exercise. I was driving somewhere, and I sat my 18 year old self next to me in the passenger seat, and I had an hour long conversation with him, and what I said to him was, I am so freaking proud of you,

Agi Keramidas: 36:26

Matt, where is the best place for someone who has listened to this and enjoyed it to get in touch with you and find out more?

Matt O'Neill: 36:36

thank you so much for asking me that yes, the so if, if this conversation resonates with the person listening, and you want to learn more about being happy through adversity, you can connect on good mood Revolution podcast, and my book is currently on pre order on Amazon by the same name, good mood revolution. So those are the two best places to get connected.

Agi Keramidas: 37:01

Thank you, Matt for this wonderful conversation. I'd like to wish you all the best as you continue your journey and your mission, and I will leave it to you to give us some practical part in wisdom.

Matt O'Neill: 37:18

Thank you. Yes, I have listened to your show, and it is the truth, and you are the light in the world Agi. My actionable exercise is anyone listening, continue to listen to personal development mastery. This show will be your guide to a happier life.

Agi Keramidas: 37:42

And before I end today's episode, if you enjoy this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you also add value to people you care about, thank you, and until next time, stand out. Don't fit in.