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Feb. 20, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
07:15
Dennis' Timeless Advice for Happiness
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Yesterday I spoke to NYU students and I told them you've got to come out of the closet.
It's tougher today, certainly, to come out of the closet as Republican or conservative on a college campus or at your workplace than it was to come out as a gay.
And it was tough to come out as a gay.
No question about that.
Anyway, it's the happiness hour because it's such an important issue.
Happy people make the world better, the unhappy make it worse.
Today, my topic, I'm tempted to say is a big one, but they're all big ones, by and large, or I wouldn't choose them.
But in the art of living, that's what this hour is about, really.
It's the art of living well.
What I am about to recommend to you, if you can act on it, it will change your life for the better, and everybody around you will love you even more.
How do you like that?
Is that a great promise?
And it goes like this.
I have made mention of this approach, but I don't know if I did an hour on the happiness hour on it.
That, I don't know.
And that is to adopt the attitude in life, so what?
So what are magical words to say to yourself?
Now, there are times when you can't say it.
God forbid you get a diagnosis from your doctor of a terminal illness, like cancer, you're not going to say, ah, so what?
Well, so what?
So what is you may die prematurely.
So, you can't always say, so what?
But you can most of the time.
And you learn to do it by doing it.
That is how most things are learned.
You simply do it.
Your mind says, it's a good approach, I will do it.
I'll give you a fairly dramatic example.
I was thinking with the living martyr, this thing needs examples.
So, as you probably know, if you're listening to the Happiness Hour, I wrote a book on happiness called Happiness is a Serious Problem.
It was published in 1998. It's still doing well because it's timeless.
It has nothing to do with 1998. Titled Happiness is a Serious Problem, my original publisher was Random House.
Random House offered me, not offered, they paid me an advance.
I don't remember the sum, but it was significant for me at the time.
That I can tell you.
What is an advance?
An advance is the publisher gives you X amount of money, and they are advancing you money on the profits of the book.
So you don't get profits of the book as they come in, because you only get profits of the book when they surpass the advance on the profits.
That's what advance means, advance on the profits.
That they pay you at the outset.
Every writer wants a big advance, even though theoretically they might prefer to be paid out as the book sells.
But we all prefer, nearly all of us, in advance because, among other reasons, if the publisher gives you a big advance, they are sort of committed.
To advertising and publicizing the book so that they can get their advance money back.
All right.
Anyway, I got an advance from Random House.
However, it comes with a string.
Not strings, a string.
And what's the string?
You must have the book in by X date.
Telling me I have to have a book in by X date is like telling a blind man...
Is that one beautiful painting or not?
Okay?
With all his goodwill, we cannot really appreciate a great painting.
You can't read a painting in Braille.
Okay.
Or an audible of the Mona Lisa.
Doesn't work.
So...
I took my time.
I did my research.
I did my writing.
I had no book for them by the due date.
Mr. Prager, thank you, but you'll have to send back the advance money.
So, I've chosen this as my example, and I live by it, by and large, of the so-what approach.
And I needed the money, and I had already spent it, as most authors do.
But it didn't ruin my day.
I sent them the money, and then I got another publisher, HarperCollins, which ended up publishing the book.
The more often you could say, so what, about things that...
Or just negative in your life, the healthier you will be.
You can't always, obviously.
And you must know the difference.
But the more often you can do it...
Ah, this I have told.
This is one of my ten favorite stories of my life, which is filled with great stories.
Top five, in fact.
Fourth grade!
I'm in a religious Jewish school, yeshiva.
Rabbi announces, boys, it is time for the afternoon prayers.
I walk over to the rabbi, and I was not being obnoxious, but just sincere.
I said, Rabbi, I'm not in the mood for the afternoon prayers.
Man had never heard mood and prayer in the same sentence.
It was clear.
Looked up, stroked his beard, then looked at me and said, Dennis Prager is not in the mood for the afternoon prayers?
So what?
He changed my life.
I realized, so what if I'm in the mood for something?
Or not in the mood?
So what?
I gotta do the right thing.
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