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Yes, it is.
Hey, everybody, the happiness hour on the Dennis Prager show.
And I will bring it into the theme of the new year.
A happy new year, everybody, January 2, 2004, or 20 odd four, if you prefer.
Thanks for being with me.
Every week at this hour, I devote to the subject of happiness.
I consider it to be one of the great powerful ideas of life because happy people make the world better than unhappy people do, as a general rule.
There are some unhappy, good people, no question.
There's no question about that.
But as a general rule, the world is made better by happy people.
Not only macro, that is, in the larger sense, because it's hard to imagine people happy communists, happy Nazis, happy terrorists.
You know, they don't strike you as among the happiest of peoples.
The people who are happy don't want to hurt other people.
It's just, that's just the way it is.
It makes sense.
You want to spread happiness, not death.
It's pretty self-evident to me.
So I am a big believer in happiness, wrote a book on it, which I commend to your attention.
Not often enough, in my opinion, because I really do believe it can deeply affect your life.
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
The book is happiness is a serious problem.
And it took me 10 years to write, and it is the basis of the program.
There is a concept of the basis of the happiness hour, that is, each week, not the program every day.
There is a concept that we have at New Year's known as a New Year's resolution.
And I am a big fan of these things.
And I want to tie that in to the happiness hour theme.
A resolution, a New Year's resolution, is a very good thing even if you break it.
Just as I believe that marriage is a good thing, even if you get divorced.
Love is a good thing, even if you are rejected.
It is good to grow up.
It is good to grow.
It is good to live life to its fullest.
Making a resolution is a very good thing for happiness, even if you break it, because it says to yourself, and that's the theme of this hour today, it says to yourself, I can change.
I can't tell you, I can't overstate the importance of that concept.
I can change means I am the captain of my life.
Now, anyone with a mind, and that's everybody listening, knows that there are things you cannot control.
I am not of the folks who believe that if I am hit by a drunk driver, I have somehow brought that upon myself.
I do not believe that.
I do not believe that every victim of a mugging has somehow brought it upon him or herself.
This is, I think, pure nonsense.
However, by and large in life, having the notion that you are in charge of your life, and I'm not dealing now with, and you know I'm deeply religious about God being in the final analysis in the driver's seat and so on.
I like the name of a book written many years, I think it was written before I was born, God is my co-pilot.
And that is my theology, that we are, in effect, co-pilots of our lives, God and we, God and myself.
But putting that aside for now, this notion that you are in charge of your life, that you can make things happen to your life, that you can change, is liberating, empowering in the best sense of the word, and indispensable to your happiness.
You can't go through life thinking others are controlling you and be happy.
It is not possible.
It is, by definition, not possible.
That is why I am so angry about those who want to tell any group in America or any individual in America, you are a victim.
Walking around thinking you're a victim is a guarantor of unhappiness.
It guarantees it.
There's no other possible, well, you can't say I'm a happy victim.
It doesn't work like that.
If I am a victim, woe unto me.
My life is benighted.
You are walking around if you feel you are a victim as incapable of determining anything in your life.
Others determine it, forces, people, whatever it might be.
That's why I can't believe that anybody who walks around with a conspiracy theory that, you know, they're really, they're trying to get me, is the paranoid a happy person?
It's not possible.
The people who walk around with, well, there are nefarious forces in this world that are controlling it.
These are profoundly unhappy people.
Maybe, you know, I'm thinking aloud here because, you know, I have always rejected the conspiratorial theories of life.
And whenever I hear there's a conspiracy, I mean, I'm not saying there's never been a conspiracy where 10 people get together and they conspire to do something.
Of course that happens.
But large world conspiracies never pan out.
I think there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, and I don't think there's a conspiracy.
There were right-wingers, there were left-wingers, all-wingers who believe in some sort of group that is controlling the world.
Anybody who believes that is in effect announcing that I know I am not in control of my life, so somebody else must be.
Oh, it's the banks, the Jews, the this, the that, whatever it is.
I am so aware of, I'm so, I personally feel so helpless and so weak that I ascribe the world's events and events that affect me to others in control.
Then there is the victim status of they're out to get me, where there are kids of color who were raised to believe, for example, that this society does not want them to get ahead.
Even if it were true, it's a lousy way to raise your child.
Even if it were true, it isn't true, but even if it were, how could a child grow up and be happy and be in control of his or her life to be raised that they all want to get you?
They almost all hate you.
It's so sad to me when that is told to a child of color in our society.
To me, it is a form of child abuse, whether it is a political party who is announcing it or it's a parent who is announcing it.
It guarantees an unhappy human being.
So back to the concept of the New Year's resolution.
You are resolving to change.
That is what it means.
Now, why that is beautiful is very simple.
It means I control myself.
I am in control.
I can change.
I can do something about my life.
That's a big statement.
The phone number is 1-8-Prager776.
1-8-P-R-A-G-E-R-776.
I say this almost every happiness hour, and I mean it each time so I feel that I can say it without sounding silly.
And that is, you know, there aren't many more happy, there aren't many more important topics on the subject of life and happiness than this one.
Are you in control of your life?
Do you feel it?
Now, to feel it doesn't mean, as I said, we're not fully in control.
Of course not.
I acknowledge that's just a reality of life.
As I said, you could be hit by a drunk driver.
There is a God in this world, too, that may have a plan.
I mean, whatever reason, I fully acknowledge that I am not entirely in control of the events.
But I'll tell you what, I am virtually entirely in control, if not entirely.
And I got this from one of the five books that most influenced my life.
And Alan, if we don't have that list working out on the website, we got to do that.
And that is from Viktor Frankl's incredible book, Man's Search for Meaning.
This man went through a Nazi death camp as one of the few survivors, and he made the point that there was only one thing, literally only one thing, that the Nazis at the death camps could not control.
They controlled whether you lived, whether you died, whether you ate, whether you starved, whether you slept or you didn't sleep, whether you relieved yourself or didn't relieve yourself.
They controlled everything.
It was hell.
Absolute hell.
But there was one thing he said that they couldn't control.
And that is how we reacted to what they did.
So he retained a sense of autonomy where in the conditions of the least control ever developed in human history.
A Nazi death camp.
1-8-Prager776 is the number.
Do you feel that you do not control, that you cannot change your life?
Does this resonate with you what I am saying?
1-8-Prager776, this is the happiness hour.
I have a lot more to say, and we'll take calls as soon as we return.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
I can give you so many examples of people not feeling that they are in control of their lives.
And that's the theme of this edition of the Happiness Hour, based on the fact that it is the second day of the new year and people make resolutions and why I'm so in favor of it.
It implies I can change.
That is of staggering significance to your happiness.
Just the belief that you can change, even if you violate it, as I say, even if you drop the resolution, the implication is what is important.
I can change.
You know, let me tell you something.
And I'm going to take some of your calls here: 1-8-Prager776.
That's 877-243-77776.
I have, as many of you know, I've been giving lectures my whole life, actually.
I started at 21, believe it or not, giving public lectures.
So I've given literally thousands and thousands of lectures, probably, I guess, four to five thousand lectures.
It's a very large number.
I give now, anyway, it doesn't matter.
I lecture a lot.
There are times when I get the following reaction from a member of the audience, and an older member of the audience will come over to me and say, you know, it was a great speech and so on, but it was wasted on me.
It's the young who should hear it.
And I started speaking when I was very young, as I just noted to you, in my 20s, in my early 20s.
And even then, I hated hearing that because I thought, oh, my God, what this old person is saying to me is it doesn't matter if I change my life.
It only matters if a 25-year-old, a 35-year-old changes his or her life.
But why?
You can't change.
You can't change.
That's the way I read it.
I can't change.
They can change.
Or it doesn't matter if I change.
Whatever the implication, it's ridiculous.
You live your life.
If you change at 80, then that is a great statement.
You're in control at 80.
You're in control at 20.
I can change.
I can master my life, my reactions to it.
I am in control.
These are liberating ideas, massively liberating ideas.
Let's go to your calls here.
Let's go to Solomon in Cleveland on WCCD.
Hey, Solomon, Dennis Prager.
Hi, it's Marcel.
I just want to say one of the happiest.
I'm sorry, it's not Solomon, it's Marcel.
Solomon's my last name.
Yeah.
Oh, Solomon's your last name.
Okay, that's what you gave.
Go ahead.
That's right.
One of the happiest things that has happened to me this year is discovering you on the radio.
Oh, thank you.
Michael Medved.
I just think it's the greatest.
I'm 69 years old.
All my life voted as a Democrat, and I've changed.
And I'm very proud of you.
I've changed already.
That's strength.
There you go.
That is truly a change.
It's very hard.
I take it you're Jewish.
Yes.
So for a Jew at 69 to change from Democrat to Republican, that is truly autonomy.
I salute you.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
But my resolution for this year, after I've been talking about it for many years, as I mentioned to the young lady, I'm also a survivor of the Holocaust, right?
Of the Holocaust.
And I'm also a survivor of the October War in Israel.
I fought there.
But what is interesting, I finally decided to write my life story.
Good, you should.
I started yesterday to do it.
Good man.
And I'm putting my things together.
And no matter what's going to happen, the world will find out something that I've had one of the most amazing lives that anybody could have.
I believe you have, and you must write it up.
I will talk about that after we hang up, but go on.
And the only thing that I was sorry about last year is I understand you were speaking in where I work, and I didn't know anything about you in Cleveland at the Jewish Community Center.
Oh, how painful.
And my wife runs the restaurant at that time.
Oh, really?
How ironic.
Well, I'm sure I will be back.
Anyway, God bless you, Solomon.
Thank you.
Or Marcel, thank you so much.
There are a lot of things.
This man exemplifies in that minute, two minutes, what I am talking about.
Talk about victims.
There is no clearer victim than someone who went through the Holocaust, the Nazi attempt to exterminate every single Jew in Europe and eventually the world.
But they did it in Europe.
Two out of every three Jews in Europe, nine out of every ten in Poland, where there were three million Jews was murdered.
It's astonishing.
I mean, actually, as I get older, the Holocaust gets worse.
It's not easier for me to read about it.
It's actually harder.
Now, if anybody can see himself as a victim, it's someone who suffered through that and miraculously survived, but undoubtedly lost relatives and friends and saw evil, the likes of which we can't even, we don't have in our nightmares.
And yet here is a man who radiates good cheer.
He has decided, I can't let myself be a victim.
I can't, I can't, I can't.
I will not, will not, will not, will not.
And that's that he's an admirable man.
And he has decided at 69, listen, my father decided to write his autobiography and did not go through the Holocaust, but to write his autobiography at 80 or 82, now 85 and writing it, and it's a magnificent work.
And I tell everybody you should write your autobiography.
Absolutely.
Because the truth is, while some lives obviously have more adventure and more variety than others, every life is amazing.
Every life.
Every life is interesting.
Every single one.
That's why I consider murder so evil.
What you have destroyed by killing a human being, the immensity of experience and memory and hope and uniqueness of that individual, and you have killed that person?
Anyway, don't get me started on non-murder.
Well, that's not for the happiness hour.
For the happiness hour right now is you are in control of your life.
You can change.
And you have to say that to yourself.
It is very easy to walk around the victim.
My kids know there's very, very little that can get me angry at them.
Very little.
The truth is.
But when they whine, when they make themselves into victims, I lose it.
If I don't show I lose it, and sometimes I have, I lose it.
I can't take that.
That's the one thing I can't take.
I don't want my kids to grow up as victims.
And it doesn't, you don't, you understand?
Everybody can do it.
Everyone, everyone can see himself as a victim.
There is nobody listening to me right now who doesn't have the ability to take events in life and see yourself as a victim.
No one, no matter how wealthy, successful, beautiful, rich, anything.
Everyone has.
I could absolutely write up a life story for anybody listening and go, oh, woe unto me, woe unto me.
And I mean that.
This is not a rhetorical device.
I truly believe that I could do it with my own life, believe it or not.
Absolutely I could.
Dennis Prager, victim.
All right, when we come back, I'll take your calls here.
This could change your life if you take it seriously.
And that's why I salute the virtue of the New Year's resolution.
It's a statement, I can change.
I want you to say that a hundred times, and I mean it, or put it on your bathroom mirror.
We'll be back in a moment.
You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, 1-8 Prager, 776, The Happiness Hour.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
All righty, my friends, welcome back.
This is the happiness hour every week at this time.
The subject is happiness.
Happy people make the world better.
And ask any kid, any of you, any adult, what was it like growing up with an unhappy parent?
And you have an idea of how important happiness is.
I think we have a moral obligation to be as happy as we can be.
It's not a selfish pursuit at all.
I mean, it is partially, obviously.
I want we all, most of us at any rate, want to be happy for ourselves.
But in fact, it's very altruistic.
It is good for everybody else if we're as happy as we can be.
Anyway, that's the reason for the hour every week.
Today it is the concept of the new year's resolution is a good one, a great one, in fact, because it says I can change.
And I can change, in turn, says I am in control of my life.
That is what makes happiness possible.
To feel that.
Any of you listening walking around with victim status, woe unto me, because of, and you fill it in.
Now, some people really are genuine victims, by the way, but even the genuine victim can't possibly be happy if you walk around with a victim mentality, even if you are, and there really are victims.
There are people who have terrible diseases inflicted upon them that they did nothing to earn, if you will.
Of course, there are real victims.
If you've been, you know, a mugger has come and blinded you, then you were a victim of that.
Of course, that's true.
But it's still bad to walk around thinking you're a victim.
You can acknowledge the fact that you are a victim and we should acknowledge it, but to have that as your persona, as your personality, obviously you're unhappy.
I mean, there's just no way around it.
On the other side, everybody can think of himself as a victim.
No matter what your life has turned out, there is a way to look at yourself as a victim.
And then we have victim industries, industries telling entire groups of people you're victims.
And I'm so angry at people who do that because they raise children to be unhappy and whole groups of people.
Let's go to More of your calls here.
And Mike in Sacramento, California on KPKZ.
Hello, Mike.
Dennis Prager.
Hi, Dennis.
I might be able to provide a visual metaphor for what you're saying.
Something I learned a long time ago, and I can't tell you about the source because I don't remember.
But it was if you were to take a piece of paper and draw a circle on the piece of paper, and then inside the circle, write all the things that are easy for you to influence, all the simple things that take no effort.
And then outside the circle, you put all the things that would take a lot of effort and you would need to set goals and you would really need to try to exert some force on yourself to achieve those.
Well, every time you do achieve something outside that circle, it's as if you have knocked the circle out and made it larger.
That's great.
Other things that were outside the circle are now easier for you to do because, in effect, what you've done is the same thing you've said.
You sent the message to your brain that I am in control, I can do, and your expectations get reset, so to speak.
That's good.
I like it a lot.
Thank you, Mike.
You're welcome.
That's right.
He's absolutely right.
That's why I used the metaphor earlier.
That's how we grow is to feel in control of your life.
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on the Patriot in Minneapolis.
Hi.
Hi, Dennis.
I'm calling with agreement because I agree with you about the feeling in control.
Yes, and resolutions.
I think there's power in resolution.
That's right.
I just wanted to ask you a question: how this principle applies to homosexuality.
And, you know, first of all, I think it would be simplistic to say that they chose it outright or simplistic to say that they didn't choose it at all.
So there's a middle ground.
I just emphasize the choice because I think it's more humanizing to the person who is a homosexual to emphasize the choice factor.
And I think that if they feel controlled by non-chosen forces, that may be working against their happiness.
Well, only if they feel that if they walk around as a victim.
I happen to be among those who believe that there are many cases of homosexuality where there is no choice.
The individual, I knew many, I've known this for many years.
Let me give you a story here.
It's very important.
A young man who was deeply influenced by me religiously and philosophically said to me that he feels deep homosexual yearnings, but he wants to live by the values that I would speak of about family.
He wants to bond with a woman.
And I remember how much effort he made to be attracted to women.
Everything he could do, from analysis to looking at pictures, to going out with girls, but it didn't do anything for him.
It did nothing.
This guy didn't choose.
So I don't want to, this hour is not going to be on homosexuality.
I devoted a whole speech on that subject last week, as many of you may recall on the air.
But only if the homosexual says, I am a victim, does this apply here?
We'll be back in a moment.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org/slash wellness.
That's chministries.org/slash wellness.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
All right, my friends.
Dennis Prager here, the happiness hour.
The theme is based on the fact that this is the new year and the new year's resolution, how powerful the idea is because it says I can change.
I can change means I'm in control of my life, and that is a major source of happiness.
Thinking that you are the victim of forces is a guarantor of bitterness, unhappiness, and often terrible moral consequences in the fact that you will lash out.
Almost everybody who does evil, I mean real evil.
I'm not talking about sinning in the normal span of life, but I mean real evil.
Almost everyone who does that thinks of himself as a victim.
The Islamic terrorists are a classic example.
Oh, we are victims of the Christian West.
We are victims of the Jews.
We are victims of imperialism.
Therefore, we can murder anybody we want because we are victims.
The victim mentality is bred deeply in various parts of the world.
Woe unto us.
It is abetted by, it is contributed to by many in the West, in the intellectual arena who tell this to them.
Oh, you are not responsible for your lives.
It's the big, bad West that has kept you down.
Oh, you have no idea how common that is, folks.
As it is to this day, why is there terror?
Because the West has been imperialistic in the Middle East and because of, I don't know what else the West does.
I don't know.
But something to that effect.
The riots in Los Angeles, which I witnessed, there was smoke in my house.
I was so close to them.
And everyone who burned a Korean store or looted or burned a building or a business thought of himself as a victim.
I'm a victim of racism, and therefore I can hurt innocent people because, after all, I'm innocent and I'm a victim.
Not only is the victim mentality, therefore, guarantee bitterness and sadness and unhappiness, it is often the necessary condition for evildoing.
So this is a very big, very big deal.
All righty, let's go to Mitch in University Heights, Ohio, also in WCCD.
Hey there, Mitch.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
Thank you, by the way.
Your show is probably the most intelligent thing in the history of radio.
If you think about it, maybe it's tied with the Lone Ranger.
The Lone Ranger.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that this American custom that a lot of people have of getting absolutely drunk on New Year's Eve seems to be the exact thing that you're talking about.
It's sort of like saying that, you know what, the year's over.
I can't trade.
I'm just going to get drunk and forget all my troubles.
I think it's humorously sad, actually.
And I was actually thinking about it once that if you juxtapose that to the idea that's put forth in the Jewish New Year on Rosh Hashanah, which is not only a new year, so to speak, but it actually celebrates the creation of mankind.
And the whole point of that change.
You're 100% right.
I actually wrote that in my first book, the comparison, but there's one difference I would draw that I think you'd be more precise in using.
It's not the issue of the American New Year versus the Jewish New Year.
It's the secular new year versus the religious new year.
Sure.
Okay?
Sure.
All right.
Yeah, you're absolutely, he's absolutely right.
The purpose of the secular new year is basically to get drunk and revel.
And the religious new year Is to have introspection.
I thank you for your call, Mitch.
That is why I was talking earlier about the sense of empowerment that a New Year's resolution gives.
It does give New Year's more than just getting drunk.
By the way, Alan, I want to have a subject that I've never done.
We're going to do this one day.
Why do people get drunk?
I don't mean alcoholics.
No.
I mean, why do non-alcoholics yearn to get drunk?
It's a very interesting question.
I've never related to that, and I relate to a lot of not healthy stuff, but not that one.
And it'd be a very interesting hour to have because a lot of people will have experience and will be able to enlighten us on that.
Khalid, also in Cleveland, this is a riot.
I'll tell you, some days it's just one area and that Cleveland is dominating this hour.
Hi, Khalid, Dennis Prager.
Hello, sir.
I just want to point out a couple of quick things briefly about I'm an African American, and as you know, victimology unfortunately runs rampant in our community.
Yes, and I have to believe so does sadness.
Yeah.
And mainly because of our leadership or so-called leadership, which poisons people on a daily basis with victim stories.
And the dangerous thing about victimology is that a victim never examines oneself.
That's right.
A victim never looks in the mirror.
That's right.
What am I doing wrong?
That's right.
How can I improve myself in my thinking?
Of course not.
Why should I?
I'm a victim.
And that only leads to decadence, and which has, you know, ripped our community a great deal of not looking in the mirror and examining the self-inflicted wounds that we perpetrate on ourselves on a daily basis.
And I think that's why victimology, which I hear on a daily basis, all kinds of conspiracy theories.
Listener.
After the riots, Andrew Hacker, a major, major professor at Queen's College, New York, wrote in the New York Review of Books that blacks should know that whites really want to exterminate them.
That's right.
Wow.
Yep.
I mean, imagine that.
Imagine I'm a black reader of this, and this is a white guy telling me, my God, he must know he's white.
And lastly, I want to compare our thinking to that of Arabs in the Middle East, which we have some of the similar psychosis, I call it, when it comes to the poisoning that we receive from a certain segment of our community, which only leads to more self-inflicted pain and anguish.
I wanted your comments on that.
Thank you.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
And I've mentioned that, and to hear it from you is actually stronger than to hear it from me.
Anybody can, as I said, anyone can walk around with a victim mentality.
And I know that for anybody.
I could if I chose to.
And I have a blessed life.
But it is now entire groups of people are taught you're victims.
And Khalid makes the critically important point.
There is something very comforting in thinking you're a victim because then you don't have to judge yourself.
You are then free to do anything because, after all, I am a victim.
And it's a pain to judge yourself.
Final segment coming up on the happiness hour.
You can call in at 1-8-Prager776 or email me through my website, of course, dennisprager.com, taking control of your life.
Got a call coming up about the issue of God being your co-pilot.
This is Dennis Prager.
Back in a moment.
Dennis Prager here.
Final segment of this edition of the Happiness Hour on the power of the New Year's resolution.
I'm using that as the jumping off point for saying you can change.
When you say you can change, you are in control of your life.
You'll be happy.
The opposite, thinking I am a victim, it guarantees unhappiness.
Let's get some more calls.
Linda in Los Angeles, KRLA.
Hi, Linda.
Dennis Prager.
Yes, Dennis, it's such a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I wanted to add something to your comment about God being your co-pilot.
And I feel that if you allow him to direct your life, you can achieve happiness.
And let me tell you just a little bit about myself.
I came down with an illness about six years ago.
And before that, I was very successful.
I was living in New York, making lots of money and having a good time.
And when I became ill, I lost everything.
And I didn't know what, you know, I, you know, years went by and I was unemployed and I didn't know what to do with myself anymore.
But in the interim, I discovered God.
And that probably would not have happened if I had not become ill, you know, because I was so wrapped up in my career.
Oh, very interesting.
I didn't have time for him.
That's a very powerful statement that you made.
I have seen that happen and not only vis-a-vis God, but people being struck by a very big blow in life, actually increasing their happiness.
That's right.
It's a very interesting, it's really, Alan, that's worthy of another happiness show.
How big blows can make you happy, actually, in the final analysis.
By the way, your point about seeing God directing your life, that's the opposite of the victim.
You understand what I'm saying?
Your view is the opposite of, oh my God, woe unto me.
Rather, God is the director of my life, and therefore, I am grateful for or I understand what I have.
I accept it rather than I am a victim.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
But let me tell you something.
It's not just God.
It's also the Lord, Jesus, that I've discovered.
And, you know, one morning when I was praising him, when I was praising him, I heard him call me by profession.
You know, and I had already gone back to college, studied law, and gotten my paralegal certification.
I thought, this is what I'm going to do from now on.
And I said, you know, I said, God, I said, if this is what you want me to do, I said, give me somebody in that field who will direct me, guide me, and help me.
And there you got it.
And you got it.
Well, God bless you indeed, Linda.
Thank you.
David says we can have a conspiracy view of the world and still be happy.
God, I'm sorry, David, I didn't have that time.
John's been out from the beginning in Washington State.
Our subconscious and so on.
I'm sorry, and Elizabeth and others.
But folks, the message of today, you can change.
And you should just get up and throw your hands in the air and go, yeah, I can change.