anything goes with emma chamberlain - chasing happiness is making you miserable, advice session

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

[video available on Spotify] welcome back to advice session, a series here on anything goes where you send in your current dilemmas, or anything you want advice on, and i give you my unprofessional advice. today's topic is the pursuit of happiness. Learn more about Venmo Stash, visit http://www.venmo.com/stash-rewards  FX's The Beauty. Now Streaming | Hulu on Disney+. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to advice session. A series here on Anything Goes where you send in your current dilemmas or anything you want advice on. And then I give you my unprofessional advice. In today's topic is the pursuit of pleasant emotion. Okay, I'm talking about happiness, joy, fulfillment, contentment. I'm talking about a lust for life, a sparkle in the eye. You know, the good stuff, the feelings we like feeling. The feelings that when we're not feeling them, we're pursuing feeling them again. Okay? It kind of feels like life is split into two parts.

Feeling pleasant emotion and pursuing feeling pleasant emotion again. And that might be oversimplified. But if I were to really simplify my life and look at it in the emotions, that kind of rings true. Today, I'm going to be giving you all advice, unprofessional advice, of course, as always, about the pursuit of pleasant emotion. I wish I could sit here and just say, you guys, all you got to do is, is just shut your eyes and think really hard about feeling good, and then you'll feel good again. I wish I could sit here and say that, but I can't. Unfortunately, the pursuit is a bit more complex.

And so without further ado, let's get into it. I briefly interrupt this episode to let you know that this episode is presented by Venmo. Okay, hear me out. Apparently, you can earn cash back with your Venmo debit card. All you have to do is join Venmo Stash in Boom. You get cash back when you shop at your favorite brands. It's kind of an awesome flex. With Venmo, Venmo Stash, you can get up to 5% cash back at your fave brands. Just pick a bundle of your go-toes to shop with your Venmo debit card and earn cash back at them. And you're free to mix things up. You can easily swap out your bundle of brands every 30 days.

Start earning when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash Terms and Exclusions apply, max $100 cashback per month. See terms at Venmo.com. Now back to the episode. Okay, somebody said, how do you stay happy? happiness sometimes, but it's so fleeting. How do I keep it? Well, I think your first issue here is that you think it's possible to accomplish constant happiness, permanent happiness. I got bad news for you. That is impossible. In fact, happiness wouldn't exist without sadness. In life, all good things

are good because there is a bad counterpart. Sun only feels warm on our back because rain feels so cold, you know? Happiness only feels as good as it feels because sadness feels as bad as it feels. So happiness cannot exist without sadness. Thus, it's impossible to be happy all the time. I mean, it's also impossible to be happy all the time

because, well, number one, it's like, it's just impossible. But also, there are a lot of things going on in our lives that challenge us constantly. And we don't get to avoid those. There's no, there's no, there's no, there's no avoiding those. And we shouldn't want to anyway, because again, number one, happiness doesn't exist without negative emotion. The contrast is what makes happiness exist. But also, part of what makes life satisfying is the fact that there's push and pull. There's tension. There's tension. There's challenge and then there's overcoming the challenge. There's pain and then there's happiness again. The push and the pull is what makes life dynamic and engaging and interesting. If you felt

happy all the time, your life would be boring. So what you're pursuing permanent happiness is not only impossible, but it also isn't ideal anyway. How boring would your life be if you were just happy all the Honestly, I think if you were happy all the time, let's say the impossible came true with you. And somehow, by some miracle, you became the person who defied all odds, who found a way to be happy all the time permanently. I have a hypothesis that you would self-sabotage because you would get so bored and you would feel almost weirdly dead inside from the lack of push and pull to the point where you would self-sabotage and you would create pain.

That's a common thing that happens in happy, healthy relationships. It'll be so comfortable and it'll be so good that people will get uncomfortable and self-sabotage the relationship. Same thing goes with, I don't know, having a good job. Someone will really enjoy their job so much so that they're like, I can't handle how good this is. I have to fuck it up. I don't know if that's necessarily the exact same experience, but we crave a dynamic life

experience. That's what makes life rich. Also, too, I don't think we learn as much when we're happy. That's not to say that there isn't learnings to be learned when in a state of happiness, but I think we learn the most when we're being challenged and we're experiencing negative emotions. And growth is such a beautiful, important thing. It's kind of our purpose as a human being, really, not to get too existential, but I think growth not only increases our likelihood for pleasant emotion, it actually evokes pleasant emotion. Growing and coming out the other side of a challenging situation in a better place, that evokes pleasant emotion, maybe even at times happiness. Without negative emotion, I don't think we would grow. There would be nothing pushing us to

grow. And growth is so important and it has the potential to create more positive emotion. So I think you need to reframe how you see happiness. It's always going to be fleeting. That is a truth. But also, that's not a negative thing necessarily. And I think reframing the way you look at happiness, accepting the fact that it's fleeting and actually in some ways finding a level of almost gratitude for the fact that it's fleeting with the understanding. that without it being fleeting, it wouldn't really mean anything. I think that's step one. Step two, I would work on managing your expectations because you want to know something that creates negative emotion, having unrealistic expectations. So I think it's important to manage your expectations.

Okay, right now your expectations are way too high. You're expecting permanent happiness. That's never going to happen. So that's probably leading you to feel far more negative emotion than you need to. I suggest, actually, honestly, I suggest removing expectations completely from how you're going to feel because you can't really control how you're going to feel in your life. Like, you can't control, well, how do I put this? I think that expectations aren't helpful here, at least in my opinion. Some might disagree. But I think you're better off creating expectations for yourself about your actions, because you can control your actions. You see what I'm saying?

But you can't really control your emotions, which I imagine is up for a debate. Some people probably think you can control your emotions. In my experience, I can control what I do. I can control who I surround myself with, what time I wake up in the morning, what foods I eat, how I choose to spend my time. But I can't choose what emotions are evoked from those experiences.

I can only just assume, right? And then my emotions, how I read. react to what I do dictate how I treat my next day. I have a certain level of expectations about what I do in my life rather than how I feel in my life because I feel like if I expect myself to feel something, it doesn't just allow me to feel. You know what I mean? So I would say remove expectations from what you're going to feel and rather focus on your expectations of yourself and what you do with your life. Does that make sense? Because that's in your control more so. And then you your emotions to dictate and to help educate you on what to do in your life. Does that make

sense? Expectations not met lead to disappointment and unhappiness. And I think expecting yourself to feel a certain way, to me, that's just not the move because you're probably going to get disappointed. And in your case, you're definitely getting disappointed because you're expecting something impossible. And my last piece of advice is, you know, once you've reframed the way that you view happiness, once you've removed expectations from how you feel and rather put expectations on what you do with your life and let your expectations educate you. Once you just allow happiness to enter into your life and exit once again and enter back in and exit, once you allow happiness to come and go with an acceptance of its fleeting nature and a gratitude for the moments when you

get to experience it, then I think it could be helpful to take note. Maybe you write it down, maybe discuss it with someone you're close to, when you feel happiest. Do you feel happiest when you're with other people? Do you feel happiest when you're participating in a hobby? Do you feel happiest when you're in bed alone at the end of the day watching your favorite TV show? When do you feel happiest? And take note of that. And on the other hand, take note of when you're the least happy. And then again, now that you've changed your relationship with happiness and now that it's something that is allowed to come and go freely without expectation, it's actually going to become even more of a tool to help you educate yourself on what's working in your life and what isn't.

It's like a natural teacher, you know? If you just let your emotions come and go naturally and you analyze them, you can learn a lot from that. Whereas if you're micromanaging your emotions, then you can't trust them as much and they're not as educational. All right, let's move on. Hopefully that was helpful. Next, somebody said, I feel like I'm sad all the time. How do I get that excitement back for life? Now, I know you're thinking, Emma, this is the same question as the last one. No, it's not. The last one was about happiness being fleeting and wanting to maintain happiness, wanting happiness to be permanent. This is more about feeling sad all the time and craving a lust for life again. Feeling down and out, just bummed and not even necessarily chasing happiness, but just

chasing excitement, energy. It's different. I think a perpetual sadness usually stems from one of two things could be, number one, a fundamental issue in life. Something deeply ingrained in our lives that is not working. It's not serving us. It's clashing with us. It's clashing with us. as a person, but yet it's a key element of our lives. Or there's some sort of psychological issue going on that needs to be addressed by a doctor. Now, this is where I suggest that if you're feeling sad all the time, don't listen to anything goes podcast with Emma. Talk to a psychologist, a psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatrist, I don't remember,

psychiatrist, talk to a doctor and just make sure that there's not something else going on. because if there is, you know, the advice that I'm about to give might not help you. And then that's not good. So if you're feeling perpetual sadness, talk to a doctor before you listen to me. Because I'm unprofessional and I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm just a girl. And I'm just giving you advice based on my 24 years on this planet. Okay.

So talk to a doctor first. But if you're dealing with a fundamental issue in your life, not depression or an undiagnosed psychological issue, that's not being managed properly, that's causing sadness, whatever. If you just have a fundamental issue in your life, I can give you advice on that because that's something that you can solve on your own, right? Let's start by defining what a fundamental issue is in life, okay? As I said earlier, it's a key part of our life that isn't working for us.

It's harming us in some way. Okay, this could be a stressful job, a bad work-life balance, a toxic friend group, shitty relationship, messy dating style, bad habits, unhealthy habits, but the key is that they're so ingrained in our day to day that we barely even notice that they're there. And that's why they haven't been addressed yet, because they're so deeply ingrained that we've just gotten used to living with these things, abiding by these things, you know? I think a lot of times when we're in a rut and we're just feeling sad and bummed, it's because we're dealing with something that we shouldn't be dealing with, that we don't need to be

dealing with. There's something that we're not addressing. So what's my advice to figure out what the fuck it is. Now, this is sometimes easy. You might find yourself in a rut and literally sit down in journal for an hour, not even. And hours actually a lot of journaling. I've never once in my life journaled for an hour. Maybe, maybe. But that's kind of intense. Like I feel like my max journal entry was like, took 20 minutes. In 15 minutes, you might be able to pinpoint what's bothering you. And it might be something as simple as not feeling like you're supported by your friend group. It might be something more significant. Like the city that you're living in doesn't make you happy. It doesn't fulfill you. It isn't, it's not compatible with you as a person. It might take you 15 minutes. It might

take you two weeks. It might take you six months. But I think the key is to plant the seed. What is the problem? And it's a matter of self-reflection, honestly. And really dissecting your life in looking at every little bit in peace. Not just the obvious stuff. Like, oh, I'm in a fight with my best friend. Well, being in a fight with your best friend is not causing you perpetual sadness necessarily. It might be causing you temporary sadness. What's the deep issue? Do you see what I'm saying? The deep issue might be, oh, I actually don't like the city that I live in. Do you see what I'm saying? But that's harder to pinpoint because that's not something we often analyze. It's just a part of our lives that we don't even question at a certain point. Challenge yourself to analyze the parts of your

life that you forget to analyze and get to the bottom of it. And then from there, it's time to do my favorite thing. Make a plan. What can you do to move in the direction of solving this issue? Okay. Let's say you discover that the issue lies in your romantic relationship. Okay, start building a plan to get couples therapy or to potentially break up with your partner. If you discover that your issue has to do with your friend group, maybe start making new friends. Make a plan to make new friends. Maybe if the city you live in is making you unhappy, start making a plan on how you can potentially move offices to a different office within your same company.

You know what I'm saying? Start making a plan. Is this stuff going to get fixed overnight? No, probably not unless it's like a breakup thing. But then now you have to deal with a breakup. Ooh, that's not fun. That is not fun. But you get what I'm saying.

make a plan. Okay, next, somebody said, I haven't been feeling like myself for a long time. And I don't know how to find myself again. How do I get my spark back? Now, I know what you're thinking again, Emma, this is the exact same question as the last one. Emma, I'm not, I've been feeling sad. How do I get excitement back? I think sadness is different from not feeling like yourself. That's like a different experience to me, okay? Feeling sad is like just, feeling exhausted and down and whatever. Not feeling like yourself is like feeling a misalignment. It's like feeling like your mind and your body are not connected. It's feeling like your sense of humor is gone. It's feeling like you don't have a sense of self. Okay. To me, this is different

than sadness. This is a more hyper-specific experience. So I'm going to be giving more hyper-specific advice for this hyper-specific feeling, okay? In my experience, I don't feel like myself when, number one, I'm surrounding myself with people who are judgmental, okay? That is a one-way ticket to losing my spark, to losing myself. Number two, if I'm just exhausted, emotionally exhausted, physically exhausted, if I've run myself into the ground to the point where I literally do not have the energy anymore to have a personality. Like I've used all my energy doing something else and now I'm so exhausted that my spark leaves the body. And lastly, when my life is boring, not stimulating enough, when I'm sticking too strongly to routine, when I'm too firmly in autopilot, that can also

kill my spirit, kind of make me lose my sense of self. I would say for me, in my experience, it's usually one of those three things. Now, you might be different, but I think check there first. Because honestly, majority of times in my life when I've lost my spark, it's been because I was dating the wrong person. I find that that's the most common culprit, at least in my life. Every time I go through a breakup, I'm like, oh my God, my spark is back. Every time. And so if you're in a relationship, pay close attention because dating the wrong person, being around the wrong person every single day can really fuck with your spark. You'll lose your sense of humor. You'll lose your sense of self. Go through a little breakup and see what happens. Watch the magic. Watch yourself come back. Now, if you're single and you feel

like you've lost your spark, then it might be one of the other two. Being overly exhausted or the opposite, your life being too boring and mundane, being too firmly in autopilot. I suggest, similar to the last one, look inward and pinpoint when you lost your spark and some potential ideas as to what killed your spark? Pay attention. When was the last time you felt like you were you? Was it before you started dating your significant other? Was it before you joined a certain friend group? Was it before you got a certain job? Was it, you know, like what was it? And then you have your culprit. And then from there, similar to the last one, you make a plan. How do I alter this part of my life that's killing my sparkle so I can get it back? If you have the wrong people in your life, that's an

one, remove them from your life and meet new people. Easy. Next. If you're overworked, exhausted, can you find a way to rest in your current circumstance? Or do you need to uproot your whole situation and plant a new situation? And if you're stuck in autopilot, how can you spice up your life? Come up with ways to spice up your life and get you out of your routine? Is it going on a little weekend trip with friends? Is it trying a new grocery store? Is it going to a new coffee shop? Is it trying a new workout class? Is it switching up your style for a week? Is it, what is it? How can you shake up your life a little bit? This episode is brought to you by FX. For the first time ever, there's been a truly beautiful medical breakthrough. One shot makes you hot, but with terrifying

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Transitionary phases are always really weird. It's really hard to feel pleasant emotions when in a transitionary. phase when you're in limbo. I think it's easiest to experience pleasant emotion when you have your job all figured out and you're in a romantic relationship and you got that all figured out and you have a good friend group and you have hobbies that you participate in frequently. Like when you got everything all figured out, it's easiest, I would say, to experience positive emotions. Being in limbo sets you up to not feel positive emotions. It comes with stress, uncertainty. There's a level of insecurity in it too. Like when you don't have things figured out, it can make you feel insecure. You're like, ah, you know, I don't, I don't have a job. I don't have a significant other. Like there's all these different things. You almost feel rejected by those things. Even though you haven't really been rejected. It's more just like you haven't found those things yet. But we can sometimes internalize our lack of, say, job or friend group or significant other as like that's rejection when that's not necessarily what it is. It might just be.

we just haven't found it yet, which is so normal. But that sort of pseudo-rejection feeling can make us feel insecure, which is not a fun emotion. What you're feeling is natural. To feel lonely, to feel like shit is to be expected. But I invite you to reframe the phase of life that you're in. I think sometimes we can look at a state of limbo as this horrible, stressful, lonely, empty phase of life where nothing's happening and it's just kind of blah. But we don't have to look at it that way. I would argue a phase of limbo is actually a really exciting time. It's like the calm before the storm. It's this brief moment in life where you don't know where you're going and you could go anywhere. There are so many different directions that you could go. Your life is never as blank of a

canvas as when you're in a moment of limbo. You know what I'm saying? Like, I almost think of, let's say life, your life is just one big canvas. And throughout your life, you're painting all over it. And then at the end, by the end of your life, you have a full canvas. Instead of looking at limbo as being this time where your arms are tied behind in your back and you can't paint and you can't even think about painting, it's just no art is being done on this canvas. Life is stopped.

If you were to change your perspective and look at it as, I'm just looking at a new blank corner on my canvas. and instead of rushing into, you know, getting that brush onto the canvas and just blurting out something onto it, I'm taking my time, I'm thinking, perhaps even laying down a foundation of color, you know, taking the brush with a gorgeous light blue and painting the background. You're painting the background when you're in limbo. Or maybe not even that. Maybe you're just looking at the canvas and thinking about what you're going to paint next.

But that's an exciting and important phase in life. and it's also temporary. Inevitably, you will paint again. You will draw again. This is a temporary stage, but it's a crucial stage. And it's actually, it can be an exciting stage, a restful stage, a wonderful stage, if you just change your perspective. Instead of looking at it as this like boring, bland stage, look at it as time to plan,

time to manifest what you want for your future, time to think and reflect in analyze yourself. Time to rest too. My dad always reminds me of this when I'm in limbo in my life. He's like, enjoy this moment because things will pick up again. Things will start moving quicker and quicker and quicker again. And you'll regret not having just enjoyed this moment of calm. So enjoy this moment of calm and use it to its highest degree. Use it to the best of your ability. Use it to manifest, plan, rest. Use it to acquire skills that you've been wanting to acquire. It's, If you don't have a job and if you don't have friends, you got lots of free time to teach yourself how to cook or crochet or do pottery or do yoga.

Take advantage of this time to teach yourself something that you've been meaning to learn. And through that, there's a good chance you might meet friends. And then the ball's rolling. And then it all comes together. And next thing you know, you're not in limbo anymore. And joy, I think, will come in this experience. Like to me, I don't think you can just find joy. I think through living life for you, doing things for you in that is joy. It's simple as that. You know what? Here's the advice I'll give. You're in a state of limbo. Your future is sort of up to you. You have so many different directions you could go. There's so many different types of jobs you could get. So many different types of groups of friends you could join. So many different types of people you could date. So many different types of hobbies. you could participate in.

If you want to find joy, the most, the maximum joy you could possibly experience, as you enter into this next phase of your life, make decisions for you. Don't make decisions based on what's the most prestigious and what's the most cool. Don't make decisions based on what's going to look the best on the internet. Don't make decisions based on what you think you should be doing, what your parents think you should be doing, what your friends think you should be doing. to find joy and to experience maximum joy, make every single decision for you. What job makes the most sense for you as a person?

What group of friends makes you feel the best? What person makes you feel the most loved to date? What hobbies fill your soul the most? If you entering into this next phase of your life, make decisions for you, you will experience maximum joy. That is my experience. I think joy is much harder to come by when you're not living in accordance to your soul and your spirit and what you're being called to do. And instead, you're listening to the noise and there's all this other noise dictating what you do with your life. When you start living by that noise instead of your soul and spirit, not to be spiritual,

but I'm being spiritual and by your soul and spirit, it will be much harder to experience joy. And so in this moment when you're in limbo, I would say the joy is in planning and thinking and reflecting and in experimenting and in utilizing this time of relaxation. But also you're in a phase where you have a blank corner of your canvas that anything could happen there. And so paint what you want to paint there. And think about what you want to paint there and then paint it. And that's all for today's advice session. I hope you all enjoyed this and found some sort of value in it. I mean, as always, take it with a grain of salt. I don't really know what I'm talking about. But alas, I give advice anyway. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you did new

episodes of Anything Goes every Thursday, I do advice session now once a month. So stick around. And I guess you're just going to have to tune in every single week to see if it's an advice session. If this is your favorite series on Anything Goes, you're just going to have to see when they pop up. Um, watch anything goes on Spotify and YouTube, listen anywhere, on social media, anything goes. I'm on the internet and Emma Chamberlain. My coffee company is Chamberlain coffee. I love you all. I appreciate you all.

Thank you for listening and hanging out. And I'll talk to you soon. I'll talk to you next week. Until then, I send you my love. And yeah, I'll talk to you later. Okay, bye.