The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Big Reasons for Unhappiness

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

What do you think are some of the big reasons for people’s unhappiness? In this episode, Jeff walks through a series of questions to help you discover what is most important to you and help you discover one of the main sources of happiness in life. Snippet from the Show Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 284, big reasons for unhappiness. And thank you for joining me. Just got off the ship just a few days ago. I was on a cruise. with a number of really new friends, I should say, and then we met up with some old friends who went down the Rhine River in Europe, starting in Basel, Switzerland. And then we were supposed to go up through France,

but there was no, well, the water was low in the Rhine, so we had to take a bus around there and back up to Germany. And then we ended up in the Netherlands in Holland, and that was a wonderful time. And what made this so special for me was not only the renewal, of friendship. You know, and we go on these trips to Israel and Europe and cruises in Europe.

When we go on these trips, we create so many new friends, and it's on these trips that we renew our friendship. And some of the people have moved from friends to really close friends as a result of these trips. But what made it super special was the fact that my daughter, Carly, she got to go with us along with our three grandchildren. First time that they've been out of the country, and it's so much fun to travel with them and to be a part of their life. All right, big reasons for unhappiness. That's what we're going to talk about today. There are reasons for unhappiness.

Are you happy? Are you unhappy? Well, there's a lot of reasons, I would imagine, but I'm going to talk about a couple of big reasons for unhappiness. Before I get into that, big announcement, the Great Adventure Bible is in large print now, and it's available. if you are interested, you know, this is one of the things that people have said to us in the past. They said, we love the Great Adventure Bible, but do you have it in a large print?

Now, those people tended to be over 50 years old, but the answer was no. Now it's yes, and it's available. I'll put that in the show notes for you. It's the Great Adventure Bible, large print. And a heads up, too, keep your eyes open for the Catechism coming out from Ascension Press. and that's going to be a new catechism that is, well, I can't go into it in details yet. It's phenomenal. It's so good.

It really is. And we're going to be starting up at the beginning of the year with the catechism in a year. Father Mike Schmitz is going to be doing that along with myself and a few others who are going to be contributing to try to bring an understanding of the faith to you. Do you want the show notes? Okay, if you want the show notes going forward today and going to be, forward just text my name one word Jeff Kavens and you can text it to the number 33777 there and then you'll get the notes in perpetuity that means hopefully forever

so Emily and I we have we have so many good friends we really do I over the years I've made a lot of really good friends through not only the cruises the trips to Israel but in the Twin Cities here I've got a lot of good friends then traveling and doing conferences around the country, have a lot of good friends. But we also have a handful of best friends. Not a best friend, I'm not saying that, but best friends. We've got some really best friends. And these are the people that we tend to, you know, call up every week or every other week, hey, what are you guys doing for dinner? Or we travel to their city to spend a day or two with them because the friendship means just that much. And it's interesting because at times when,

And over COVID, for example, when things were difficult, what a blessing it was to get together with some of the best friends, as I'm sure you would attest to, and to sit in the backyard, have some iced tea or, you know, have dinner, whatever it might be, and not wear a mask and just be together with them. So I want to start off by just going through a little exercise here that actually came from Charles Schultz. Charles Schultz is the famed creator of Peanuts. You're familiar with that comic strip, Peanuts.

And he has kind of a philosophy, a philosophy of Charles Schultz. And he brings you through a series of questions to kind of narrow down what's really important in your life. And so I'm going to go through these questions with you real quickly. And I might answer a few myself. And then on the other side of the break later on here, I'm going to go, bit deeper into the actual topic as to why people are so unhappy, at least a couple of big reasons why they are. But you don't have to actually answer all these questions right now. You might want to think about them, but if you want to answer them, go ahead. And you can think

about them, you know, meditate on them. And so here they are. I'm going to ask you the question, and I'll pause real quickly. Name the five wealthiest people in the world right now. Name the five wealthiest people in the world. That should come quickly, right, to you? You probably already got them written down, huh? Maybe not. Number two, name the last five Heisman Trophy Winners. That's in football, or all of you in Europe.

Name the last five Heisman Trophy winners. That's basically the best college football player in the last five years. They get a trophy with a guy standing there in a position of moving, you know, running with the ball, a round end. Number three, name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant. That's a good one right there. You know, they don't even show that like they used to on the networks anymore. I think that used to be up there with Wizard of Oz every year where people watched the Miss America pageant, not so much anymore. So the last five winners, do you have that?

Number four, name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pilots are. Prize. Name 10 people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize. Now, if you're in the car, you're obviously not going to be writing this down, but maybe, just maybe some names come to mind. Maybe not. I'm sure that so far there are some of my friends now listening that didn't get any of this. But number five, name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and best actress. Movies are big in our culture. We are attracted to movie stars for some reason. So who are they? Who won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Actress in the last, say, five, six years? And number six, name the last 10 years of World Series winners.

Now, you'll probably get one or two of those based on if your team was in it or your brother's team or your parents, some friend from college. So name the last 10 years of the World Series. They're winners last 10 years. Okay, so how did you do? How did you rank there? Did you do pretty good? And if you didn't want to answer them and you want to pause this right now, you can pause it and then get home and try to figure it out. But good luck.

So how did you do? The point is that he says, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. And these people that I just asked you about are the best in their particular field of expertise. these are the cream of the crop they are the ones that got the trophies they got the awards and the praise the public praise and they were on the tonight show and and and so forth but as we can see here based on your answers most likely the accolades and the the applause from the audience dies rather quickly and as one guy said the awards tarnish the achievements are forgotten here's another quiz, though. Let's see how you do on this one, okay? Let's see how you do on this one.

This one's a little bit different, and this one's probably a little bit more personal for you. And I might answer these, just to give you an idea of what we're thinking about here. Number one, list a few teachers who aided your journey through school. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school. Well, for me, it was Mr. Swanson in fourth grade who taught me all about how a city works and how you go to college and you can get a job and you can buy a home and so forth. It was a marvelous game that we played in fourth grade where the center of the class was like a gigantic city. And we would get these little glass pebbles, you know, if we got a really good grade on a test, we get four of these blue ones. And if you didn't do so

well, you got three red ones and, you know, two green ones or whatever it might be. And you could buy property and so far. That was very, very powerful. And I remember that. Probably more than any was my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Knight, who gave me such a desire for reading and writing, even though he told my dad that I would not do two things, one's speaking and one's writing. But he gave me such a hunger for adventure stories and he read to us and he was such an encouragement to me. He really was. After I wrote my first book, I ended up going back to that elementary school, and I gave them a copy. So a list a few teachers who aided your journey through school. I got that. Number two, name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time. Well, I would say my parents, obviously, when I was younger, I guess everything was when I was younger. But my mother-in-law, Emily, more than anybody, has helped me through difficult times. That's my wife. And then a number of other people locally who have been a great help spiritual director for one number three name five people who have taught you something worthwhile oh boy that's a good one that's bishop dudley for me bishop paul dudley he's going to be a saint someday i'm sure of it so five people who have taught you something worthwhile that would be my dad on that list as well and i would say that uh a teacher in Bible college.

One of Mr. War, Dr. Warrobe. Now, number four, think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special. You have anybody in your life who has made you feel really appreciated and made you feel special? And number five, think of five people that you enjoy spending time with. Now, that one should be kind of easy. I've got a list of three or four guys locally that I like to spend time with and share, share our lives. Now, those last five, no doubt, were easier than the first six, weren't they? Well, the lesson here is that the people who make a difference in your life,

the people who have really moved the dial, sort of speak, in your life, are not the ones with the most credentials. these are not the people who have billions of dollars. You know, Leon Musk, Elon Musk probably wasn't on that list there, although he's got a lot of money. And these are not the people probably who have won the most awards. They simply are the ones who cared the most, aren't they? The people on that second list are the people who have cared the most,

and they are the ones who invested something into your life, whether it was time, wisdom, encouragement, fun, wisdom, whatever it might be. These are the people that really made a difference in your life. And so today, one of the things I love to encourage you to do is to kind of forget about that first list. You're probably not even going to talk to those people ever in your life. But on that second list, these people who have really made a difference in your life, these are the people that we want to zero in on and we want to nurture and nourish the relationships and live with an attitude of thanksgiving about these people and let them know that they have made a difference in our life. Now, all of this could be condensed down into a topic that we could call friendship. friendship. And remember, we're talking about the big reasons for unhappiness. Now, I mentioned this

before, but I didn't go into it in great detail. But a number of years ago, there was a great big Harvard grant study. It was a 70-year study. And in those 70 years, it was amazing what they did. They took under the leadership of psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, who is the the director of the Harvard study of adult development. They went on a long, in fact, I believe it's the longest and most complete study of its kind. It's a study of adult life and specifically the secrets to happiness. And this is what they were trying to do. And you can also look up a famous TED talk on this. But the study followed two cohorts of men for 75 years, starting in 1938. Now, the two cohorts, the two groups of men were divided up like this.

There were 268 Harvard sophomores as part of the grant study, led by psychiatrist George Valant, I believe I have his name right, 268 Harvard sophomores. And then they had 456 12 to 16-year-old boys who grew up in inner city Boston. by Harvard as part of the gluick study led by harvard law school professor sheldon gluick now the researchers surveyed the men about their lives including the quality of their marriages job satisfaction and social activities and get this every two years they monitored their physical health and that included chest x-rays blood tests urine tests and uh echocardiogram and that was every five years and they they also had tests with psychologists and discussions about their life and how they were doing and they came away with one major

finding one major finding there were several findings but one major finding guess what it was if you paid any attention to the title of this show then you'll probably win the major finding was that good relationships keep us happier and healthier now That's an important point, isn't it? Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. And when we talk about relationships, at least as I'm going to talk about it here, those certainly are relationships with people and family, but I'd put in there as well, our relationship with the Lord, which is the greatest and most important relationship in our life.

So that's the major finding, the good relationships keep us happier. and healthier. Now, they divided the results into three aspects of these good relationships. And I want you to think about the people that might have come to mind in the second set of questions that I gave you. So, number one, now this is how they looked at the good relationship. Number one, close relationships. The men in both groups of the Harvard study reported being closer to their family, friends, or community, they tended to be happier. If they had a close relationship with family, friends, or community,

they tended to be happier and healthier than their less social counterparts. They also tended to live longer, if you're interested in that. By comparison, people who said they were lonelier reported feeling less happy. They also had worse physical. and mental health as a result of being lonely or not having these vital relationships. A 2014 review revealed that dozens of studies published in the Journal of Social and Personality

Psychology Compass suggests that loneliness can get in the way of mental functioning, sleep and well-being, which in turn increases the risk of illness and death. Now, as I'm going through this first part about close relationships, I am very aware, and I think you are too, as you're probably thinking like me between the lines that, boy, this sounds like the church could be a healthy place to be. I know what you're thinking. Sometimes it's not, but we can deal with that. But it should be a source of mental health and physical health because we have relationships,

not only with people here on earth, but the communion of saints. Number two, another aspect of these good relationships was that they took into consideration was quality, not quantity, of relationships, the quality of a relationship. So it's not just being in a relationship that mattered. Married couples who said they argued constantly and had low affection for one another were actually less happy than people who weren't married at all. That's what the Harvard study found. However, the effect of relationship quality seems to depend somewhat on age. A 2015 study published in the journal Psychology and Aging that followed people for 30 years found that the number of relationships people had was, in fact, more important for people in their 20s. That's kind of easy to understand, I guess, than the quality.

But the quality of the relationships had a bigger effect on social and psychological well-being when people were in their 30s and beyond. And then another aspect of these good relationships were stability, if it was a stable relationship, not a hit and miss, not a sometimes I want to be your friend relationship, not one that's filled with manipulating and threats and cold and hot and so forth. being socially connected to others one researcher said isn't just good for our physical health it also helps stave off mental decline this is interesting that a stable relationship helps to stave off mental decline that would be dementia that would be Alzheimer's people who who were

married without having divorce separating or having serious problems until age 50 perform better on memory tests later in life than those who weren't the Harvard study found and other research backs this up 2013 study also backs that up all of this suggests that strong relationships are critical to our health now another aspect of this study and I'm not going to go into it today but this is the other big ticket item that is a big reason for unhappiness first is a lack of good, solid relationships. The second was, get this, you ready, alcoholism. That's right. Alcoholism contributed to unhappiness and, generally speaking, poor health. And of course, alcoholism is the trigger for all kinds of bad things. So friendship is very, very important.

And I'd like to go into that a little bit deeper with you as far as what the scripture says. and a little bit of suggestion, advice going forward. So we're talking today about big reasons for unhappiness, and you are listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Every one of us is made in the image of God. We are unique, worthy of love, and called to greatness. In this world, though, we can be distracted from that truth and begin to doubt God's love is real.

You see, we live in a world that tells us, we are not smart, attractive, thin, or rich enough. It is easy to focus on the ways we fall short of worldly perfection and forget that we are already made perfect. We are already enough. I'm Danielle Bean, author of You Are Enough, what women of the Bible teach you about your mission and worth. You Are Enough dives into the stories of women in the Bible

so that you can fully see God's plan for your life. to order visit ascensionpress.com or amazon thanks for coming back i figured you probably want a little bit more information than simply the harvard study and so what we're going to do now is we're going to look into friendships and give you just a little bit of advice on what scripture says here it's very very powerful you know that the scriptures talk a lot actually about friendship and when jesus talks to his disciples he he talks about friendship between between his disciples and himself he says you know you can call him friend or he call you friend if you if you do what he says and so the the friendship with jesus is dependent upon doing his will and i think that stands to reason

doesn't it you know you're you're not going to have a great relationship with mom and dad growing up if you are constantly doing what they said don't do that that doesn't end in a good relationship generally but wisdom is the life skill of choosing making and nurturing good friendships there's a lot of wisdom that goes into it and no doubt you as a parent if you are a parent and you have you have kids that are either preteen or in their teen years right now, you probably have preached this a long time, you know, or Paul talks to the Colossians and he says, bad company corrupts good morals.

And it does. So the friendship that you keep has a big influence on your ideals, on your decision-making, on your opinion of social matters. It really does have a big impact. Someone once said, and I don't know if this is really true, it sounded pretty good. They said that if they could get together with your five best friends, they would be able

to tell you what your future looks like if they could sit down with your five best friends. Now, I think there's some truth to that, to be honest. So let's look at this. Proverbs 17, and I'll put these in the show notes for you. Again, my name is Jeff Kaven's one word, one name, Jeff Kavins, and text 33777. seven i'll get you these proverb 17 says that a friend loves at all times a friend loves at all times now that speaks to point three of the harvard study stability of good friend loves at all times i would say that on my secret list which i have in my left hand right before me those people on that

list are stable i have never been out of sorts with them and I have never been in a big fight with them, but they have loved me and my wife at all times, and we have loved them at all times. That's pretty neat. And the Bible says that a friend loves at all times. A true friend loves at all times. We could do a whole show on people who say their friends, but they're not.

A companion says, call me if you need me. A friend says, I will be there. I'll be there. But a companion says, hey, if you need me, call me. But a true friend says, I'll be there with you. Number two, you know, Proverbs, which is absolutely chock-full of wisdom on friendship, Proverbs 13 for number two says, the one who walks with the wise becomes wise. And that's really true.

The one who walks with the wise becomes wise. Why? because if you walk with the wise, you have not only insight into wisdom, but you have a model in front of you who's living it out. And if you have a model in front of you who's living it out, that's a real, that's a gift. You know, that's a real gift in your life. And by the way, this should be something that we train our children in when they are in the process of making friends. And as you know, that process starts very, very young. I remember when we first moved to EWTN in Birmingham, Alabama, our daughter was in, oh, I want to say fifth grade. I say fifth grade at the

time, going into fifth grade. And we moved to Birmingham from Steubenville, and this was going to be brand new for her. And when news got around in Birmingham, there's a young couple with a daughter going into fifth grade. She's going to be at St. Rose of Lima. And wouldn't you know it, a young girl going into fifth grade got in touch with my daughter and said, I know you're new. I'll meet you at the flagpole on the very first day of school. I'll be your friend. Jokes me up talking about it, to be honest with you, because it did then. And that very first day of school, she met standing there at the flagpole. Didn't know who was going to meet her. But a beautiful young girl walked up. up and said, I'm your friend. They became friends and they were the deepest of friends and have been

at each other's wedding. And they have continued on in their friendship. That is a beautiful thing. So the one who walks with the wise becomes wise and those two certainly became like each other. I like this one scripture in Proverbs 2717 when it says, as iron sharpens iron so one person sharpens another you know you're in a good relationship when you become sharper around other people you're growing you're becoming more you're becoming more effective as a disciple your prayer life is changing with the decisions you make they're getting better because you're around good people and you've made really good friends now again that doesn't mean you that doesn't mean you you you can't be friends with people i'm talking about a good friend according to this study number three proverbs 14 seven

stay away from a fool, for you will not find knowledge on his lips. It's a good one. If you're around a fool, go ahead, look. You're going to finding knowledge on their lips. That's not the kind of person that you want as a close friend. Number four, Proverbs 22 in verses 24 through 25 says, do not make friends with a hot-tempered person. You will become ensnared.

Now I can just hear you saying right now, amen to that, Jeff. Amen to that. And you could probably email me a list. In fact, if you want to email me anything, it's the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. I would love to hear from you. Proverbs 23 is number five. Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat. They will come to poverty.

That's a good one. You talk about, that just illustrates how hard it is to make friends in college. You know what I mean? You go to college and a lot of freshmen coming into the school, they've got partying and they've got booze on their mind and so forth. They're away from mom and dad. What a horrible time to actually say I'm going to make the best friends of my life. So that's going to take some discipline, right?

Number six, Proverbs 27, better is open rebuke. hidden love faithful are the wounds of a friend profuse are the kisses of an enemy i like that i like that you know some of the friendships that i have that are the closest friendships were friendships where they didn't have any problem correcting me in love and because i knew that they loved me i listened to them i listened to them in fact you know just not too long ago i did a couple of shows on how to give criticism and how to receive criticism. That was show 279. Yeah, 279. So you can go back and listen to those if you didn't get a chance to listen to them. Okay. So those are some really good points, you know, about friendship. And I've done some shows in the past, too, on friendship on my show,

I think two or three of them over the last, you know, five years. Because it is an important topic. It's not only important for you and living a good life now. It's also important for you to teach your children because, you know, making friends, deciding on who are going to be friends is so important to their whole life. How many parents have said, you know, that when we moved to that school, they fell into the wrong crowd. They fell into the wrong crowd and it made it very, very difficult. What I would suggest is to make this a matter of prayer. if you're moving to a new city this year or have get on your knees go to a holy hour grab your

rosary get your bible spend some some really quality time praying for your kids that they would make outstanding friendships that they would and that they would they would make friends for life friends that would be there for them and encourage them and model and model the faith it's stronger for our kids to stand with others, as the Bible says, a court of three cannot be broken. You get three people together that are agreeing together about the faith in high school. The odds of them splitting up and going the wrong way are diminished because the fact that they are walking with each other and holding each other accountable and they are encouraging

each other to walk in the faith. So to kind of bring this all together, today we, you know, this Harvard study, which is not the end of all studies, but it is interesting, says that there are two things that really stand out. And at the end of the 75 years study, which ended not too long ago,

and the study yielded this information that, number one, you have to have good relationships if you want to be a happy man or woman. Number two, you've got to avoid alcoholism. Pretty simple, but it starts young. That's where parents come in.

You know, my friend, love you so much it's so good to be with you every week and i'm not with you let me say this i'm not with you just for this half hour or so i'm with you all week long do you know how many times i think about you during the week and and what i'm going to share and what what might be needed right now and what's going on in the world i love being with you and in sharing these things do me a favor and go on apple or google play and uh go ahead and rank the show and give some feedback. It all feeds into the algorithm.

And based on what you've done in the past, you have helped this show rise. And when people are searching for things like big reasons for unhappiness, this show might come up and you play a part in that whole thing. So thank you for doing that. I really appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to do that. And if you would like to drop a note to me, The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com,

I truly would love to hear from you. and I read all the messages given to me. Let me pray for you, and specifically let's pray about this issue of friendship. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lord, Jesus, I thank you. I thank you, Lord, for my brother. I thank you for my sister. I raise them up to you right now, and I ask you, Lord, to help them at this point in their life,

to evaluate friendships, and to determine which friendships are so valuable and have really contributed to their life. And may they nurture them. May they reach out and feed that relationship and thank people for being a part of their life. I also lift up their children to you, Lord, and I ask you to give them wisdom in teaching their children about friendship.

And I pray for their children that they would be safe from horrible relationships that are not going to be good for the future. Save them, oh Lord. protect them and keep them innocent I agree with my brother and my sister about this and we also pray and ask our mother hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen in Jesus name we pray amen love him a friend God bless you and I'm all

looking forward to being with you next week.