I Beat Leukemia and All I Got Was This Life-Changing Happiness Secret (Try It: No Cancer Required)

I've reserved a metaphorical seat at this fake event for you.

Sep 10, 2024

Thank you for attending this free seminar on happiness.

Come in, grab a seat and help yourself to a complimentary muffin.

Are they gluten-free? Uhhh… I don’t know. They’re blueberry, if that helps.

It looks like a small crowd today, but that’s OK. That means you can all have two muffins instead of one. I said I don’t know if they are gluten-free. Please stop asking.

I’ve only rented this space for an hour, so let’s get you from “I’m not happy with who I am” to “I f*cking love who I am.”

Before we get to your happy place, let me tell you about my dark side.

Can you look directly at a sunflower or do you need special glasses?

This is a Killer Story… Literally

I am feared by every house plant in my apartment.

They have a name for me in the houseplant community. It’s one whispered in the aisles of Home Depot and hardware stores worldwide.

“Las manos de la muerte” 💀

Translation: The hands of death.

Don’t ask why my nickname is Spanish. Probably because it sounds cooler, but I haven’t fully looked into it. I don’t have time to explain myself because I’m too busy buying healthy plants and killing them.

FYI, I’m not doing this on purpose.

It just happens.

I’m like the serial killer committing accidental murders.

Maybe he’s cleaning his new set of serrated knives when one slips out of his hand, through an open window, and into a passerby’s neck. Maybe he rushes downstairs to offer first aid but, in haste, pushes someone into traffic, doubling his murderous tally.

SIDENOTE: If you’re a big city lawyer who wants to tell me those are both manslaughters, why don’t you do something useful and help me sue a supermarket for negligence? I am willing to fall on a patch of wet floor or a single green grape so that we will get rich. Call 1800-SCAM for more. 📞

The point is, my touch of death is accidental, too.

I’m not trying to kill plants.

I wasn’t born with a hatred for the Fiddle-leaf fig or a resentment towards the Boston fern. I rolled around in the grass as a kid. I smoked grass as an adult. That’s a lifetime of grass-related appreciation. But for some reason, plants die in my home.

Some of you will say:

“Yeah, but are you watering those plants?”

And to that, I say… what’s with all the questions?

Are you the plant police? Are you here on behalf of the plant’s family? Are you concerned about the rumours of me stuffing my pillowcase full of Monstera leaves to fulfil my fantasy of f*cking Mother Earth herself?!

Let’s not get sidetracked about who takes care of plants and who forgets to water them for months until they crumble like a bad high school relationship.

Forget green thumb. I’m the Black Thumb.

The point is, I wish I could care for plants.

Sometimes, I also wish I had nicer teeth… bigger muscles… more patience… was better at getting out of my shell in social situations. The list goes on.

The point is, I’m not always happy with myself.

You’re the same.

Whether it’s something you vocalise to those close to you or frustrations you hide away, there are moments — possibly extended and difficult — where you struggle with feeling like you’re not good enough.

What do the numbers say?

According to a recent study by people much smarter than me (a bar so low no Limbo champion could get under it), 8 out of 10 young adults feel they are “not good enough.”

The study participants felt they were falling short in a bunch of areas, from not earning enough money to not hitting the gym more and even failing to hit 10,000 steps a day.

I don’t care about those anonymous people as much as I care about you, though. So, let’s get real and a little bit personal for a second.

What does “not good enough” mean to you?

Maybe you don’t feel attractive enough.
Maybe you wish you were a smarter person.
You might not feel like a good enough friend.
You might even wish you were someone else entirely.

Whatever personal flaws your cheeky brain can identify (naughty brain), I’m not telling you to snap out of these thoughts or stop whining. This isn’t a tough love seminar; that advice isn’t practical or helpful.

The real problem with feeling “less than” is that your current feelings are only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath this moist tip (eww) are endless possible causes, reasons and interconnected contributing factors that leave you unhappy.

Offering generic advice to overcome these contributing factors won’t work because there’s a difference between the perfectionist with a great job who still craves more vs. the person with low self-worth who doesn’t feel they deserve to hold down a job in the first place.

In the same way, there’s a difference between someone with a big head who wishes it was smaller vs. someone with no head, reanimated from the dead, who wishes people would stop screaming in fear and running away.

I could continue, but I sense you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

To go into the minutia of working through these fragmented causes wouldn’t just require a much longer article; it would also need four years of training to become a psychologist, and neither of us has that type of free time.

Since we’re short on time (I told you, I’ve only booked this function room for an hour), I’ll share my personal secret to happiness — learned in hospital and refined in the years since — so you can try it for yourself.

The Secret to Happiness Is…

To be happy.

*Groan*

I know, I know. You want more than that.

You want a lamp with two wishes (originally it had three, but I wished for muffins for this seminar, I’m sorry!!!). You want a “brain hack” forged in the heart of a Harvard study and perfected across 100+ independent tests. You want certainty. But none of those things exist.

I say this with love, but if happiness is hard to find, you are both the cause and the solution.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got six teeth, sixty kilos of unwanted weight, or you’re six months into treatment for leukemia. You can’t wave a wand and magically make these problems go away. Life isn’t a video game. There are no cheat codes. There is only the choice to face life with happiness… or not.

In other words:

Happiness is something you choose, not something that is given to you.

I’m not saying that to fill your sexy head with more garbage “life advice” that sounds good but doesn’t work. I’m saying it as someone who was almost crushed by the weight of cancer until I took agency over my feelings.

And look, this advice may feel like cold comfort if you’re swimming in shit — whether metaphorically or literally. So let’s not put all of our eggs in one basket (especially if you are literally swimming in shit because that’s going to ruin the eggs AND the basket).

If you’re struggling to feel happy, the internet is full of suggestions. I think working out releases happiness chemicals. You can buy a bunch of Golden Retriever puppies. Take heroin — whatever works for you.

But if nothing is working, here are two paths you can take 👇

Path #1 - Happiness Through Action ➡️

If you’re unhappy with who you are, take a single step towards the change you want to see and watch your unhappiness fade.

Often, inactivity agitates unhappiness.

Let’s say you want to lose weight and fit into your favourite matching two-piece PVC gimp suit. Doing nothing guarantees you stay right where you are, thinking, “I don’t have the body I want”. Every day you wake up, you won’t fit in your suit. Nothing changes. You stay unhappy because you’re forever wishing things were different.

Now, imagine you take a small step towards change. The size of that step doesn’t matter (you can take bigger steps later).

Maybe you buy shoes, start walking around the block after work, and research how calories work. The goal isn’t to become a black belt at nutrition or sprint around the block like you’re running from debt collectors. It’s to recognise what’s in your power and act on it.

This is known as incrementalism and is the process of changing small things you have control over. The goal is to do something, no matter how small it may be.

Now, you’re making progress, which stops you from wishing you were someone else because you are in the process of becoming someone else.

Path #2 - Happiness Through Choice ⬅️

More likely, the thing making you unhappy is something you cannot control.

You can’t up and move countries tomorrow, you can’t grow 6 inches taller, and you can’t undo traumatic experiences that feel constricting.

Chances are, that’s the thing affecting your happiness most, and since it’s impossible to change, it can feel impossible to overcome. If life has punched you in the genitals, it’s easy to feel powerless.

Trust me, I know.

My experience with leukemia wasn’t fun then, and it’s not fun now. Sometimes, my brain feels broken, like the happiness fell out. I feel like I’m sitting in a bathtub, but the hot tap doesn’t work. The best I can hope for is no water at all. Sometimes, when my anxiety is firing and catastrophic thoughts push into my head, it feels like I’m drowning in ice-cold water.

I can’t just “take action” to get past those feelings because my homemade time machine doesn’t work (it’s an old garbage bin with two frying pans taped to it), so I can’t undo what’s been done.

If, like me, your unhappiness stems from trauma or unchangeable things, you might feel stuck — but you’re not.

You can choose happiness.

That doesn’t mean what happened didn’t suck. It doesn’t mean what happened didn’t irreversibly change you. And it doesn’t mean you’ll wake up and never feel troubled by what you’ve been through.

Instead, it’s the empowering conscious choice to allow and look for happiness despite your past, not resign yourself to a life of unhappiness because of it.

When you don’t have a choice but to live with who you are, the choice to find happiness in your existence — in whatever form it looks like to you — can be liberating.

Thank You For Attending This Seminar

I can see I’m being told to hurry up and finish.

My grandfather always said time flies when you’re renting an affordably priced local function room (he had dementia; that expression never made sense until now).

Entire books have been written about happiness, so what you do about your feelings is up to you.

Here’s my two cents:

If you can take action, do it. The path of progress is lined with happiness.
If you can’t change what’s making you unhappy, look for happiness in your existence.

It might feel impossible, but take it from someone who had cancer and chooses to find joy in as many moments as possible for as many moments as he gets.

The secret to happiness isn’t a secret at all.

It’s right there whenever you’re ready to accept it.

Please take the last muffin and have an amazing day. 🧁

With love,

New World Porter

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