Joy, happiness and stress

6 episodes of The Truth Hurts on this topic, each with its notes, key points and the questions it answers.


Episode 86 · February 20, 2025

Patience Is Power

You have no patience for yourself either, not just for other people

You explode inside over every small thing, and then you go and prove to yourself that you're just an impatient person. Gili has a different explanation: that impatience is almost always tied to trying to prove something to someone else, to your parents, to your friends, to anyone at all, and not really to the situation itself. Patience isn't waiting quietly, it's an active force, a choice to stay calm exactly when everything inside you wants to fall apart. And the moment you stop trying to prove something to anyone but yourself, your patience simply grows on its own.

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Episode 82 · December 23, 2024

Take the Pressure Off

You stop for a breath and a voice immediately tells you you're running away

You finally stop to take a breath, and right away a voice comes up in you saying that you're running away from your life. Gili knows that one up close. She was running nonstop from role to role, and the moment she decided to stop is exactly when the harshest, most critical voices jumped into her head. When the choice is between disappointing yourself and disappointing someone else, it's always better to choose the other person. That's the central work: to focus on yourself a little more, and on other people a little less.

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Episode 70 · September 12, 2024

Boy Takes Girl

You know exactly what isn't working in your life, and still something keeps pulling you back to what's familiar. Gili Man Wolner says that isn't an unwillingness to change. It's the subconscious doing its job, holding us in the place we already know, even when that place isn't the best one for us. She draws a line between pleasure, which arrives in the moment, and happiness, which in her view comes only from an act of love toward someone else. And when a heart breaks, she sees in it not only pain but a real opportunity to grow.

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Episode 69 · August 8, 2024

Here and Now Is All We Have

You don't have to be certain in order to move

The same decision keeps going around in your head, and every time you think you've reached a conclusion, a new doubt comes up. That confusion doesn't solve anything. It only frustrates you and leaves you stuck. Gili says there are just two ways out of that loop: act even without full certainty, the way an entrepreneur moves ahead without absolute confidence, or go out and get more information that will give you a little more confidence to decide.

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Episode 60 · June 6, 2024

How to Be Happy

Waiting for the kids to grow up so you can finally be happy?

Happiness feels slippery. One minute it's here, the next it's gone, and the whole time you're waiting for something on the outside to bring it to you: the kids, your partner, the house with the pool. The way Gili sees it, you are the only owner of your own happiness, and nobody else can hand it to you. The road there starts with taking responsibility and changing the story you tell yourself, including cutting phrases like "I don't have the strength" and replacing them with something that gives you strength instead. And that takes time. The way she sees it, wisdom is patience, because fruit picked too early tastes bitter.

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Episode 50 · March 14, 2024

Choosing Joy When Life Hurts

You're waiting for it to feel right to start, and meanwhile nothing moves. You worry more than you need to, you take what other people say to heart, and more and more books pile up on the shelf without changing anything. The way Gili sees it, change comes from action and from self-discipline, not from waiting for the right moment, and the way we talk about ourselves locks our reality in place far more than we realize.

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