Tucker Carlson has some wise thoughts about happiness.
Asked how he stays positive, the independent media personality said, “It’s really simple.”
In addition to taking a sauna “every single day” and getting outside with his beloved dogs daily, he doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of those who don’t love him.
Want to be happy? Care only about the opinions of people who love you. pic.twitter.com/udA9mu3L7V — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 3, 2023
“I think it’s worth — especially if you have a job where people you don’t know are judging you — it’s so important, even if you don’t, it’s so important to remember and repeat it as a mantra that ‘the opinions of people you don’t know mean nothing’,” Carlson explained. “I always think it’s like dogs barking, but, actually, when my dogs bark, I care, so it’s less than dogs barking.”
If you want to be happy, he advised, you need to be mindful of who you allow to influence you’re moods.
“Never hand emotional control to people who don’t love you,” Carlson said. “It’s like handing a firearm to a toddler. Why would you do that? You wouldn’t. You’d be insane.”
“If you just take all your emotional energy and focus it on people in your orbit — if you’re not married with children, focus it on your siblings, your parents, your cousins, your co-workers, your employees — yes, your dogs. But keep your circle, the circle of people whose opinions you really care about, small. Ignore everybody else, and pay very close attention to what they think,” he said.
And as an outspoken man on the global stage, Carlson is in a unique position to give advice on this matter.
“Obviously, I’m one of the most hated people in the world, and that causes me zero stress,” he said. “I could care less. I mean it. I’m not just saying that. I think it’s obvious. I really don’t care.”
The admission sparked a round of applause from his audience.
“However,” he continued, “if my wife were to say, ‘I don’t really like what you’re doing,’ it would bring me to my knees.”
“Everybody cares what other people think,” Carlson stated. “Make the decision about who you hand that power to. And in my case, I’ve handed it all to my wife, my four children, my college roommates, my employees — people who are closest to me. Right there. I really care what they think. I really, sincerely do. I listen to them carefully, their praise, which I don’t get very often, but if I do, it means a lot. Their criticism is just devastating.”
“I put all my eggs in the basket of the people who love me and no eggs at all in the countless baskets of people who hate me or who I don’t know,” he said. “Like, why would I care what you think? Honestly, why would I care? Let’s just try to be rational about this.”
If you want to see the results of seeking validation from strangers, you only have to look to the political arena.
Our political class is “disgusting,” Carlson said, because they are “all so emotionally damaged and they look at life backward.”
Most people in the world don’t get into politics simply because they want power to throw around, but because “they have a desperate need to be loved by people they don’t know,” he explained. “They can’t wait to receive the adulation of strangers. And almost all of them have absent or alcoholic fathers to whom they are trying to prove something, but they’re damaged from childhood.”
“But regardless of your childhood, you just have to make the decision that you care about the people who care about you, and that’s all you care about,” the former Fox News host said. “And if you don’t do that, you’ll become a captive to insecurity, self-hatred — and what does self-hatred give way to every single time? — hatred of others. Hundred percent. People who hate themselves hate you too. They do. And they’ll mistreat you a hundred percent of the time.”
Politicians, he said, “are almost all self-selected from a group of emotionally damaged people whose key desire — overwhelming, overriding desire — is to be loved by strangers. And that’s the darkest sickness of all.”
“That’s why their behavior is so unbelievably screwed up and pathetic,” he stated.
At this point in his life, Carlson assesses people based on the strengths of their relationships.
“If your wife doesn’t respect you and love you, and if your kids don’t respect you, and if your employees think you’re horrible, and you don’t tip the waitress, I’m not your friend,” he said. “And I mean that.”
“That’s who knows you, the people in your immediate orbit,” he added.
Carlson and his family believe in this philosophy so completely, they don’t give to any non-profit charities.
Because of his wife’s “fervent” belief in Christianity, Carlson said they do give “ten percent,” but they give it all to people in their “orbit.”
There are a million great charities out there, he said, but “does my housekeeper need a new car?”
“How could I possibly justify giving mosquito nets to kids in Congo if my housekeeper’s in need?” he asked. “I mean that. I couldn’t. And that’s a reflection of my view that you are put on this earth to serve the people right around you.”
Someone who talks of “effective altruism” or helping people he’s “never met and will never meet, and the consequences of that help will never be recorded, and he doesn’t even care what those consequences are — that’s the most dangerous in the world,” Carlson said. “Because his giving, his charity, is totally disconnected from actual people.”
“Effective altruism,” Carlson said, is “evil masquerading as good” and it’s a sign that the “giver” is “certainly a horrible person.”
“‘And by the way, give me your wife’s texts’,” Carlson said. “‘I want to find out what she thinks of you.’ And 100 percent, she has contempt for him, because he’s a crappy husband, because he’s a crappy man, because he’s ignoring the people around him in favor of helping people whose names he doesn’t know in order to self-aggrandize.”
“You see it on the left,” he said, noting that he doesn’t want to get partisan because “I hate the Republicans so much I almost don’t want to make any partisan statements because I hate them all.”
“But it is a feature of the left,” he said. “‘I’m giving my life over to the people.’ Really? Which people? Do you have their addresses? How are they doing? They don’t care. It’s totally abstract.”
“There’s no such thing as abstract love,” he said. “You can’t love any group of people. In fact, I don’t even believe in groups of people. It’s all a lie.”
“There are people, with names and fingerprints and unique histories and desires and weaknesses that need bolstering,” Carlson said. “They’re individuals. And that’s all there is. God doesn’t create groups of people at once. No woman ever gave birth to a community. It’s all bullsh*t! All that matters are people!”