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Happiness · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: happy host, Abraham.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: And I am your elated host, Shane.
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  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that humans and non-human animals do, and this is our
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: happiest episode ever.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good timing.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. So if you're joining us for the first time,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: then welcome. I hope that you are as happy as
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: we are to be talking about happiness. If you're a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: returning person, then welcome back. We're glad that you came
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: back for more happiness. And either way, if you'd like
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: to support us, you can leave us a rating and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a review, like, subscribe, tell a friend, join us on Patreon,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: or do some other things. We'll talk more about those
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: at the end of this discussion. It is September 30th,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: so we have some holidays to talk about.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, we do. Today is my mama's birthday. So happy birthday, mom.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: If you want to give Peanut a happy birthday message,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: by all means, let her know because she will be
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  Speaker 2: 61 this year. Yeah. Very nice.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: All right. It is Banned Websites Awareness Day. I feel
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  Speaker 1: like that could go dark or not dark.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Because there are like websites that do horrible things that
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: should be banned. Yeah.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: It's a weird thing to celebrate. It is Blasphemy Day.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: So there's that.
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  Speaker 1: I'm bored. It is Chewing Gum Day. That's very blasphemous. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It's extra virgin olive oil day.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I love extra virgin olive oil.
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  Speaker 2: Evu.
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  Speaker 1: Particularly like good high quality stuff. Evu. I heard somebody
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in the airport talking about this just randomly. They were like,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce E-V-O-O. I
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  Speaker 1: was like, I mean, you can just say extra virgin
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: olive oil.
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  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: This isn't my fight.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not my fight. I shouldn't step in here.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Whatever. You guys, you have your whole lives in front
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  Speaker 1: of you to figure this out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: It is International Podcast Day. Hey, we're celebrating the way
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  Speaker 1: that God intended. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Look at us go. Look at us go. It is
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: International Translation Day.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Well, translate this. It is National Hot Mold Cider Day.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Translates into deliciousness.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is National Love People Day.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Sweet. I love people. Most of them.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It is National Microcephaly Awareness Day. I think we talked
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: about doing an episode on that at some point, but
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: c'est la vie.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tinycephaly, you know. It is National Mud
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  Speaker 2: Pack Day.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. Packing mud for a trip.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Sounds like something.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It is National Women's Health and Fitness Day. It is.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: It's also Orange Shirt Day. It's time for yoga. Yeah. Yes,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: it is. It's Thunderbirds Day.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: World School Milk Day. That's where they milk the school.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: For everybody in the world. Yeah, where are the school's udders,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: you know? It is National Chimney Safety Week.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Don't think we want to know where the school's udders are. No.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: It is National Dog Week. Love that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Love that.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yay.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Go dogs. And it is National Fall Foliage Day.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Week, I think.
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  Speaker 2: It's that time of year.
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  Speaker 1: Whole week.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a whole week.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, that's groovy. Love that. For this week, everybody,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: leaf peeping, they call it. But we're not here to
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  Speaker 1: talk about leaf peeping or any of those other holidays.
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  Speaker 1: We're here to spread the love, spread the joy, enjoy
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the joy. And so we're talking about happiness. And we
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  Speaker 1: have a whole intro to get into this before saying
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  Speaker 1: all of that. But is there anything I missed or
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  Speaker 1: that you'd like to jump into before we get to
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  Speaker 1: our introduction here?
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  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm always missing something. Well, that's all right.
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  Speaker 1: Let's get into it. A wide variety of human experiences
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  Speaker 1: take place within the confines of our skin. This is
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  Speaker 1: my intro, by the way, everybody. We've dove in now.
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  Speaker 1: We're here.
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  Speaker 2: We're in the episode proper.
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  Speaker 1: In the episode proper. So, yes, a lot of what
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  Speaker 1: it's like to be human is our own subjective private experience, right?
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  Speaker 1: Relevant for this particular discussion, happiness. That's one thing that
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  Speaker 1: we experience that is not out in the open for
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  Speaker 1: everyone to experience with us. So inside of our own
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  Speaker 1: bodies and our private experiences that only we get to have,
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  Speaker 1: we get to have these different emotions. One of them
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  Speaker 1: is happiness. However, we assume that as humans, we all
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  Speaker 1: have the capacity to have similar experiences to one another,
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  Speaker 1: even when those experiences are internal. So we assume that
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  Speaker 1: you're human, I'm human. So if I know what happiness
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  Speaker 1: is like, you might also know what happiness is like.
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  Speaker 1: And while I think that is a valid assumption to make,
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  Speaker 1: What I don't think we can say is what I
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  Speaker 1: experience as happiness. is the same thing as what you
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  Speaker 1: experience as happiness, and it's the same causes and the
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  Speaker 1: same end results. Like that part, I think we can't say.
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  Speaker 1: I think we can say that as we're both humans,
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  Speaker 1: we can both have an experience that we would both
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  Speaker 1: call happiness, but I don't think that they would be
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  Speaker 1: the same as each other, and they don't need to be.
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  Speaker 1: Just to understand that that is a situation we find
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  Speaker 1: ourselves in as our species, we make that assumption, that's
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  Speaker 1: a valid assumption, that we all experience happiness, but important
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  Speaker 1: to point out that it's unique to each individual species. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Further, there are many behaviors commonly correlated with the experiences
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  Speaker 2: we can only have internally, such that we can recognize
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  Speaker 2: the putative similar emotions in others and learn how to
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  Speaker 2: match our own feelings to those actions displayed by others.
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  Speaker 2: So we do a lot of observation and matching and
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  Speaker 2: labeling and all those things.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So if I say like, I know it looks
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  Speaker 1: like what I'm happy and then I see you behaving
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  Speaker 1: in a similar way, I can say like, well, that
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  Speaker 1: looks like you're happy too. And then we kind of
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  Speaker 1: learn to label it based on the fact that we're
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  Speaker 1: telling each other, hey, what you're feeling right now is happy.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm looking at you and you seem happy. I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: what I'm feeling looks like that. So I think that
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  Speaker 1: when I'm feeling this, that must be happy. Yeah. And
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  Speaker 1: that's how we learn to identify those things for each
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  Speaker 1: other and for ourselves. And is that there are these
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  Speaker 1: overt behaviors that we see that correlate with those emotions.
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  Speaker 1: And so it's totally reasonable then to say that looks
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  Speaker 1: like happy. And I feel like that's what I feel
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  Speaker 1: and what you feel looks like how I act when
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  Speaker 1: I'm feeling this way. Does that sort of make sense?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
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  Speaker 1: Now, we could spend a whole suite unpacking individual emotions
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  Speaker 1: where each one of them we dig into just that
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  Speaker 1: emotion and all the behavioral correlates and all the neurological
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  Speaker 1: things and whatever. But for this discussion, we're going to
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  Speaker 1: focus on happiness, specifically happiness, the going out with a
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  Speaker 1: bang here, what it is, some of the pitfalls and
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  Speaker 1: caveats that can come from the pursuit of happiness. So
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  Speaker 1: we're gonna get into like a definition as well as like,
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  Speaker 1: what are the, I think we're gonna have the assumption
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  Speaker 1: coming into this. A lot of people that like happiness
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  Speaker 1: is a good in and of itself. We should all
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  Speaker 1: seek happiness. Everyone should reach happiness. And we're not disagreeing
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  Speaker 1: with that. But I think there are some things to
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  Speaker 1: consider to be careful about because sometimes that pursuit can
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  Speaker 1: lead to unhappiness.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So let's go ahead and get
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  Speaker 2: into it. We love a good definition. And I think
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  Speaker 2: the first question we have to ask is, what is happiness?
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  Speaker 2: And I will say that off the cuff, like my
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  Speaker 2: first initial reaction is that it's a pleasant feeling, a
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  Speaker 2: feeling of joy, a feeling of satisfaction, all those things
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  Speaker 2: kind of coming together. But it is to me an emotion.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that My definition is tainted because I've
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  Speaker 2: spent so many years studying as a behavior analyst. So
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  Speaker 2: I can't help but go, well, what does it mean
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  Speaker 2: to be happy? So I can't help but think of
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  Speaker 2: it as like a state, like a temporary state, right? Sure.
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  Speaker 2: So I think of happiness as a temporary state of joy, satisfaction,
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  Speaker 2: of feeling good about a particular situation or circumstance or
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  Speaker 2: just life in general. But that's kind of where I
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  Speaker 2: land on it. As I kind of like think about it,
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, it's really difficult to give it some sort
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  Speaker 2: of form.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I like that. I think, first of all,
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  Speaker 1: it does have to be a temporary thing. I think
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  Speaker 1: you can only have happiness in part by its contrast
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  Speaker 1: with another experience.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: To a point. Because if you can't know what a
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  Speaker 1: lack of happiness is, then all you have is basically
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  Speaker 1: neutral until you've moved away from neutral in one direction
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  Speaker 1: or another.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And so you have experience. But I mean, that's very easy.
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  Speaker 1: There are just going to be experiences where some compare
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  Speaker 1: more favorably to to one than another, even when they
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  Speaker 1: sort of start at what feels like neutral. But for
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  Speaker 1: some people, their life is so miserable that like very
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  Speaker 1: simple things bring them pleasure. They're like, oh my God,
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  Speaker 1: I can flip a switch and turn on a light.
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  Speaker 1: That brings me so much joy because I've been in
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  Speaker 1: the situation for so long where I can't do that.
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  Speaker 1: Like we're out of power or we've never been around power,
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  Speaker 1: like whatever the situation might be. And so like those
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  Speaker 1: simple things, you notice that when you've lived in some
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  Speaker 1: amount of chaos, just having a simple pleasure of like
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  Speaker 1: something going your way can bring happiness. So for that point,
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  Speaker 1: I think it's temporary. And giving sort of that We're
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: going to give an actual definition here and lack thereof
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  Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, I think an off-the-cuff sort of
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  Speaker 1: response is like I think there are the feeling of
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  Speaker 1: happiness and then the behaviors of happiness that we could
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  Speaker 1: talk about. And I think the feeling of happiness is
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  Speaker 1: the one where it's like a feeling of satisfaction. particularly
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  Speaker 1: having overcome or gained something extra.
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  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: So it's the feeling we have in those moments. They're like,
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  Speaker 1: we got something extra that we like, that we need,
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  Speaker 1: some kind of thing that would probably be a reinforcer,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: or we got out of something that we didn't like,
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  Speaker 1: that we didn't want to be in the situation. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So we got some relief. I think the feeling we
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: get in those moments is happy. I think when we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about behaviors, behaviors that we get to see that
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: look like happy are that we move toward things that
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  Speaker 1: we choose. Our behavior goes in a direction that that
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  Speaker 1: direction often the feeling we get when we go that
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  Speaker 1: direction is happy. So I think when we allocate more
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of our time and energy toward things that that can happen.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I think when you see smiling, when you see laughing,
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  Speaker 1: when you see voluntary orientation toward things that often is
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  Speaker 1: associated with that feeling of happy. So we're getting into this.
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  Speaker 1: In giving a definition, I think we suspect many people
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: would likely give you synonyms for happiness. If you say,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: what is happiness? They might say joy, pleasure, joy. Gaiety, contentment, delight, bliss, gladness, ecstasy, euphoria.
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  Speaker 1: Keep going if you're really good at synonyms.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Like that was a pretty good list, I think, but
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you could keep maybe some people got more. That was
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: so many things. Now you got more words for your day.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Or they might describe happiness as feeling good. They might
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  Speaker 1: define it based on things that make them happy. They
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  Speaker 1: might say happiness is being a grandma. Or happiness is
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  Speaker 1: dark chocolate, you know, whatever it is. Those could be
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  Speaker 1: ways that they describe it. They would never say happiness
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  Speaker 1: as ads.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I was going to say happiness is the end of
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  Speaker 2: an ad.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, happiness is the end of an ad. All right,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: we're back. So you must be feeling happy because the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: ad is over.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Relief falls in there somewhere.
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  Speaker 1: We made it on the other side.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there are a few ways to define happiness.
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  Speaker 2: And as you can see, as we're kind of getting
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: into it, it gets a little bit nebulous. But some
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: professionals have suggested that happiness is a temporary good feeling. Now,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: there are lots of temporary good feelings. So that definition
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: by itself is pretty lacking. Another definition focuses instead on
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: identifying the conditions under which we call a feeling, quote unquote,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: happy or call an emotion happy or state happy. By
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: identifying the observable behaviors in context in which we would
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: use the label happy– We can have a better definition
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: of it. And finally, others suggest instead that the feeling
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  Speaker 2: of real satisfying happiness is living in accordance with our
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: values and being the kind of person we want to be.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Sure. So there's sort of this process based happy. There
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: is sort of this nebulous, we would say the word
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  Speaker 1: good as an adjective to describe this experience, therefore happy experience.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: There's like the behaviors we'd observe, as I said, the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: orienting toward and spending time with that we might call happy.
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  Speaker 1: Those are sort of the categories there. The Greek word
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  Speaker 1: for a life spent in the pursuit of feeling good
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  Speaker 1: is called hedemonia or hedemonia, from which we also get
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the word hedonism, as in pleasure seeking or pleasure driven.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: But the Greeks also have a separate word for a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: feeling of happiness associated instead with that feeling hedonism. Of
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  Speaker 1: a life well-lived, and that's eudaimonia, E-U-D-E-M-O-N-I-A, or eudaimonia, but
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  Speaker 1: I'm guessing eudaimonia. Yeah. That means more closely flourishing is
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: sort of an adjective that you would describe with that
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: as flourishing. So they have the heudaimonia or heudaimonia. for
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: this pleasure-seeking, and then eudaimonia for this flourishing, fulfilling life.
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  Speaker 2: Sure. Now, Nietzsche, love a good philosopher here, real sad philosopher.
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  Speaker 2: He talks about happiness as the feeling of increasing power
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: and overcoming resistance. As a byproduct of mastering things, achieving goals,
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  Speaker 2: and overcoming barriers, the byproduct is ultimately happiness. You get
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: this feeling, this sense of gaining skills, getting better, having
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: more power over your life, all those things. And so
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that's how Nietzsche describes it.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not endorsing any one of these, by the way,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: or the people behind them. We're just sharing some of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the ideas others have had about how they would describe
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and try to explain and understand these phenomenon. Nietzsche is
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: one of them. Another philosopher is Epicurus, who argued that
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: happiness was the pursuit of simple pleasures, removing anxiety and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: feeling comfortable. He indicated specifically, so you might hear that
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and think that living well is happiness. And in a sense,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that is what he means, but not living well in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the sense of luxury. He actually indicated that wealth and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: luxury complicated life and prevented reaching true happiness. So this
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: is more of the Socratic aestheticism that is like just
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: being alive is enough and you should want for little,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: sort of this Buddhist Zen idea, if you will, although
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that obviously Epicurus was not Buddhist. But that was the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: sort of arguments there is this idea of simple pleasures,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: not complex pleasures, and then living without anxiety is how
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: they argued for what happiness is and how to achieve it.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now, Plato viewed happiness as personal
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: growth and achieving inner harmony. He argued that happiness cannot
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: be reached through external rewards and pleasures, but from mastering
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: and controlling our desires and gaining wisdom instead.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so sort of insight and personal growth there.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Now, two philosophers many of you will likely not have
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: heard of, although those behaviorists among us might have heard
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: these names, are Israel Gold Diamond and TV Joe Lang.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: They describe emotions more broadly as behaviors that are contingency descriptors.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And what they mean by that is that the label
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: we give to emotions reflect the circumstances in which we
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: experience those emotions. Okay. So identifying feeling happy means that
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: it is a set of experiences that produces that feeling
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and behaviors we gauged in when we experienced that feeling.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So it's like smiling, laughing, reacting with patience and grace.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I think when you're happier, you tend to be more
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: patient and graceful in your reactions to things, even when
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  Speaker 1: they're unpleasant. Calling that experience happy describes the situation you're
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: in and the behaviors you're engaging in that situation. And
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that's what the word happy sort of means. And they're
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: sort of unpacking of it. It's like this is a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: happy context. And that's how we describe happiness.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And I think that's a very valuable, actually, orientation personally. Yeah.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And I think we're going to talk about that. more
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: a little bit too. We talk about like the behavior
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: analytic view on that, because that definitely aligns with how
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: we kind of isolate and expose what happiness, what it
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: really means and the features by which happiness shows up. Right.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: So we'll definitely talk about that. So people have been
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: thinking about happiness and how to achieve it and what
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: types of happiness there are for probably as long as
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: there have been people thinking about anything at all. So,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, the moment people could start talking, they're like,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: what is this pleasant feeling that I'm experiencing? Um, And then,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: you know, and then in happiness is one of those things.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I want to say even John Watson in
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: his like studies on emotions and emotional behavior said that
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: happiness wasn't happiness. One or joy was one of like
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the primary emotions that babies are born with. Like that's
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: something that they like initially start with.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Among fear. And I forget what the other one was,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: but he said that there were like three that babies
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: are born with.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, I think you're right. That I do think that
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: joy or happiness is considered one of our like core
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: happiness and fear are like one of our core unlearned
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: emotions that all the rest of our emotions and his
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: hypothetical orientation to this, his hypothesis was that all the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: other emotions develop out of those sort of core ones
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: in more nuanced and complicated ways. But that's sort of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: where we start.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: They say the same thing in Inside Out. Joy is
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the first thing that shows up, you know? Yeah.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So everyone agrees, and therefore— And that's science.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Cannot be wrong. That's science right there. We did an
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: episode— two episodes, actually, on the Inside Out movies. For those
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of you who did not hear them, we did sort
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of a breakdown of those movies. We love them, by
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the way. Yeah. But we also did a critique on
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: what was less accurate about those portrayals. But go check
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: those out.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the point of this is that there's a lot
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of people who have been talking about emotions. in general,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: happiness specifically for a long time. But there's this kind
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of general consensus among the enlightened thinkers and definitely modern
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: psychologists that heightened is best thought of not in terms
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of the heightened, elated feelings that happen temporarily when we
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: experience something good or fleeting, these fleeting external pleasures or luxuries,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: but instead, it's more of a process of inner peace.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't happen all at once. It develops from
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: feeling of satisfaction when we have sort of a good
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, good life, which is more about finding that
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: inner peace and tranquility, feeling safe, relaxed, you know, those things.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's sort of, if you were to take
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: all of the ways that this is more or less
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: described in the modern psychological circles, that's sort of the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: way that we orient to it is this idea of
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: it is temporary and it's more about that inner peace
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and tranquility, not about the external rewards that happen. But
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to be fair, those have also happened and resulted happiness.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's funny to think about it
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: because like, I think that when people talk about it,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: they do have like a general idea of like what
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: happiness looks like or feels like, but usually it sounds
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: like people have a hard time discovering the path to Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: On that note, I want to spend a little bit
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: of time talking about the behavioral parts of this. And
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: as behaviorists, we have to unpack this a little bit.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: So we as behaviorists are no stranger to the term happiness.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: I think that this comes up often when we start
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: talking about mentalisms and we start talking about things like
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: when we get to circular reasoning. And you'll see what
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: this looks like in a second. But if we are
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: orienting as a general rule to the philosophy and the
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: idea that we are radical behaviorists and radical behaviorism accounts
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: for emotion as part of its scope, then studying and
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: understanding and exploring happiness as a concept is well within
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: the scope of behavior analysis to some degree, right? Like,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: and I think that you brought up a perfect example
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: when you brought up Israel Goldiamond and TV Joe Lang,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: like these are behaviorists that are talking about happiness as
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: in this contextual constructivist way. And so like, there is
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: something really fascinating about that, but happiness is well within
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the scope of the study and the philosophy of radical behaviorism.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: If you really kind of like drill down on it. Yeah.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: We're thinking about understanding and analyzing behavior. If happiness is
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: an emotion and emotions are behaviors, then we can evaluate
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: based on in part, the observable behaviors, as we mentioned, crying, laughing, smiling,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: But there's also going to be private thoughts. Those are
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: still relevant. Those are behaviors. They just are behaviors only
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: one person can observe. And then those environmental contexts, just
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: as we described, the circumstance is part of it. And
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: we create a label about the emotional state of a person.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And again, this is just a way to describe their behavior.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Does it explain the behavior? No, not at all. But
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it describes it. It doesn't explain it, right? And it
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: could be useful in allowing us to break the pattern
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: that can come from circular reasoning if you try to
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: explain behavior as like happiness. If we carefully analyze those features,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the circumstances, the behaviors themselves, then we don't fall into
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the circular reasoning trap that's easy to fall into when
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: we can't observe part of the event itself. We can
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: observe parts of the event, but not the whole thing.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And so it becomes, again, it's a useful description. It
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: just doesn't explain behavior because it is behavior. Like if
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: happiness is a behavior, then it's not also an explanation
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: for behavior.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Right. So, like, for example, let's say we notice that
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: someone is happy based on some features or definitions that
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we've talked about, right? How do we know they're happy?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: We know they're happy because we have related some stimuli
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: or behavior to the event, and we say they're smiling. Generally,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: it's very easy for us to say if somebody's smiling,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: they're probably happy. And then we go, well, why are
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: they smiling? Because they're happy. And that's the circular reasoning
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: component that we get into. We know they're happy because
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: they're smiling, but they're smiling because they're happy, and that's
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: a snake eating its own tail. It doesn't make any sense.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: That's where circular reasoning gets to a point where we
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: want to break that. We want to avoid that. Instead,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: what we would say as behaviorists, we would say, why
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: are they smiling? We could describe something observable, like their
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: preferred person just walked in the room and greeted them.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: So they're happy to see somebody. Like when you and
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I got to hang out at Utaba, the minute that
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: we saw each other, we got to hug and it
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: was great because we haven't hugged each other in years.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: And that was like a moment where somebody could describe
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: that as a moment of happiness. And like we engage
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: in happy behaviors, right? So like that was one of
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: those things where- There's an observable event that we have
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: related to the emotion that we're describing.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Or they're happy because the ads have finished.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Yeah, we actually have a picture
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: of us and a big warm hug when we got
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to see each other.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so great.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: We should post that and share it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: We will.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: We will. But yeah, that's the whole thing there is like,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: rather than explain the behavior with the behavior itself, they're like, oh,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they're happy because they're happy. They're smiling because they're happy.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: They're happy because they're smiling. You can say like, what
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: are the situation here and give it that example. And
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: behavior analysis is no stranger to measuring happiness. Researchers have
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: used something called indices of happiness to assess and evaluate
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: happiness through a behavioral lens. Indices sort of meaning... observable things, right?
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Like measures of happiness. So Green and Reed in 96
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: began by looking at folks with profound disabilities. And eventually
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Reed went on to include those measures in their supervisor's guidebook.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Parsons and friends in 2012 took this further and looked
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: at indices of happiness and unhappiness as well. So giving
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: examples of like, what are the behavioral correlates is another
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: word we like to use sometimes. What do we see
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: where these things tend to group together? Does that give
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: us more information? Or here's some more information we can
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: use in making that determination and the conditions under which
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: we use the label, the word, happy.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So today, behavior analysis is largely except the
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: term happy, specifically under the phrase HRE or happy, relaxed
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: and engaged in relation to establishing teaching context. So it's
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: not just that we're describing something now or like using
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: that as like a possible way to indicate that somebody
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: is ready for instruction. But what we've found is like
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: in the phrase shows up this happy, relaxed, engaged or
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: HRE context. shows up in the PFA SBT technology behavior analysis,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: and essentially just says this person is smiling, they're laughing,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: their needs are met in a particular context is another
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: way to kind of think about it. They don't have
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: elevated physiology, and they are engaging in behaviors that seem
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: like they're ready for instruction. So, like, that's what happy, relaxed,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: and engaged essentially says. Like, And so we've accepted it as,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I say we, I say as a general rule, there
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: are a lot of folks who are in the SBT
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: process who have widely accepted this term happy as part
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: of the prerequisites for good instruction. And I think that
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: that's kind of like a nice thing to see that
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: we're kind of evolving in that space.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think there are going to be people
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: who hear this and they want to know, well, what
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: about the neurology of happiness? And I think we're not
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: going to get into this super hardcore because I think
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: people are going to want to think about the neurotransmitters involved, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, those things are involved, but as
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: we have described... I think as recently in our episodes
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: where we had Dr. Stu Law on as a guest,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you provide dopamine in one context that does
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: result in these behaviors, or it was oxytocin, but in
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a different context, you see these other behaviors that are
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: actually really aggressive. And it's like the neurotransmitters, we do
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: not yet have a very comprehensive understanding of how all
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: these neurotransmitters work and how they interact with one another.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And these are things that our brains produce, right? And
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I want to be mindful to appreciate that as scientists,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we accept that the material mechanistic version of our biology does...
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: That is a critically necessary part of our behavior. I
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: think we often don't necessarily bring in a discussion of
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the brain, but the problem is that we don't have
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a very complete understanding yet of the role that those
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: neurotransmitters play because... We see that they're released during this
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: certain context, but they also do other things. Like their
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: impact is not so straightforward that we can associate them
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: with this one particular emotional state reliably. As we described,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: like you can inject them with these neurotransmitters and their
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: effects are actually different based on the context that they're in.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: That like we've even done things where it's like you
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: shock a part of the brain that's associated with the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: rewards and like that does have that type of an
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: effect in that context sometimes, but you can change it again.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: You can have it go the wrong direction. And like
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: it just does not reliably produce it enough that it
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: is a part of the understanding, but it's not the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: complete picture. So there are parts of the brain that
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: are involved in this. There are neurotransmitters that are involved
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: in this. And the understanding that neurology has those is
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: an evolving one. And I do think we're going to
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: get to a point at which we have a much
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: clearer picture of how the neurology and the neurotransmitters work
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: together as part of the experience. But it's only going
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to be part of the picture. And it's just not
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the part of the picture that we're focusing on in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: our general discussion. Because No matter how granular you get
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: with the biological part, it still happens in concert with
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the environmental part, right? And so you want– you need
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: both pieces of that. So we're never going to explain
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: it 100% based on the biology, and we're never going
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to explain it 100% based on the environment. Because an
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: environmental picture for one is not the same environmental picture
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: for another. So like I can't just say like cake
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: is the thing that it will result in everyone being happy.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Like the people who are gluten-free or the people who
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: are just don't like things that are sweet or they
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: don't like those particular flavors of cakes. Or maybe they
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: have a bad history with cake. Like those are all
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: going to be things that like it just does not
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: necessarily produce happiness. And like when those things happen in
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the brain, that doesn't tell you anything about the context.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Like you can't just force that feeling to happen completely
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: sans any experience with a context that would produce that
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: feeling either. So we need them both. And that whole
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: tirade is just to get behind the– Or I guess
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: get out in front of the fact that people are
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: going to hear this and say, yeah, but what about
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the brain? And yeah, there are
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: lots of things going on in the brain, and hopefully
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: one day we'll have a better complete picture of it.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: But for our discussion today, you've gotten as much of
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that as you're going to get, which is to say
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: there are neurotransmitters involved. There are neurological things that are
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: like structures that are involved. We don't have a great
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: understanding of that as a species at the time that
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: we're recording this. And that's also not our particular realm
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of expertise as behavior analysts.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Our understanding right now, the neurology of it
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: is like, I would imagine... looking through a keyhole into
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: the library of Alexandria.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: That's a great analogy. I like that. Yeah. You can
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: see that there's stuff going on in there. You have
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a good idea that there's like a lot of things
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and that they're very like that we don't have access
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: to them now. Right. But we can see through the keyhole.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: It's better than a wall. Like we can see that
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: there's the stuff in there.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: We're getting there.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the point of that was just to say, like,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I think there are going to be people who are
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: curious about the neurology part of it. And I wanted
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: to address that in the way that we were going
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to address that.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's beautiful. So I guess my question
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to you would be, what happens when happiness goes wrong?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Happiness go bad. What happened when happiness go bad?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think people hearing this, maybe they saw
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the title or they heard the discussion and they're thinking,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: all right, they're going to tell us how we can
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: be happy or why we're happy. I feel like that's
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: kind of how we started this discussion a little bit
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: without necessarily prescribing any particular method because it's going to
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: be different for everyone. But there is a darker side
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: of this, as we are wont to do, I think,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: in this podcast and describe... that this can have a
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: darker effect. So let's get into it. So of course,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: what constitutes happy is different for everyone. As we've described
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: many times now, like board games make me happy. They
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: make other people full of rage. So everybody's got their
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: own unique things. There is no template or formula that
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: can be applied universally to produce a happy feeling, even
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: with the neurological correlates, as we described in the neurotransmitters.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Particularly with respect to that deep soul satisfying happiness we've
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: been trying to allude to. Like there just, there isn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: this one recipe. It's going to be different. It's going
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: to be unique for everybody. Right.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Money will make some people happy, but not everybody, and
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: not indefinitely for anyone. Food will make a lot of
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: people happy, but not for people who struggle with eating
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: disorders or body dysmorphia. Sex makes lots of people happy,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: but not when it is with a partner they don't
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: prefer or if they're asexual. So there's things that work
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: for people, and there's things that don't work for people,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and there's also things that only work for people temporarily.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And that list could have also gone very dark,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: so I tried to leave it. Yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I think that works just fine.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Okay. So where happiness can go particularly wrong is in
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness when that becomes pathological, right? When
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: we get stuck in our minds, which is to say
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: our language, with rules about what will and what won't
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: make us happy, what we can and what we can't
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: do that become rigid and we're sort of then... more
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: tied to our language about what happiness is, whether or
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: not what we feel is real happiness. I'm going to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: do a quick side tangent. There was a podcast I
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: listened to once, it's no longer airing, but there was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: someone who came on and it was a pretty good
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: skeptical podcast. But this guy came on and he said,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I want to do an experiment to see if my
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: cat knows its name. And talked about like, how can
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I do this? And I remember thinking when they were
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: describing that you have to define what you mean by
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: know its name, first of all.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: And also it's like, I don't think you can answer
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: this question. Like you're not asking a question in a
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: way that can actually be answered. And I feel like
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes that happens when we I guess the reason I
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: wanted the side tangent is because I'm thinking about this
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: idea of we think that there is a thing that is,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and then we spend a lot of time pursuing that
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: thing when the thing that is, is just our language
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: about it. So there's gonna be people who are like, well,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: but happiness is this, and that's not the thing that
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I've achieved. So I can't actually be happy. And I'm like,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: but for you, that might not be what happiness is.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: And so what I'm trying to get after here is
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: this idea that I think some people get wrapped up
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: in this idea of like that something in their language
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: is a real thing and not just their language. And
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to understand that everything that we
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: say and do about this, again, it's also just language.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: None of it's real in the sense that these are
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: not– the words themselves are not substitutes for the things
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: that exist in the real world. but we can use
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: them functionally to communicate about them. But I think sometimes
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: people treat then their language of like what happiness is,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: is they're like, but is it real happiness? I'm like,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: that's not a thing. You're just using more words, assuming
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that those words represent something that really exists.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To be fair, I think there are accounts of
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: real happiness. Like when, when an ad ends, like we
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: can go like, that's real, true, pure happiness. That is like,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: that's what they fill the canisters with in Monsters, Inc.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. We've been pontificating about the role of
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: language in our happiness, but where this can go wrong
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: is that we get stuck in our minds about what
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: it is and what it should be, what it cannot be,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so research has shown that the more we chase
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: that pleasurable feeling and avoid uncomfortable feelings, the more likely
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: we are to experience anxiety and depression. We get trapped
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: in our own should, quote unquote, should logic about what
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: we should be doing, how we should be feeling or reacting,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: how our lives should be going. I hear the phrase
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: a lot when it comes to happiness. I hear the phrase,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: comparison is a thief of joy. And it's kind of
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the same thing. We're saying, okay, I see these people
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: doing these things. I should be doing those things. And
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: then you pursue those things only to find out that
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: those things never brought you joy in the first place.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And then you've spent all this time and wasted time
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: and effort and money pursuing something that was never going
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: to make you happy to begin with. So like there's
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff like what we have found is
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: like we almost, like you said, create rules around what
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: should make us happy ultimately to find that none of
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: it actually does make us happy.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: The rule does not actually accurately describe it. And then
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: it leaves us feeling like we can't appreciate the things
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: that actually do make us happy because they don't match
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the rule.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And so I want to give a quick shout out,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: I guess, and maybe caveat or notes, I don't know,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: something to know for all of you listening. A lot
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of this part of our discussion right now, as we're
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: getting into the downsides of happiness, The Language About Happiness.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: This is taken from a book called The Happiness Trap,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by author Russ Harris.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: As the name aptly suggests for that title, it's about
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the ways we can find ourselves feeling stuck and unhappy,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: even when we're working hard to get the things that should,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, should make us feel happy. So if you're
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: interested in checking that out, I think this book does
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: a great job in laying the foundation, but we're going
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to sort of summarize and select some of the points
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that I think help convey that message well from that book.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I think there's a second edition out of it now,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: but yeah, go check that one out. I think it's
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like a 20-year-old book, but there is that recent second
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: edition that just came out more recently that's all updated
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and has new stuff in it. So you can go
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: check that out. But I do want to just get
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: people oriented to that if they're curious about this part
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of this discussion.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. I strongly recommend it. Now, Harris helpfully
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: points out that we often have some preconceived or ill-conceived
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: notions about happiness that we would do well to acknowledge
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: and move past. So, first, that feeling happy is the
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: normal or default state of being. That's just not true.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: And that's not true for everybody. Like we assume that
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: happiness is kind of like where we should always be.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: And if we think that that's where we should always be,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: then it's going to create some problems for us when
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: we are not in that kind of like, quote unquote,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: default space.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: More of that should logic.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: That should logic, right? So in part, the feeling of
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: the external pleasures is ephemeral. which is a great word,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: which we need to do a vocab on that. Also,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: even that feeling of eudaimonia we described is something that
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: is earned by working at it diligently, not something that
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: just happens. So, hey, Abraham, what does ephemeral mean?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, I was going to ask you.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. It's like ghosts, right? Yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Well, it means temporary. Ephemeral means fleeting. It does not last.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Temporary is a good synonym for ephemeral. It is not
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: long lasting. I like to describe sounds as ephemeral because
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you play a sound and you hear it when it
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: happens and then it decays and then it's gone, whereas
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: a text will stay there. So Spoken language is ephemeral,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: but written language is not because it can last longer
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: unless you're constantly setting that writing on fire or something.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it is a fleeting state of something. That's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a way to describe ephemeral. And that's what happiness is.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: It is a fleeting state. It happens in small bursts,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: temporarily spread out intermittently with other emotions, feelings, and often
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: sort of a neutral sort of state.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: So that's one notion here, this misguided, ill-conceived notion that
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the default state of being is happy. That's one misconception
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: that I think could have people in the trap that
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: they should be happy more often than they actually find
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: themselves to be. But most of us are not there
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: at best. Most of us are neutral most of the time.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: But another notion we might have, particularly if we believe
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: that first one, that we're supposed to be happy all
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the time, Another misconception that we might have is that
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: if you're not happy, that there's then something wrong with you.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: And that goes back to that should logic. I should
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: be feeling this. And again, the problem here is we
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: don't default to happy. So not being happy is not
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: abnormal or defective. It could potentially be totally normal and
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it's just baseline. But I think people can be trapped
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: in this idea that I don't feel happy. Therefore, there's
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: something wrong with me. And therefore, they get into their
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: head about what might be wrong with them. And it
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: just goes down the spiral, if you will. So that's
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: part of an issue that can arise with this language
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: about happiness and that should logic.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure. Now, of course, not being happy can happen
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: when there's a pathological situation such as depression. A term
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: contrasted with hedonism is a clinical term for the inability
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: to feel happiness, particularly from experiences that would have otherwise
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: predicted a happy feeling. Anhedonia. Anhedonia? Anhedonia? Anhedonia.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Anhedonia, yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Anhedonia, yeah. Now, but not being happy does not by
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: itself mean that you have a pathological condition or situation. Like,
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: that's just not, that would be unfair. Because again, if
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: we're assuming that happiness is temporary, then we can assume
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: that other emotions are also temporary and not necessarily pathological.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I just wanted to acknowledge that, like, People
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: might hear this and say, yeah, but there are feelings
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that are not happy that are problematic. And you're absolutely right.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: There are. Depression is one. This idea of anhedonia where
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: it's like you don't feel any joy even from things
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: that would have otherwise brought you joy. These can be pathological,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: but just saying you don't necessarily feel happiness right now
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: does not mean there is something pathologically wrong with you.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: But there are things that could be pathologically wrong that
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: also mean you're not happy, if that sort of makes sense.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: So I think people want a very hard and fast
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: rule about this, and there just isn't one. It can
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: be easy to fall into that trap in that way.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: So the trap we can fall into is that we
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: can tightly hold onto these beliefs about what happiness is
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: or what it should be, what it means, that instead
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: of choosing to live in line with our values, instead
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of choosing to just have that life of fulfillment, we
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: spend our time worried about how we don't feel happy enough,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: or we're not doing it right, or that there's something
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: wrong with us because we're not feeling happy all the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: time or something. And so we just, we have these
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: beliefs about what happiness is. And instead of just feeling
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: happy when we would feel happy, we're chasing those beliefs
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and worried that we're not feeling happy enough or doing
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: this thing enough.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Right. So suffering, unfortunately, is normal. If you live long enough,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: you will experience suffering. You will lose things and people
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: that are important. And these experiences come for all of us,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: not equally either. Some of us will experience a lot
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: more suffering than others, but suffering finds us all no
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: matter how much or how little money or how many
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: privileges we have or anything like that. We will feel
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: suffering and we will feel joy, at least moments of joy,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: just like we'll feel moments of suffering. Yeah.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Very important that there. Now, why do we feel this way?
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: We don't know for sure.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, this idea like suffering, that seems to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: be an easier thing to achieve. We remember those adverse
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: conditions very well. It's very easy to contact and find suffering.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: And why those things stand out to us is it's
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: hard to tell, but it does make evolutionary sense to
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: consider the kind of environment from which we have developed.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: So before we developed social groups... That became things like
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: tribes and eventually colonies and cities and whatnot. Before we
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: developed that, we needed to evade predators and other threats.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: So it behooved us to be very sensitive to suffering. Right.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Or that you, for survival, you need to avoid the
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: things that will kill you. And so it makes some
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: evolutionary sense for us to have a high capacity of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: suffering because suffering causes us to avoid those things. Does
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: that make sense?
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So as we became a tribal species,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: we needed to be cautious of those dangers as well
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: as the threats posed by other tribes. So remembering and
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: holding on to the things that could kill us was
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: more important to our survival than any feelings of happiness
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: or related emotions. So we're, like you said, we're particularly
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: attuned to suffering and danger because it became a survival
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: necessity versus happiness, which didn't appear to be as important
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: during those times when we were more likely to suffer.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: So as a quick aside, I think that this is
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: a moment where I reflect on this and I have
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the thought and feeling that like, I think there are
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: those people that are around us in the world who
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: think that fear is the best emotion we can have
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: because fear is safe. And you can see where they're
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: coming from. Like, as we said, like if you spend
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of your time in fear, you have a
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: heightened fear. proclivity for avoiding things that are dangerous. And
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: so they overgeneralize that fear to things that they don't
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: necessarily need to be afraid of because it's that sort
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: of better safe than sorry ethos.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: And this, I think, is where we get some of
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: how conservativism tends to thrive. It is a fear of
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: others primarily. Like we need to be afraid of people.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: We need to be afraid of difference. We need to
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: be afraid, afraid, afraid is the way that they live.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: And this idea of fear, they actually find a lot
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: of value in, and they tend to think that piece
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: is more important to them then the gain that might
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: be had by instead seeking out cooperation, love, forgiveness, and
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: kindness with one another, because there is danger in putting
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: trust in other people Which is true. There is danger
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: in putting trust in other people, but there's also a
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: high amount of reward. But emotionally for those people, the
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: risk is not worth the benefit. They would rather live
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: in fear and avoid danger than live in happiness or
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: like have trust and have the potential for happiness. Now,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: that's not to say that they won't find happiness anywhere.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Happiness is in contrast to things. So even living in fear,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you're going to have plenty of opportunities to to find
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: things that will engender a sense of happiness. It'll just
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: be a lot of times in the context of potentially
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: accomplishing successfully avoiding danger that might bring happiness to people
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: for whom they weight that very heavily. But this is
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: just such a side tangent, but it's something I think
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: about sometimes. I'm trying to understand where people are coming
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: from on these things. And to me, it strikes me
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: that a lot of their arguments are centered around fear.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: It's this like, it's better to be afraid to avoid
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: danger than it is to give trust to other people
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and potentially have joy and compassion.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: And to me, I just don't follow. I just don't
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: agree with that. No. I think that it is more
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: worth it to have the risk of danger for us
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to find compassion and love for one another than it
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: is to live in fear and always view the world
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: through the lens of danger or through the lens of ads.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. No.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. And I think I went on a
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: very long side tangent that was unplanned in describing where I,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: because we've been describing essentially that we think that there
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: is evolutionary reason for us to be heightened, to have
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: a heightened sensitivity to danger. And that's possible why we
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: are more attuned to those experiences. We're more ready to
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: accept and remember things. frightening and terrible experiences than we
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: are the happy ones, but we still find moments of
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: happiness by contrast with those experiences.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Most definitely. So going back to kind of like this
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: evolutionary piece, right, in our own evolutionary history, We carried
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: those predilections, those survival instincts, those fear-based things that we
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: talked about, we carried them as part of our evolutionary history.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: And even though we don't face the same threats, we
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: retain the tendency to easily remember the things that go
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: wrong rather than the things that go well. And because
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: we remember the things that go wrong, that tends to
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: be our focus. That tends to be— it also leads to
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: so much languaging around trying to avoid those situations. which
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: is the should language and partly where our should language
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: comes from. We should avoid these things. We should escape
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: away from these things. We should not contact suffering because
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: it is dangerous or whatever we are kind of talking about.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: And as a result, it's very easy for us to
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: get into should language.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the same thing. So going back to this book we've
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: been talking about, Russ Harris, he suggests that essentially we
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: have a choice to make when faced with a challenging
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: situation that threatens our potential for happiness. Because again, we
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: can be in these situations and... sort of fall into
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: a spiral. But the choice he says that we can
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: make or in these is that we can leave the situation.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: It is a problematic situation. We can leave it. And
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: this can be appropriate in some situations.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: But it can also be a pretty radical choice with
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: really serious implications. So if something is challenging, you can
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: leave that situation. And sometimes that's the right thing to do.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I think personally, I would generally say that if you
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: had an abusive partner, it's appropriate to leave that situation.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: It's not worth it. trying to work through that one.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: But sometimes it's like the barista got my order wrong.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, this isn't to throw it on the floor,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: walk out the door type situation. It's like, Let's just
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: get it resolved. Like it's not that big.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: This is not one where we need to die on
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: that hill sort of thing.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so that's option number one is we can leave
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the situation. Number two is we can stay in that
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: situation and live with your values, do whatever you can
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: to improve the situation, make room for the pain and
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: be kind to yourself. That's sort of the other option
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: there is like rather than just leave, we can try
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: and make space for it and understand that like things
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: happen that are challenging and And we can still be
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the people we want to be in those situations and
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: feel okay about how that situation went afterward instead of
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: feeling regret. So those are options. One, we can leave.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: And again, leaving might be the right answer. Two, we
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: can stay and we can work through it. Or three,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: we can stay, but we can engage in behaviors that
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: make no difference to them proving the situation or even
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: make the situation a little bit worse.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: We don't generally recommend option three.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: That's not, that's not usually our go-to two is probably
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: a pretty decent choice is like, you know, in, in
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: many cases, not in cases where it's dangerous or it's
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: going to cause you additional traumas and harms, but like
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: for the majority of situations, like I think that that
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: is a fairly reasonable thing to think about.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So the thing to leave on here is
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: what to do in this, in this space of when
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: things could go wrong. Choices we can make. And again,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: the important one was we're saying like, you don't necessarily,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: it is not the recommendation that you stay and suffer
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: through something that is making you unhappy.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Again, like if it's dangerous, if it's threatening your wellbeing,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: like those are not times when you need to just
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: stick it out. But there are times that it's like,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: This relationship is worth saving. It is worth figuring out
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: how to rebuild or move on from here or this
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: environment that I'm in. Like there's something that is not
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: working here, but like, I really want this job or
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I really like this job or I really need this job.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: And so like, how can I make the most of
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the situation?
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Or like, let's take, for example, like body image things
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: of like, you might be thinking like, I don't like
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the way I look. Is this a like leave the
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: situation type thing? Or is this a, how can I
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: make choices that will help me feel like I'm living
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: in with my values and also be kind to myself?
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Or there's the like, make it worse sort of thing.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Like how, like instead I'm engaging all these problematic behaviors
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: that actually make me less happy and feel more and
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: more suffering. Cause I mean, you could, there are things
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I think people do that are like in service of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: them trying to just sticking with the body image thing.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: They're like, I'm going to go on this extreme diet
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: or this extreme exercise regimen, or like, I'm going to,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do these things to myself and I
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: won't be happy until I look a certain way or whatnot.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: And I think instead look, working through the, like, It's
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: fine to want to be in shape. Like, it is
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: not pathological to want to feel healthy and want to
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: look healthy and want to be in better shape physically.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: But that should not come at the cost of you
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: being unable to accept who you are and what you
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: look like. And so you can be in the pursuit
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: of exercise and eating well and also be okay with
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: how you look and have that not necessarily be the
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: thing that you get stuck on. If that's like, I
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: won't be happy until this is one that should logic rules,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: that it's easy to get stuck on. I feel like
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that clearly enough that I'm like, yeah, okay.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. I think people
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: sacrifice happiness in the pursuit of something that is unachievable sometimes,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: and they don't give themselves enough compassion to experience happiness
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: and joy in current states or to recognize moments of
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: happiness and joy, you know, cause they, they end up
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: like they end up sacrificing it for those other things.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: I think you, you nailed it there.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, great. Yeah. What makes you happy?
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Shane? Not ads, reading music, spending time with my friends,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: spending time with my family, all those fun things. You know,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: I feel like in the last couple of years, I
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: think I've taken time to like really try to like
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: lean into that more of like, I'm just going to
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: do this and I'm going to like, enjoy this. And
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: I don't need, I don't have as much of the should,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: you know, language that I used to have when I
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: was younger. So like, I've had to learn how to
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: undo that a little bit. And yeah, food makes me happy.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Disney makes me happy. Good movies make me happy. Yeah.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: All those things, right? Like just doing like all those
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: things make me happy, you know?
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. I found for myself, I mean, a
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: lot of that I feel similarly about. I love music
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: and I love learning. I think when I'm learning, I'm happy.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: If I'm happy, I'm probably learning. Learning new information specifically,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: there's lots of forms of learning. But when I get
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to gain new information, new skills, when I acquire or
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: sharpen skills, I feel happy. I found that just being
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: out in nature gives me such a sense of calm
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and just general happiness. it's often not like that feeling
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of elation, but it's this feeling of like, ah, serenity. Yeah.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Serenity is a good way to put it. And that
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of happiness to be found in that
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: space for me. Like that could be on a beach
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: that could be on a mountain that could be in
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: a desert, just being out like in nature and, I
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: just tend to feel more of that. But I will
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: say my favorite is in a forest. If I'm surrounded
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: by trees on a mountain, that's my favorite place to be.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: Like sitting at a lake on a mountain surrounded by
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: trees is definitely like the happiest, I think– as long
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: as there's not a ton of flies, there can be
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of flies in this situation.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: But see, I think my nature space is like sitting
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: at a beach, like on, like when the water is
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: calm and it's breezy and it's not too hot, but
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: it's like, it's nice. Like, yeah, that's, that's usually, that's
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: usually where I'm at.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course, board games make me happy.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: Board games. Of course.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: All right, people write in and tell us what makes
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: you happy. Uh, we'd love to hear it, but, um,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's all we have to say about happiness.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to add or that we
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: forgot before we get to our recommendations and credits and
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: all of that?
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: Nope, not today.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: All right. If you have not listened to us before,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you may not know this, but we do a thing
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: where we give recommendations at the end of our discussion,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: and they're just some fun things that we like to recommend.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: So we're going to do that very soon here. But first,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I got to get through some credits. First, I'd like
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: to say in those credits, thank you all for listening.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: We wouldn't be here without you. We might be, but
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: we appreciate you being here. It makes it worth it
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: for us to do this show that we have people
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: who want to listen to the show. I mean, that's
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: why we've been doing it for so long. So thank
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: you all. We appreciate you. If you did not yet
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: hear the mini that would have preceded this, we are
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in our twilight stages here as a podcast. Just to
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: let you all know, we're winding this down, a little
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: project of ours, but we've been happy to have you
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: all here. And to have been doing this for you.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: So a giant shout out and thank you to my
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: team without whom I could not make this happen. Writing
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: recording with me today, Shane.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And our person,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: our guy who has like, just apply all the happy
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: adjectives you can to this person because he's the best.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: He does all of our audio stuff and that's Justin.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Justin.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's just truly the best.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: All right. If you'd like to support us, you can
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: do this by leaving us a rating and a review. Like, subscribe,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: tell a friend. Actually, I don't know. Yeah, do all
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: those things. That's great. We're still going to be around
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: for a little while longer, so we appreciate you being
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: here with us while we're still here. Yeah. Go get
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: the word out, and we'll get some good listens in
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: for our last sort of hurrah here, and then we'll
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: say our goodbyes. But you can also join us on
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Patreon if you'd like to do that for like a
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: month or two, something that we're getting up to. You
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: get some bonus content, ad-free episodes, early episodes. And until
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: we are done, I will read your name in the
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: list of people who have taken the leap to support
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: us on Patreon. So a giant shout out and thank
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you to Mike M., Megan, Mike T., Justin, Kim, Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Kiara,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and Charlie for the help that you have been just
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: so helpful. We appreciate you very much.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Ah, you're just the best. Truly.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Indeed. Thank you all. All right. Yeah. Thank you for
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: doing the thing, for being with us for all this time.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Really wonderful. We appreciate you.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Yes. We love you so much.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: You can tell us your thoughts on happiness. You can
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: email us directly at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com. We
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: might even read it at the end of a full
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: length discussion. We can join us on the social media platforms.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: We do appreciate our engagement there. Anything that I missed
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: or that you'd like to add before we do our recommendations?
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: No, not today.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to recommend a book. I'm going to recommend
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: a book that you recommended to me. So this is
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: like Recommendation Inception. Recommend Inception?
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: And that is a novella called A Short Stay in
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Hell by Stephen L. Peck. And I'm going to do
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: exactly what you did, which is I'm not going to
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: spoil it for anybody, but I do think it is
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: a particularly interesting meditation on hell. And one that I
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: think has a lot of gravitas and a lot of
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: existential kind of like feelings around it. I think I
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: got to leave it at that because I think if
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: I say anything else, it'll spoil it for you. But
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: this is one of my favorite books that I've ever read.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: It was so much fun. It was so interesting. And
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: I think just like I said, a particularly interesting meditation
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: on what it means to be in hell. And so
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: I think you should all read it. I think you
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: should take the time to read it. It's good.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Reading this one, I got to say, when I
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: have that feeling of wow, I wonder what the implication
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: of this would be, or wow, I wonder what's going
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: to happen here. And like, it really challenges my thinking
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: on something. And I think about it in a different way.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: This book did that in spades.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Yes. And like my position on things changed as the
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: story evolved. And I'm just like, that's what I know.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: And I feel like I'm reading a book that I'm like,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: I like this. This is good.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: And like, I'm never bored. I never want to put
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: it down. Like this book delivers on that so very well.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was great. Great. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: I think I'll offer the caveat for you that I
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: offered last time when I recommended this, that like, For
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: people who need there to be a sort of satisfying
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: storybook ending to this, you probably won't like this very much.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: So this may not be for those who cannot enjoy
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: a story that does not have a like wrapping up
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: conclusion where everyone lived happily ever after. And not to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: say that it's that dour. I think it's not one
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that you're going to like everything's miserable and everything sucks
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: and you're just walk away hating life. It could have
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: been a lot worse, but it's not happy. Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: It could have been, I have no mouth and I
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: must scream worse, but it wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: quite that bad.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think for the people who cannot be
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: satisfied by that, you won't enjoy this. That would be my,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: just the one caveat to offer is that I think
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: there are those people who like, they just need a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: very traditional story arc and structure with everyone lives happily
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: ever after ending. And if that's you, probably not going
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: to like this book. Yep.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm recommending a TV show. It is called Fix
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: My Franken-House. There are two seasons available. the idea behind
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: the show, this is one of those HGTV shows, but
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the idea behind it is that these people who have
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: houses that often had a bunch of renovations done to
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: them over the years. And so then they have these
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: very weird, like things don't make a lot of sense.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: There's like, this addition was built on, but they did
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: it wrong. So it's like three inches lower than the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: rest of the house. Or like, there's just all these
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: weird little things. And so this couple, it's a man
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: and his wife, uh, They come in and sort of,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I guess it has some overlap in that way to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: the Joanna and Chip Gaines renovation stuff. Sure. Where the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: husband comes in, he does a lot of the labor
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: and stuff. And then his wife does a lot of
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the design elements. Anyway, it's actually really fun to watch.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: They do a great job. So they get the problem
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: and then they tackle it. And a lot of times
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: they try and pick houses that other contractors wouldn't touch,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: that they're looking at this like this is going to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: be like way too much work. And they're like, no,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: we got this. And so then they take on these
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: cool projects where they'll try and breathe new life into
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: a space that had a weird sort of stitched, weird
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: stitched together situation. And I like pretty much anything that's
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: on HGTV. They've all been really fun. The new show
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: with Leslie Jones called Roast My Rental is actually really good.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: And there's lots of these, but a botched is a
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: new one that's out. That's really good. But fix my
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Franken house. Um, I've really enjoyed and they've got two
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: complete seasons out. So it's, those are really fun to watch.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: So if you're into watching people renovate houses and do
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: so with these really cool designs and stuff, then I
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy it. Fix my Franken house.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Perfect. I love it.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is on HBO right now. I think if
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: you're into that, uh, if you have access to that,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: but that's, I'm sure it's other places cause it's HGTV.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Uh, thanks. We have to say about all of that. Uh,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: I think I finished everything already, so that's pretty much it.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: We can wrap it up there. Anything for you?
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Uh, no, go on and be happy or listen to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: the Dillinger four song. Don't happy. Be worried.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Love it. This is Abraham.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: This is Shane. We're out. See ya. You've been listening
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: to Why We Do What We Do. You can learn
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: more about this and other episodes by going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.