Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / The Surprising Connection Between Effort, Inconvenience, and Long-Term Happiness

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The Surprising Connection Between Effort, Inconvenience, and Long-Term Happiness · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Dector Edwards, Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me so, mate.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: You are a podcaster, you're a university lecturer, and you're
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the founder.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Of the BU Happiness College, and we're going to talk
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: about happiness. And I'm just going to be a controversial
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: devil's advocate pain and the ass right from the outset.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I fucking hate the word happiness.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Can you tell me why?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Because I have a suspicion.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Bit to confirm it.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Right, I'll tell you why because it has been hijacked
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: by marketers and it you know, whereas there's this whole
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: drive that, particularly in the West, that in order to
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: be happy you have to have lots of material things
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: and be successful and and you know it's been shaped
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: whereas as you well know that the research doesn't talk
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: about happiness. It talks about whether it's subjective well being,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: human flourishing, these sorts of things. That's why I don't
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: like the word because it's a fleeting Happiness is a
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: fleeting emotion when you talk to proper researchers, like all
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: the other emotions.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: You can't be fucking happy all the time, right, And
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: That's the goal either. I want to talk about a
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: couple of things, because I'm glad you brought it up,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: because this is probably the most common challenge I think
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: people have with happiness as a skill set and as
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: a science. The first is, to your points, the West
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: tends to push this idea that happiness is something that
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: comes as an outcome of something else. We can either
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: require it, it's the result of success or accomplishment. It's
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: that if I have this, then happiness will be the byproduct. Yes,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure we can have a big conversation about
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: why that's not the case and why that is actually
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: in many cases backwards. The other challenge that people have
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: with happiness, though, is what you said just then, which
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: is happiness is a fleeting emotion, and my challenge to
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: that is not always and not in all forms. So
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: when I think of happiness, I think of happiness as
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: an emotional umbrella term that actually captures quiet a lot
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of feelings and different expressions. And the reason I think
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of it that way is we go back to doctor
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Paul Ekman's work as a psychologist, to his hipopularized yeah,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: seven yeah, the seven primary emotions, so much like an
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: artist has primary colors. And then you mix those colors
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: together and you get different blends and shades. I think
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: it's the same with our emotions. And if we look
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: at those primary emotions happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, contempt,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Well where would contentment sit under those? If those are
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: the primary emotions, Well, contentment wouldn't sit under any of them,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: but happiness. But contentment's not fleeting and not swallowing no time.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: And actually, and what I should have said this side
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: is I don't cheers.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I cheers contentment, which I would.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Argue then is you are chasing a form of happiness.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: You've just decided that's the flavor of happiness that matters
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: more to you than maybe joy, accomplishments, and some of
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: these other more fleeting ones, so excitement, enthusiasm.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And So sometimes people say to me, I don't like happiness,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: but I like purpose. I don't like happiness, but I
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: like contentments. And I'm like that is literally like saying
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: to me, I don't like chocolate, but I love Cadbury.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I'm like, no, you've just said you like that type
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: of chocolate.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So for me, when I think of happiness, I'm like,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: all of these are important parts of living a happy
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and rewarding for feeling life. Of course, there's going to
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: be chapters, sometimes weeks long, months long chapters of your
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: life where joy is not accessible or a feeling that
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: you're going to have show up. Often the one that
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: comes to mind straightaway is times of grief and loss. Yeah,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: But in times of grief and loss, can we also
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: experience connection? Can we experience ratitude and love?
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And I would argue that if we look at just
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: what are our seven primary emotions of what fits under
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: those emotional sort of headlines or benner items, there are
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: all forms of happiness.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: So what would you then say that if happiness is
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: the umbrella term, give me some of the sub terms.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: So you talked about you mentioned joy, you mentioned contentment,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: and you mentioned excitement as well. Didn't you any any
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: others that you would put under this umbrella?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Playfulness would fit under there, something that a lot of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: us don't do enough of as adults. Feeling curious and
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: inquisitive often sits somewhere on the over line happiness and
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and surprise like that sort of somewhere between those two
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: being blended together. So it's almost like, you know, the
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: color purple, little bit of red, a little bit of blue,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: we get a little blending. Yeah, feeling sensitive, creativity, feeling brave, courageous, like,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: so many different emotions that would go these.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Sure you'd put them under the thing of happen. And
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I'm monder by gratitude. I was going to ask you that, Leoto, but.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Feeling grateful, Yeah, okay, these are.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: All expressions of that go under the umbrella term of happiness.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny if you ask people in a lot
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of Western individualized societies, what does happiness feel like? We
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: tend to lean more towards the fleeting, dopamine driven expressions
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: of happiness, like joy, enthusiasm, excitement. But you're all good,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: that's fine, like whatever, but don't gamble all your happiness, honest.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: But if you look at a lot of collectivist societies
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: and a lot of Eastern societies and say, what does
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: happiness feel like, they lean a lot more in the resets.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: They called you tomonic happiness, like that intent meant slower state,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: meaning purpose. There are alstoll forms of happiness though.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to I was going to bring
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: up the ancient Greeks Aristotle that then full circle into Seligman,
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: and I think probably more Corey Keys of.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Headonia and you daemonia.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: So I actually I really like Corey Key's stuff where
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: he breaks it down and it's back to the times
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: of Aristotle and the Stoics right where you have eudaemonic
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: happiness and then you have headonic happiness. And correct me
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: if I'm wrong. I'm doing this from memory from bloody
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: years ago. But the hedonic happiness would be broken down
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: into two things. Positive emotions which you we just listed
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: all hyper positivemotions and being satisfied with life.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: And then the.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Eudaemonic stuff is more of the purpose, the social connectedness
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: all of that. And I think I think there was
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: eleven you demonic things and you had to take six
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: or something that this is.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just putting this out of the.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Depths of my memory banks and what you're thinking around.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Organizing it around that sort of thing.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I think it helps people make sense of it. It's
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: nice to group it into two overarching I guess it's
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: almost okay. We've got happiness as an umbrella term. Under that,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: what are the expressions of happiness, Well, they're either happiness
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: is the pursuit of pleasure, which would be more the
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: hedonic type happiness, which.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which to come back is what we are mostly
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: focused on on and what society tells us, what gets.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Sold to us. Yes, to your point, would it being
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: co opted by marketing? Oh as a happiness research I
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: could promise you. Capitalism and consumerism loves an unhappy person.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Loves an unhappy person.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, so easy to sell to, right, and so selling
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: these quick fixes, these fleeting forms of happiness. It's the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: classic Buy the new car and you'll feel successful and
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: happy for all of a couple of weeks until it's
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: just the family car and not the new shiny car
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: anymore in the driveway. Again, nothing's wrong with that unless
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: we only get by our happiness on it, so to go, Well,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: that's yes. One grouped expression is the pursuit of pleasure.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: The other side is you to mic, which is the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: pursuit of purpose, right to do things that feel meaningful, purposefual.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And what I've found, which I find really interesting, I've
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: been reflecting this a lot more lately, a lot of
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: those types of happiness, the buying is actually effort and
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: not immediate happiness. It's like delayed gratification. A lot of
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: things with the good for long term happiness, don't make
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you feel happy straight away.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: And this is really interesting because I think it plays
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: into dopamine.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Right. So I been, you know, on the easy versus
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: hard dopamine train.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: At a minute, and the as you will know, the
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: easy dopamine is the stuff that like scrolling on social media,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: like ultra processed foods, alcohol, drugs, where it's just there's
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: there's not much pursuit of it and it comes very
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: quickly and it gives us a massive rise, but then
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: we get a crash.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: And there's really interesting research that talks about hard dopamine.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: There's stuff that you have to earn.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Like exercising, cowater immersion, these sorts of things, but I
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: think have roots and evolutionary biology whereby it's a more
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: sustained release of dopamine. Because if you think, you think
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: you know, going through a hard exercise session is the
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: equivalent and evolutionary biology of going hunting and it taking
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: days and days and days to find something. But doesn't
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: it make sense from an evolutionary biology stuff if you
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: do something really hard that he necessary for survival, that
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: your brain would reward the shit out of you in
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: a more sustainable way than stuff that's easy.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: To come by.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah without it. And I think much the same. I
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: think the price of genuine and lasting, long form happiness
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: which you then top up with the hedonic stuff. I'm
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: not saying don't do fun things, don't have pleasure and
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: play and enthusiasm, Sure, but you know, do that as
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: the top up, not the foundation. The price of having
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: a strong foundation of happiness is two things. It's effort
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: and it's inconvenience. And I think we're living in a
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: society at the moment that has actually optimized towards convenience
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: and reduce reduction of effort and reduce friction, and it's
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: robbing an entire generation of people of really meaningful and
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: valuable happiness. Even I mean, let's look at something like
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: the Harvard Longitudinal Study, the longest running study that we
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: have on well being, and their conclusion that the number
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: one contribute out to long term happines is our quality
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: of relationships to others. Guess what having good relationships requires?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Effort and inconvenience. Yeah, like, it is inconvenient to have
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: other people in your life.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: If you want to have a very very simple life,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: go to your hermit in the woods. But as soon
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: as other people are involved, it requires a little bit
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: of sacrifice, It requires a little bit of this is
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: no longer just about me. And I think that's a
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: really healthy thing that again we're losing a little bit of.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Touch with and really interesting actually, because just as you
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: were talking about that, I've got a sort of a
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: friend of mine who's a little bit lonely ni but
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: also has a little bit of social anxiety. And for
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: that individual, there's a lot of effort and inconvenience in
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: expanding social networks. And you know, it's hard enough for
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: all of us, but you know, if you've got got
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: a bit of social anxiety, that then becomes really hard.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: But then, jeez, if you don't do it good, are
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: cubbing that sustained happiness without social relationships and human connection.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Right, especially when cheap connection is so readily accessible. Yeah,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Like we've done what I would argue is one of
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: the largest scale, non ethics tested studies we've ever done
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: a cubid psychology, which is to roll out smartphones with
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the computing power of you know, the whole NASA launch
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: in the sixties, put them in people's pockets filled them
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: up with information and said, let's see what happens to
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Pebel's brains, Let's see what happens short form content. And
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I would say the experiment hasn't worked very well. We
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: know that. I mean just this year's World Happiness Report,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Australia dropped in the rankings again and a big part
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: of it was the younger generation in particular, so those
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: under twenty five. We're seeing some of the lower rates
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: of mental health and happiness and well being that we've
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: ever seen, and a big part of is being linked
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: to we're more connected than ever before, but we're seeing
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: rising rates of loneliness and isolation. It's the whole thing.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: It's cheap connection verse meaningful connectionsp happiness first, meaningful happiness.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a there's another I agree with
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: you one hundred percent on that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: I think there's a There's another little part to that, Lens,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: is that on that social media where we are having
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: those cheap and easy connections that aren't deep, and there's
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: also an outrageous amount of upward social comparison where we
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: are constantly getting a feed of half naked whankers on
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Instagram who look like they're so successful and so happy,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: and and the human brain is it defaults to social comparison,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: especially when we're kids and teenagers, because we need to
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: work out where we are in the tribe and what
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: value we're bringing. And you think of when me and
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: you went, I mean, how many kids were in your
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: year in school?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: We had one hundred.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I was about one hundred in mind.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: So you're kind of looking and comparing yourself to around
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: one hundred generally, whereas no people are looking comparing themselves
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: to thousands. And it's the best little herb brush snapshots
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: of people's lives, and we compare it to our mundane
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: shit and think, oh, my life shit.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And to your point, this is a very
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: human thing to do. I don't know too many people
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: who compare to reality and give themselves the perspective chests.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: We all have the in the research we call the
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: negative cognitive bias, right, the part of the brain that
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: nice to hyper fixate on the things that we think
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: are wrong about ourselves or our life or the world,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and marinating that. I sometimes use the saying our brains
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: are really good at marinating in the shit times and
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: navigating so quickly through the good times like we press
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: fast forward and the good times, but we love to
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: simmer in the stew of shitness. Right, our brain sits there,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: he goes, give me more of this, and a lot
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of my work and a lot of my career has
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: been better. How do we train the brain to do
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: the opposite of that, to marinate in the good times,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: to notice it, to savor in it, to strengthen it
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and lengthen it, and in the shit times, not bury
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: our head in the sand and do toxic positivity or
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: positive thinking. And they sitting in the corner trying to
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: manifest a good life and going nothing's bad, nothing's bad,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: nothing's bad, But to go no bad times. It is
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: still going to happen. Life is still going to throw
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: us shit moments and bad curve balls. What do we
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: do about that? And how do we navigate through that
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: healthily so we can go Yeah, I'm okay with how
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I showed up in that moment.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: And interesting you mentioned that I like to I've talk
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: a lot about shit sandwiches from the universe, right, And
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: I say to my kids, who are now twenty and fifteen,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: set for ages, life is frigging amazing, But it's also
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: going to be hard, right, and you need to number one,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: be pre prepared to accept that, and number two, you
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: need to be prepared to lean in. And I think
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: we can learn a lot from the stoics here. You know,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: I've been really thinking about this stuff quite deeply. I
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: think there's a couple of levels. I think there's three levels.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: One is the acceptance that life is going to be
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: hard because a lot of people aren't there, right, and
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: you know, society is telling us, you know that we
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: are entitled to this and entitled to that. We're even
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: freaking entitled to not being offended now, which is just ridiculous.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: But so there's that. One level is acceptance. I think
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the next level is.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: That whole historic idea of you embrace it, you actually
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: embrace it and look at the shit sandwhiches as a
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: way to test and develop your character or aarity. The
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: third level, which I haven't got to yet, which is aspirational,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: is the whole amor fatty, which is love of feit
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: like love of whatever the universe throws actually shit and all,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: where you actually embrace the shit sandwiches with love. I'm
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: at the bit of their challenges to be headed on
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I'm not at amor fatty yet and any commentary around that.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got a couple of thoughts on it.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: The first thing, yeah, we see these across so many
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: different disciplines and philosophies in life. The first one came
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: to my fear was the first teaching of Buddhism is
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: life is suffered.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, think of these Buddhist mugs as these very peaceful
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: content you know, being are like the first lesson that
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: that life is suffering. What are you going to do
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: with it? I think the second thing I have is
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of people mistake acceptance for celebration, which it's not.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Acceptance doesn't mean you like it. Acceptance doesn't mean you
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: condone it. I have people sometimes when they come through
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the college bit they're doing coaching or they doing courses,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, but I don't want to accept this
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: bad thing that's happening in life because it's wrong, And
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, it is. But the acceptance is just
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a neutral reality that it is here. It is, this
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: is the cards that we've been dealt. I don't have
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: to like it or feel bad about it. It just is
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: what it is. What do I now do with it,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: which we see in acceptance, in comitment therapy, we see
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: it in I mean even in the oh, what's the
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: prayer that goes before all the programs? Give me the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: strength to know the different or the wisdoms, know the
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: difference between what I can control and most people.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Most most people don't realize. That's that's from the Stoics.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Actually is the Stoics, and and seeing Christian tradition, that's
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: where that came from.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So we see you just come up. I'm a big
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: believer that so much of modern happiness research and science.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: We've been debating what it means to live a good
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: life and be happy people for three thousand years or more.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: And so what I look for is what are the
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: themes that come up time and time again across cultures,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And to your point, this is one of them. That
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: acceptance is a big part of it. Also just knowing
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: that life is going to be challenging, life is going
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: to push this. I'm a big fan. There's a concept
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: or an approach called logo therapy, which is the pursuit
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: of me.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Focus right over my shoulder.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: There we go, right, So this idea that I love
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: he's got to quite I don't know exactly what is it,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: something along the lines of challenge without meaning feels like suffering,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: but challenge with meaning feels like growth. And so if
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: we can go, hey, challenge exists, it's up to me
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: to decide whether that challenge is meaningful or if it
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: feels senseless. And hopefully if you can go, yeah, there's
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a sense of meaning to this, this sense of purpose to it.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Because to your point, I think it's even really hard
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: for us to judge a time accurately is good or bad.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I know there's been times in my life that I
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: was like, well, this is absolutely shit and nothing good
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: can come of it. And then give it six months,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: give it a year, give it two years. With the
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: clarity of hindsight, I go, oh no, that kind of
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: had to happen to make this happen, to make this happen,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: to make me the mean I am today. Okay, I
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: can see the purpose in it. And there's other times
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: and I go, oh my god, this is going to
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: be the best thing ever. This is the best chapter
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: ever in my life. And you give it six months
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: or a year and you're like, okay, maybe it was.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It so I now try to practice for myself and
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: others that life is really as good or bad as
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: our brain tries to make it seem. Our brain loves
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: exist to get the extremes of that. The negative tens
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: are the plus tens. But life is in that messy
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: gray middle.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: So often can I throw a personal anecdote? I actually
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: want to double click on what you said about challenge
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: with meaning versus challenge without meaning. And I think what
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Frankel was also pretty big on and the others historic
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: is that life is no meaning other than what you
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: give it. So I think you have to find the
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: meaning in the shit. So which is so I'll give
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: you a personal anecdote. I had opened heart surgery last
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: year just because I found out by fortune I was
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: born with a bicuspoan aortic valve right, and had to
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: have it replaced and embraced it as a challenge, all
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: of that, and then this year was like something's not right,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: went and got checked and I just went through a
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: pet scan the other day because they think I might
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: have something called cardiac sarcodosis, which is a really shitty disease,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: all immune condition that basically eats your heart and there's
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: been a six week period when I told I might
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: have it waiting to the pet scan, and I've got
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: another three weeks. But the day I was told I
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: might have it, I drove home and I'm like, okay,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: so what am I going to do with this?
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Right from the stoics? What am I going to? This
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: is another shit sandwich? What am I going to do
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: with this? What's the meaning?
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And as I was trying home, you know, I'm just
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: inspired by stoic coots all the time, and I went,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: you know what this is the I'm choosing to view
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: this as this is the universe. I sually going to me,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: all right, you dealt with open heart surgery, how about
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: this one?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: All right? How about your test? And develop yourself here?
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Because my whole background is around hardiness, psychophysiological, histoics and stuff,
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: and it's the universe going to me, Are you authentic?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Are you really authentic? Right?
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Because authenticity is one of my deeply held values. And
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: I've actually chosen to view this because this is I
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: think the important bit. We get to choose how we
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: react to our circumstances and we get to ascribe our
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: own meaning. So the way that I'm looking at it
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: is that the universe has just gone right, there's this
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: shit sandwich that is going to come to one of
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: your family members and you get your chance to put
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: your hand up and ticket. So I'm actually that's the
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: way that I'm viewing this, which is giving me that
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: sense of meaning and purpose around it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: You know, we're meaning making machines. It's one of the
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: things that I do really well as a species. And
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: the meaning that you've given this challenge what you said there,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I guarantee would stack the deck in your favorite. It
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: doesn't guarantee that you're going to feel happy or a
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: form of happiness throughout this challenge, but it does stack
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: the deck in your favor a little bit compared to
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: many of the other meanings you could have applied to it,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: and many other stories you could have told you about
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: this situation, this challenge in life. I'm reminded a little
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: bit of there's a really well known Chinese fable parable
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: about a farmer with a horse? Have you heard this
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: one before?
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: That I as you taught me through this, I'll remember
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: it because I know there's a parable of a farmer
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: with a horse.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Basically, there's this old Chinese posment. There's a farmer who
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: has this horse, and the horse runs away, and you
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: know you're living at a time where this is a
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: lot of wealth in the family is the livestocks.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: The horse has something to do with a war and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: his son.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: All the villagers come around and go, oh, no, your
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: horse run away. It's so sad. It's such a bad
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: thing to have happened, and the farmer goes, maybe we'll see.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Seems like a weird reaction. Then a few days later,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: the horse comes back, but also brings two wild horses
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: with it, and all the village is like, oh, this
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: is the best thing ever. It's so good, you must
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: be so happy. Maybe we'll see. And then the Sun
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: is training and breaking in the wild horses and falls
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: and breaks his leg, and I goes, this is terrible,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: such bad news, and again the farmer goes, well, we'll see.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: And then China goes to war and they're going around
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: conscripting all young, able bodied men, and the Sun doesn't
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: get sent to the front lines because of his broken leg,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: and all the villagers go, oh, your son's life was spared.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: You must be so thankful and grateful. Yes, maybe we'll
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: see but as this idea of and I think Shakespeare
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: says it too, nothing is good or bad until we decide, yes,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: decide the meeting that's applied to it.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I actually want to come back on the
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: personal anecdote because you talked about acceptance, and you talked
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: about acceptance and commitment therapy right, which is very aligned
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: with Japanese psychology and marita therapy, which my wife's an
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: expert in.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And there's this awesome term.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Called arugamama, which basically translates as with things as they are,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: what needs to be done? Right, So for me, it
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: is the acceptance part, but then there's the action part.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: So what needs to be done?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: And in that ten weeks that I've got rather than
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: because I had somebody starated to me just say fuck,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: are you not just like worried going out of your mind?
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, there's no room for that because I'm
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: in action mode. So I went and I researched this condition.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: I'm like, because I'm ex military, understand thyself, understand thy enemy?
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: How do how does it form? You know, what's the
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: process inflammator? It's immune sales? Okay, what can I do
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: about that? I can do fasting did a whole heap
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: of research. So I'm in action, taking positive action around
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: my circumstances, which I think is given me autonomy and
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: a sense of purpose in the moment, whereas I could
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: just sat and go one. Okay, I accept that this
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: might happen and out of ten weeks, but there'd be
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: a freaking a lot of worry coming in with the acceptance.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: But I think when you couple it with action what
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: needs to be done despite the shit sandwich, I think
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: that's the bit of a game changer, right, it's meaning
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: focused action.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Do you have any thoughts on that?
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do have thoughts on it. The the fact
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: of the matter is our brain likes feeling like it's
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: in control of things that are very uncontrollable, which is life, right,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Like life is very unpredictable. It's out of our control.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And so when we pair acceptance of hey, this is
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: what's happening, the the cards I've been dealt, but then
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: you have that sense of what can I do about it?
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Or what do I do about it?
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It's autonomy.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's self determination theory or like it's tickling that
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: part of the brain that likes to feel like we're
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: in the driver's seat of life, and so if we
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: can go, okay, well this is even if it's one
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: small thing that we can do, Like, there might be
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: so much that you can't do to influence the situation.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: But if you're like, well I could do this, that
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: is so reassuring to the brain.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Mhmm yeah, absolutely, one hundred percent.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: And I sort of knew that's going in and I
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: knew I can't just setting weir it and wallow in
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: self pity number one.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I mean you could, it just wouldn't have been like, yeah, yeah,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: well that's right. I can't. But yeah, just not the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: way I had. So so let's let's you.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Turn back to happiness in general, right, And we mentioned
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: such things like that, you know, we're told it's all
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: about material geons and stuff like that, and and we know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: oh that that's not the only way to happiness.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But what rule does it play? Right? So we can't
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: throw the bab out with the bathwater?
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: What rule like, does your income level influence your happiness?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Factors, Yeah, external factors do influence happiness. I think it
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: would be. I used to believe early in my career
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I was the kind of happiness researcher. I was the
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: kind of guy that was like, happiness is an inside job, right,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Like it is your job and your responsibility to focus
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: on your happiness, which I think is true to a degree.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: But what I would add to it now is like,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say, you know that you shouldn't
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: be responsible for your happiness. You can't just sit there
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: and wait for someone else or some situation to make
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: you happy. You need to start it. But what I
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: now believe is we all have the responsibility of planting
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: the seeds of happiness for ourselves, but those seeds are
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: like nurtured and cultivated and best strengthened collectively. I'm moving
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: so far away from I mean, even the idea of
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: self help, right that we have entire best sellers and
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: entire shelves in bookstores dedicated to self help about what
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: you as an individual need to do differently, and I
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: don't think there's enough talk about community help, like how
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: do we actually make a better societies, better workplaces, better communities?
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: How do we play a role in supporting the happiness
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: of each other rather than just focusing on how do
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I as an individual get happier? And we know that,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: you know, we have a role to play in the
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: happiness of others. We mentioned before the longitudinal study from
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Harvard about you know, our quality of relationships having a
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: huge impact on happiness. We also have research coming out
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: now from some of the Scandy countries about the contagion
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: effect and reple effective happiness. Your happiness has a measurable impact.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: They've measured it now to three degrees of separation, which
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: is why.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember, I remember the Harvard, the Framingham tried
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: the Framingham Heart study, and they went back and they
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: reanalyzed the data because they had all their stuff about
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: who they were related to you, and they had a
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: whole heap of stuff on happiness.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And it was three eas of freedom, wasn't it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: I think I think it was something like having a
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: happy friend increased your chances of being happy by fifteen percent.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Correct, but the third one was six percent.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: But but you had to importantly catch up with them
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: fierce to fierce at least once a month getting back Yeah,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: getting back to they're in social media shit.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: So it's the same with all like the other external factors. Right,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Like I used to think, I used to be very much.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: You know, money can't buy happiness. And then I had
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: someone very point Blake, tell me that's a very privileged
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: thing to say. That's a good point. They're like the
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: only people were saying that are not stressing about putting money,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: like putting food on the table and every the head
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: they've got enough money to meet their basics. And so
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: much of the research now shows that there's not so
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: much that like money buys happiness directly, but financial insecurity
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: and financial worry is such a block to happiness. It's
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: such an underminor effect that we go, yeah, of course
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: this is going to happen him. So I'm of the
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: lens of what can we do as individuals, And yes,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: we should take ownership responsibility for our own happiness individuals,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: but also play your part in making a better society.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: They play your part in making better homes and schools
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: and workplaces or sporting teams. It doesn't I don't care
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: how big your scale of impact is. Be I don't know.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people these days want community,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: but forget that they need to be part of that.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: It's like we want someone to lean on. It's like, no,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: you also need to be someone to lean on.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I want to come back to that
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: because I really want to drill down on that. But
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: I do want to come back and close the money thing,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: because you did allude to it here. But I think
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: ed Denier's research and others have shown that money is important,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: really really quite important if you're very poor, up to
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: about everything, but it's about being able to meet your
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: basic needs. And then there's the law of diminishing returns, right,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: whereas every extra thousand dollar rears has a diminished amount
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: of impact on your happy So yes, I guess it can.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: It can support the foundation, but in and of itself,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: it won't do it. And then sohnyo Libermotsky, I think
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: it's Libermotski. It jeered really win terestion research to find
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: it was actually money in the bank. So it was savings.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: When you could see that you had savings that had
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: more of an impact on your happiness than the amount
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: of money you earn. Because you can earn a shitload
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: of money and you know, be living beyond your means,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: that's nowhere near of an impact of being not that wealthy,
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: but having some savings.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: And I know some of the more recent studies around this,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: they're starting to bring up questions I think is really
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: worth asking of a lot of it was previously asked
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: around inconsequential increases to money. So it's like, hey, do
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: you think you'd be happier with twenty thousand more dollars?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: And people go, of course, I want twenty thousand more dollars.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Why wouldn't I? But you go, well, if the consequence
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: of that is you're taking a job that requires you
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: to commute for an extra forty minutes each way over
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: what you currently commute, is that a trade off worth making?
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Or if the consequence of that is your working a
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: job that has more responsibility and stress, is that a
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: consequence worth taking? And so it used to be like, hey,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: it does more money get more happiness? They weren't talking
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: about the consequence of more money. It was like, here's
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: just my free money, all right, and now go yeah,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: we could make more money, but at what cost? And
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I think we're starting to see I mean, there's all
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: this now. I know the media is loving this. The
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: we're talking about how gen Z is consciously unmanaging and
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: not wanting to step into major positions because they're like
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the extra financial reward does not match the extra emotional
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: load and mental load and expectation on my time that.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, my wife's all these people. You know, we
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: have a one year old son at home now. She's
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: just returned to the workforce after maternity leave, and I
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: said to her, do you ever want to go back
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: into like a majorment position. She goes, God, no, it's
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: like three to four percent more than i'd make per
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: year for twenty percent more stress and time.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point, and I make Sally,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: glad I haven't seen you on the researcher. I'd love
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: you to flick me some I'm glad they're not starting
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: to look at that because because it has a big impact.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: And I remember this conversation i'd happened with my wife
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: in January. We kind of do a review and what
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: are our plans and stuff, and we're thinking we're going
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: to grow following want to try and monetize stuff. And
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: then we just went, you know what, fuck it, it's
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: not worth it because we've got a good life at
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: the minute, and we're actually really enjoying our lives and
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: this will just be a whole heap of extra time
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: and energy and stuff.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And I know that I.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Could massively grow my social media phone, but I hate
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: it being on freaking social media, and it's it's not
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: worth it for me. So I think we do need
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: to We all need to do that analysis, don't We
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: are not just not just chase the friggin chase the
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: dollars without thinking about the consequences.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And whether it's dollars, whether it's any extrinsic rewards. Right,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: any extrinsic goal could be dollars. It could be the
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: holiday of the car, the new house, whatever. It is
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: like being able to do second order thinking on like
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: what is this demand of me? What are the consequences,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: and being able to go like, because then you're not
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: coming into a blindsided right to be able to go.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: I know that this is going to demand sacrifices from me,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: and I've been accepting that from the start. Yeah, rather
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: than oh, this is harder than I thought it was
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: going to be. I thought I was just going to
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: get this goal. It would be happiness. But you get
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: to go, Okay, am I willing to do the effort
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And coming back to I said before, you know the
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: price of authentic happiness. The thing that it demands from
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: us is effort and inconvenience.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: And I think that the other thing is well as
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: thinking about should I take this this different job or
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: whatever it may be, it should also be should I
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: buy this thing? Should we upgrade at our heights, should
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: we get a new car, should we.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Go on holiday?
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: All these things that we know are going to bring
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: us some joy and positive emotions.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But again, what's the tread off that you're going to
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: have to do for?
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: They're literally having this conversation at the moment. My wife
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: and I we live in a very small you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: it's a little three better, one bathroom, little family home
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: that we love, and we're looking at it, going Okay,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: as that sun grows up, we're going to need more space.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: We're going to need more room. I think Australians in particular,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, we have some of the highest square footage
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: in the world, yes, right, and as a byproduct of that,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: some of the highest mortgages in the world too. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: so we sat down and read it all and went, okay,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: we could do that, and this is what it would
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: mean for our cash show. This is what it would
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: mean for the mortgage we would have in the amount
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: of debt we'd have over our heads, or we're actually
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: really happy here and this is fine, and this gives
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: us a lot of freedom and a lot of room.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: And I think we ended up figuring out that the
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: just an additional interest if we made that movement, did
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the whole keeping up with the Joneses, everyone else in
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: our life is getting the bigger house, and just in
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: the interest repayments. If we don't do it, we could
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: buy a new car and do an overseas holiday every year.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: There you go, there's the difference.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: I'm like, do we want a new car every year?
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I don't actually care about a new car, But do
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I want two overseas holidays every year?
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: I'll take that compared to just funneling more money into
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: I know, one of the big bags.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, no, no, exactly, and they've got plenty with that.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: My contributions, I think.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I think they'll be all right. Let's come back to something.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: That you said earlier that I think is hugely important,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: and that's the whole society thing and playing your part.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think we need to spend a
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: lot of time convincing people that there's been a breakdown
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: a progressive breakdown in society. I mean, anybody can remember
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: as they're a kid, you know you'd be in and
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: out of neighbors houses, you just be rocking up. People
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: will be leaving their doors open, all of this stuff.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: And to your point, everybody wants a community, and most
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: people would say, I'd like to have a community. But
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: it's about playing your part, isn't it. And there's a
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: quote from Seneca that that's what This is a kind
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: of a summary of what he said. But but every
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: individual birds the responsibility to be of value to humanity.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: And it goes on about if possible a big part,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: if not a smaller part, but if not, even to
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: benefit your immediate community, right, which I think is hugely important.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Not just thinking words my society, but what role can
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I play in my local community? How can I give
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: back time, effort, whatever it may be. I think that's
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: people don't think about that enough.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm more so lately, to be honest. So it's funny.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: At the Happiness College at the Social Enterprise I have
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: where we teach the skills and signs of happiness. Over
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: the last few years we've been putting together a curriculum
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: to define what specifically other skills of happiness, Like what's
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the research say, is a skill that stacks the deck
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: in the favor of someone living a happy life. And
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: we identified seventy five distinct skills, like there's a lot, wow,
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: And then we went, well, how do we group these?
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: And we broke them into three categories. There's personal happiness skills,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: which is more things about how to manage your own
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: mind and emotions and manage your own well being. So
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: emotional intelligence fits in, that, gratitude fits and that these
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: are all skills that we can learn and practice. The
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: second category is personal growth skills, which is about like
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: fulfilling your potential. It's like self actualization, So it's stuff
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: around habit building, behavior change, goal setting, knowing your values,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: knowing your strengths like that would all fit in that category.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: And there's this third category of happiness skills, which I
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: think don't get anywhere who as much attention, which is
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: interpersonal happiness skills. So the skills the skills that lead
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: to us being a better contributor in society, in our communities,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: the skills that help us better understand ech other. Empathy
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: is a huge one of these skills, right being able
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: to see someone else's worldview and be able to connect
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: with them. To the point we're making before about you know,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: what are the things that people can do that they
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: can just make a difference, but they don't think of
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: doing them. One of the best things practices if I
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: could click my fingers and everyone starts doing more of it,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: if they want to practice those interpersonal happiness skills and
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: play a better part in spreading ripple of back to happiness.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Volunteer for something. Yeah, choose and I don't even care
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: what it is. Choose something that matters to you, but
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: it Volunteer at the canteen at your kids' school, be
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: part of the local rugby club, or whatever it may be.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Choose a cause that matters to you. But if you're
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: like giving of your time and energy and knowledge, doesn't
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: have to have to be like monetarily, you know, giving back.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: But if you feel like you're giving to something that matters,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: oh what a what a short fire away to boost
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of that Walter earlier, the eudaemonic happiness, the contentment,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: the pursuit of purpose. One of the greatest pathways we
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: have for that is volunteerism. And we don't have remarkably
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: high rates of it in Australia.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Oh really are we are? We pretty little compared to
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: other countries and.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Who not like who low low, But I think we
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: could do better.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Right, Who's particularly good at it? Is? There is there
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: any particular societies that that stick out?
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: We see quite a few in like the Southeast Asian
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: But I think the interesting part there is some of
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: it is almost from social expectation and obligation, right, you know, I.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Mean of like yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: The question is how much of this is volunteer as
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: by choice autonomy? Yeah yeah, yeah, And so that could
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: be an arguement this put there. But I mean, I
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: suppose you could also make the argument either way if
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: the benefit's still there, like yeah, who cares? Like is
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: it maximized your autonomy? But like if people still get
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: the benefit just because it's a social expectation that you
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: are part of a community. Latin America does quite well
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: at this. This like communal celebration, communal joy, I mean
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: in the world happened in sports this year, Costa Rica
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: has skyrocketed up. It's the first Latin American country ever
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: to break into the top ten happiest countries in the
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: world and yeah.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: My daughter, Yeah, my daughter is just back from Costa
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: Rica and said it was She said it was amazing,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: and the people were like yeah.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Because there's still a little bit of that sense of
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: what you mentioned before, of like in our childhood, this
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: sense of like you know, the doors are open and
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: you end up. My wife and I spent five months
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: backpacking through South America a couple of years ago. I've
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: been spending the last probably decades going around the world
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: asking people in different countries what happiness means to them,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: what their approach to happiness is, just honestly out of
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: my own curiosity. And I was like, one day I'll
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: do something with this research. I've included a little bit
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: of it in my book, but I was astounded by
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: how much that still exists in a lot of these communities.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: The sense of yeah, someone's doors open, go in and
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: have dinner with them like this, and say, oh, so
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: and Sowa's got a friend who has a guitar, or
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: they're playing a music not you play music. Don't you
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: come and play music together? Like just things that I
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: think we don't prioritize as much in a lot of
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Western countries. Because we're quite individualistic.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that individualistic. It just just reminded me.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: So Denmark, as you know, is pretty high on the
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: happiness index, and I remember reading something that at least
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: part of it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I know, there's a whole heap of things. As Scandini,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: we just do really well.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: But part of it, they think from Denmark is that
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: they actually have reasonably low expectations about their future. Right,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: their aspirations are really to get a job, get married,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: you know, get a house, that sort of stuff. Where
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of the aspirations in more of the well,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: the United States, Kingdom here, whatever is like you ask
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: kids these days, they want to be famous, they want
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: to be millionaires, they want to be all of that. So, like,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: how much of a role does this play about how
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: you're forecasting your future? Because unmet expectations that's what causes
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of really negative emotions. So if you set
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: the bar reasonably low, like not ridiculously low, but reasonably.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Low, wouldn't that be a better strategy.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: It can, But the downside of it is it can
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: also we lose a sense of ambition and excitement and
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: hope for the future. So I think, like the key
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: for us is do we have intentions for a future
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: or do we have expectations of our future. Intentions are
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: loosely held, right, Intentions are I have a compass in
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: a direction, this is where I want to go. This
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: matters to me. But I also know that I might
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: do everything right and it might still not happen, like
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: life might just not play to play it. Yeah, expectations
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: are this is what must happen for me to be happy.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: And by the way, we do this on a micro
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: scale every day. Right, we set expectations over how our
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: children should behave, We set expectations over how we should
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: show up at work. We spent the amount of teams
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: I talked to sales teams. I'm like, what's your goal?
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And I just may sales And I'm like, you don't
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: make anyone buy from you, Like you can send intentions
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: about what you're going to do, and you can take
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: a oriadship over your part in this, but you can't
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: make sales happen. Right, So this is a this is
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: an expectation. Gable. When you were bringing up Denmark and I.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Don't rememberf it was Denmark or Finland.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: They're always so they're always at the top of the
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: world happiness reports. But every year when they get out
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: at the top of the reports again, there's just this
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: flurry of articles from those countries of people saying, well,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: we're not happy, but we're content. That's what was for
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: out earlier like this, I would have raised us as
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: a happy country. But we live a pretty good life, right,
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I'm like that again, that is happiness. It's just their
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: approach to happiness is one of low expectations, one of contentment,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: one of appreciation of what we already have. Yeah, I
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: think I go lifestyle.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's I think it's much it's much
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: more sustainable for for sure.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about positive emotions. Right over my shoulders.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: I've got a number of books from Richard Wiseman. I
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: don't know if you know Richard. Richard wise psychologists really interesting.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about his research on lucky people
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: because I think there's a bit of a crossover, right.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: And that that that and all of his research.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: One of his things is that lucky people actually they
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: notice more positive stuff in their environments because their brains
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: have a positivity bias, so they actually see more positive things.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: And when there's opportunities, they're more likely to go and
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: take advantage of those and to take risks around those opportunities,
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: whereas unlucky people who tend to be less happy than
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: lucky people, and the unlucky people they tend to have
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: a negativity bias, so they're bringing is subconsciously looking for
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: bad shit and they miss a lot of positive stuff.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: So he's done really co research on that. And then
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: when they do see positive stuff, they go, oh, that
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: won't work out for me because they have that negativity bias,
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: and so they don't take risks and then they don't
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: get friggin lucky. Right, So how much does this player role?
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: How much is doz are our subconscious bias, whether it's
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: a negativity or positivity bias, How does that play into
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: all of this? And can we tree in ourselves towards
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: a more positive bias?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: I think that's the practical side.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, before ending that, I want to thank you
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: for giving me a great trip down memory line. I
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: was at a conference and attended the workshop with Whichard
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Wise when many years ago, and I was just talking
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: about every is that the guy who was a magician
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: that was like the most practical form of magic is psychology.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And I was like, it is that is that guy?
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: He's such a cool dude. I think anybody just big
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: just go and look.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: On Amazon for Richard Wiseman's books. So after you've bought
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Declan Spook, their next prot save yourself.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: One box that I remember.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: At that workshop I was at with him, he was
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: talking about this idea of increasing or decreasing your surface
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: area for luck to strike, Like this stuff that we
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: can do awesome of Like we can make it more
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: likely that luck appears. All we can do things that
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: shrink that likelihood. And I think much the same. And
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I did not even realize all this conversation that this
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: is where my train of thought on this had come from.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: So I'm realizing this now that this was a big influence.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: I talk about happiness in a similar way. There's a
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: lot that we can do that increases the likelihood of
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: happiness striking, and there's a lot that we can do
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: that shrinks the likelihood of happiness striking. The outcome itself,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: whether we get the thing, whether we're lucky, whether we're happy,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: is not actually in our control. Yeah, So anything we
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: go into now it's like my job, my responsibility, my
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: ownership is can I make this more likely whilst being
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: detached from the outcome, because again I could make it
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: remarkably likely and just get a really shitty striker.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: M you should be a sports psychologist as well, by
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: the way, right, how do you meet it?
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: More like? But not be attached to the outcome?
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: Because when they're attached to the outcome, that's what brings
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: us stress.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Sure, and so we can and to you, but yes
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: we can, we can train that. I mean, this is
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: the beautiful part of neuroplastistic. We know the brain is trainable.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: It might take a bit more effort because we've you know,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: the brain loves familiarity. It loves doing what it's done
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: for a long time. Again, our brain doesn't actually give
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: a shit if we're happy or successful. It cares that
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: we're alive. That's its biggest batch. So as far as
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: if you are listening to this right now, as far
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: as your brain is concerned, regardless of what else is
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: happening in your life, it's given itself a big tick.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: First thing in the boarding of like, when do we
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: really well? Because we woke up today we are alive.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: I would like to think that we can aim for
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: more than just survival or getting by. I think we
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: aim for flourishing. I think we aim for happiness. I
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: think we aim for fulfillment. But I also know that
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: we can't guarantee any of that. Our job is to
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: make it more likely that that strikes.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: I love this idea of increasing your surface area of
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: the likelihood of it happening. I think that that that's
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: a that's a cracker. I think that's the that's the
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: big tackle because because it implies action. You know, I
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: get frustrated with people who complain about their lives and
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: do fuck all about it apart from complaining about their
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: lives and hard shit it is.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And it's just like well, and I think it comes
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: back to earlier.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: You need to have you need to have intentionality around it,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: and then you need a plan, and then you need
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: to create some action. But but do this around your
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: happiness right I big? How big is your surface.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Area right now? And and and are you are you
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: in the game?
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: Are you just waiting for the happiness fairy to come
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: along and dullar happiness on you? Because so many people
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: believe in fairies, whether it's about their behavior their diet,
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: their alcohol whatever. They're just waiting for the motivation fairy,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: and people are waiting for the happiness fairy. Right, But so,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: what give us a couple of things from your seventy
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: five skills that people can do to increase their surface area?
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: And I know it's going to be you know, it's
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: going to be individualized. I think that's another thing I
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: like about what you talked about. There's no coookie cutter approach, right,
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: but sort of generically, what are some of the things
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: that people could could.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Do, so generically your best bang for buck ones that
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: are the most likely to hit, like hit the largest population.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Because as you said, I'm like, I'm not an expert
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: in everyone's individual happiness. I'm not going to be an
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: expert in their happiness. I've not lived their life. So yeah,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: people listening to this, it's to kind of go, what's
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: resonated with you from this conversation? Right, Like, there might
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: be one or two things that you and I have
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: said that we've thrown away that someone goes that's what
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: I needed to hear. Okay, we'll do something with this.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: But if I was to kind of be a gambling
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: man and say, what are the things that I think
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: most people aren't doing that they probably should be doing.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: First and foremost, everyone talks about emotional intelligence. I mean
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: I talk about it in my book right in How
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: to Be Happy. I chose five of those seventy five
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: skills that I think people should start with, and emotional
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: intelligence is one of them. But I go a bit
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: earlier than that and go, we can't hope to be
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: intelligent about something that we can't recognize and name. And
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: I think what we're seeing in society at the moment
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: is not so much an emotional intelligence problem. We're actually
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: seeing an emotional awareness and literacy problem. First, Like people
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: can't even recognize and name what they're feeling, let alone
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: be smart about what they do with those feelings. Okay,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: And so I think to go back to square one
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: is just we need to increase the words that we
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: have to describe our emotions, just like we did the
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: starts like, give me a bunch of words that would
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: go under the happiness umbrella. Okay, here they all are
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the gold standard. I remember I was an event with
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Brene Brown quite a few years ago, and she mentioned
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: in Passing I think she was writing her book outless
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: of the heart and she goes, oh. The gold standard
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: is for functional, healthy capable adults to be able to
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: recognize name and healthily work through thirty distinct emotions. And
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: I remember sitting there and being like, oh, no, what
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: if you just went to the average person and said,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: name all the emotions that you could recognize in yourself.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: You know what they feel like, you know how they
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: show up, and you know what to do with them.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think we're getting anywhere near thirty r and
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: so the tool that would help with that, I do
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: it with my team. Actually we use this at work now.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Is something called a two word check in, because then
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: when you ask someone how they're going, if you just
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: let the brain go wild, it starts talking a lot
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: about context rather than how they're actually feeling. Yeah, Hey,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: how are you feeling lately? Oh? Well, this is happening
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: it's work, and then this is happening with the kids,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: and this is what's happening at home. And I'm like, okay,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: how are you feeling? So I didn't say if you
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: were to catch how you're feeling right now in only
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: two words, you only get two words. What are the
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: two words that come to mind. That cuts straight to
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: the core of emotion rather than beliefs, rather than stories,
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: rather than judgments, rather than context and storyline. And if
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: you really struggle to answer that, google it. It's free.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: The feelings wheel rather earliest Gloria Wilcox in the eighties.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: There's heaps of other versions now, but it's little. It's
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: a little wheel of emotions where you can start with
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: the primary ones in the middle, the ones we spoke
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: about the very start of this conversation, and you go, okay,
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: would it sit under the happiness the term? Maybe not,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe say it sits under sadness or under fear or
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: under you know, feeling bad or stressed, And then you
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: work your way out and go, well, what type is it?
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: And over time you build your literacy and vocabulary for
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: describing your inner world. So that would be one that
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: everyone would start with. I think a second one. Train
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: your brain to look for the good that's already there,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: guarantee the heaps of it. So gratitude, practice, appreciation practice,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Whether this be the classic one, and all the research
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: is like the three good Things journal, write down three
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: good things that happened that day. I struggle with that.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: I tried that for years and I didn't love it.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: The tweak I put on it was give each thing
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: a category in a direction. So my personal gratitude practice
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: is what is a small moment say that I would
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: have otherwise taken for granted? So I'm training my brain
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: to look for the little moments. The second prompt I
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: use is who is someone I'm grateful for today? Yeah,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: so to get that interconnected piece. And the third one,
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: which used to be and sometimes still is the hardest,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: what is something about myself I'm grateful for today?
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: And be it my body, or be it my decisions
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: or my character? What is something I like about me today?
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: And then once you've got your three answers, go back
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: and write why for each of them, because it's actually
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: the why that turns it from this is gratitude as
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: an action and a practice to gratitude as a feeling.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: What turns into something that you experience, and that's where
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of the benefits are. So I'd recommend people
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: do that again both that takes less than ten minutes.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: And then if I give people a third one, it's
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: everything we've been talking about in this about interconnectedness, be
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: an active part of a community. Cheeky way to do that.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: That second prompt I gave him the gratitude journaling of
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: who is someone I'm grateful for? If the person that
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: you wrote down that day, if they're alive and you
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: have their contact details, tell them.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Right, message them, and the the the ultimate is write
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: them a letter.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Right the fuck? When's the last time he wrote a letter?
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Last year, we spent we spent our Christmas. We got
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: twenty cards with a picture of myself, my wife, and
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: our son, and we hand wrote each one to twenty
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: people in our life that were really grateful for having
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: our life that year, and we wrote why more grateful
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: about them? We wrote about our memories. So it took
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: us days to do this over the Christmas break, and
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: then we hand we sealed them all in envelopes with
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: an old.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Like wax poor and this is awesome.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: It was such a meditative and mindful of experience and
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: we felt incredible from it. And then we popped in
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: the post and forgot about it. And then a few
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: weeks later we start getting all these messages back from people,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: and we get these phone calls from people, and I'm like,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: you know what this is? Now a Yearly practiced for
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: us like we did it for the first time last year.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: But the best thing I've ever got it was because
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: someone got it for me for Christmas. They got me
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: a little wax poor with a little stamp thing.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is that is awesome. I love it. As
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: you were starting to say, I was like, this is brilliant.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Carly's my wife's mum and she she died a cancer
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: a number of years ago, but she knew she was
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: going so she had a celebration of life event which
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: was frigging brilliant, right, And she spent the little bit
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: of money that she had. She hired out the Floor Drum,
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: which is a very famous Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, invited
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: all of these people, right, And I was.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: The I was the sadness police.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: It was like she threatened that I was going to
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: throw out anybody who cried. But what she did is
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: she spoke about every single person in the room and
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: how they brought her joy.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: And it was freaking brilliant, right.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: And it's along the lines of that thing that you
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: said about writing writing the letter to people about why,
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: which is which is just breaking brilliant. I think I
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: would add a little bit to your You talked about
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: this with gratitude. So so what I started doing recently
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: cause I'm doing a gratitude ritual for thirty years since
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: I met a guy in India with elephant elephantiitis and leprosy, right,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: and I just remembered this guy every day, And so
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: I started doing a gratitude practice. But lately my wife
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: Carob It gave me a book on oh and which
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: is really.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Very protective for our mental health.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, and I have started to weave that in. Like
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: sometimes I'll turn the tap on the have a shave,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: and a little part of my brain and go, how
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: cool is that sh running water? And then you think
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: about what is all the stuff that needs to happen
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: for me to have fresh, clean running water, right, And
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: and I'll turn a light on and go, fuck, here's
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: that ship work?
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: I think when you combine that all the curiosity and
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: the gratitude, right, that's where magic shit starts to happen.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: But I love your idea of adding the why onto
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: it why.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I'm grateful about that? I think.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: I think that's very cool and that's a that's an
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: awesome thing for people to do around it. Hopefully lots
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: more people in Australia and beyond are going to be
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: getting cards or little letters.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: In the post this Christmas around it.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: And as we start to wind up a little bit,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: there's so much more recond I think we need to
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: do another one on this, but happy to do.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I want to. I want to ask you about.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: So the thing that frustrates me as a psychophysiologist, right
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: is that I don't see any of the psychologists happiness
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: researchers talking about the physiology. And and why I think
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: this is important is that we now know that being
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: sedentary and eating a data of ultra processed foods is
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: chemical warfare on your body. Right, And I could spend
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: the next r waxing lyrical about how that happens. And
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: you know, every time you're exercising, there's six different neurotransmitter
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: systems that are activated that make your brain function well.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Right, And we know that.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Ultra processed foods distrupt the got, they create systemic inflammation,
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: they attack on urns, and I'm like, good luck with
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: your mental health.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Surface area, right, You've got a very small surface area
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: for happiness to start.
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: To Yeah, exactly, exactly if you are starting, it's like
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: you're trying to build a five million dollar house on
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: sand foundations if you're not moving well and you're not
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: eating well, because you're not giving your brain the substrates
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: that it needs to function normally. And I think without
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: that fonedation, you can be doing a lot of this
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: stuff in it and it's certainly suboptimal and I think
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: depending on hi bad people's lifestyle, so it can massively
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: reduce the effectiveness of what are brilliant tools.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Any commentary around that.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw much the same thing. I will say
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: we're seeing that change in the industry, which is good.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: I know there's been even recent debates and updates to
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: the perber Bodel from Positive Psychology.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, Celigrat, we finally added the haitch of helleh at
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: the end right and going like, yes, health matters, I
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: am sort of.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: I think this is because my background, so I actually
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: my undergrad was a Bachelor of Health Sciences in nutrition
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: and dietetics and in sports science, so like I came
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: to positive psychology and happiness research from a physiology first
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: background and then added the psychology in afterwards, and so
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: it's always just made sense to me. I'm like, we
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: can't separate our mental health and physical health. We can't
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: separate our brain. Boy, and I hope there's not some
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: dystopian future with AI that we can. But I hope
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: we're always able to have our mind and body working
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: together in some way, shape or form. I mean, all
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: the research shows us, like, what is it? Eighty five
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: ninety percent of serotonin is produced in our gut gun
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: in our gut health. We know that regular exercises as
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: effective for low to mild grades of depression as antidepressants
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: more effective.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: I'll show you a British medical journalist pesses all over it.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so like this is we know, and then all
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: the reason are just saying this is important. And so
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: I think funnily enough, you know, when we look at happiness,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: and there's seventy five skills we have for happiness, some
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: of them are built around like habit building with our
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: physical well being?
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Are you something?
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: Why are you hydrating your water?
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Are you drinking enough water? Are you like moving your
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: body in a way that's enjoyable to you. I don't
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: think we can miss that or discounted. And yet the
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: more conversations we have about these being done together and
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: not on either extreme either discounting entirely or I'll be honest,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: the amount of people I see in the fitness space,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: in the fitness entry or in sports and in athletes
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: that are nailing the physical health stuff. Yeah, but I'm
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: not looking at the happiness skills and the mental and
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: emotional skills, and mental and emotional fitness that also has
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: its own blind spots and detriments, right, that also leads
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: to really shitty outcomes for a lot of people.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: The classic argument. I mean, for people who didn't grow
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: up in Astralia won't understand this reference, but I'm hoping
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: you remember it. There was a famous ad many years
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: ago where a town was at war about whether they
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: should eat hard shell or soft shell tacos, and then
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: a little girl came on the TV and said, pokeno
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: los dos, like why not both? And then the town
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: celebrated and rallied around her. And I think it was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: an old El Paso ad. Thought, use the same thing here,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: it's like why not both? Why not? Yes, look after
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: your physical health, I mean, and look after your mental
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: and emotional skills.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because the two are intertwined me that that
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: brings me joy, happiness and contentment.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: To hear that from a happiness researcher, I.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: Think that's a that's a point to end it on.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: So Declan and more can people go to buy the book,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: to find out more about you, to book you for
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: talks because I know you do corporate talks? Is I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: have a lot of corporate currency. Who listens to this?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: So where do we send people?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: So a few places. The book is out in all
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: good bookstores. So if you go to your local bookstore
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: and they don't have it, then clearly not a good one.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Tell them to up their game. But if you just
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: look for How to Be Happy, it's on the bookshelves
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: at Amazon, book Topia, all the normal places to get books.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: If you're a podcast person, which I'm guessing you are
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: because you're listening to one, I also have a podcast
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: by the same name, how to Be Happy. If you're
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: looking for your own development and skills and learning more
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: about the college than be You Happiness College, And if
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: you're looking for those corporate talks and bringing happiness into
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: the workplace, then heading to Declan Edwards dot com dot
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: au to find out more about that.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Awesome man, great stuff, important work. Keep on.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you will keep on keeping on, and I'll
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: look forward to part two at some stage.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, you and I both