Tal Ben-Shahar
Happier - Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
EPISODE 193
Can You Learn to Be Happy? If you feel like you’re floundering when it comes to finding meaning in life, look no further than Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. He’ll give you some specific and actionable tips to increase your joy today.
Learn about this emotion in just 3 lessons:
Happiness breeds success and all life goals point toward it.
Balance your outlook on the present and future to get more joy in your life.
Nurturing worthwhile relationships will make you happier.
"When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates". Happier by Ben Tap Shahar
INTRO
Tal and how he reversed his unhappiness
Selfish or selfless (3m14)
WHAT IS HAPPINESS
Tal states that a happy life does not need to be happy all the time; don’t chase it
Acceptance of pain (2m08)
Tal breaks down how happiness, and the connection to anti-fragility, is so relevant for us now more than ever
Post Traumatic Growth (4m20)
PURSUING HAPPINESS
Tal and the happiness paradox, plus his SPIRE steps to happiness
Looking indirectly at happiness (4m45)
OUTRO
Tal’s final tip breaks down the critical misconceptions about happiness
Study of Happiness (2m49)
READING:
If you would prefer a short summary of the book you can find it here on Blinkist.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 192. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man with the plan, Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning.
Hey, good morning, Mike, I'll tell you what the plan today is to carry on our series on happiness, which I tell you what I'm already learning a lot and thoroughly enjoying.
How about you?
Me too. Technically we should all be 10% happier from our episode. Two shows ago. We then added in a little reflection. I think that gets us to 15% happier. Yeah. and boy, today. I think we're gonna shove it into the twenties, maybe 30% happier. What do you think,
mark? Yeah, I totally agree.
Today. Listeners and members, we are digging into as show 192. Tal Ben-Shahar: Happier. Learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfillment. Mike, remember when we had our show with Dan Harris and we were reflecting on the title and that was getting you. And I pretty pumped, I think Tal Ben-Shahar: Happier is doing a thoroughly good job in at least having the runner up for the most promising title within
happen series.
I think you're right. Who doesn't want to, a little bit of joy in their day, but then on the long term thing, lasting fulfillment, they're so big and amorphous, I'm really looking forward to breaking them down into things that I can do so I can get a little bit of sparkle in my day and feel good for the longer term.
I didn't know a lot about Tal Ben-Shahar and his book app called actually titled happier. I didn't know a lot about it before we studied it for the show, but it promises some really good thinking, some really practical things that you can do around happiness, but more importantly, perhaps. He really challenge us as challenges us in a very Moonshot's way.
That happiness really isn't pleasure. There's a lot more to it than just that isn't there.
Yeah. I think as we were finding out within Dan Harris, it was almost. Having a moment, he had that fantastic. Not fantastic for him, but a very vivid story where he had this panic attack.
And then he went to his own sort of self journey to understand a little bit more about what makes him happier. What we're now gonna see as we dig into the world of Tal Ben-Shahar: Happier is, I think, much more of a science approach. He was a teacher at Harvard university and he ran the most popular.
Life changing course, as some people described it to all of his students and it was highly oversubscribed. And I think that revealed the intention that a lot of us have when it comes to this amorphous or more strange ideal. Of happiness. Yeah. And as we're gonna hear from Tal during the course of today's show, he reflects on studies, research references, maybe even some advice from some of the self-help individuals that are out there.
And he does this fantastic job of trying to weave it all together so that you and I readers and listeners, we can all get a better understanding of this concept of this perhaps crazy. Of happiness and how to be, yeah.
How good. And he definitely, what I love about him is he has this idea where he has got the scientific academic body of work, the practical application.
And also he's not proposing to us the easy path, but definitely the path of more meaning. So mark, I'm keen to get stuck in where do you wanna start? Yeah.
Yeah. I think you. If there's ever a show, that's all about moonshot. It's gonna be today's show with Tal Ben Shar. So let's hear from the man himself talking about how he reversed his unhappiness and it also introduces you and I to the idea of selfishness or selflessness.
I became interested in happiness because of my own unhappiness. It didn't make sense to me because looking at my life from the outside, things looked great. But from the inside, it didn't feel that way. We were told from a very young age, whether explicitly or implicitly, that it is all about success. It's all about the attainment of the next goal of the next milestone.
And yet achieving these goals does not bring. To a happier place, certainly not in the long term. And I wanted to figure out what it is, if anything can lead us to a better, happier, more fulfilled existence. And that is what I've been doing over the past 30 years, looking for answers.
Now, what drew me to studying happiness was of course, first and foremost, my personal experience. I want it to feel better. I wanted to be happier. One of the issues that people have with a pursuit of happiness is that it's a selfish endeavor or is it because when I pursue happiness, when I contribute to myself, a much better place to also help others.
The problem though, doesn't line the pursuit of happiness, but rather in our concepts. So is it selfish or selfless? It's neither in both. It's self full. Selfless synthesizes the best of both worlds of selfishness and selflessness. And they work together reinforcing one another in an upward spiral of generosity and benevolence because we have mirror neurons in our brain.
And when we encounter an act of generosity, That has an impact on us. We're more likely to then act generously and benevolent. So giving is contagious. Now there is a double standard when it comes to cultivating happiness in every other endeavor in life, we understand that we need to practice. We need to put in the time.
Similarly whether happiness, it's not enough to read a book or hear a lecture or come up with an idea as good as it may be for us to become HAPPY. What we need to do is invest time and effort, invest in finding meaning in what we do in life. Go out and exercise, engage with text or nature. Invest in our relationships, not just rely on the fact that there is good chemistry or connection.
We need to put in the work. When we put in the work. That is based on science, on evidence based ideas. That is when we increase our levels of happiness. And because happiness is contagious, we do the same for others.
What an interesting juxtaposition of helping yourself so you can help others. Mike. I think the risk when we talk about this is that it can all become so abstract.
What kind of stuff do you think he is encouraging us to do? What habits should we build so that we can be more self full?
I think immediately when I hear Tal break down this or his interpretation and theory. Happiness is similar to what we've understood on the moonshot show when it comes to management of people or leadership.
You cannot necessarily be the best leader unless you work on yourself. You have to study it. You have to put it into practice. You have to like Ken Blanchard as my one minute manager encourages feedback as well as receives it. And I think that's interesting. And possibly in a direction that I did not appreciate, we would go in with regards to this emotion of happiness.
Instead, it's something that you physically work on. It's a practice you put in the hard work. So when it comes to, like you say, habits and what to do, I think it really comes down to the essential rules of treating each other. Like we would like to be treated, as step one, don't blame others for perhaps the stresses that you might be having.
Because at the end of the day, they probably have stuff going. As well. So it's down to giving each other the benefit of the doubt because that's probably what you would like yourself, don't you think?
Yeah. And it reminds me of when we talked about Adam Grant and he talked about give and take and there's givers, takers and matches, I think there's this really interesting idea about fulfillment and satisfaction and feeling.
Complete and all of that sense of realizing your potential comes from giving, sharing and helping others, but doing so in a way where you help yourself so you can help others. And that's like this big continuous loop. As somebody who is a husband and a parent and someone who works in teams, I'm very mindful in order to contribute.
I have to put others before myself, but in order to be somebody who is generous and supporting that, I need to be in a good place because if I'm exhausted, I just won't be able to bring my best self and I can't support people or I'll be just too NA I'll just be too tired to to help. And when T Ben Shaha has been, a lot of people have questions about this idea of this intersection of selfishness, selflessness, which is called self full it's a balance.
He shares this quote from the Dalai Lama and I wanna read it to you. And I think this really points to something if your intentions, you want to do the right thing, it cannot come at too big. A. To yourself, cuz in the end you don't end up doing good. So here's the quote from the Dalai Lama, caring for others based only on your sacrifice.
Don't last caring must also feed you. Now what I take from that is when I look at the work that I do with colleagues and partners and clients, which I. Invariably love. What I search for is the capacity to work on something that not only that I enjoy, but to be in a place where I can create some sort of value for the other person, it might be that we build a product together, or it might be that I share with them some techniques for them to build a product.
To me that's the giving or in the context here of being selfless. I am giving, I am teaching them. What I get back is working together, enjoying this, but also I, in order to enjoy that loop of giving and taking, I need to make sure of that. I am sleeping, eating, and exercising that I don't have too much work on.
So I see this self full as the capacity to. Be generous to care, to help people around you, to support people around you, but to do so in a way that you get something back from it, the delight, the satisfaction. Yeah. Sometimes it's acknowledgement or praise. If you are always giving and you get nothing back, I think that's the enemy here, right?
Yeah, exactly. I think you are not getting any. The Dalai Lama would say in the quote, you just read. If you're not getting anything back, if it's not feeding you, if it's not feeding your soul, then. You're only doing it for the sake of other people, which is of course good in itself.
But when you can similar to a habit, when you can see or feel, or give yourself the mindset that, treating others as in, in a better way and caring for them then has a positive effect on yourself. I think therefore you are more likely to do it. Because you have started to build in that ability to notice it is a positive reinforcement on yourself and therefore it becomes more of a habit and easier.
Right. Easier. That's what we're looking for, right? Yeah. So I think like a flag here is if you find yourself professionally in a team where the giving comes at a huge cost. Or if you're in a personal relationship where your giving comes at a huge cost, I think that's a flag to open up this book from TA Ben Shaha and ask yourself am I experiencing enough joy and fulfillment?
And it can start you on a path of investigation to ask yourself, are you caring for others based on only your sacrifice? Or are you getting fed too? And I think that's a great pace to start. The second place you could go is to become a member of the Moonshot's podcast. Mate, you could become our patreon and the market is so exciting.
We are almost at the tipping point. We're almost at 50 members and we get the chance to welcome a new member today. So I think Mark, it is time to shine a light on all our wonderful moonshots members. Yes,
the individuals who are learning the secrets to daily habits, motivations, as well as giving us all the support that they can.
And we in turn give them a Luna powered dose of good karma. Bob and Niles, John and Terry Nile Marline, Ken at ma Marja, Rodrigo, Yasmin, and Lisa Sid. Mr. BJ. Maria Paul and Berg, cowman and David, Joe, and crystal Evo, Christian, hurricane brain and Ella Kelly and Barbara, Bob and Andre, Matthew, Eric and Abby ho and Joshua, Chris and Kobe Damon and Deborah Gavin.
And Lasse Tracy, Steve Craig, Lauren, Javier and Daniel, our brand new member. Welcome. Once again to our members and our supporters. Thank you for giving us your support as well as your ears every single week and every single month. And Mike, all it costs is just a simple cup of coffee a month. Isn't it?
It's crazy. And we really appreciate your support, cuz it helps us pay the bills and as our shows get more and more popular. The hosting goes up, the bills get bigger. And it is so exciting to know that we are, our work is being appreciated by you. Actually, it feels really good for us.
Our little secret to daily joy is right, mark. We see all you literally 55,000 people every month, just on the podcast. Not on, not including YouTube and the. At tuning in and we love it to see that cuz it tells us when you become a member that we're creating value that you wanna support us in this endeavor.
As we get up very early every Tuesday morning to record the show, don't we, it's in the early wee hours of a Sydney morning, isn't it? And
similar to what you were saying previous Mike with regards to caring for others and trying to be the best version. You and I, we're not going out late at night.
Are we turning up fresh faces and rosy tails to record our shows? And that's really just about putting our best foot forward.
Isn't it? It really is. So thanks once again, to all of our members. Thank you to you, Daniel. We really do appreciate your support and if you do wanna support us head over to moonshots.io.
Go to the members section and then you'll get connected to Patreon and you can do all of that. Goodness with just a few clicks. What else what's gonna take you a little bit more than just a few clicks is getting through some of the challenges in life. And we've got a couple of clips now where Tal Ben-Shahar is gonna really set up maybe a challenging idea that this pursuit of happiness isn't as easy as you might think.
There are only two kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions. The first kind are the psychopaths. The second kind are dead.
There is a false understanding or expectation that a happy life means being happy all the time. No learning to accept and even embrace painful emotion. Is an important part of a happy life. And the study of painful emotions is an important part of the field of happiness studies. My name is Tal Ben Shahar.
I'm a student and teacher in the field of happiness studies. There is a very important concept that was introduced by Nasim TAed. And that is anti fragility. Anti fragility is essentially resilience. 2.0 resilience. 1.0 is when we put pressure on a system after the pressure is lifted. System goes back to its original form.
Anti fragility takes this idea a step further, you put pressure on a system. It actually grows bigger, stronger. We see antifragile systems all around us and within us. For example, our muscular system, we go to the gym and we lift weights. We're putting pressure on our muscles. What happens as a result, we actually grow stronger.
We're an anti-fragile system. On the psychological level, you know what that's called PTG post traumatic growth. So where post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD is about breaking down. Post-traumatic growth is about growing stronger as a result of pressure, stress. It's anti agility, the role of the science of happiness.
To teach us what conditions we can put in place to increase their likelihood of growing from hardship.
Mike, this is, I think T Ben must be a moonshot listener if he's not yet a member. I dunno, but this seems bang on with where we go with the moonshot show. Doesn't.
It really does.
And I think it's so easy to sit in our minds and think, oh, everything is so hard. I, for me, it's the build of, oh, work, Ugh. I have to work on supporting my parents, Ugh. Then I have my partner. Oh, then I have kids. Everything is calling on me. It's work.
And it's very easy to almost spiral and just say, why is it so hard? Why do I have to fight so hard? Get on the other side. And I think we all suffer a little bit from that. Don't you like it? Just yeah, it feels like life is permanently like work in progress.
I think you are always when you're in that mindset and I've certainly been there as we all do.
You are looking for the next. Relief on you, the next attainment, the next thing that you can tick off the list and move on. And I think where T is leading us here is to not always try and turn the page, try and get to the next thing, get through it, grin and bear it. And maybe take it out on others because you are feeling a little bit low or unhappy along the way instead.
What he's really calling out with this idea. Posttraumatic growth. And this resilience 2.0 from T's anti fragility, is this embracing the embracement, of those experiences and those challenges that come along the way, which I think Mike, you and I are both thinking the same thing. It's Yoko willing again, isn't it?
Yeah. Challenge.
Good. And we're Tempted to avoid challenge, struggle, and pain, and Tal Ben Shaha says in the book that the pain associated with the fear of failure is often stronger than the pain of failure itself.
I could believe that. Yeah. How often? We are our own worst enemies.
Aren't we it's Mike Manson with a subtle art of not giving a Woohoo , we are often we have more pain within our minds as we're fearing potential. Experience more so than the actual experience itself. When you shift your mindset towards maybe embracing those painful experiences, and instead you are getting something out of it, you are learning how you respond to a challenge where you might be able to grow.
Then suddenly it becomes almost dare I say fun.
yeah. Like for me, it's as soon as you don't resist pain, struggle and hardship and just say, oh that is part of life. Like once you accept that it happens. And then as a build on that, then you say, oh, and that is really the path to reward and satisfaction because everything that you fight for feels really good.
Mark Manson talked about that a lot. And the show we did on him. It is something that Joe Rogan talked about a lot who wants to win the lottery because actually if you really earned it and did the work, how good is the millions, the rewards that come from the hard work and there's this great idea from mark Twain, where he says I've experienced a great deal of pain and suffering in my life, most of which has never happened.
Ah, oh, I like that. How
good is that? but that it's so true. Isn't it? It's so true. I think we're,
I think we're just allergic in many ways to pain and challenge what we have learned, whether it's Goggins or here today with T Ben, Shaha just accepting that it happens. Life is hard. It is not easy.
Pleasure is not a default, right? As soon as you do that, you've changed your expectations and said, all right, so it's gonna be a little tricky. It's gonna be hard. I'm gonna have to soldier on. There'll be times when I feel like stopping, but I can't, I need to go through it. The beauty of, if you accept that, what we all know to use, what Tal_Ben-Shahar was talking about, you're in the gym and you're working out and you're really going for it with the weights.
You can feel it. How hard this is on your muscles. And we know that technically there's a sort of a tearing of the muscles and that's why the day after you feel sore because the muscle is growing back. But it grows back stronger. So this is the next big point. So if you accept the pain, then you can be prepared to get the reward on the other side.
So let's have a listen to Tal Ben-Shahar talking about what's. On the other side,
you can essentially situate all our experiences on a continuum. So we have the, on the ups, on the positive side, we have joy and success and fun and gain. And on the, then we have the neutral and then on the negative side, we would have pain and sorrow and struggles and anxiety.
And most people think that dealing with happiness is about dealing with the upside when things are going well. However, happiness, the science of happiness, can help no less when things are not going well. So yeah, it can help us go from a five to a seven. It can also help us deal with a negative five in a negative seven.
And in order to understand that we need to understand an idea that was introduced just a few years ago. By Nicholas Taleb is a professor at NYU. And he talks about the idea of anti fragility. And what is anti fragility? As I've studied it, I've come to call it resilience 2.0.
So what is resilience? 1.0 traditional resilience, so to speak actually, a term that comes from engineering and it's the ability of material or something to go back to its original form after pressure has been put on it. So we have, piece of rubble, we squish it, put pressure on it, it's resilient.
It goes back or we have a ball, we drop it. It bounces back. This is what resilience is about. Bouncing back anti fragility. Take that a step further. So if you put pressure on a system, it doesn't just go back to where it was before it goes to a better, stronger, higher place. So you squish material, it goes back and becomes bigger.
You throw a ball, it bounces back up higher than it was before. Now. The thing about anti fragility is that we see anti systems all around us. I'll give you a J just one example or two examples, one physiological, one, psychological, the physiological example is your muscles, your muscular system. You go to a gym and you lift weights and you're putting pressure on your muscles as a result of that pressure.
You go, once you go twice a week later, you go again and again, as a result of the pressure that you're putting on the system, it doesn't just go back to where it was before. You actually get stronger, bigger, healthier, that's potentially an antifragile system. So this is physiologically psychologically. We also see it, most of my students in my classes, most, not all are psychology majors.
And I always ask them this question. And usually I'm not the first psychology class that they take. So I asked them the following question. I said, put your hand up if you know what PTSD is. PTSD post traumatic stress disorder, the overwhelming majority of students, psychologists, or not put their hand up.
Then I said to them, okay, great. Put your hand down. I have another question. Now I'd like you to put your hand up. If you know what PTG is now, I'm sure many people from this audience know what PTG is. The overwhelming majority of my students have no clue. PTG post-traumatic growth. Now, here is the thing.
According to the research by Kashian Calhoun, PTG is twice as likely to happen as PTSD twice as likely. If, and this is a very big if first, about the possibility, the existence of PT. If you don't know about this possibility then it's unlikely to, or less likely to happen. The second thing it's to know what conditions you can put in place.
In order to increase their likelihood of PTG, you cannot guarantee PTG. Sometimes trauma does lead to a, to PTSD, to disintegration. However, if you know what conditions to put in place, you can increase their likelihood, significantly increase their likelihood of growing from trauma.
Mike, again, this is a really interesting breakdown and reveal as we are within our happier and happiness series of the concept of what it means to a struggle and find things quite difficult, but also B come out the other side and maybe B that little bit more happier, or at least comfortable with the experience that you've gone.
Yeah. And what he goes into in the book is these five key areas that you can explore with PTG, like how you can grow after a real challenge, hardship, trauma, whatever it is. I think the first let's have some fun with this mark we'll get in the locker room and let's pep ourselves up and all of our listeners, I think you go through something really tough.
Okay. The first thing you can do is just say I survived. There is growth in that idea. If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. And I really relate to that when you do a really intense or long physical exercise and you really push. Once you've got across the finish line, you're like, dang, I'm still alive.
And I did it. Yeah. Like I recently did a marathon and my wife posted yep. First marathon done. No heart attack still alive. Thank God. Shared it with all our friends but there's so much truth that you can appreciate that you went to your boundary. Maybe if you were Goggins, like you went through what you thought was your boundary and all of a sudden you're like, wow, This is amazing.
Like after some enormous challenge, you can just have an appreciation for life itself.
And I think the same is true perhaps to a less clear or transparent extent when you struggle with things in your career, I think you are totally right with the physical element, but I think it's true from the psychological point as well.
Isn't it? Whereby you are relieved. To have survived. It sounds a little bit dramatic, but I survived that project or I survived that experience of working with so and and yes, it can help as you reflect back on it, can't it.
And the second part is it's all about relationships as well.
Very often we go about these things. With others, we're in it. It's a team sport. Life is a team sport. So you can look at each other and say, Hey, we did it. So not only I survived, but we did it together and you can appreciate the bond and the companionship that you have with those. Very much what first time marathon runners experience is holy hell, I didn't know.
I could do that. What else have I previously thought? Impossible. That now might be possible. If you had said to me a year ago, I was gonna run a marathon. I'd be like, no way Jose, but now that I've done it, I'm like, oh, what else? And then you can start to say if I built a system to go and do a marathon or work on a really hard project Then, in yourself that you are battle ready, so you can bring almost confidence to say something in your personal life or on the sports field.
You can bring that to your professional life because you have that inner strength. It doesn't matter whether it's work or personal or on the sports field. It's all coming from the same place. Isn't it, mate?
Yeah, it really is that personal strength is something that you can control and.
If and are comfortable with where you can lean towards and that you can rely on yourself to experience and therefore get through a particularly difficult patch. That's pretty encouraging. Isn't it, Mike? And I think that in turn leads to the fifth outcome of Ben Shahaz.
Work on post-traumatic growth. Is this spiritual change because then it can lean into either a, an area of, faith or it can in turn lead into an area of increased happiness. And maybe if happier is the, of all encompassing words, it's comfort, it is the acceptance that where I am, is good.
I'm happy. Yeah. I'm happy. And it's that appreciation of, and gratitude of the now, which I think is something again that we've really delved into with all of the work we've done on being grateful and in the moment and. I think this is one of the big ahas when we're digging into happiness is the fact that we can learn these potential patterns that you see when you are doing something really difficult.
Let's say a marathon training, knowing that at the end, you might have this newfound appreciation for yourself or life or maybe others. Is going to help you and stay motivated throughout that experience of challenge prior to the event, don't you think?
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, we use the idea of a marathon just cuz it seems so daunting and all of that, but it could be a project.
It could be something you do at home, something with friends, with your community, or it could be in the office with you. I think the point here is after going through a challenge and to use this marathon analogy, it is traumatic on the body. The body is like you are running 42 kilometers for three or four hours.
Are you mad? The body is like, what are you doing? This is bonkers. And those that last. Five or 10 kilometers, those last five miles. Oh boy. On your first marathon, do you meet the maker? You're just like, whoa, this is hard, but the sense of completeness that you have at the end, because it is such an intense endeavor, the satisfaction and fulfillment when you finally can stop knowing that you just gave it your.
Epic awesome. Worthwhile. And that's what we just can learn from Tal Ben-Shahar. We should train ourselves on a two step process, except that it's not all gonna be easy and that there's gonna be hard work. And the other side of the hard work, the challenge, even maybe the trauma of it, we are stronger for it.
And if we can hold that to be true, we can fight off those survival instincts. Take the easy path, cut the corner you don't need to because all sorts of goodness is there. And mark. Something that's not nearly as daunting is leaving a review for the moonshots podcast, but it is equally rewarding.
Wouldn't you say?
The reward, if we start at the act, you know quite a simple little process, isn't it? Mike, if you listeners are enjoying what you're hearing and learning out loud with myself or Mike and the moonshots team. Pop along into your podcast app of choice and leave us a review or even a rating.
You can do that in the apple podcast app. You can leave us some comments and also you can leave a rating within Spotify too. And this really helps Mike the result of that input, which is getting out into the ears of more listeners around the. We hear from listeners and fans very regularly from all four corners of the globe and Mike, it gives us so much motivation as well as gratitude.
Doesn't it? When it comes to creating the show, when we're hearing. From our listeners, because we really are just trying to put out a product into the world that is providing some benefits, some information on happiness, productivity, motivation, we're learning out loud. And we're glad that listeners from all over the globe are learning out loud with us every single week, but it really comes down to.
The customers and you guys and the listeners just give us a little rating or review because it does that algorithmic work.
Isn't it Mike? Oh, it starts a snowball effect. And in the last week we've had lots and lots of new listeners waiting for this. This is a collection of countries, Norway, India, Singapore, Hungary, Slovenia, Vietnam.
Estonia Nepal, like how awesome is that? That's because you guys get in there, you give us a thumbs up, you give us a star, a rating, or a review. This helps us to be discovered by people all around the planet. So thank you so much. And if you haven't had a chance to do it yet, open up the app right now, it literally, I think it's like a three to five second process.
Give us some love, cuz we get love back. And that is what it's all. Now as we turn our minds we've learned that there is. A certain need to get over challenges, to get over hardship, to get through the pain and the trauma, because on the other side there's all sorts of goodness. And what is really important now that we are discovering this system from Tal Ben-Shahar is we're gonna go next level into some key steps that you can take in the pursuit.
Of happiness.
Now, there is a paradox when it comes to pursuing happiness. On the one hand, we know that happiness is a good thing, whether in and of itself or as a means toward other ends at the same time, we also know from research by Iris MOS and others, that people who say to themselves, happiness is important for me.
I want to pursue it. Those individuals actually end up being less happy. In fact, they're more likely to experience depression. So the paradox is that on the one hand, happiness is clearly a good thing. On the other hand, valuing it as a good thing is problematic. So what we do to resolve this paradox is that we pursue happiness in.
Think about sunlight. So if I look at the sun directly, it's going to hurt my eyes. However, if I break down sunlight into its elements, into its constituents, I can look at the colors of the rainbow. So I'm indirectly looking at the sunlight, enjoying it, savoring it in the same way, pursuing happiness, direct.
Can cause more harm than good, but breaking it down into its elements can lead us to enjoy the indirect pursuit of happiness and by extension to raise our overall levels of happiness. What are the metaphorical colors of the rainbow? When it comes to happiness? Here we have what I've come to call the Spire model and it can trigger the antifragile system.
Spire is an acronym that stands for spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational. And finally emotional wellbeing. Spirituality is about finding a sense of meaning and purpose in life at work and at home. If you wake up in the morning with a purpose, you are more likely to overcome barriers. When it comes to physical wellbeing, the most important idea to look at is stress.
The silent killer in the United States. More than half of the employees do not use up their vacation time. And even those that do close to half are still tethered to them. The problem is not the stress. It's the lack of recovery with intellectual wellbeing. There's research showing that people who are curious, who ask questions are not just happier.
They also live longer. Another important element is not just asking questions. It's deeply engaging with material. It can be a text, a work of art, even nature. Relational wellbeing is very important. The number one predictor of happiness is quality time. We spend time with people we care about and who care about us.
And it turns out the number one condition that we can put in place to increase the likelihood of anti fragility. Growing through hardship is the quality of our relationships. Finally, emotional wellbeing. So embracing painful emotions is critical, but how do we then cultivate pleasurable ones, specifically the emotion of gratitude.
CICE zero talked about gratitude as the mother of all virtues. When we appreciate the good in us. We have more of it. So happiness is much more than pleasure. Happiness is whole being these five elements together. Create that sunlight. Happiness. I don't think there is a point before which one is unhappy after which one is happy.
Rather happiness resides on a continu. It's a lifelong journey and knowing that we can have realistic rather than unrealistic expectations about what is possible. I do not think that things necessarily happen for the best. However, we can learn to make the best of things that happen.
Oh Mike, what a, what an epic clip that we have within this
show.
Mike, we could have done a whole show just on that clip. We
Really could have, because we're gonna try and break down as much as we can. But the thing that stands out right away to me, Mike, which I think is something to start with is actually something that towel says rod towards the end of the clip, which is the fact.
Happiness, happy inverted commerce or feeling content is a lifelong journey. And once we have that in mind, we realize that we aren't rushing towards it. We are not waking up every morning, feeling unhappy. Because we are not happy. Instead, once you accept that, it's something you just have to work on. Like anything like a muscle, like anything you have to put into practice.
It's suddenly I personally think feels more achievable and instead of judging yourself, And how you're feeling today. Perhaps instead you are looking into ways and habits and mechanics that can help you get that little bit closer towards that destination, rather than trying to be unhappy with where you are right now.
How do you hear from that?
I think a big theme in his pursuit of happiness is resetting expectations. And I know this is something that I'm coming back to a lot in the show, but I think this is where it all starts not having. And perhaps I was a victim of this and that's why it's really jumping out at me is the reality of what he's saying is just be prepared for the harder.
It's not gonna come easy. It's not gonna come instantly, but it's something that you have to build daily habits for. And when I look at his Spire these five steps we'll have a link to these in the show notes, which you can get@moonshots.io. This is what a playbook lets me just play back to you.
Leading a meaningful life and mindfully saving the present, caring for the body, engaging in deep learning, nurturing, constructive relations, feeling all emotions. Mark I think there's so many great starting points to feeling more satisfied. Not only with life, but just joy in your day and a bit of fulfillment for the longer term.
What I was wondering is, should we try five habits to unlock these five steps? Are you ready? Oh, yes. All right. Here's your challenge. Name me one moonshot habit to get a more meaningful life and mindfully savoring the present.
I think Mike, unfortunately, I'm gonna be stealing the one that you probably wanted to say, which is reflection.
Yeah. It's journaling. Totally. It's what we heard with Matthew McConaughy last week in the show. Yeah. And what we're hearing from T if you don't give your time to recover. You're not necessarily getting the most out of it.
Very good. For the physical, this is the P of the Spire framework. What's one habit you could adopt: a moonshot habit caring for the body and tapping into the mind body connection.
There's gotta be exercise, hasn't it?
It definitely does. And if that's too much for you, you can throw in a little bit of breathing work, breath work, right? Yep. 4, 7, 8 breath work. Very good for connecting mind and body. Okay. Intellectual. So we're at the eye of the S P. R E SP framework engaging in deep learning where you, that would have to be listening to moonshots, right?
exactly. Exactly. It's learning something new every day. Robin Sharma when we broke down his 5:00 AM club, one of the core pillars of his strategy was to. Yes. Learn something new every day. Doesn't matter what time it is. You don't all have to wake up at 5:00 AM , but it's learning something new each day allows you to have curiosity and encourage your brain to keep on ticking,
relational.
This is nurturing a constructive relationship with self and. Others, what would you do
there? I think this is really encouraging us to reach out to those people who are around us, whether it's teammates or colleagues or partners, and instead of closing them out, maybe it's staying away from your digital space.
Obviously digital connections are great. It's important to pick up the phone and message people if they don't not physically around you, but actually having the real life interactions, I think is what I'm getting from Ben Shaha here.
Emotional. This is the last one of the by steps. Feeling all emotions, reaching towards resilience and positivity.
What would be the habit you would do there?
Obviously it's coming from Eckhart tolle and the power of now, isn't it noticing the present. It's some of the tips that Eckhart had for us, even when you're brushing your teeth, it's the feel of the bristles. It's maybe the vibration of the toothbrush.
It's the taste of the mind. The coldness of the floor, it's really appreciating your sensory connections to what's happening right here. Right now, the chair I'm sitting on is in the warmth of the room, the movement of my laptop screen is you and I are recording this show. That for me, Mike is where the emotional connections come from.
There you go. That's five practical moonshot habits you can do to get your pursuit of happiness with the SP steps from tal Ben Shaha in order and going in the right way. But mark, we have just one more final clip and it's a, it's an absolute cracker. Why don't you set us up for the last bit of wisdom from TA Ben?
We've certainly learned a lot from TA today with regards to self fullness, the exceptions of pain and looking maybe not directly at the sun. But looking at happiness from a different angle. So let's hear from tell just one more time today, as he breaks down this critical misconception about happiness and his study of happiness
back in 2015, I was on a transatlantic flight.
When a question came to, how is it that there is a field of study for psychology philosophy, history, medicine, geography, you. And there is no field of study for happiness. Yeah. There is positive psychology, but that's just the psychology of happiness. What about what philosophers like LASU or Aristotle had to say about it?
What about what literature remarked on happiness or neuroscience or theology or economics? Why isn't there an interdisciplinary field of study that looks at life's ultimate, highest goal are resolved on that flight to help create a field dedicated. To the study of happiness. There are two main critiques that people have for the field of happiness studies.
The first one is that it's superficial. The reason is that they equate happiness with pleasure. So when people say, oh, I went to the beach, I was so happy or. Ice cream just makes me happy. That's not happiness. That is a pleasure. Happiness is much more than pleasure. It also includes our ability to deal with painful experiences, finding a sense of meaning and purpose, cultivating healthy relationships and intellectual development.
The second critique of the field of. Stems from the false understanding that a happy life is a life devoid of painful emotions. It's not, it can never be part of a happy life is the VAs of daily life. Overall happiness includes life's ups and downs. The science of happiness can strengthen our psychological immune system because as I see.
The role of the science of happiness is first of all, to introduce us to concepts like post traumatic growth, which is growing stronger as a result of hardship. And second to teach us what conditions. We can put in place in our homes, in our organizations, in our schools, in our countries to increase their likelihood of growing from hardship.
Hardship is inevitable. What we do with hardship. Here we have a choice.
We have a choice mark and that is really how we want to perceive. The mindset that we want to have to have the ups and downs. And I think what we've heard today is Tal Ben-Shahar has given us quite the roadmap to face those ups and downs.
And we don't, we just don't have to start with expectations of perfection, but rather simple habits that we can do every day. This is. On point moonshot kind of stuff, isn't it?
Isn't it fun that the series of happiness is already revealing such new ways of thinking of reflecting and looking at this concept of happiness, Mike?
It's certainly much more than as towels say in that final clip, more than just the feeling of pleasure or feeling maybe joyful instead, happiness is a journey. Like anything in life, it's something you put in the practice, the time and the effort, and then you get the result out of it. And I think what's really surprising as we're going through all of these episodes on the concept of happiness is how it's something that we really do need to work on both physically as well as mentally.
I think this is really enjoyable and revealing. Isn't it?
It is, and he gave us a new acronym, PTG. He gave us a framework of five steps. SPPI of all of those, which one's getting, gonna get an extra bit of attention from you, mark over coming days. Oh,
Oh, this is well, that's actually a pretty challenging one.
Isn't it? I think it reveals that happiness is. A one stop shop. It's something you've gotta work on. So I think for me, it's the E with emotion, within the spiral model, it's healing, the emotions being present, but also working towards that major moonshot mantra of resilience and that reveal of resilience 2.0 with anti fragility is such a big takeaway.
What about you, Mike? What are you really taking away from? Today's show?
I think I'm a bit similar to you in that SP those five steps sound very good. And I think it's all about just setting the right expectations. Lots of work to do there. And mark, we're really in the thicker things in happiness.
And I just wanna say thank you to you for joining me on this adventure, where we learn out loud. And I wanna thank you. Our members and listeners for today were a big part, a big step in the happiness journey here on the Moonshot's podcast, it was show 192 where we studied the work of Tal Ben-Shahar his book HAPPIER.
Learning the secrets to daily joy and lasting for fulfillment. And boy, it started with, look, you have to help yourself if you want to help others. And that was the idea of self full and part of our journey towards happiness is accepting pain and accepting that there is growth. On the other side of challenge, we can appreciate life relationships, new possibilities, personal strength, and personal.
And spiritual change. It's all there on the other side of any challenge. So we can lead a much more fulfilling life, a life that is those five key steps, spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotionally good. They can be both good in the long term and daily habits in the short term, because we're gonna need them.
Cuz life will be full of ups and downs. But if we hold true to the science of happiness from T Ben Shaha, we will be able to learn. Loud together will be able to be the best version of ourselves. And by the way, that's what we're all about here at the Moonshot's podcast. That's a wrap.