Speaker 1: Hey, it's your friend Mel,
and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.
And I also wanna thank you for making the decision to listen
to something that could help you improve your life.
I think that's pretty cool. Now, if you're new,
I wanna welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family.
And by the way, thank you for making this one
of the most popular podcasts in the entire world.
My name's Mel Robbins.
I'm a New York Times bestselling author,
and one of the world's leading experts on
confidence and motivation.
And I'm on a mission to inspire
and empower you with the tools that you need
to create a better life.
And you wanna know a very important component
of creating a better life that's happiness.
And I know that this is a topic that you love hearing about.
In fact, every single time that you
and I talk about it together, you want more.
And today I'm gonna introduce you
to somebody I deeply admire.
He's one of the world's leading experts on happiness.
His name Dr. Tall Ben Shahar.
And that name, I bet you're like, wait a minute,
I think I've heard that name before.
Well, let me tell you where you may have heard it,
because we did an episode just a little bit ago
on the Science of Goals.
And at the very end of that episode,
I shared some powerful research from none other than Dr.
Tall Ben Shahar.
Remember that it was the research about the Olympic
medalists and how they felt happier as they were training
for the Olympics when they were pursuing that dream
way happier when they were pursuing it than
when they actually won the medal.
And that part of the episode about goals
and how goals are critical to happiness
because your goals represent the pursuit of something
that matters to you.
You love that? So, you know what I did?
I begged Tall to join us today. And he is here.
He's here to unpack his research
and share very specific takeaways with you.
Now, T is very well known for being Harvard University's
most popular teacher like ever.
He taught two of the most popular courses in Harvard's
history, positive psychology,
and the Psychology of leadership.
And today, you are getting key takeaways.
He's also the New York Times bestselling author of eight.
Yep. You heard it. Eight in incredible books,
all about happiness, many
of which are required reading in university
courses around the world.
And you know, what I love about Tal is
that he has this amazing ability
to bridge the academic aspect of happiness with the insights
that you need to apply it to your life.
And today, Tal is sharing the five elements of happiness.
So let's jump in. Tal, welcome to the Mel Robs podcast.
Thank you, Mel. So good to be here.
I am so excited to talk to you.
I wanna just start with the beginning of your story,
because here you are one
of the world's leading experts on the topic of happiness.
Something we all wanna know more about.
But when you got to college,
you thought you were gonna study computer science.
So what happened in your life that created this big pivot?
Speaker 2: So I became interested in happiness
because of my own unhappiness.
Oh. And um, you know, it started off, uh, even
before, uh, college, I was, uh, a squash player.
My dream as a, as a young boy was
to be a professional athlete.
Uh, initially I was supposed to be basketball,
but I stopped growing at about the age of five six .
So, uh, that didn't happen. Um, but squash was it for me.
And I wasn't happy as a child,
but I would always tell myself,
when I become a professional,
when I win the national championship, then I'll be happy.
And, uh, for years I was quite miserable.
And then I won the national championship
and I was ecstatic, right?
For about four hours. And then again, going back to
where I was before the same stress and unhappiness.
And I thought something was wrong here with my model.
But then I said, oh no,
it's when I become a world champion, then I'll be happy.
And I continued towards that
and I played professionally for a few years.
And, uh, then I got injured and I went to college
and I said, okay.
So I didn't make it in, uh, in, in, in athletics,
but I'll do it academically.
And I went to Harvard and, uh, I was a top student there,
and I was miserable.
And my sophomore year, very cold, Boston morning, I went
to my academic advisor
and I told her that I'm switching majors.
I was a computer science major. And she said, uh, what to?
And I said, well, I'm leaving computer science
and moving over to philosophy and psychology.
And she said, why? And I said, because I have two questions.
First, why aren't I happy? Second, how can I become happier?
And it's with these two questions that I then went on
to get my undergraduate degree, then went
to graduate school in education
and organizational behavior all the time, asking
how can I help myself, individuals, couples, organizations,
and ultimately nations increase their levels of happiness?
And that was, uh, 30 years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's quite a,
you sound like a really intense dude. .
No, seriously. Like you sound like somebody
that was incredibly tightly wound,
but that's not my experience of you right now.
And so I only say that
because to me, if somebody that is that driven
and that competitive
and that tightly wound can figure out, first of all
why you're not happy, and also then figure out how
to become a happier person
and then translate that to everybody else, that's cool.
Because that means the rest of us can probably do it too.
Speaker 2: Um, there's no question on my mind, again,
after 30 years of, uh, work, internal work,
external work research, that there is a lot
that we can do to become happier.
Speaker 1: So if you go back to that sophomore year at Harvard
and you're sitting there with your academic advisor
and your advisor says, wait, what?
You're gonna switch? Why would you switch?
And you say, because I wanna figure out why I'm so unhappy.
What did you learn about why you were so unhappy
that we might be able to apply to our own lives? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the first thing that I learned,
or that was, uh, you know, obvious to me at that time was
that success doesn't lead to happiness.
Hmm. You know, we think there are certain
boxes that we need to check.
So for me, it was winning that championship,
or later getting into Harvard, or becoming a top student
or getting a good job and making a lot of money.
All of us know that the best
that these achievements can do is lead
to temporary happiness, a spike.
Right? But that high doesn't last.
So that's the first thing that, that I learned.
Now, the thing that amazed me is that while we all know that
achievement, uh, attainment reaching a goal will not lead
to lasting happiness, we continue to live as if it will.
Not only that, that's also how we raise our children.
That's also what we teach our students.
We tell them, you may not be happy.
Now you may be miserable, you may be stressed.
But when you get to your top school,
when you get your desired job, when you make that amount
of money, then you'll be happy.
Those successes will lead to that temporary high
and nothing more.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't it make you happy to achieve something
that you've worked really hard to get?
Speaker 2: Because our system is built
for the pursuit, not for the outcome.
So once there is the outcome, there is sort
of like a, okay, check.
Been there, done that. Now I need something else.
And that's part of our nature.
And you know, you may say, you know, it,
it's terrible, it's awful.
Why is it that it just is, you know, why is the law
of gravity, the law of gravity?
The question is, how do we accept nature?
Just like we accept the law of gravity? Hmm.
How do we accept our human nature
and then build our life based on that?
Speaker 1: So, if I am hearing you correctly, what you are saying
is that one of the biggest things
that somebody could take away from this conversation
with you is that you are not hardwired
to feel happy simply because you've achieved something.
That happiness is tied
to pursuing it, not the achieving of it.
Speaker 2: Yes. And if you do live by the, uh,
belief that achievement will lead to happiness,
that will cause you a great deal of unhappiness.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a big one.
Speaker 2: In fact, that is one of the main causes for, uh,
the levels of unhappiness that we see in our world.
Because people are focusing on, uh, on the wrong thing.
You know, they're, they're climbing up the wrong mountain.
Speaker 1: So can you break that down for us?
'cause I wanna just stay on this point and highlight it,
because if,
if thinking about happiness wrong creates unhappiness,
explain to us how
you want us to think about happiness.
Speaker 2: Hmm. So happiness is important.
It matters just like we are, uh, hardwired, uh, not
to celebrate successes forever.
We're also hardwired to pursue happiness. Okay?
So it's not that I'm saying, okay,
forget about happiness, happiness matters.
Okay? However, there's also research,
and this is research done, uh, quite recently
by a professor Moss, MAUS, showing
that if I wake up in the morning
and say to myself, I want to be happy,
or happiness is important for me,
or it's a value for me, I will actually become less happy.
Speaker 1: What? Speaker 2: Wait
Speaker 1: A minute. Yeah. Really?
Speaker 2: That, that was exactly my reaction. That's a problem.
You know, and, and you know, I read about this, you know,
five years ago, and I said,
but you know, that's what I'm dedicating my life to.
Of course, happiness is important for me.
And yet what the research clearly shows is that
this will make you less happy.
So does this mean we should, um, say to ourselves, you know,
I don't wanna be happy, wink wink.
I actually do. You know,
self-deception is certainly not the path to happiness.
So what do we do about it?
Let me use an analogy that was very helpful
for me in thinking about happiness.
Imagine you go outside, it's a, it's a beautiful sunny day.
Mm-Hmm. . And you wanna enjoy the sun.
So you look up at the sun directly, what happens?
You hurt yourself, it burns. It hurts. You tear up.
So looking at the sun directly hurts.
However, what if you take a prism
and you break the sunlight,
and then you look at what has just been broken.
In other words, the colors of the rainbow.
Then you can look at the, the sunlight and enjoy it.
But you're looking at it indirectly.
It's the same with happiness.
Pursuing it directly and saying, I wanna be happy.
Happiness is important for me, that will make us unhappy.
But if I break down happiness into its metaphorical colors
of the rainbow, and then pursue it indirectly,
that is when I can actually become happier.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm gonna see if I can understand this,
because you are saying, I totally get the part
that if you focus at something maniacally, right,
you're gonna get the sun spots.
You cannot hold that intent, gaze at something,
even if you want to.
But when the sunlight hits a prism
and it casts a rainbow, you are saying that the rainbow
is the way that you indirectly enjoy the sun.
Yeah. I have so many questions.
Speaker 2: What, what is the definition of happiness? Yeah.
So there are many definitions to happiness.
In fact, as many definitions as there are people
around the world, the one that I work with
that I find most helpful actually draws on the work
of Helen Keller, who says that for her happiness is
wholeness, WH wholeness.
So I define happiness as whole person wellbeing.
There are five elements to happiness.
There may be more, but five main
elements to happiness, okay?
Which, uh, we call the spire. The aspire.
S-P-I-R-E-S stands for spiritual wellbeing. Okay?
Spiritual wellbeing is about, uh, of course we can attain it
through religion, but we can also find it through, uh,
doing something that is meaningful to us.
Purposeful, uh, by being mindful, by being present.
We experience the, the spiritual, that's one
of the colors of the rainbow.
So if I wake up in the morning
and say, I want to be happy, I'll be less happy.
But if I wake up in the morning
and say, I wanna find something which is more meaningful
to do, or I'm gonna meditate for 10 minutes.
Now, that is an indirect way of pursuing happiness.
That's one of the colors. So that's the S of spire.
The P of Spire, that's physical wellbeing.
Physical wellbeing is about nutrition.
It's about, um, about rest
and recovery, sleep, it's about, uh, uh, touch.
It's about what we eat. That of course, matters.
So if I start to exercise regularly, that's an indirect way
of pursuing happiness.
Hmm. If I eat more healthfully the same,
then we have the I of Spire.
I stands for intellectual wellbeing.
That's about, uh, curiosity,
about asking questions about constantly learning about deep
diving, whether it's into a text or a work of art or nature.
And these are, again, all indirect ways
of pursuing happiness.
The fourth color of the rainbow, the R of Spire,
relational wellbeing, number one, predictor of happiness.
Quality time we spend with people we care
about and who care about us.
So if I spend more time with my loved ones,
indirectly pursuing happiness.
And finally, the E of Spire, emotional wellbeing.
Emotional wellbeing is first
of all about giving ourselves the permission to be human.
In other words, allowing the, um,
embracing painful emotions that are natural parts
of any life, even a happy life, sadness, anger, frustration,
allowing these emotions to freely flow through us,
paradoxically actually leads to more happiness.
So these five elements of happiness, spiritual, physical,
intellectual, relational,
and emotional wellbeing are the metaphorical
colors of the rainbow.
And when we pursue them,
we're actually pursuing happiness
indirectly, and becoming happier.
Speaker 1: As you were describing all five elements,
you did keep saying the word wellbeing,
and it makes a lot of sense, right?
That all of these components go into
a, a, a, a whole look at how to elevate
or experience happiness in your life.
What do I gotta achieve next
to feel that thing that I wanna feel?
How would you begin to explain to somebody like that
what this actually means and how you pursue it?
If you don't even know what happiness kind of feels like?
You got the wrong definition,
Speaker 2: Right?
You know, so the first thing
that I would do is I would take a step back
and, um, explore models of happiness.
Because if you think about it, in our culture today,
we have two major models of happiness.
The one model of happiness, which is mostly associated
with the West, is you become happier
by achieving your goals.
Right? That's the most important thing you get to the peak
of the mountain, that you'll be happy.
Yes. That's a model that I tried and that many people tried.
It doesn't really work.
The other model that people veer towards is, uh, okay,
so the future doesn't get us happiness.
Let's focus on the now, let's just be in the present moment.
Yes. And that's an alternative model,
which is mostly associated with the east Mm-Hmm, , you know,
meditation, mindfulness, being the here and now.
There are problems with both models.
We know what the problem is with the future oriented model,
but there's also a problem with the present oriented model.
And that is human nature, again, because we do want goals.
We are ambitious, we do want to achieve things.
And the question is, can these two models be reconciled?
In other words, can you draw the best of both worlds?
And the answer is yes, goals matter.
They're important, whether it is to, you know,
to win a championship in sports,
or whether it is to get into a college,
or whether it is to make X amount of money.
Mm-hmm, goals matter. We care about them.
Speaker 1: Why do they matter in the context of happiness?
Speaker 2: Well, they matter because again, it's part of our nature.
We want to improve, we want to get better.
And that's a beautiful
and wonderful part of our nature,
which we ought to celebrate.
Not, uh, not not attack. So that's a good thing. Okay?
However, what we also know is that the achievement
of these goals will not make us happy.
What will make us happy?
Not the achievement of these goals,
but the existence of these goals.
Mm-Hmm. Whether or not I achieve them is actually less
important to have them matters.
Think about it. You go on a road trip
and you have no idea where you are going.
So you know, you turn left or right.
You look over my falling over a a, a cliff,
what should I do today?
Is this the right thing? You know, it's, it's you,
you are meandering, you are not certain,
you're not happy then.
Mm. But if you know I'm going to the top of
that mountain over there, then you can go there
with full energy, with motivation, especially if
that mountaintop is meaningful to you,
which is an important component of a goal, of course.
So you have a meaning goal, full goal,
you're going towards it.
And what does having that goal do?
What it does for you is it liberates you
to enjoy the here and now. That
Speaker 1: Makes a lot of sense. And
Speaker 2: Actually, and the two of the two of them are reconciled
Speaker 1: Because it gives your day to day life a sense
of purpose and direction.
And I can see how if you wake up in the morning
and you're either just going through the motions,
or you wake up in the morning
and you're not quite sure what to do with your time
because you're not quite sure what you want, how that lack
of purpose then starts to
probably make you think too much
and probably make you start
to dwell on questions like, am I happy?
Am I not happy? What should I be doing? I don't know.
Am I lost? Am I stuck?
Am I, I mean, I've certainly been in those areas of my life.
And so you're absolutely right about that.
I see what you're saying. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then what that means is that
that future goal is not an end,
but rather a means, it's means towards liberating you
to enjoy the here and now.
Speaker 1: Tal, thank you for explaining that.
And this is a great moment to remind you
as you're listening, that the episode
that we did on the science of setting deeply personal goals,
we're gonna link to that in the resources.
It also is the episode that features some
of t's research on goal setting that's there for you.
I wanna hear a quick word from our sponsors
who are bringing us this amazing,
amazing information about happiness at zero cost.
Do not go anywhere. You're gonna be happy you stuck around.
Because when we come back, I'm going to ask Tal to walk you
and I step by step through all five elements of happiness,
and give us a specific example
of a simple action you could take in each area
that will make you feel happier today.
Stay with me.
Welcome back. It's your friend Mel,
and boy, are you in for a treat today.
I'm so excited. We are here with Dr. Tall Ben Shahar.
He is the most popular professor in history at Harvard,
teaches positive psychology, the psychology of leadership,
and we're going through 30 years
of his work on happiness.
And more importantly, how you can be a happier you.
Now, we've already covered two important things.
Let me just recap to make sure that you got this,
that happiness is about wholeness.
And there are five elements to you being happier, spiritual,
physical, your intellectual wellness,
relationships, and emotional.
And one of the things that I wanted to ask you, Tal,
is you're talking a lot about the things we can do
to improve those areas of our life,
which impacts our happiness.
For somebody listening that maybe
has not grown up around happy people
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really know if happiness is possible
or even kind of what it feels like,
where do you even begin if you don't know
what happiness looks like or feels like,
or how to achieve it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always, um, tell my students
that the best self-help books are biographies.
Why? Because biographies give us, you know, the, the,
the deep, uh, understanding of what a, a happy life,
miserable or a successful life looks like.
And, uh, one of my favorite biographies is Ma ma gandhi's.
Hmm. The subtitle of his, uh, autobiography is
My Experiments with Truth.
It's not my finding truth, it's not the ultimate truth,
it's my experiments with truth.
And that for me is a guiding mantra,
and I think it ought to be for many of us
because it is very much about experimentation.
It's about trying things out.
It's about trying different ways of being, living and doing,
and through experimentation.
And if we're not afraid of experimenting, of trying,
if we're not afraid of falling down, then we'll get better,
then we'll grow, then we will actually become happier
with an emphasis on happier.
What do I mean by that?
See, many people ask me, okay, Todd,
you've been in this business for 30 years, 30 years ago,
you embarked on this journey.
Are you finally happy today?
Speaker 1: Are you? Speaker 2: Good question. My answer is, I don't know what
Speaker 1: That, that is not acceptable.
Tol I'm sorry, you're supposed to be here
and tell us to be happy.
How to be happy. You dunno. If you're happy,
Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you how to be happier.
Okay? Not happy because I don't know
what being happy is
or means in the sense
that I don't think there is a binary zero one.
Okay? So yesterday I was unhappy.
Today I am, I'm happy rather than a binary zero one,
it is a continuum.
So I can certainly tell you
that I'm a lot happier today than I was 30 years ago.
Hmm. But I hope that five years from now I'll be
happier than I am today.
Speaker 1: How will you know? Speaker 2: How do I know
that I will be happier?
Or how do I know how to measure that? I'm both, both.
Speaker 1: I know there's a kind of a basic question,
but happiness alludes so many people.
Yeah. There are so many people
that write in about feeling stuck or a lack of purpose,
or devastated with grief that
I know when you look in the rear view mirror, you can say,
oh, I'm happier than I was 10 years ago.
I feel in your definition that you've presented to us
that you really like a sense
of wholeness, right?
Uh, uh, an access to it.
But for somebody that really feels like, whether it's
because of depression or they're just been miserable their
whole life or their life has been really hard.
Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I would go for, uh, you know, small changes, okay?
The kaizen change that the Japanese talk about, which is,
how can I become 1% happier?
Not how can I become happy?
Not how can I, you know, find, you know, the, uh, the,
um, the answer.
Just how can I become 1% happier?
And then if you look at, ask this question
and look at the five spire elements,
and you can look at all five, and you can look at one
of them, how can I introduce a small change, experiment
with a small truth, and then see how that works?
And then if it does, great to do more
of it if it doesn't try something else.
But the key is to continue moving
because as we know, one of the,
the major characteristics of depression is, uh,
helplessness, which means doing nothing.
Mm-Hmm. . So counter that with doing something.
And again, that's something doesn't have to be major.
You know, one of the things that I'm, um,
working on a lot now is
how small changes can make a big difference.
Yeah. When consistently applied. Yes.
And I know that you are, uh, you know, you know,
doing work in that area as well when you talk about,
you know, take that one minute to, uh, to breathe.
And those small changes make a big difference.
And, you know, I've, I've coined, uh, a term,
so I dunno if you're familiar with, um, the term MVP,
not from sports, from, um, from, uh,
business MVP minimum viable product.
Mm-Hmm. . Now this is something a company, you know,
brings out as sort of a beta version, a test case.
And, um, you know, it's not perfect.
It's not ready, it's not ideal, but it's good enough.
So based on this MVP minimum viable product idea,
I coined the term MVI, minimum viable intervention.
Hmm. Minimum viable intervention.
These are the small changes that you can introduce
that actually make a difference over time.
And this is what I would urge the mvi is what I would urge
that someone who's feeling stuck or down,
or someone who just lacks motivation right?
Introduces in their lives, okay, what are these mvi,
for example, um, you know what,
actually let me go over the spire elements and,
and provide an MVI for each one.
Speaker 1: I love you. Love that. Speaker 2: Yes.
Alright, so spiritual wellbeing.
Spiritual wellbeing is about purpose and presence. Okay?
Let's say we for, uh, one minute breathe deeply
focusing on the air, going in and out.
That's meditation. You know,
it's not 30 minutes, but it's one minute.
And we know, and there's a lot of research showing that
that one minute can make a huge difference.
Or, um, you know, one minute of, um,
the 4, 7, 8 breath that Andrew Mm-Hmm.
Wild talks about, you know, there are
so many things we can do in a one minute while being present
and that will enhance.
And we know that, and there's a lot of, lot
of data on this will enhance your spiritual wellbeing
as well as your physical wellbeing.
But let's let, let's move to the P
of spire for a second, please.
So, um, going to the gym, working out for an hour. Great.
You know, doing high intensity interval training
for 15 minutes, amazing. Sounds
Speaker 1: Horrible, honestly, Speaker 2: .
But you'll become happier as a result. Yes. Subsequently.
But what about taking 30 seconds
or 45 seconds
for a burst off energy running on the spot
or doing your pushups or sit-ups 45 seconds.
That's all. Now we know, again,
there is research on it showing
that if you do it three times during the day,
you'll actually have the equivalent of a workout.
So it doesn't have to be all at once.
Meaning you can do it, you know, now for 45 seconds,
and then in two hours, another 45 seconds climbing up
and down the stairs, which you can do in the office.
You know, you don't sweat, you don't need
to, you know, shower after.
And then five hours later you do it again when you,
when when you get home, 45 seconds,
minimum viable intervention.
It's cumulative.
And it actually has the effect
of psychological wellbeing impacts,
and it also impacts your, of course, physical wellbeing.
Speaker 1: Now, as you're talking, I just wanna remind the person
listening that you're considering this
inside the context of happiness being
wholeness and wellbeing, meaning
you are intentional about caring for your wellbeing.
That these are all components of wholeness,
and these five categories are the ones that matter the most.
So what's another MVI for
Speaker 2: I intellectual wellbeing.
So intellectual wellbeing, which is
after spiritual and physical.
It's the third element.
Um, this is about, for example, learning something new. Hmm.
You know, and going online and, uh, looking at these,
you know, short excerpts, okay,
I'm gonna learn a new technique,
or I'm gonna learn a new idea,
or I'm gonna come up with a new question to ask my partner
or my, or my friend.
So this is intellectual wellbeing,
and it's incredible how these small changes,
just asking a question
or just learning something new, then trigger
your curiosity muscles.
You know, by the way, Mel, I forgot to say this,
but curiosity, you know, the, the,
the saying curiosity kills the cat.
Yeah. It turns out that it's the opposite for human beings,
meaning people who are curious, who ask many questions,
who are lifelong learners actually live longer.
Wow. So look at all the benefits of being curious.
So that's intellectual wellbeing.
Then we have relational wellbeing, the R of Spire,
you know, a hug, you know,
and a nice text you send your, um, you know, your partner,
uh, relational wellbeing, you know, really listen,
really listen to someone, be present for them,
even if it's for two minutes.
The impact of it on the relationship, on them,
on you is remarkable.
And yes, of course, if you have two, three hours
to spend together, even better, ideal, good enough
to use those viss,
Speaker 1: I am hearing from so many people that listen
to this podcast that are really struggling with loneliness.
And if one aspect of the spire model, one
of the five elements of happiness is your relationships
and wellbeing in that area, um, for somebody
that's just feeling isolated and lonely
or that sense, like, where are all my friends
and feels disconnection,
what does the research say in terms of happiness?
Speaker 2: Number one, predictor
of happiness is quality time we spend
with people we care about and who care about us.
Now we also know that, um, the number one predictor
of unhappiness in our world today is loneliness.
Hmm. And this, um, was, uh, exacerbated as a result
of covid, of course,
because what loneliness does is it very often gets us into
this downward spiral where I feel lonely
and I feel, you know, incompetent in the social realm.
And what we need to do in order
to get out of it, is get out of it.
There has to be focused action and intention.
In other words, singletasking rather than multitasking.
Because one of the main causes of loneliness is not the fact
that we're not around people.
Hmm. It's the fact that when we're around people,
we're also doing 20 other things, you know?
Oh, Daniel Goman calls our age, the age of distraction. Yes.
So, you know, if I'm with friends,
but at the same time I'm texting and doing something else,
and they're doing, we're not really together.
Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: You know, it's, um,
the, the example that I like.
So imagine, imagine you're listening to your favorite piece
of music, and, um, can I share with you what mine is?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Speaker 2: All right. Don't tell anyone
that Drake, no.
Whitney Houston. And I'll always love you. Oh my God.
My favorite song, okay. Of all time.
So imagine you are listening to that
or whatever your favorite is.
Okay. And then you listen to your second most favorite.
And you know, my second most favorite is, uh,
Beethoven's fifth Symphony, pop, pa, pa.
Um, and then for the perfect experience,
you take these two pieces of music
and you play them together
Speaker 1: At the same time.
Speaker 2: At the same time. It's cacophony it's noise.
And that's modern life for you.
Because what we're doing is we're trying to pack
because of, you know, fomo
because, uh, you know, you know, we are eager
to experience things, we pack in many things.
So while we're with friends, we're also, you know,
doing some work perhaps.
And while we're with the, you know, kids,
we're also watching a movie, and you can't do it all.
Well, you can do a lot,
but you certainly can't enjoy it all.
Mm. And much of our sense of loneliness comes
because when we're with other people,
we're not really with other people.
And what we need to do is put down a, uh, put time aside,
and it doesn't have to be seven hours, you know,
even if it's an hour twice a week,
or that text that you commit yourself to mindfully,
these small, committed, focused activities
can get us out of the sense of loneliness or unhappiness.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. Beautiful. What a beautiful metaphor.
It makes so much sense.
Speaker 2: And finally, emotional wellbeing.
That's about, you know, the gratitude journal.
Take a minute to write three things
that you are grateful for.
You know, close your eyes
and savor, savor what, what you have, uh, right now.
Or write a journal about what's hurting you for two minutes.
There's research showing that even two minute journaling,
whether it's about difficult experiences
or about ecstatic experiences,
two minutes actually make us happier and healthier.
Better to write it in a journal
or to talk about it than to just ruminate over it. Why,
Speaker 1: Why is it better to write in a journal and talk about it?
Speaker 2: So, so, so here I'm drawing on research by Sonya Luki,
who's a professor at uc Riverside.
And what she shows is that when we are dealing with, um,
uh, painful emotions Mm-hmm
or difficult experiences, we can either talk about it,
write about it, or think about it, people
who think about it, it actually gets worse.
We ruminate, we go down the rabbit hole downward spiral,
and we can stay there for, for hours or sometimes weeks
Speaker 1: Or decades in some people. Right?
Speaker 2: Exactly. Whereas if we write about it
or talk about it, there's a much higher likelihood
that will emerge stronger.
Why? Because what we're doing when we're writing
and talking about it, we're actually making sense of it.
You know, so often, and, you know,
this is work on journaling, Jamie Penny Baker
and others showing that when we write
about something very often we reach a aha moment,
or, oh, now I see what, what, what's happening?
Or now I see what I need to do.
And then it becomes more manageable,
it becomes more coherent, more clear,
and we're ready to move on and we know what we ought to do.
So writing and talking about it,
rather than ruminating about it, is very important.
And then after we have, uh, written about,
talked about it, just do it.
What is it? It could be an MVIA minimum viable intervention.
It could be, you know, go to the gym it doing, it could be,
you know, go out with friends,
even if you don't really feel like it,
but keep on experimenting
with truths rather than sitting down
and trying to figure out the meaning of life or,
or the, the, the, the ultimate answer
to the universe. You know,
Speaker 1: I have something to share that, um, happened
with my sister-in-law business partner and friend Christine.
She had been, uh, somebody that really loved going
to church, and then like many of us life gets busy
with your kids, especially if they're in these sports
teams and everything else.
And something happened at the church.
And so they kind of stopped going.
And for a number of years, she thought about it
and thought about it, and thought about it.
And recently, let's talk MVIA minimum viable intervention.
She just got up off her rear end.
She didn't wait for her husband and sons to go with her.
And she just, one Sunday went back to one service.
And I will tell you that there is something, if we go back
to the rainbow analogy,
and you think about happiness being
an indirect thing in your life,
that you feel in multiple ways
that one small action of no longer thinking about it.
But going back, it has created
more, it's almost like if, if you think about a rainbow,
there is a hue there, there's a vibrancy there.
And I love this word wholeness
because it is part of her wellbeing
to have a spiritual practice.
And it does create a vibrancy
and a wholeness in that area of her life.
It is one simple change. It is an hour every week.
She, it is not dependent on anybody else
in her family doing it.
And to me, that is a very clear example of
what you're talking about in terms of how it relates
to these five elements of happiness
and how you can just in very small ways,
small experience what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so I love that story, and I love it
because of what you brought up saying
that it's one small action.
It's not all or nothing, experiment with these small truths.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm wondering, as one
of the world's most respected
and leading experts on happiness,
what do you do every day to be happier?
Speaker 2: Mm-Hmm. . Um, you know, I do the basics.
I wake up in the morning and I do my meditation.
Speaker 1: Now, do you lay in bed? Do you get up? No.
Do you, like, do you, how do you do
Speaker 2: Your meditation?
Yeah, I, I lay in bed, and again, I'm a morning Is that
Speaker 1: Technically like, just sort of snoozing?
Like, what are you doing? Like, you literally are like,
you wake up and then you meditate while you're here, and
Speaker 2: Then I meditate.
And again, this is, this is good for a morning.
I'm a morning person. Uhhuh . So when I wake up, I wake up.
Okay. It's not, I won't fall asleep again.
But for people who, for whom it's difficult
to wake up in the morning, get out of bed, you know,
wash your face, do whatever you need to energize,
and then sit down if you need or,
or walk, do walking meditation.
Right. But meditation is, uh, is where I start.
And then, um, I read, and I, and I, I love reading in bed
and I read quality stuff.
I don't look at the news. Uh, that's very
Speaker 1: Important.
You're not looking at TMZ on your phone. No. ,
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. Yeah. That yes, but not the other news.
Um, so, so I do quality stuff in the morning, then,
you know, I'm, I, I'm, I'm responsible for taking the kids
to, uh, to, to school. Um,
Speaker 1: I love Speaker 2: That. Yeah. And they might,
Speaker 1: I bet they love that too.
Speaker 2: They do. And, and I do.
And, and, and always, and we have a sort of a, a ritual
around, uh, around that, you know, where, where, where we,
where we talk and then they ask me, okay, dad,
one message for the day.
And it could be something like, um, be generous, be kind,
or appreciate, or whatever, whatever it is.
And they go with it. And,
and they also share it with their friends.
That's pretty cool. Uh, yeah. So, so we have that.
And then, and then I go home and I, and,
and I work, mornings are my, my productive hours.
And then I do yoga in the, in the afternoon.
Um, almost every day, you know, I have, uh, have lunch with,
uh, with my wife and, um,
and then sometimes work in the afternoon,
you know, do sports.
I do a lot of sports, you know. Do you still play squash?
I play squash. I, I didn't play squash for 25 years,
and I always said, if one of my kids plays,
then I'll take it up again.
And our little one, our 14-year-old plays squash.
So I play with him.
Speaker 1: I bet you're a monster on the pickleball court.
Speaker 2: I've never played pickleball bet, but,
but I want destroy it.
I want to. So you just, yeah. Yeah.
And, um, so yeah. And then, you know, I, I love movies.
I love, you know, reading, hanging out
with friends, uh, family.
Speaker 1: I wanna reflect on something
because what you're describing
sounds like a happy life.
And if you're not watching this on YouTube,
you can probably hear in TA's voice that he's smiling
as he's reflecting on this.
And it is true that so many of us make ourselves unhappy
because we think that the answer
to it is something out there that national championship,
the getting into the right school, the right grades,
the right this, the right that,
and what you just described is the little
things you do every day that make you feel whole.
Speaker 2: Hmm. There's something very important,
Mel, that I want to add.
You know, it may sound, you know, fairytale.
Oh, he is always happy and always smiling far from
it. I have my bad
Speaker 1: Day.
Why I ask your kids, I said, some days you're a real
jerk. Speaker 2: .
Just kidding. They don't say, they don't say jerk,
but they say, daddy chill.
Yeah. Chill. chill. Yeah.
Um, and, um, and, and,
and it's, it's important to, to understand, you know,
not every morning when I get up, I want to write, you know,
some mornings I get up and I want
to stay in bed and do nothing.
What is most important is what we do,
rather than what we feel.
You know, I do what I, what I do, whether it's the yoga,
whether it's the writing, whether it's spending time with,
with family and friends.
I do it even if I don't feel like it.
And over time, what we do affects us.
It also affects our feelings.
Speaker 1: You know, Tal, when I was researching, uh, your work
to get ready for this conversation today,
I came across a video that you did that has 7 million views
where you say, stop chasing happiness,
and you want us to focus on something else.
Instead, I'm gonna ask you to tell us what we're supposed
to be focused on after a short word from our sponsors.
So stay with us, you'll be happy you did.
Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins.
I'm so happy you're here with me today
because we are getting to spend time with Tal Ben Shahar.
He's one of the most respected
and prolific experts on happiness in the world.
And he is the most popular professor
to ever teach at Harvard.
He taught positive psychology.
And we're digging into 30 years of research
and what research says about how you can be happier.
We've already covered the definition of happiness
as this sense of wholeness.
We've talked about the five elements of happiness.
He's made it very clear
that this is not about checking boxes.
It's not about achieving goals.
It's about pursuing small 1% changes
in these five areas of your life.
And one of the most popular things you've ever put out
online has 7 million views in less than a year.
Don't chase happiness become anti-fragile. What?
What does anti-fragile mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, that's one of those concepts
that really made a difference in my life.
It's a, it's an idea that I read about through the work
of Nasim Tale, who's a professor at, uh,
New York University.
And what is anti-fragility the opposite of fragility,
or I've come to look at it as resilience 2.0.
Okay. So let's begin with 1.0. resilience. , please.
Resilience 1.0 is actually a term
that comes from engineering.
It simply means that resilience 1.0 comes from engineering
resilience as a term comes from engineering.
See that Computer science,
the classes you'd took, there you go.
Good step. Absolutely . So what, what, what it means is
that if you have certain material
and you put pressure on it, mm.
If it's resilient, it goes back to its original form.
Mm-Hmm. , uh, you squish, you know, a piece of, uh, rubber
resilient, it returns to where it was before.
Yep. A ball, you drop it, if it's resilient,
it bounces back up to where it was before.
So that's 1.0. What's resilience 2.0 or anti-fragility?
You take material, you put pressure
and stress on it as a result of the pressure
and stress, it actually grows stronger, bigger, healthier.
Or you drop a ball, resilience 1.0,
it simply bounces back 2.0,
antifragility it bounces back higher as a result.
So that's antifragility.
And it turns out that there are antifragile systems all
around us and within us.
Think about it. For example, our muscular system.
You go to the gym, you're putting stress on your muscles.
What happens as a result of it?
If you persist, you actually grow stronger, bigger,
healthier as a result of that stress,
where anti-fragile systems, not just physiologically,
also psychologically.
And that's important.
You know, I, most of the students in my class, not all,
but most of them were psychology majors.
And I would always ask them two questions.
The first question was, put your hand up if you know
what PTSD is just about everyone in the
class put their hand up.
They've heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.
They've read about it, studied it in Psych one newspaper.
Mm-Hmm. people know what it is.
And I said, okay, put your hands down
and now put your hands up.
If you've heard of the term PTG,
hardly anyone put their hand up.
And again, these are psychology majors.
PTG stands for post traumatic growth.
So, whereas PTSD is breaking down, being fragile,
PTG post-traumatic growth is being anti-fragile growing
as a result of trauma or hardship or difficulty.
How do you do that? So here is the thing.
This is, this amazed me about the research,
and there's a lot of research by Tadeshi Calhoun
and others merely knowing about the existence of PTG
of post-traumatic growth of antifragility
actually makes it more likely to happen.
Wow. Why?
Because what is knowing about PTG do for us?
What it does for us is it actually gives us hope
because Oh, okay.
So I'm going through hardship difficulties.
I'm really struggling, but I can actually grow from this.
So I become hopeful.
Now, if you think about it, what is the main difference
between sadness and depression?
The main difference between sadness
and depression is
that depression is sadness without hope.
Depression is sadness without hope,
sadness. I mean, it comes,
Speaker 1: You, you feel it every day. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 10 times a day, sometimes big deal. That too shall pass.
But if that sadness, um, is devoid of hope, you know,
that too shall pass, then that's problematic.
That's when we become hopeless. Yes.
And that's when we experience being helpless.
And that's depression. So knowing about PTG gives us hope,
makes it more likely to happen.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And remember, most people have never heard of these terms,
don't know that it's even in the realm of the possible.
So that's the first thing.
Speaker 1: I love that. Because the other thing that's happened,
and I know that you see this too, is just
the proliferation of short form content on social media
has so much about identifying trauma.
And it would be wonderful,
especially based on this research, if there were just
as many reels
and social media posts about post-traumatic growth,
that knowing that you are struggling with something
is the first step to kind of knowing
what you need to address.
But being aware that you can grow
through this and be stronger.
And I think we all know this
somewhere in the back of our mind.
And even if I look back on my own life tall,
and I think about, um, like even a period of my marriage
where my husband and I like wanted to kill each other.
And we went to therapy. Our marriage was in the pits.
We were, we'd been together for over 20 years,
and we were just having a lot of problems,
and we were not feeling connected with one another.
And I can see that if you're in a situation
that's very difficult, whether you're grieving
or you're having a relationship problem,
or you've now just lost your third job
or whatever it may be, and you add a sense of hopelessness
to it, you've just driven a nail into the
coffin and sealed it shut.
It's the hope that it can get better.
That is what allows you to grow through it.
And you're here to say that no matter
what the traumatic experience
or the heaviness of the emotion
or the very real life experience that you may be living
through right now, that just like a sun can shine
through a prism and cast a rainbow, so too hope can shine
through this experience and you can grow stronger.
And even just knowing that in your definition
of being a whole human being who takes care of self,
that hope is a critical ingredient to you getting better.
That's, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And it's a critical period for you
as an individual getting better.
It's a critical element of a relationship,
as you pointed out.
It's also a critical element of national growth.
Speaker 1: Yes. That's exactly what happened.
I realized I didn't complete the whole thing is that
in working through it
and having the really hard conversations and,
and really exploring ourselves
and sticking through the very hard,
painful times, I have a profound sense
of in your definition, that you are giving us tal a sense
of wholeness in the relationship
and also a sense of wholeness with self.
And it's true. If you really are listening to
what t's saying and you reflect on your own life,
and you think about any moment in your life
that was crazy painful, notice whether
or not as you moved through it
and you really are honest with yourself, that there was
that bounce up effect that happens
after it as you move through the grief or the disappointment
or the heartbreak that all of a sudden you wake up one day
and you weren't staring at the sun directly going,
I'm gonna be having a, you were just slowly working
on your wellbeing and you felt different.
And it, it, as I really listen closely to
what you're teaching us, I think that's
what I'm starting to take away.
Speaker 2: And, and I will add to that.
And, and you know, you mentioned earlier about how knowing
that you can grow from it Mm-Hmm.
contributes to your, uh, to your wellbeing.
Just knowing that a gridlock
or hardships, these are all natural parts
of our evolution of life.
You know, no, no one is exempt from these no relationship.
It could be the best, you know, fairytale relationship.
They'll have their gridlocks just knowing
that it's a natural part of a relationship that is, uh,
you know, uplifting.
Because it's liberating
because you are saying, oh, okay, it's normal.
And that's exactly what I felt after reading Schnarch
and going through a gridlock with my amazing wife saying,
okay, so, so, so it's fine.
That too shall pass. And that's what gives hope.
Hmm. And that is what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because through that hope you actually grow within the
relationship or in another context.
Speaker 1: It's so true. You know, with the 30 years
that you have spent researching this topic,
is there anything that bubbles up from the research
that is top predictors of whether
or not you're gonna have that sense of wholeness
and happiness in your life?
Speaker 2: Um, the number one would be the belief
that you can make a difference
Speaker 1: With your happiness.
Speaker 2: With your happiness. You know, many, many people ask me,
um, so what is the, uh, the, the content of, uh, the,
the chorus, you know, whether it's the, the the ma
or the certificate program?
And they're always surprised that
I say that at the beginning.
We start learning about systems thinking. Oh, really? Yeah.
And systems thinking, you know, you, for
Speaker 1: Somebody who has no idea what that is,
what the hell a systems thinking.
No, seriously. Like for somebody
who's like, what systems thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so systems thinking is, um,
about looking at things as holes.
So looking at the system rather than the symptom. Oh.
So looking at the system, whether it's a,
an organization is a system.
Yep. The human body is a system.
It's a system of, you know, cells and organs.
Um, a system is all about interconnectedness.
Hmm. And the key in a system is
to find leverage points.
Okay, where do I press, where do I touch
to affect the entire system?
You know, it's what Charles Duhig talks about,
you know, keystone habits.
Yeah, yeah. What is that place?
One thing that if you do will impact
another part of the system.
And another part is it exercising daily?
Is it, you know, starting your day, you know, zone one
of the day with, uh, deep breaths, right?
A meditation, is it, um, you know, leaving home
and, you know, hugging your, your your loved one.
What is that one thing?
And when everything is interconnected,
it actually doesn't matter that much
where you enter the system
because it'll affect everyone else.
This is why the emphasis on that one small action is
so critical, because you can literally sit down
and think for years about
how I'm gonna change my life. Or you can just do it.
Speaker 1: You know, what is so cool about this is that
visually speaking, between the rainbow example
and this idea of systems and wholeness
and everything being interconnected in this model,
traumatic experiences are connected to happiness, sadness
and grief are connected to happiness.
Struggles and periods of feeling lost are
profoundly connected to happiness. Why?
Speaker 2: Painful experiences, difficult experiences are inevitable.
Yes. Again, there is no life exemplary.
But let, let's play a, a game. Okay?
Let's imagine that sometime in the future,
and by the way, this, right now it's a, it's a theory,
but it could become a reality sometime in the future will
have the ability to
drive away all pain
because we'll have such great control over our neurons
that we'll be able to control what we feel all the time.
So, you know, in, um, in, uh,
Speaker 1: Why would you wanna do that?
Speaker 2: Well, why would you want to do it?
Many people would, especially when they're in the midst
of hardship and difficulty, you know,
all you want is for it to go away.
Or what if you see your loved one, your, your child in pain?
Maybe you can make it go away.
Speaker 1: I just got something from you.
Speaker 2: Do tell. Speaker 1: The reason why I had that reaction,
I realized is
because I have the belief that pain disappears
with time. The
Speaker 2: Hope.
Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Whoa.
And what if someone is, um, doesn't have that? Yes.
And what if, and again, many people,
many people will make it go away.
I mean, if you think about it, why are we so, um,
as a culture so obsessed with, uh, with those pills?
And again, I'm not against psychiatric medication
and sometimes it has saved lives.
And I know some cases intimately where, where yes,
where it has, however, we're too, um,
trigger happy when it comes to dispensing pills.
Why? Because we wanna make it go away.
So if we play this theoretical game that we do get
to a world where no side effects,
because we know exactly how
to make these painful experiences disappear, would we do it?
But then what would happen?
I've often asked my students this, think about
the experiences that you are most grateful for in terms
of where you are today.
Things where you have learned the most,
that have helped you grow the most.
Think about them. Now, put your hand up.
If there were fun experiences, enjoyable ones,
very few people put their hand up.
It's almost always difficult experiences.
Now, do you want to do away with that?
Do you want to get rid of growth and learning?
And this is exactly what will happen if we don't have any
of these painful experiences.
So when you say they're a part
and parcel of a happy life, they're essential to a full
and fulfilling life.
And when we begin to look at these experiences as such,
then our reaction can be similar to what you said.
And I don't wanna get rid of them.
In fact, I embrace, I don't enjoy them , but I embrace them.
Speaker 1: Well, and what you're also offering is a roadmap
of hope and action.
For anybody who's in the thick of that, who's like,
give me the pill because I just lost my child.
Mm-Hmm. . And there is, I don't wanna feel what I'm feeling.
And what you are saying is that
based on the human experience from the beginning of time,
we are designed to move through these things.
These emotional, painful, traumatic experiences are
a moment in your life.
And that if you look at that rainbow
and you look at spiritual, physical, intellectual,
relational, or emotional wellness for yourself,
and you take this MVI model of minimum viable intervention,
and you say to yourself,
there it can, two things can be true.
This can be the worst thing that's ever happened
to me in the deepest pain I've ever felt.
And I can wake up in the morning
and I can pick one of those categories
and I can take one action in the spire
model forward.
And that is a way to start to move through this
and experience that wholeness that you're talking about,
even though it's so difficult.
Speaker 2: Yes. And, and you know, Mel,
I I wanna share a story, please.
Um, when I was 27, um,
I lost the most important person in my
life to me at the time.
It was, uh, a dear, dear friend who died in a plane crash.
Uh, this was when I was living in, in Asia.
It was a plane from Indonesia to, to Singapore.
And, uh, it crashed was the 19th of, uh,
December, 1997.
And, um, I thought my life had ended at that moment.
You know, we were, uh, we were supposed to meet in Singapore
and, and, and it didn't happen.
And, um, I called up, uh, a mentor of mine, his name,
uh, is, uh, Nathaniel Brandon.
Nathaniel. Brandon has, uh,
written many books on self-esteem.
I'd learned, uh, with him.
And I called him up for two reasons.
A, because he was my teacher and mentor.
And, and b because he himself had lost, uh, he lost a, uh,
his wife in a freak drowning accident when he was
around a bit older than I was at the time.
And I called him up crying,
and, uh, he knew, he knew my friends.
So, uh, you know, he was, he was, he was
very much distressed as well.
And he said, Hal, I'm gonna tell you something now
that you are not going to understand,
but keep it in mind anyway.
He said, you are gonna get over this.
It's gonna be painful. It's going to hurt like hell,
but you are going to get over it.
We all do. Because if we hadn't, then God help us all.
And again, this was many, many years ago.
I still remember it, and I remember it each time,
even when I go through minor, uh, crisis,
because we do get over it
because we're built to overcome hardship and difficulties.
And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes, you know, it's,
it's, it's a day, but we do get over it.
And having that hope Hmm.
And doing something with it again, not staying in moping
and, and ruminating writing about it, talking about it,
doing small things, that is the way out of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that.
Like, I, I, I was trying to put myself in your shoes
because I think in the depths of that moment,
I'd probably be like, fuck you.
You know, I don't wanna hear that.
I'm not getting over the . You know what I'm saying?
But it, it is true
that we do get through the things that we never think
that it's possible to get through.
And I'm also really curious,
since you're constantly researching something
and clearly writing a book, and you've got an academy
and you are teaching people around the world,
is there a particular piece of research
or new kind of finding
around happiness that really excites you? Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 2: So what I think about a lot is
how do you bring about lasting change?
Mm-Hmm. Because, you know, people are listening to us now
and they're thinking, oh yeah, you know, I, I wanna do it.
Or, you know, I would give a lecture
and, you know, the audience would think, yeah, I'm, I'm,
you know, I'm going to implement it.
But most times nothing happens.
Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Most change efforts.
You know, you talk about it, you know, coming into 2024,
so you have a, a, a goal
and, you know, a 30 day
challenge , you know, in January, February.
What happens with that? Usually not much. Yep.
So, what I think about constantly
and what I'm researching is how can you
increase the likelihood, not guarantee,
but increase the likelihood
that you will enjoy lasting change.
And, um, you know, I love acronyms as you figure it out.
You know, the spire, MVI, so here's the third acronym.
Give it to us. The three Rs.
Speaker 1: The three Rs, okay. Okay.
And we can use this with everything
that you've taught us today in terms of making
being happier, a lasting change
in your life. Exactly. Okay.
Speaker 2: So that's why the three r, that that's, that's why it's
so important for me to, to think about it,
write about it, talk about it.
The three Rs of change are essentially the, um, you know,
should be the intel inside, so to speak,
of every, uh, change effort.
Okay. So what are they?
It's not reading, writing in arithmetic, other three Rs.
It's the first R is reminder. I mean, think about it, Mel.
So if I asked you this, um, tell me, is it important for you
to, um, appreciate the good people in your life,
um, to, uh, to appreciate whatever works in your life?
Or do you prefer to take it all for granted?
, I appreciate it. Exactly.
So, you know, no one would say, know I've had enough
of appreciating my loved ones.
It's time to take them for granted.
For a, for a while. , no one would say that ,
Speaker 1: Except for my husband in therapy.
Mm-Hmm. ,
Speaker 2: that who shall pass.
So, and yet,
and yet, even though everyone would say, it's important
for me to appreciate most people, this is an empirical fact.
Most people, most
of the time take the good things in their lives for granted.
True. Do not appreciate their loved ones most of the time.
True. Most people, most of the time.
Now, it's not because they're bad people, it's not
because they are not smart, it's not
because they don't have the desire
to appreciate all these things are in place.
The problem is that we forget,
which is why the first antidote to
forgetfulness, or the first antidote to the absence
of change, is reminders.
Yes. And Mel, you talk about it,
you talk about your post-Its Yes, I love that.
Create reminders around you.
Whether it's post-its whether it's, um, you know, walking
around with, uh, with a bracelet that reminds me of some
of, of something specific
Speaker 1: Or a rainbow.
Like, I keep thinking about how much you've poured into us
and how actionable everything is.
And understandable that even if you were
to write on a post-it spire,
and it's a reminder of the five elements every morning,
and you pop it on your mirror at your computer at work,
like now it's in your face.
And that's more likely with the reminder
to help you go to the next star, which is what,
Speaker 2: Which is repetition.
Because one or two reminders one day,
second day, not enough.
Yep. We need repetition.
We need to do it over and over and over again.
And for that you need many reminders.
So for example, a recurring function on your,
you know, on your calendar.
Yep. You know, every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, I'm in the gym.
Yep. And after you have repetition
and you have enough of it, that is when we get
to the third R, which is rituals.
What are rituals? Rituals are actually
deeply embedded neural pathways
that when we repeat an action over
and over again, that action becomes automatic.
Because neural pathways have been formed,
our brain has quite literally been transformed
through the repetitive action.
Simple example, mom reminded me to brush my teeth. Yeah.
Over and over again. Yeah. Repetitively.
I don't need mom anymore to re remind me.
'cause it's a ritual, right?
It's the same with the cultivating a, you know, a,
a, a tennis forehand.
Initially the coach reminds me, you get your, your hand up,
you know, meet the ball here, right?
And you do it again and again. Right?
And then you wake up Serena Williams in the middle
of the night, she'll hit that forehand .
I, that's true perfectly. Because it's a ritual, right?
It's a habit. There are neural pathways
associated with that.
Whether it's for hugging your loved ones, whether it's
for acts of kindness, we can actually ritualize them.
Now, to many people, this, this sounds like, you know,
the absence of spontaneity, you know,
if you ritualize things,
I'm not against spontaneity, it's great.
But if you want to bring about lasting change, the only
reliable way that we know about is by cultivating rituals.
And you do that through reminders and repetition.
Speaker 1: Well, and there's a fourth r do tell, which is the fact
that it's not about the fact
that you're removing spontaneity,
you're removing something else, your resistance Mm-Hmm.
To doing something new.
And if I bring this full circle to, um,
the topic of being a happier you,
and the fact that in your definition of wholeness
and the five elements of happiness, which all tie to
wellbeing, that you could apply
the reminder, the repetition over and over
and over in each of those five elements, going to church,
or to temple, or to mosque,
or if your church version is taking a walk in the woods,
making that something that you repeat so
that it becomes a ritual that these things,
and I'm suspecting that this is why you are
an unwavering optimist in
people's ability, absolutely.
Anyone's ability to be happier. Mm-Hmm. ,
Speaker 2: You know, TALEN Keller, who's one of my teachers,
has an essay on optimism, which I highly recommend, uh,
that, that, that you read.
And, um, in it, she says, my religion is optimism.
And she says, I look around metaphorically, I look
around the world and, um,
and what I see is a lot of hardship and difficulty.
What I also see is the overcoming of it.
And she was a consummate optimist.
I mean, how could she have not been, you know,
given the hand that she was, uh, dealt
and she still lived a, a, a happy life, a full
and fulfilling life.
And I think there is a very important lesson that we can,
uh, learn from her.
And if I may, I just wanna recommend something else
by Helen Keller, please.
So the essay on optimism, the second one is an essay
that she wrote called Three Days to See In it,
she reflects on what she would do if, you know, having been,
um, blind and deaf for most of her life.
What would she do if she were to regain her hearing
or vision?
What would she do for three days?
And she talks about it and she talks about
how important it is to appreciate, not take
for granted the things that we have.
And I have Helen Keller's essay Next to Me is a reminder.
A reminder, a to appreciate
and as a reminder, uh, of the religion of optimism.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow. Dr. Tall Ben Shahar.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You are really, really good at what you do.
I, I, I know, you know,
but I mean, it's like so fun to spend time with somebody
who is so smart
and who has a beautiful way of explaining topics
that are kind of hard to wrap your brain around.
And, uh, I just really appreciate the, the time
and I appreciate the way
that you think about things and explain things.
You made a huge difference in my life,
and I know that you just made an enormous difference in
helping people around the world be happier.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mel. And what I'm most grateful for in terms
of your work, is that you create a bridge between
evidence-based, uh, academic ideas,
and you make them accessible.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a massive compliment coming from you.
I accept that. Thank you. Thank you.
And for you listening, I just wanted to be sure,
in case nobody else tells you that.
I tell you that I love you and I believe in you,
and I know I speak for both of us.
When I say we believe in your ability
to take action
and do the little things every single day
that will bring more happiness into your life.
Now go do it. I'll talk to you in a few days.
Are you guys ready for us? Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, we just on, here we go. Our cameras rolling.
I should probably wait in case I
say something and just audio.
Okay, I'm on. Great.
And as soon as the tele the audio all audio only.
You know what? Do you guys have a cloth
for these things? I don't know about your glasses.
Speaker 2: always. It's Speaker 1: Like, how the hell do they get so dirty? ?
Do you think we touch our
glasses a lot? We don't realize it.
Speaker 2: We do. Speaker 1: Around the world. Do you hear that
Speaker 2: Again?
I think it was just that one. That one I think. But
Speaker 1: You, you, I know you, you know, do you hear that?
Um, we're gonna keep going.
Speaker 2: The thing that I found ,
Speaker 1: This did not turn off. That one did
Speaker 2: Not That one. That one did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: That one it did.
Speaker 2: Oh Speaker 1: Lord. Okay. This is hilarious.
Speaker 2: I dunno if I should have stomped amazing iPhone .
So the,
Speaker 1: That Speaker 2: Was good.
Sorry, just
Speaker 1: Did it just turn off.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Great Show High five.
Speaker 1: Oh, and one more thing.
I know this is not a blooper , this is the legal language.
You know what the lawyers write
and what I need to read to you.
This podcast is presented solely for educational
and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend.
I am not a licensed therapist,
and this podcast is not intended as a substitute
for the advice of a physician, professional coach,
psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
Got it. Good. I'll see you in the next episode,
Speaker 3: Stitcher.