Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie d Ammonia Douglass.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what does ud ammonia? I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperss Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that sumps you up except for prosperous, but
Speaker 1: prosperous in my relationships and other non monetary ways. Yeah. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know that's a it's a big question, right happiness
Speaker 1: At this very moment, I feel you, ammonia, So you
Speaker 1: feel happy right now? Right now? Okay, Well that's good.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's that's a good sign for the podcast episode.
Speaker 1: We should we should both be happy while we're doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have to be, but it helps,
Speaker 1: I guess. But that's pretty much life in general, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, from moment to moment, it's a question, am
Speaker 1: I happy? Is this making me happy? And should I
Speaker 1: be asking that question? To begin with? To what extent
Speaker 1: is it a false construct? To what extent can we
Speaker 1: actually plan and manipulate our environment in our life in
Speaker 1: such a way that the end result is happiness, right,
Speaker 1: which is why this is such a sticky topic and
Speaker 1: why we haven't really like put our arms around it
Speaker 1: and really given it a big old squeeze, because, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a territory that gets into all
Speaker 1: sorts of variables. And as you had mentioned, happiness is
Speaker 1: from moment to moments. So to say are you happy?
Speaker 1: Do you want to be happy? It's sort of like, yes,
Speaker 1: I do in five minutes, in a day, in a year,
Speaker 1: I want all of that for me. And then to
Speaker 1: even try to figure out what happiness is is a
Speaker 1: whole sort of Pandora's box of philosophies and pitfalls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when anyone asks you what it does X make
Speaker 1: you happy? Um, and unless unless X is something that's
Speaker 1: tied to a very in the moment experience, such as
Speaker 1: say does the sugar make you happy? You know you
Speaker 1: can say, well, yes, sugar makes me happy in a
Speaker 1: very short term sense. But otherwise it you know, does
Speaker 1: does does any kind of artestic artistic endeavor that you
Speaker 1: you busy yourself with? Does does that make you happy? Well? Yes,
Speaker 1: their moments that it probably makes you really happy. There
Speaker 1: are moments where it will frustrate you there moments where
Speaker 1: where it will will bleed into other areas of happiness
Speaker 1: or frustration in your life. It's just it's it's such,
Speaker 1: it's so dependent on so many different things, and it's
Speaker 1: such a subjective experience, right, subjective and ephemeral. Right, it's
Speaker 1: a fleeting feeling most times. And it's and you had
Speaker 1: mentioned this whole thing of like, even asking the question
Speaker 1: about happiness, what is it? Am I happy? Kind of
Speaker 1: takes you outside of the experience of being happy, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of one of the things that you start
Speaker 1: to take it apart. Can you put it back together again?
Speaker 1: You know? Does that does it make us unhappy to
Speaker 1: even try to figure out what this un ammonia is? Well,
Speaker 1: you end up stabbing to step outside of the human
Speaker 1: experian's itself, because when you start realizing that that as
Speaker 1: humans we are ephemeral, As humans were not one thing
Speaker 1: from one second to the next. Where this weird, kind
Speaker 1: of odd shaped snake that's draped across the timeline, with
Speaker 1: all these weird unconscious things going on that we can't
Speaker 1: always pin down. And right, there's just so many different
Speaker 1: states affecting nous. So one of the things you mentioned.
Speaker 1: You said, if X makes me happy, that made me
Speaker 1: think about this equation. That we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: this happiness equation, which might sound a little reductive, and
Speaker 1: maybe it is, and we'll get to it, but we
Speaker 1: really wanted to use this as our sort of entree
Speaker 1: into the topic because we could go on and we
Speaker 1: may into this topic for episodes and episodes and episodes,
Speaker 1: but this at least gives us a place to start
Speaker 1: ad to figure out, you know, happiness in this transient
Speaker 1: state and what it means to us, because indeed, they're
Speaker 1: constantly are studies coming out dealing with happiness and the
Speaker 1: human we for happiness, and uh it's and we've been
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what happiness is for a very
Speaker 1: long time. Uh So it's a deep topic. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to we're gonna talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how are thinking about happiness has changed, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about this supposed happiness equation, which is when
Speaker 1: we get to it, you'll see it's a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than than than it sounds. Yeah, there's no X
Speaker 1: plus Y equals. Yeah, there are many more variables. But
Speaker 1: let's start with Aristotle because He described happiness as an
Speaker 1: experience of the good life through virtuous action. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is the idea. You spend your time doing things
Speaker 1: that are good, that are virtuous, that benefit humanity in
Speaker 1: some way. You're gonna you're gonna feel good about that.
Speaker 1: You're gonna feel uh this, this positive feeling in your life. Yes,
Speaker 1: by being disciplined, by being virtuous. Yes, the byproduct is
Speaker 1: a sort of glow of happiness that that you're you know,
Speaker 1: a good person out they're doing good things. Okay, and
Speaker 1: I can see where, certainly later you can end up
Speaker 1: interpreting this, uh by by really drawing in more religious
Speaker 1: ideas of virtue as well. But but you know on
Speaker 1: the surface that that's this is a definition that seems
Speaker 1: to ring true. When you're doing when you're helping others,
Speaker 1: when you're doing good things of that nature, you do
Speaker 1: feel a certain a bit of happiness is kind of
Speaker 1: you know, contentment. You know you're not you're not you
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're wasting your time. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: sort of purpose in life. Right, And now you can
Speaker 1: sort of turn the dial a couple of degrees and
Speaker 1: you can see that you can go from being happy
Speaker 1: to feeling happy, which then kind of makes you change
Speaker 1: this perception of happiness as this pursuit, this thing that
Speaker 1: you have to have and a kind of pleasure that
Speaker 1: you want over and over again. In fact, we know
Speaker 1: that dopamine is released when we're feeling really happy, so
Speaker 1: you can kind of even tie that to a sort
Speaker 1: of addiction to happiness. And I'm talking about hedonism, yeah,
Speaker 1: for talking about, of course, the hedonistic view of life,
Speaker 1: the idea that life is all about seeking pleasure and
Speaker 1: you're just jumping from one pleasure to the next, and
Speaker 1: that that is part and partial to the human experience itself,
Speaker 1: and anything else you're telling yourself is just a lie.
Speaker 1: So that's one way to look at it. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one way to look at Yeah. Another and you kind
Speaker 1: of already touched on this is happiness can be associated
Speaker 1: with a state of flow. And we've talked about this
Speaker 1: before that when you're really engaged in activity or just
Speaker 1: even thinking about something, it's pleasurable because you lose yourself
Speaker 1: inside of it and time sort of suspends itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the default mode network before. You know
Speaker 1: that the voice in your head, it's constantly tied into
Speaker 1: anxieties about past and the future. Uh. And then when
Speaker 1: you can shut that down, uh, you know, by meditation,
Speaker 1: by who knows medication, but also by just simply becoming
Speaker 1: the act that you're involved in, be that act howing
Speaker 1: the yard or writing a poem, or doing your job
Speaker 1: at work, or a gamy. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in our next episode. But according to Megan Keener,
Speaker 1: writing for the Huffington Post, neuroscientists and Buddhist monk Mathou
Speaker 1: Record teaches that durable happiness as a way of life
Speaker 1: requires training the mind and developing qualities like inner peace, mindfulness,
Speaker 1: and altruistic love and uh. She goes on to say
Speaker 1: that Dali Lama agrees, describing happiness as a skill requiring
Speaker 1: effort in time to develop an understanding of the true
Speaker 1: nature of reality. And in a way, you kind of
Speaker 1: get back to Aristotle here, this byproduct of doing right
Speaker 1: by yourself, of doing good in the world, of of
Speaker 1: trying to come to the act in a very mindful way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a little bit there from the Dalai Lama about
Speaker 1: understanding the true nature of reality. Um, I kind of
Speaker 1: enjoy taking that notion to a certain degree. Outside of
Speaker 1: the Buddhist construct there and think about, you know, just
Speaker 1: sort of having a good understanding, a good based understanding
Speaker 1: of how the brain is working, how the mind is working,
Speaker 1: and and and knowing, you know, however, we're gonna inevitably
Speaker 1: go from this happy moment to the next with dips
Speaker 1: in between, and there's a topography to uh, to our
Speaker 1: emotional state in life. Like just knowing that there is
Speaker 1: a topography and realizing that there are going to be
Speaker 1: ups and downs. I feel like that is is is
Speaker 1: an important part of at least trying to maintain some
Speaker 1: sort of happiness in your life. Yeah, I kind of
Speaker 1: quit it with the ferret of the mind looking for
Speaker 1: everything that's shiny, you know, and just bouncing from one
Speaker 1: thing to another. Yeah, and just knowing that there's a ferret.
Speaker 1: It's kind of half the battle. I mean that you
Speaker 1: can become aware of this, uh, this state of mind,
Speaker 1: then you can you can actually take some steps to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Yeah. And if you can say stop,
Speaker 1: that's fool schoold, it's not the real thing, then maybe
Speaker 1: you can back up for a second and kind of
Speaker 1: get back into yourself and back into that present moment.
Speaker 1: Now when did we humans really least think that happiness
Speaker 1: was worth pursuing an earnest because this hasn't always been
Speaker 1: the aim of humanity. Oh yeah, I mean you just
Speaker 1: just in the Western tradition you look back at and
Speaker 1: it's certainly like Protestant thinking and and to a certain
Speaker 1: degree Catholic views of of life, where you you really
Speaker 1: get into this idea of this physical world as being
Speaker 1: a world of suffering and just you it's all about
Speaker 1: just enduring what the world is throwing at you, and
Speaker 1: you've got to keep your eyes in the prize and
Speaker 1: that being some form of happiness in the afterlife, if
Speaker 1: you can even call it happiness. You can even I
Speaker 1: guess it base call it liberation. Uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: get a little Buddhist on it. But life sucks, and
Speaker 1: your only possibility out of the suck is to follow
Speaker 1: the rules and make it out in the next life. Right,
Speaker 1: there's the original sin, the idea of that, and everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna suffer for that in this lifetime, which when you
Speaker 1: get out maybe not so much so. According to Peter
Speaker 1: Stearn's writing for the Harvard Business Review, this idea changed
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, and he said the fact is
Speaker 1: that the commitment to happiness in Western culture is relatively
Speaker 1: modern until the eighteenth century. Uh, if anything, you have
Speaker 1: that saddened approach to life. And so he says, what
Speaker 1: changed is you had the the Enlightenment. And we've talked
Speaker 1: about this before. The Enlightenment not only just brought in
Speaker 1: this new circulation of ideas, but coffee houses which helped
Speaker 1: to circulate and really pump up everybody's energy to communicate
Speaker 1: those ideas like little virus, these little memes that began
Speaker 1: to distribute among everybody. And so then you have these
Speaker 1: ideas of well, hey, maybe you know the original sin
Speaker 1: and suffering. Maybe it's a little bit different. Maybe God
Speaker 1: wants us to be happy, and he was coffee and
Speaker 1: all this energy, and I have all these thoughts and
Speaker 1: ideas and I want to talk about him. Maybe God
Speaker 1: really wants us to be cheerful. That's that's the idea there.
Speaker 1: And in addition to that, Stearn says that the air
Speaker 1: were advances and human comfort for the middle classes. This
Speaker 1: is really key, and he's saying that there is better
Speaker 1: home heating. I mean, imagine being chilled throughout the night
Speaker 1: and how angry and depressed you might be the next day. Um.
Speaker 1: It's these little things that he said sort of move
Speaker 1: the needle for people to get into a position where
Speaker 1: they could begin to consider happiness. In other words, they
Speaker 1: were in this really nice, comfortable position. Um. And he
Speaker 1: even says that improved dentistry might have encouraged people to
Speaker 1: smile more. And you know, we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Just smiling, the act of it will communicate to your
Speaker 1: brain that you're happy, even if that state. You know,
Speaker 1: right before that you were kind of feeling funky or
Speaker 1: in a funk, I should say. And then the just
Speaker 1: the act of your lips curling up can tell your brain, hey,
Speaker 1: you're smiling. You know that. In this of course, flows
Speaker 1: into the the theory that the Mona Lisa, for instance,
Speaker 1: might have had that unique smile because she doesn't want
Speaker 1: to show her teeth. Um, it's an it's an interesting theory.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, it's kind of disappointing though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, she's the she's neither smiling or grimacing,
Speaker 1: she's just doesn't want to show her teeth. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know what, I think we've all seen very genuine
Speaker 1: smiles on the part of people with imperfect, too too
Speaker 1: bad teeth, you know, and in a way like there's
Speaker 1: nothing better, because you know, that's a genuine smile, Like
Speaker 1: it's a smile where the the happiness of the moment
Speaker 1: supersedes any concerns about physical health or or or just
Speaker 1: you know, basic appearance. Yeah, and it's you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of take dentistry for granted now, but think back
Speaker 1: to the eighteenth century, and this would be a clear
Speaker 1: marker of those who maybe had access to money and
Speaker 1: dentistry and those who did not. So all of a
Speaker 1: sudden to be able to have things in your mouth fixed,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not have that rowan tooth or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Um that might say, oh, look at me,
Speaker 1: I've got access to wealth, and I'm going to smile
Speaker 1: about it all day. All right. So weally, we eventually
Speaker 1: get into this idea, uh, in large part, especially in
Speaker 1: the United States, so due to the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: UH and Thomas Jefferson's pen that everyone has the right
Speaker 1: to life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence is not provide additional details on exactly
Speaker 1: what happiness means and or how to obtain it, but
Speaker 1: we're told, oh, will you have a right to uh,
Speaker 1: to pursue it? So so what are we to make
Speaker 1: of that? Like? Where where does that even come from?
Speaker 1: That's a that's a question that scholars have actually looked
Speaker 1: at quite a bit. Well. Thomas Jefferson, as we know,
Speaker 1: was really very well read and in many different areas,
Speaker 1: and as Josh Clark points out his article about this um,
Speaker 1: Jefferson was very interested in philosopher John Locke's ideas, and
Speaker 1: Locke had originally positive the idea that a person's right
Speaker 1: to live a healthy life, free to amass and maintain
Speaker 1: property or life. Health, liberty, and property was sort of
Speaker 1: the bedrock on which Jefferson began to build his own
Speaker 1: philosophy for what the United States might want to pursue
Speaker 1: for itself. So we're not quite sure how happiness came
Speaker 1: to be in in his um final wording in in
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence, but we do know that this
Speaker 1: idea of health and wellness well being might have informed
Speaker 1: this idea of happiness. Yeah. Again, it's such a subjective
Speaker 1: thing that really if you try and and really dissected
Speaker 1: too much, you just start running into dead ends. And
Speaker 1: especially when you think about the fact that that the
Speaker 1: American dream, as as it was back then, also entails
Speaker 1: being able to um to a new place and practice
Speaker 1: some sort of dreary take on Protestant theology again where
Speaker 1: life is not about happiness, and maybe that that that
Speaker 1: belief is in a sense your own sort of happiness.
Speaker 1: That it gets complicated, it does, and then it's again
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see Thomas Thomas Jefferson and others during
Speaker 1: this period really bringing in these other ideas of what
Speaker 1: life is. So obviously in the United States there's a
Speaker 1: comfort level that has been reached in which Jefferson and
Speaker 1: others can begin to ponder what it means um to
Speaker 1: be this human in this society and what to expect.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the fascinating thing, is that that
Speaker 1: turn from health and wealth being eking into this idea
Speaker 1: of happiness and that that should be accessible for people
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Speaker 1: enter stuff. All right, we're back and we're talking about happiness,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk a little bit about something called
Speaker 1: the happiness industrial Complex, or something dubbed the happiness industrial complex.
Speaker 1: And for an example of this, you just need to
Speaker 1: look at pretty much anything in your surrounding world. U
Speaker 1: turn on the television, turn on the radio, listen to
Speaker 1: a podcast, drive down the street. It's everywhere. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: according to Caroline Gregor, a features editor Huffington Post, a
Speaker 1: Google search for happiness yields seventy five million results and
Speaker 1: nearly forty thousand books on the topic. Now sitting atop
Speaker 1: this heap of books is Gretchen Rubens Happiness Book or
Speaker 1: The Happiness Project. I'm sure a lot of listeners have
Speaker 1: probably seen this around. And Gretchen Ruben, she was very
Speaker 1: interested in trying to figure out what made her happy,
Speaker 1: and she began to sort of live this life of
Speaker 1: how she could achieve Um. It's a sort of like
Speaker 1: the six sigma Jack Doneghie, Like I'm going to attack
Speaker 1: happiness and it's going to be in you know, all
Speaker 1: these different areas of my life. And she lived it
Speaker 1: for like a year and then wrote about the successes
Speaker 1: and the failures of that, as well as some of
Speaker 1: the studies and the science behind it. Um. But she
Speaker 1: says that she thinks that the reason why there is
Speaker 1: this happiness Industrial complex is because we live in a
Speaker 1: time of incredible prosperity, not of course globally, but in
Speaker 1: the West. This is probably one of the prosperous times
Speaker 1: in history. And so hearkening that to that idea that
Speaker 1: when you reach a certain comfort level, you began to
Speaker 1: really become more introspective and figure out how to move
Speaker 1: that needle on your own happiness. Yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: media that you consume, the examples of life that you
Speaker 1: see around you, those kind of become the the sort
Speaker 1: of baseline happiness that you feel, on some level you
Speaker 1: should be able to achieve. So you have this, uh,
Speaker 1: you have this example of what your home should be,
Speaker 1: what your family should be, what your clothing should be,
Speaker 1: what your your nose should be, I don't know, and
Speaker 1: and and that that becomes the model that becomes something
Speaker 1: that you you strive for. Um And there's and there's
Speaker 1: no end of people that want to sell you something
Speaker 1: that will help you reach that point where you have
Speaker 1: that house, where you have that nose, where you have
Speaker 1: that outfit, where you have whatever version of of of
Speaker 1: happiness you're having to pull out of the media ether
Speaker 1: all around you, which kind of gets you into this
Speaker 1: terrible place where you think that there's a standard of
Speaker 1: happiness that you must fulfill for yourself, even though knowing
Speaker 1: can really define that for the community at large, it
Speaker 1: has to be defined individually. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: what fueling this industry. People are just saying, how if
Speaker 1: I just buy this book, if I just do this
Speaker 1: one thing, then I'll be happy, Which again, it's not
Speaker 1: a one size fits all, um, and it's taken hold.
Speaker 1: I think of people's imagine nation so much so that Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a one forty five million dollar Pentagon sort
Speaker 1: of happiness program that was put into place. Uh and
Speaker 1: his PBS opinion piece The Tyranny of Happiness, Joshua Faust
Speaker 1: writes that Martin Silikman helped to create this program to
Speaker 1: teach optimistic thinking to veterans returning from wars in Iraq
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan. And it's a kind of resilience training that
Speaker 1: was also put into place for for other soldiers, not
Speaker 1: just veterans. And so on the one hand, you have
Speaker 1: detractors who say it's super reductive. Um, it's almost like
Speaker 1: mind control. And it's also possibly not dealing with the
Speaker 1: concerns of veterans who have really had some very traumatic
Speaker 1: experiences returning from war. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: mean as as again as reductionists as it may seem
Speaker 1: to just sort of have this hey fight the horror
Speaker 1: with happiness kind of vibe. I mean, at least they're
Speaker 1: giving them some tools to work with, some something cling
Speaker 1: onto if you feel yourself drifting off into the deep
Speaker 1: end of of trauma and post traumatic stress. Right, it's
Speaker 1: it's a step in the right direction for mental health, right,
Speaker 1: and to even addressing the fact that there are issues
Speaker 1: that um, a lot of people are dealing with when
Speaker 1: when they're at war. UM. But the other sort of
Speaker 1: murky thing about this is that Seligman is very much
Speaker 1: associated with torture tactics and techniques and he's he's kind
Speaker 1: of actually got the corner on that. So here you
Speaker 1: have this guy who has has worked with the government
Speaker 1: UM and torture techniques, but is also on the flip
Speaker 1: side trying to help soldiers with positive thinking. And UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's very interesting, I should say, just if not
Speaker 1: um controversial. I mean, you could argue that he's very
Speaker 1: qualified for this since he is familiar with the the
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the spectrum. But but yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know it. It's still maybe it's just just a
Speaker 1: simple matter of anytime you have something that's referred to
Speaker 1: as the Pentagon Happiness program, it's going to ring a
Speaker 1: little Hollway. I think that's an informal take on it.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's what they actually I think
Speaker 1: I know they refer to it as positive psychology. But
Speaker 1: you're right, it is interesting, like this is the guy
Speaker 1: who knows how to break an individual, so maybe this
Speaker 1: is the guy who knows how to fix an an individual.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's the interesting duality of course you can
Speaker 1: make there. You know, there's the the whole argument that
Speaker 1: those are the two movements you can take in life,
Speaker 1: either destroying and creating. And just because you can tear
Speaker 1: a car apart doesn't mean you can rebuild it. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. Indeed, I feel like this is fertile
Speaker 1: ground for another episode to even talk about this um.
Speaker 1: So we should talk about the mathematical happiness that we
Speaker 1: referred to in the introduction this. I d you that
Speaker 1: those moment to moment um state through our mind might
Speaker 1: be able to be trapped and even predicted in terms
Speaker 1: of how contemp we feel and of course this uh,
Speaker 1: this falls logically based on any number of studies we've
Speaker 1: discussed on this podcast. Right, we can always use an
Speaker 1: f m R. I we can look and see how
Speaker 1: blood is flowing through the brain and based on what
Speaker 1: associations are made with different parts of the brain and
Speaker 1: different parts of the brain in connection with each other,
Speaker 1: then we can and then we can compare the brain
Speaker 1: scans the FMR results to what kind of stimulized involved
Speaker 1: what you're asking the tests of you to think about,
Speaker 1: and you can start forming theories about um, you know
Speaker 1: how to fill in that X and that y in
Speaker 1: various equations regarding human behavior. And I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this in terms of how we always say that the
Speaker 1: brain is this pattern seeking machine and um. Dr Rob
Speaker 1: Rutledge from the University of College London, who conducted the study, said,
Speaker 1: the brain is trying to figure out what you should
Speaker 1: be doing in the world to get rewards. So all
Speaker 1: the decisions, expectations and out comes or information it's using
Speaker 1: to make sure you make good decisions in the future.
Speaker 1: All of the recent expectations and rewards combined to determine
Speaker 1: your current state of happiness and what's interesting about that
Speaker 1: is I don't think that people really thought about happiness
Speaker 1: in that context before, Like, oh, that's just my brain
Speaker 1: trying to predict what's going on and what it should expect.
Speaker 1: You know. We tend to think of happiness coming more
Speaker 1: from the inside as opposed to external conditions. So this
Speaker 1: brings us to the the so called happiness equation, which
Speaker 1: if you look at it, and we'll i'll try to
Speaker 1: include a link to it or an image of it
Speaker 1: on the podcast page associated with this episode, you'll see
Speaker 1: that it again is not an X plus Y equals whatever.
Speaker 1: It is is a long equation with several different variables,
Speaker 1: different levels. Like if it were if this equation we're
Speaker 1: physically a house that would have several floor as there
Speaker 1: were to be different places you could hide. It's a
Speaker 1: it's an elaborate equation, is but it is an equation nonetheless,
Speaker 1: So it's an attempt to mathematically understand this thing, and
Speaker 1: in this case, UH, the individuals trying to mathematically understand
Speaker 1: the Quest for Happiness researchers at University College London. So
Speaker 1: what they did is they analyze the results of twenty
Speaker 1: six people doing a task in which over repeated trials,
Speaker 1: they were asked to choose between definite and risky monetary rewards.
Speaker 1: So we're, you know, we're talking basically the idea of
Speaker 1: do you stand to to to gain any kind of
Speaker 1: small monetary reward on this particular risk is that there's
Speaker 1: zero dollars involved? Is there one dollar, two dollars involved,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, And what's your expectation as opposed
Speaker 1: to what really happened and when you were playing the game? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so through these trials, they're asked to report their
Speaker 1: level of happiness following the result. And of course the
Speaker 1: participants brains were also scanned using an f m R I.
Speaker 1: So looking at the brain scans, looking again how blood
Speaker 1: is flowing through through the noggin during all of this,
Speaker 1: they they noticed activity in two areas of the brain
Speaker 1: correlated positively with happiness scores. These were the ventral striatum,
Speaker 1: this is the main source of dopamine neurons, and the insula,
Speaker 1: an area of the brain that is associated with several emotions,
Speaker 1: but especially happiness. So, yeah, let's say that a player
Speaker 1: made a decision and she thought, okay, there's you know,
Speaker 1: she wasn't sure what her reward would be monetarily, but
Speaker 1: she expected maybe zero dollars or one dollar. But let's
Speaker 1: say her reward was not those full six dollars, but
Speaker 1: four dollars. Hey, that was better than what she expected.
Speaker 1: She thought that on the lower end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: she'd get zero or one dollar. So you see that
Speaker 1: activity in the brain spiking. So what they did is
Speaker 1: they took all of that information and then they had
Speaker 1: a second part of the study in which they developed
Speaker 1: that equation based on all of those reactions and the
Speaker 1: way the brain was behaving, and they applied it to
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand people playing a game that was very similar
Speaker 1: to what the volunteers were doing. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: a decision making task game. It's a smartphone game. And
Speaker 1: the results were as the model had predicted. When players
Speaker 1: expected a reward, they were less happy to receive it
Speaker 1: than if they hadn't expected anything at all. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it all comes down to expectations and how appropriately low
Speaker 1: or high those expectations might be. Yeah, which is kind
Speaker 1: of uh, that's a little bit of a dumb moment,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it challenges our perception of
Speaker 1: how happiness sort of happens inside of us, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't depend on really how things are going, but on
Speaker 1: our perception of how they will go or how they
Speaker 1: should go. Yeah. I feel like an area of my
Speaker 1: life where I see this in play the most is
Speaker 1: when I see a move of you when I go
Speaker 1: to check out a film, right, because you're coming into
Speaker 1: any given film with varying levels of of of information
Speaker 1: regarding its quality and how much you are supposedly going
Speaker 1: to like it, so you have a certain expectations set
Speaker 1: for it. Maybe so everyone's saying this is the big
Speaker 1: summer thrill ride, this is the best movie of the year,
Speaker 1: this one an Oscar, this one, this uh, this is
Speaker 1: the film that all your friends are talking about. So
Speaker 1: you go into it perhaps thinking well, I will certainly
Speaker 1: love it, it it will be the greatest thing ever. Or
Speaker 1: you go into a film that everyone has dumped on
Speaker 1: and then it's better than you expected. So based on
Speaker 1: your expectations, you know, I find myself thinking at times,
Speaker 1: what was this film really that bad? Or was that
Speaker 1: just my expectations were just way too high for it?
Speaker 1: And then likewise, I'll see something and I'll really enjoy it,
Speaker 1: and then I'll think, well, maybe that's just because I
Speaker 1: was really expecting nothing out of it, and it did
Speaker 1: have some some nuggets of gold hidden in there with
Speaker 1: the poop. That's a nice way to say. Yeah, um
Speaker 1: and Ritledge says he even says like this isn't the
Speaker 1: way to pursue happiness, by the way, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about moment to moment, and he said, in contrast to this,
Speaker 1: you could actually even be thinking about stay an upcoming
Speaker 1: vacation and imagine yourself learning to serve or if that's
Speaker 1: something you really think you're going to do and you're
Speaker 1: committed to that and have pleasure from that, just from
Speaker 1: imagining yourself being on vacation and doing things, so you
Speaker 1: can have expectations, he says, Um, but the trick moment
Speaker 1: to moment in your life is to try to um,
Speaker 1: as you can say, lower your expectations to the reality
Speaker 1: of the situation in order to not be disappointed. Right, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense. You can set out, you
Speaker 1: can fantasize essentially about learning to serve on that vacation,
Speaker 1: but don't be upset when it rains every day and
Speaker 1: you just end up playing scrabble in the beach house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just the out of being on vacation having those
Speaker 1: thoughts and yeah, maybe even being like, maybe this is
Speaker 1: the key fantasizing about surfing, but also saying that won't
Speaker 1: it be beautiful if it rains, then I'll be playing scrabble,
Speaker 1: So surfing settle for scrabble. That can be our new
Speaker 1: bumper sticker happiness equation that everybody can can use and
Speaker 1: we can put that in our stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Store right Travel can license it and use it on
Speaker 1: all the products. There you go. Religeous also says that
Speaker 1: this is only a measurement for immediate reward. He says
Speaker 1: that it doesn't deal with long term satisfaction. And in
Speaker 1: fact um, when you look at all these short term
Speaker 1: spikes in debts and you account for them, people still
Speaker 1: have a baseline happiness point and they tend to follow
Speaker 1: that over the course of a lifetime. And perhaps that's
Speaker 1: more dominated by your philosophy of life. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: by the I mean sort of the the the icons
Speaker 1: and the role models you look up for too. I mean,
Speaker 1: those became the models of what you want to achieve,
Speaker 1: be that you know, you're one of your own parental
Speaker 1: units or some celebrity or whatever. You end up you
Speaker 1: end up kind of shackled to that model to some degree,
Speaker 1: and you are shackled to um, whatever your circumstances are
Speaker 1: at that very moment, the circumstances that you can't maybe change.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking health is one of them. Um. And
Speaker 1: this certainly doesn't even begin to touch on depressions. So again,
Speaker 1: reductionists at all. But these are just you know, this
Speaker 1: happiness equation is interesting to look at the happiness paradigm
Speaker 1: and try to figure out what's going on there in
Speaker 1: the femeral states. So if we're to take something away
Speaker 1: from this, and again you can't really take away a quick,
Speaker 1: easy uh uh you know rocket ride to happiness but
Speaker 1: essentially aimed for the stars but settle for them in
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. Yeah, but even that, it's it's
Speaker 1: more complicated than it sounds like. If you start dissecting
Speaker 1: the the bumper sticker um simplicity of it, it is
Speaker 1: a lot like how do you set how do you
Speaker 1: aim big and still find yourself satisfied with with with
Speaker 1: less impressive results? Uh? Like even my own life when
Speaker 1: I think about about my writing, uh, it's I feel
Speaker 1: like I've I've gotten to the point where I have
Speaker 1: a like a healthy level of expectation, but I still
Speaker 1: I am also at the same time, uh, staying ambitious
Speaker 1: with what I'm trying to do, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I can really break apart how I'm maintaining that, you know,
Speaker 1: like because they seem like to contradictory feelings. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of one of those things, especially with fiction,
Speaker 1: is you do have that expectation I'm going to write
Speaker 1: the great American novel, and I'm doing it now, and
Speaker 1: it never happens, right, because that novel turns out into
Speaker 1: something entirely different than what you expected. So I think
Speaker 1: when you come to the experience of flow, in this case, happiness,
Speaker 1: that you have to be willing to fail a lot
Speaker 1: or a little in order to reach some sort of
Speaker 1: stasis of happiness, right, because it's just in the effort
Speaker 1: of trying to do that and then square your expectations
Speaker 1: with whatever comes out on the other side. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: when we're writing, requires that sort of like zen monk
Speaker 1: like mind, which makes it I think, very difficult, although
Speaker 1: not for Joyce Carol Oates. Oh yeah, she finds it easy.
Speaker 1: She's prolific, And I think it's because it's like a
Speaker 1: muscle for her. She has written so much and she
Speaker 1: does it almost automatically when she comes to the table,
Speaker 1: because that is what she does, you know, every single
Speaker 1: day that you know, I think that you sort of
Speaker 1: maybe when you're doing it that much, you put away
Speaker 1: those fears or those thoughts that allow you to get
Speaker 1: to that page. Bottom line, though, expectations seem to play
Speaker 1: a major role in the pursuit of immediate happiness. So
Speaker 1: shoot for the moon, or if you shoot for the moon,
Speaker 1: the shoot for the moon. Shoot for the moon is fine,
Speaker 1: but settle for low Earth orbit. There you go. That's
Speaker 1: our bumper sticker, all right, guys, Um, you know you
Speaker 1: can find us in other places, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're available all over, but especially at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That is where
Speaker 1: you will find all of our podcast episodes streaming for
Speaker 1: your pleasure. You will find all of our videos. You'll
Speaker 1: find our blogs as well as links out to various
Speaker 1: social media accounts that we frequent And if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on happiness, any sad thoughts on happiness differately, um,
Speaker 1: please do share them with us. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you, guys, and you can do that by
Speaker 1: emailing us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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