Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie.
Speaker 1: Live in the Dream, Douglas. You are You're You're living
Speaker 1: the dream, the American Dream. Yeah. I have a roast
Speaker 1: in the oven. I have my apron on right now,
Speaker 1: I have my new Ford Etfel outside. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know two and a half lovely children. And you you
Speaker 1: probably arrived on a on a boat as an immigrant
Speaker 1: and just fell off the boat right into a pile
Speaker 1: of money. Right well, I'm second generation, right yeah. And
Speaker 1: and hard scrabble worked for it. Really wanted that hard
Speaker 1: scrabble life, the professional scrabble circuit. That's an entirely different
Speaker 1: podcast episode. It's hard to make a living on that,
Speaker 1: but but it does exist, and it's fascinating. From what
Speaker 1: I understand. It's about as lucrative as entering into like
Speaker 1: the Toddler beauty pageant circuit. Yeah, I think it. It
Speaker 1: may be as comfortable to that, but but but slightly
Speaker 1: less crazy. Slightly. I refer to this idea of this
Speaker 1: nineties like ideal of the American dream, where you know,
Speaker 1: you had the perfect lawn, you had just bought a
Speaker 1: house in a car, and everything was okay because you
Speaker 1: had those things right and and if you weren't happy,
Speaker 1: it was achievable if you could only work hard enough
Speaker 1: to buy these things. It was all about work hard
Speaker 1: by the things that will give you the life that
Speaker 1: is happiness. But does it really work like that? Does
Speaker 1: money really buy happiness? Well, that's the big question, isn't it.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly I threw this question out on Facebook yesterday.
Speaker 1: I did a little blog post, and I found that
Speaker 1: a lot of people just you know, instantly say no,
Speaker 1: of course, that money didn't buy you happiness. Because that's
Speaker 1: become an increasingly popular, uh, little bit of wisdom to
Speaker 1: keep around in your head, especially as we live in
Speaker 1: a world that is so fascinated with the lives of
Speaker 1: celebrities and the wealthy and so you know, ruled over
Speaker 1: by by that class of people. It's comforting to remind yourself, Oh,
Speaker 1: they have all this money, they live this grand life,
Speaker 1: but they're not really happy, and therefore I can feel
Speaker 1: a little better about not having what they have. Ironically,
Speaker 1: I feel like Oprah actually brought this idea to the masses. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: because she does a lot of self you know, introstruction
Speaker 1: and work with her audience on what is happiness and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So I feel like she
Speaker 1: seeded this for a lot of people. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: And but it is such a tricky issue because if
Speaker 1: you hear, because because we respond both ways to it, right,
Speaker 1: even some level, you hear a rich person or a
Speaker 1: celebrity complain about their life. On one level, you have
Speaker 1: that voice that says, oh, well, money doesn't buy happiness.
Speaker 1: There you go. But on the other side, there's a
Speaker 1: voice that you want to say, oh, shut up, you
Speaker 1: own an airplane. If you own an airplane, you don't
Speaker 1: have the right to complain about your life. Like we
Speaker 1: we kind of we kind of feel it both ways.
Speaker 1: But found up in the is a little bit of
Speaker 1: envy and this idea again that if if you just
Speaker 1: had access to their money, you would spend it right
Speaker 1: and you would do it in ways in which you
Speaker 1: would be happy exactly. I mean, we think that even
Speaker 1: as we we stare right in the face of studies
Speaker 1: that say, of you know, the people that that win
Speaker 1: the lottery um are either either it doesn't improve their
Speaker 1: lives or makes them less happy. We we always think,
Speaker 1: but if I want they won the lottery, I'd know
Speaker 1: how to spend it. I would use it appropriately and
Speaker 1: actually improve my life. I would be the exception of
Speaker 1: the rule. So those are the types of things we're
Speaker 1: going to explore today. But before we do that, we
Speaker 1: should probably say that when it comes to happiness and wealth,
Speaker 1: there is a major impact made when you are below
Speaker 1: with the poverty line. That's right. The World Health Organization
Speaker 1: is called poverty quote the world's biggest killer and the
Speaker 1: greatest cause of ill health and suffering because when you
Speaker 1: look at poverty, living below the poverty line in this
Speaker 1: world brings increase risks of violence, infectious disease, chronic disease,
Speaker 1: mental health problems, sleep disorders, and chronic stress. And in
Speaker 1: many cases we're talking about an individual's financial inability to
Speaker 1: meet their own basic needs or the basic needs of
Speaker 1: their dependence. Yeah, and we were starting about basic needs.
Speaker 1: We're talking about biological needs eating, right, Um, these are
Speaker 1: things that we have to use to survive. So if
Speaker 1: you can't meet that need, it's terrible, right, of course,
Speaker 1: you would be very unhappy. The thing, though, is that
Speaker 1: once you can meet those basic needs, and once you
Speaker 1: can rise above that poverty level, it may not be like,
Speaker 1: oh hey, it's it's smooth sailing from here on out.
Speaker 1: But the effects of money begin to taper off. And
Speaker 1: this is actually from a House to Works article that
Speaker 1: we of on happiness and money, and it says that
Speaker 1: homeless people in Calcutta, for instance, score a mere two
Speaker 1: point nine on a seven point scale of happiness, while
Speaker 1: multimillionaires in the United States rank around five point eight. However,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Inuits in Greenland and Masai
Speaker 1: ranchers in Kenya, they are just as happy as those
Speaker 1: high society Americans, scoring around a five. So again, here's
Speaker 1: that those effects of money tapering off. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: to be diminishing returns. It's kind of like, uh, like
Speaker 1: when you're when you're really hungry and you you dig
Speaker 1: into that delicious meal. You know, that first bite is amazing,
Speaker 1: and then as you begin to fill up, it becomes lesser.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen sea studies that say that like
Speaker 1: the seventh bite, after you take the seventh bite of
Speaker 1: something and then you're just you're just eating. You're not
Speaker 1: enjoying the food at all. In your you're in you're
Speaker 1: beginning to get even, you know, even closer to that
Speaker 1: level where you're not even hungry anymore. It's just pure
Speaker 1: recreational eating without any actual value to you as an organism.
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, to your your brain
Speaker 1: really can sustain that anyway, because that first bite is
Speaker 1: really um sort of the bells and whistles of the
Speaker 1: dopamine in your system saying, oh, a reward. But if
Speaker 1: every single bite was like that, you would never put
Speaker 1: your fork down. Yeah. And in this we're getting into,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the complex notion of happiness that
Speaker 1: we've touched on before. What what is happiness? We're talking
Speaker 1: in this podcast about about potentially buying happiness, but that
Speaker 1: in itself is elusive. Is a happiness? That moment that
Speaker 1: you bite into that meal is happiness? The knowledge that
Speaker 1: you created a recipe for that meal? Is it? Is happiness?
Speaker 1: A moment in time? Is it an overarching theme that
Speaker 1: covers a grand uh length of time? Well? And is
Speaker 1: happiness forkful after forkful really sustainable even if it's been
Speaker 1: bought on a silver spoon? Right? And So in order
Speaker 1: to really get to this answer, we have to start
Speaker 1: looking at meaning versus happiness because they're bound up in
Speaker 1: each other. There's no way to to to talk about
Speaker 1: one without the other, really right, So happiness we can
Speaker 1: you know, as elucid as the term is, we can
Speaker 1: say you can still say things like, ah, well this
Speaker 1: neal makes me happy. Uh, this gadget makes me happy.
Speaker 1: My family makes me happy. Uh, this trip makes me happy. Uh,
Speaker 1: this pill makes me happy. But can you can you
Speaker 1: plug in the word meaning in all those cases, this
Speaker 1: gadget gives my life meaning, this pill gives my life meaning.
Speaker 1: This uh, my family gives my life meaning. To to
Speaker 1: what degree to these statements match up with each term? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you have to start looking at this idea
Speaker 1: of happiness or well being. And for some economists, well
Speaker 1: being is seen as a rising when benefits outweigh cost.
Speaker 1: For the centers for disease control and prevention, they've just
Speaker 1: find it as requiring good living conditions and positive relationship.
Speaker 1: For spiritualists, you see that it's a pleasurable state that
Speaker 1: is the sum of the positive and negative thoughts and
Speaker 1: feelings that arise when we reflect on our lives. When
Speaker 1: we reflect on our lives, because that's when the meaning
Speaker 1: part comes in. Yeah, and I think that goes beyond
Speaker 1: spiritualists too and gets into areas of philosophy and even
Speaker 1: psychology as well. But uh, but yeah, you start thinking
Speaker 1: it's it's more about those moments in life when you
Speaker 1: really reflect and ask yourself, what's the point of all
Speaker 1: of this, what's what's what's the meaning? Why am I here?
Speaker 1: What am I doing? And and that's where the meaning,
Speaker 1: that's where the meaning comes into play as opposed to
Speaker 1: the happiness, unless you're adhering to kind of a hedonistic philosophy,
Speaker 1: in which case the worm kind of uh turns back
Speaker 1: on itself. But if you think about it this way, happiness,
Speaker 1: as we have discussed before, is ephemeral, it's leading at
Speaker 1: the moment to moment thing. But meaning gives you context,
Speaker 1: It gives you a sort of richness of that bite
Speaker 1: of happiness. I think most people would think that meaning
Speaker 1: is just nested within happiness, when in fact, it is
Speaker 1: happiness that is nested within meaning. It's really sort of
Speaker 1: a byproduct of it. Right, Like for instance, when I
Speaker 1: when I say name somebody who has led who has
Speaker 1: led a meaningful life? Like what are some of the
Speaker 1: iconic examples exactly Gandhi or you know, or or a
Speaker 1: mother Teresa type figure. These are the the individuals that
Speaker 1: come to mind. But you don't necessarily think, oh, Gandhi
Speaker 1: he was he was a happy guy. I mean, and
Speaker 1: I don't think of Gandhi is an unhappy guy. But
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily attach the happiness onto his meaningfulness. You
Speaker 1: think more, uh, more about struggle. You think more about
Speaker 1: about putting yourself second and putting happiness second to a
Speaker 1: cause and to the you know, the betterment of the
Speaker 1: world itself. Although you look at someone like the Dalai
Speaker 1: Lama and you see perhaps he has both. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: here's a man who is a meaningful life uh and
Speaker 1: does seem to be rather jolly. Yeah, So keep that
Speaker 1: example in your mind. Us as we go through these
Speaker 1: sort of scales of wealth to happiness and scales of
Speaker 1: wealth to meaningness. And we're gonna do this by taking
Speaker 1: an example of a study by Shigihiro Oishi, who is
Speaker 1: from the University of Virginia psychologists and Ed Deaner a
Speaker 1: University of Illinois psychologists. They conducted a study to better
Speaker 1: understand how wealth would influence both happiness and meaningfulness. And
Speaker 1: they examine the reli relationship between a country's wealth and
Speaker 1: the well being of its citizens. That we're talking about
Speaker 1: thousands of people, um and these people completing an annual
Speaker 1: Gallop survey in one hundred and thirty two countries, And
Speaker 1: so they would report how happy they were and whether
Speaker 1: or not that their life had some sort of purpose
Speaker 1: or meaning. And then they would look at a scale
Speaker 1: from zero, which would be the worst possible life, to ten,
Speaker 1: which is the best possible life. And that's where they
Speaker 1: got masses of data and takes eased out this idea
Speaker 1: of happiness and wealth, and so in the scale, we
Speaker 1: would easily imagine that a ten would be an almost
Speaker 1: unattainable level of happiness, like no mortal human could contain.
Speaker 1: That if you reached a ten, you would sprout golden
Speaker 1: wings and ascend into the cosmos right whereas a zero
Speaker 1: you your life would be so miserable that how could
Speaker 1: you You You would just pop into non existence. There'd be
Speaker 1: no way you could continue because your life would be
Speaker 1: such um, such such a pool of suffering. So what
Speaker 1: did they find? Overall, people from wealthier countries were generally
Speaker 1: happier than those from poorer countries. Now again, think about
Speaker 1: the ephemeral effects of happiness moment to moment, and so
Speaker 1: I want and so forth. And to reach an average
Speaker 1: life satisfaction score of four out of ten, people needed
Speaker 1: to earn about seven hundred dollars a year. For a
Speaker 1: score of five, they needed to earn three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, and for a score of six, they needed
Speaker 1: to earn an average of sixteen thousand dollars per year.
Speaker 1: For a seven, it's pretty good on the scale, right,
Speaker 1: they needed to earn an average of sixty four dollars
Speaker 1: a year. So all right, yes, we see that there's
Speaker 1: an idea of more happiness in wealthier countries here, but
Speaker 1: what about meaningfulness? Well, and not only let you say,
Speaker 1: not only this the wealthy country, but here we see
Speaker 1: the actual income level influencing happiness. Because it's easy to say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: a rich country, obviously they're gonna arguably have have a
Speaker 1: better support system in place, They're going to have better
Speaker 1: resources for for everyone. Um, it's going to be safer.
Speaker 1: You know, you can go down the list of all
Speaker 1: the positive benefits there. But but what I like about
Speaker 1: the cities that also and what is more problematic about
Speaker 1: the study, especially to the whole money camp by the
Speaker 1: happiness thing, is that it says that you actually see
Speaker 1: the lineup of the money that's coming into the life
Speaker 1: and the happiness enjoyed in that life. Indeed, right, but
Speaker 1: it tells a good story of that. So the other
Speaker 1: story is that they found is that between nine five
Speaker 1: and of respondents from poverty stricken Sierra Leone, Togo, Kyrgyzstan,
Speaker 1: Chad and Ethiopia reported leading meaningful lives on that scale.
Speaker 1: Now only two thirds of the respondents and wealthy countries
Speaker 1: like Japan, France and Spain believe that their lives had meaning.
Speaker 1: So what is happiness without meaning? Here? Well, I think
Speaker 1: we can we can probably all point to moments in
Speaker 1: our own life where we can say, well, that was
Speaker 1: a moment that was happy, but was it meaningful? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And maybe more than moments, maybe whole decades of our lives,
Speaker 1: we can look back and say, well I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, but did it mean anything? Um and uh.
Speaker 1: And not to say that that meaning and and fun,
Speaker 1: not to say that meaning and happiness can't line up,
Speaker 1: but or that they're mutually exclusive, but but you can
Speaker 1: well imagine someone setting in a you know, say a
Speaker 1: fancy penthouse, Uh, you know, kick back, enjoying, say some
Speaker 1: sort of video game on the latest system, the largest screen,
Speaker 1: the coolest sound system, and uh, is it a meaningful experience? Though?
Speaker 1: Is it something that they can look back, that they
Speaker 1: can have that that moment of reflection and say, what
Speaker 1: is my life about? Why? Why do I exist? What's
Speaker 1: the purpose of everything? And I would argue that it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to say that enjoying an awesome video game
Speaker 1: on an awesome couch in front of an awesome television
Speaker 1: set lines up with that that sort of existential reason
Speaker 1: to be right. And we've talked about this, that's the
Speaker 1: problem of consciousness. Why are we here? What are we doing?
Speaker 1: So the question then becomes why would people in poverty
Speaker 1: stricken countries have more meaning or feel that their lives
Speaker 1: had more meaning? And Adam Altar, who wrote a New
Speaker 1: Yorker piece on this, says, perhaps because poverty strips people
Speaker 1: of happiness and the short term when those terms ding
Speaker 1: ning ning that we've been talking so much about, Perhaps
Speaker 1: because of that, it forces them to take the long
Speaker 1: you to focus on the relationships they have with their children,
Speaker 1: their gods, and their friends, which become more meaningful over time.
Speaker 1: And indeed, you could you could probably argue that they're
Speaker 1: they're they're forced to depend upon those social structures more.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're less financially self reliant, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's more of a community situation as opposed to the
Speaker 1: you know, the lone individual standing in line to get
Speaker 1: the latest gadget and then taking it home to enjoy
Speaker 1: in their in their cavernous den, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: in a moment, but just in case you're wondering if
Speaker 1: there are any other studies that maybe are more Western
Speaker 1: centric will Indeed there are. There's one by psychologist Roy Baumeister,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about before in the context of willpower. Yes,
Speaker 1: all those chocolate cake experiments where you would attempt somebody
Speaker 1: with a chocolate retreat and see what could effect it
Speaker 1: would have on your your willpower. Yes, all those interesting
Speaker 1: experiments where you would you would see to what extent
Speaker 1: various stimuli would have on your ability to exist the
Speaker 1: temptation of delicious chocolate cake. Yeah, as you said before,
Speaker 1: he's that guy in the street corner with a lab
Speaker 1: coat and a chocolate cake, Beware Beware of Roy biomaster Um.
Speaker 1: But he and a team of researchers asked four Americans
Speaker 1: between the ages of eighteen and seventy eight about whether
Speaker 1: they felt happy and or meaningful when it comes to
Speaker 1: their life. Did they have meaning in their life? And
Speaker 1: he found that people were happy when their needs and
Speaker 1: desires were met in the present, but that this immediate
Speaker 1: fulfillment was largely the relevant to meaningfulness, and that the
Speaker 1: respondents derived meaning from considering the whole of their lives,
Speaker 1: including the past, in the future, and happiness was generally
Speaker 1: a reflection of how they felt in the present alone.
Speaker 1: So Yes, the happier people, they were more likely to
Speaker 1: report that they lead easy lives, that they were in
Speaker 1: good health, and to feel good much of the time.
Speaker 1: They could buy whatever they wanted without any financial stream um.
Speaker 1: But people who felt that their lives were more meaningful,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, were likelier to have experience fulfilling
Speaker 1: social relationships, engaged in acts of charity, taking care of
Speaker 1: the children, thought about struggles and challenges, challenges including you know,
Speaker 1: the act of prayer in this as well as other
Speaker 1: more community centered activities. So yes, you have this big
Speaker 1: study from Shikhiro Oishi and at dinner, but you also
Speaker 1: have Balmeister's smaller, us centric one, which is mirroring the
Speaker 1: same effects of meaningfulness versus happiness. I like that you
Speaker 1: mentioned struggle earlier, and it brings us back to this
Speaker 1: idea of a meaningfulness being tied up with the story
Speaker 1: of our lives and sort of the story shaped nature
Speaker 1: of our own self awareness. Uh So at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you have to you have to place
Speaker 1: yourself within a story and think also about the kind
Speaker 1: of stories we actually engage with. The kind of stories
Speaker 1: you would pay to see the movie theater or reading
Speaker 1: a book. They're generally the stories of struggle. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the base of the basic plot line, the rise
Speaker 1: and fall the Uh you don't want to see a
Speaker 1: movie about about a man or a woman who had
Speaker 1: everything uh they ever wanted, right, Um, you want to
Speaker 1: see the movie about someone who lost everything and then
Speaker 1: figured out what was important in their life, or someone
Speaker 1: who rose from nothing to to achieve something. So these
Speaker 1: are the archetypes that we have to fit our our
Speaker 1: own lives in in order to find me At least,
Speaker 1: I agree, because I think we are so much the
Speaker 1: storytelling brain. That's how that's how we operate. We have
Speaker 1: to have that story in order to make sense of
Speaker 1: our lives and move forward. And I even think about
Speaker 1: the fictional movie The Matrix, in which the storyline there
Speaker 1: was that the alien overlords at some point had tinkered
Speaker 1: around and made the human lives very easy. They had
Speaker 1: no challenges and in essence, they had no meaning. So
Speaker 1: what happened is that all the humans died off because
Speaker 1: of course they were harnessing their their bodies energy right
Speaker 1: um in those little pods, and so they had to
Speaker 1: put into the stories of the humans lives some sort
Speaker 1: of challenge obstacle in order to get to that idea
Speaker 1: of why am I here? What? What is the point
Speaker 1: of being alive? Indeed, yes, I think that's that's an
Speaker 1: excellent example of it, just the idea that a life
Speaker 1: without struggle is not really a life. Struggles are the
Speaker 1: things that define our existence. To give us that story
Speaker 1: and ultimly give us meaning. Alright, Uh, on that note,
Speaker 1: we should probably take a break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about like you've got some change,
Speaker 1: you burning a hole in your pocket, and you want
Speaker 1: to spend it and to try to be happier. Let
Speaker 1: me talk about the ways in which you might be
Speaker 1: able to do that. All right, we're back putting a
Speaker 1: price tag on happiness, all right. So of course Forbes
Speaker 1: has some some articles on this, right because Forbes is
Speaker 1: very interested in in economics and um how to pursue
Speaker 1: that in in the best way that you can. And
Speaker 1: one of the articles talks with Elizabeth Dunn, who is
Speaker 1: a co author of the book Happy Money, The Science
Speaker 1: of Smarter Spending, and she talks about one of the
Speaker 1: ways that has the most impact with money and happiness
Speaker 1: is to purchase experiences, not things. Yes, buying an experience
Speaker 1: as opposed to a material instead of simply going and
Speaker 1: even waiting in line to buy that new gadget at
Speaker 1: the store. It's about taking a trip to an exciting location,
Speaker 1: or even even not that exciting a location, but but
Speaker 1: taking a little adventure, right Or going to a concert,
Speaker 1: checking out a new musical actor, an old favorite, going
Speaker 1: to a play, that sort of thing. And she cites
Speaker 1: in August two thousand and fourteen study called Waiting for
Speaker 1: More low anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases, which
Speaker 1: tracked about a hundred college students in twenty two hundred
Speaker 1: randomly selected adults to see how they felt about material
Speaker 1: goods and experiences, and they found that participants were excited
Speaker 1: about both the thing and the experience, but they were
Speaker 1: overall more positive about the experience. Moreover, material purchases were
Speaker 1: more likely to be tinged with feelings of impatience. So
Speaker 1: I think you had already mentioned before, like sitting in
Speaker 1: line for something. Here's a good example. You're in line
Speaker 1: for the newest gadget. Do you feel collaborative and easy
Speaker 1: going with your fellow line waiters or do you feel
Speaker 1: kind of like itchy and competitive? Yeah, I would I
Speaker 1: would imagine it tends more towards the competitive side. Now. Certainly,
Speaker 1: as we were discussing earlier, really savvy companies such as
Speaker 1: Apple has tried to make it more of a community, right,
Speaker 1: more but more almost a religion where you're not in
Speaker 1: line with other consumers with whom you're competing, but rather
Speaker 1: you're you're gathered with like minded individual wolves who were
Speaker 1: there to to get another slice of the future, right,
Speaker 1: Because then you can kind of look at it as
Speaker 1: that line for the experience, right, So your in line
Speaker 1: for for a you know, a theater ticket or a tour,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're talking with your fellow
Speaker 1: line waiters about how cool it's going to be. You're right,
Speaker 1: Apple has completely hacked into that because now we have
Speaker 1: people in line for the experience of Apple. And did
Speaker 1: you know that you can ask Serri her favorite color
Speaker 1: and she will tell you it's this blue green color
Speaker 1: that she can't quite articulate. So it's like waiting in
Speaker 1: line to get into a fish show talking went to
Speaker 1: your other your fellow fish fans and discussing, you know,
Speaker 1: the set list at this show that came through last year,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, at its essence,
Speaker 1: it's about community and and and it's a highly social
Speaker 1: bonding sort of experience. Yeah. And then I think the
Speaker 1: the imaginative state going into it is key too, because
Speaker 1: you think about you know, when you're looking forward to
Speaker 1: a new video game coming out or a new gadget.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're reading these articles about it, you're
Speaker 1: looking at screenshots, you're looking at some footage, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: you to your point, you just impatiently wanted You're like,
Speaker 1: I want that thing in my hand. I want to
Speaker 1: I want it in my video game machine so I
Speaker 1: can be playing it. Why am I not playing it already?
Speaker 1: Why do I have to wait a year? Whereas when
Speaker 1: you're getting excited about a trip, there may be a
Speaker 1: little in patience. You might be thinking which might work
Speaker 1: week or over? So I could, you know, actually let
Speaker 1: the fun times begin. But you get to, uh, to
Speaker 1: involve yourself in the planning of that trip, right and
Speaker 1: picking out what you're gonna do and daydreaming about the
Speaker 1: thing you're gonna do, kind of like daydreaming about how
Speaker 1: you're going to spend that lottery money, except it's actually
Speaker 1: going to happen. Yeah, And you can involve others in
Speaker 1: that planning to exactly and their experiences. Oh I went
Speaker 1: to you know, this beach or that beach, or you know,
Speaker 1: to get excited themselves about your upcoming experience. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're it's you're you're engaging yourself with society on some level,
Speaker 1: even if you're only traveling with one person and just encountering,
Speaker 1: you know, people on the way. Uh. A trip is
Speaker 1: an adventure that's going to forge a new story for you,
Speaker 1: Whereas you know, a gadget, a video game, Uh, some
Speaker 1: sort of material possession and new code. Those things are
Speaker 1: gonna They may carve a story, but it's a much
Speaker 1: smaller story. Indeed, and Done also says that a second
Speaker 1: category isn't this this spending on other people is another
Speaker 1: way to achieve happiness with money. And when I think
Speaker 1: about this, I just think about this as being a
Speaker 1: different version of the experience. Really, but you're you're buying
Speaker 1: an experience for someone else, or you're creating an experience
Speaker 1: for someone else, And that's the altruistic act again, a
Speaker 1: community social based act here. Yeah, if nothing else, like
Speaker 1: bare minimum, you're buying yourself that that that moment where
Speaker 1: you give something to somebody else and you get to
Speaker 1: see the look their face hopefully and you you'll get
Speaker 1: to feel good about yourself. And uh and if nothing
Speaker 1: else to you're you're taking your mind off of yourself
Speaker 1: and putting it onto someone else. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: sort of breaking free of the default mode network for
Speaker 1: just a moment and and putting the taking the spotlight
Speaker 1: off of your own story and putting it on another's,
Speaker 1: or at least having your story meet there's yeah, and
Speaker 1: there are scouts of studies that support this this idea
Speaker 1: that there's a link between happiness and um, your own
Speaker 1: ability to provide that gift of happiness to someone. In fact,
Speaker 1: done in one of her studies, It was a two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight study gave college students either five dollars
Speaker 1: or twenty dollars to them by the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Now half were instructed to buy something for themselves and
Speaker 1: then the other half were instructed to buy something for
Speaker 1: someone else. And what do you think, you know, how
Speaker 1: did they rate their levels of happiness for that day. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the altruistic endeavor was the one
Speaker 1: that generated the most happiness. Yes, And they say that
Speaker 1: that may be boil down to something called self determination theory,
Speaker 1: which states that human well being depends upon satisfaction of
Speaker 1: three basic needs relatedness, competence, and autonomy. So in this
Speaker 1: circumstance where they were giving away that money or buying
Speaker 1: something for someone else, it meant those three conditions. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about bonding um, free choice, and just having
Speaker 1: the ability to do it in the first place. And
Speaker 1: this brings to mind an important point that's brought up
Speaker 1: in the house Stuff Works article. Can money by happiness
Speaker 1: by Jennifer Horton, which is a nice examination of some
Speaker 1: of these same issues. UH. And this article points out
Speaker 1: that you do see highly successful UH wealthy individuals who
Speaker 1: are scoring highly on the on the the Happiness contentment
Speaker 1: Um meter, but a lot of this generally stems from
Speaker 1: from the success and enjoyment of one's job rather necessarily
Speaker 1: than the size of the paycheck. So again it comes
Speaker 1: more down to UH, to the the experience, and to
Speaker 1: the into determinalism as opposed to just a fat check
Speaker 1: at the end of the week. Indeed, now um in
Speaker 1: terms of giving away money or buying experiences or even
Speaker 1: getting a big fat page, one of the things that
Speaker 1: Done says is that you have to restrict access or
Speaker 1: make something special. In other words, buying something for someone
Speaker 1: every single day could diminish your feelings of happiness. Right.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of again that analogy of forkful of cheesecake.
Speaker 1: You know, first it's going to be the best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, no matter what the fantasy is, no matter
Speaker 1: what the the dream is, if you have enough of it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get old, it's gonna get sick. It's you're
Speaker 1: going to adapt to that environment and you're going to
Speaker 1: want a different environment. You're gonna need something greater and
Speaker 1: greater to to thrill you or at least satisfy you
Speaker 1: and give you that feeling that you're leaving leading this
Speaker 1: happy life, which taps into two things. Here will power
Speaker 1: and as you said already, fantasy. And if you think
Speaker 1: about those two terms side by side and you think
Speaker 1: about watery winners, wow, you have a really great discussion
Speaker 1: or even study about how happiness plays out. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because suddenly you go from zero to five, right, You're
Speaker 1: you're you suddenly have all of this money to buy
Speaker 1: the happiness that you've wanted, and you start spending on things, right.
Speaker 1: You get that, you get that car that you think
Speaker 1: you need, You get that the house that you think
Speaker 1: you need, um, and pretty soon you you just have
Speaker 1: to keep buying things to maintain that level of newness
Speaker 1: and happiness. Right. Yeah. And there's this idea that you'll
Speaker 1: have more choices, Yes you will, but that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: make someone happier. In fact, we've talked about that before.
Speaker 1: It's you go depletion, and which you have all of
Speaker 1: these things in front of you, and you spend so
Speaker 1: much mental energy on it that you are depleted for
Speaker 1: making good decision in the future. And again here comes
Speaker 1: the short term long term thing, because if you are
Speaker 1: trying to fill that void by buying, buying, buying, your
Speaker 1: serving constantly the short term. And that's where you see
Speaker 1: that lottery winners are something like twice as likely to
Speaker 1: declare bankruptcy than the general population. And it also just
Speaker 1: ties back into that old adage. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, if you you're still
Speaker 1: going to be the same person, right, You're just gonna
Speaker 1: be surrounded by more stuff, or maybe you'll be in
Speaker 1: a fancy your house, but you still have to look
Speaker 1: at yourself in the mirror. You still have to ask
Speaker 1: those questions about meaning, why am I here? I have
Speaker 1: a really fancy car that I just bought, But how
Speaker 1: does that change my story? Yeah? In fact, that gets
Speaker 1: down to this idea of perhaps all of us are
Speaker 1: pre loaded with the set point of happiness that can
Speaker 1: change over time. Right. I guess if you were to
Speaker 1: do that in a in a way that was really intentional,
Speaker 1: but if you didn't, there there may be sort of
Speaker 1: a set point that we all gravitate to. And again,
Speaker 1: lottery winners were examined for this. It was in nineteen
Speaker 1: eight study by a team of psychologists from from Northwestern
Speaker 1: University in the University of Massachusetts, which was published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and they found
Speaker 1: that lottery winners were not significantly happier than control group participants,
Speaker 1: and that patients with spinal cord injuries did not appear
Speaker 1: nearly as as unhappy as might be expected. Yes, I
Speaker 1: mean the spinal injury thing comes into play because on
Speaker 1: some of you could say, individuals are sustained as a
Speaker 1: sufficient injury have fewer choices, whereas money seemingly brings more choices.
Speaker 1: Money money's free speech, right, money is more freedom to
Speaker 1: do things in the world, And yet it doesn't really
Speaker 1: pan out that way when you look at these statistics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to further this idea of set point happiness, psychology,
Speaker 1: professor Gildrick Schmack found that once couples married, their life
Speaker 1: satisfaction measures generally changed in the same direction, suggesting that
Speaker 1: environmental factors like child's birth or a job loss would
Speaker 1: affect their well being. But with you again, if you
Speaker 1: take the long term view of them, he found that
Speaker 1: their participants happiness level was relatively stable over a course
Speaker 1: of twenty two years, So again perhaps the influence of
Speaker 1: this set point. All right, but at this point you're
Speaker 1: probably wondering, well, what can I do if I have
Speaker 1: the money to spend and I want happiness, I want meaningfulness,
Speaker 1: I want all of these things, and I have a
Speaker 1: little money set aside, how do I spend it? You
Speaker 1: would go big. You would look for three things. You
Speaker 1: would you would look for a time, You would look
Speaker 1: for giving all truism, and you would look for experience,
Speaker 1: and you would try to wrap all three of those
Speaker 1: things up into one thing. Yeah, like an example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind, and this is not something big on
Speaker 1: a financial level. But so you're giving a gift to
Speaker 1: a child. You don't just give them a thing. As
Speaker 1: much as they want that thing, would pray and would
Speaker 1: prob be happy to run off in the next room
Speaker 1: with that thing, but you give them something that you
Speaker 1: do together. You give them the experience of building said
Speaker 1: thing or playing said thing if it's a game, right
Speaker 1: and uh, and so you're getting there, getting that gift
Speaker 1: giving rush. You are getting the experience of doing something
Speaker 1: with the with the child. The socialization as well as
Speaker 1: the story of doing it. Um, all these things that
Speaker 1: wound up into one and you're giving of your own
Speaker 1: time and so investment. Yeah, and so what this all
Speaker 1: underscores is that there is some sort of meaning achieved.
Speaker 1: As you said, there's a story to go along with this.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's this is my grandchild and I'm and I'm
Speaker 1: helping to add to you know, his or her life
Speaker 1: in this way. And maybe it's even a life lesson
Speaker 1: that they want to impart. So you know, that's this
Speaker 1: hopefully a good one, right. Yeah, there's the Fisher Price
Speaker 1: Life Lesson series you can get. It's some of them
Speaker 1: are pretty rough, but but they're important. Well they're all plastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's good. Um. Yes, I think it just all
Speaker 1: boils down to the ability to take stock of your life,
Speaker 1: find meaning, and also be thankful for the things that
Speaker 1: you do have because, as we know, just you might
Speaker 1: get that quick dopamine surge from buying something, but again
Speaker 1: that that's ephemerals, that's not gonna last. Yeah. So, I
Speaker 1: especially as we begin to sadly enter into another holiday season,
Speaker 1: I would advise everyone when you when you add something
Speaker 1: to that Animazon wish list, when you buy that gift
Speaker 1: for someone else, or you know, buy something for yourself. Think,
Speaker 1: think about it in terms of meaning and story, like
Speaker 1: what what is the what meaning am I adding to
Speaker 1: my life for someone else's with this purchase? All right, well, hey,
Speaker 1: let's we've got a little time here. Let's call over
Speaker 1: the robot and read through some listener mail. All right,
Speaker 1: this one comes to us from I'm gonna say p
Speaker 1: s K for sure. I don't want to butcher your name,
Speaker 1: so we'll just go with initials. Um PSK says. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime listener. I love the show. I'm writing
Speaker 1: to you because I just heard your podcast on the
Speaker 1: flow state. I'm a practic practitioner and performer of what
Speaker 1: are called the flow arts. Basically, it's prop manipulation using poi,
Speaker 1: hula hoops, contact balls, and a lot of other objects
Speaker 1: too many of the name here. The reason we are
Speaker 1: called flow artists is because the main purpose of our
Speaker 1: art is less entertainment and more about achieving a flow state,
Speaker 1: a feeling of perfect synchronicity and awareness with our chosen prop,
Speaker 1: a way of losing ourselves in our flow. For years,
Speaker 1: I thought this was something new that people were latching onto.
Speaker 1: I had no idea there was legitimate research into flow states,
Speaker 1: or that a flow state could be achieved through other
Speaker 1: tasks besides prop manipulation. Now that I think of it, though,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense, and now I'll try to achieve
Speaker 1: flow more in my daily life. Anyways, thanks for the podcast.
Speaker 1: It was very informative, even for someone who considers himself
Speaker 1: well versed in flow. If you or your audience would
Speaker 1: like to see some of the things that people are
Speaker 1: doing through flow, I invite you all to search POI
Speaker 1: that's p o i uh in YouTube or even visit
Speaker 1: my own groups you tube channel the Way of the Circle.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, take care by all right, So that was awesome.
Speaker 1: I love that we have a flow artist among our listeners. Um.
Speaker 1: You guys are always amazing us with all these different
Speaker 1: things that you do. Um. I will try to butcher
Speaker 1: PSK's name. Okay, p send kiddo. I think P is
Speaker 1: the initial Okay, all we had was the email address
Speaker 1: on this one. Yeah, we apologize in advance anyway. Thank
Speaker 1: you for running in. Yes indeed, so hey, you want
Speaker 1: to find out more about happiness, well, head on over
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your mind dot com because we
Speaker 1: will get it to you, um happiness. That is, in fact,
Speaker 1: I visit the landing page for this podcast episode and
Speaker 1: will include links out to other podcast episodes that deal
Speaker 1: with happiness and our quest for happiness, as well as
Speaker 1: links up to blog post videos. On the page yourself,
Speaker 1: you'll find links to all of our social media pages.
Speaker 1: You can go follow those accounts and keep track of
Speaker 1: what we're up to, and you can also get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, share your thoughts with us. Maybe even
Speaker 1: have an unusual experience that brought you a lot of happiness.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a trip, it was unexpected. Let us know
Speaker 1: about that, and you can email us at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com