Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #54 Re-Defining Happiness with Professor Paul Dolan

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains swearing and themes of an adult nature. What really makes us happy? Is it a big house, lots of money, marriage and children? Not necessarily. Yet so many of us base what we do upon the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves of what we think should make us happy without paying attention to whether these things actually do make us happy day-to-day. Professor of behavioural science and guest on this week’s podcast, Professor Paul Dolan, believes that happiness is subjective in every way and if we free ourselves from the myth of the perfect life we might each find a life that is worth living. We discuss how happiness lies in the small stuff, not the big life-changing things. It is located in the things we do and the things we pay attention to – and how we feel about those experiences. Paul argues that the right balance of things that you find fun on one hand and fulfilling on the other, lead you to a happy life. He shares lots of practical tips that can help us all find more fulfilment and ultimately more happiness. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/54 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And so much of what we do and how we live our lives are according to the things that we think should make us happy, based upon our parents' expectations, our own expectations, evolution, historical accident, social construction, without paying enough attention directly to actually whether it makes us feel good day to day. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you,

as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier, because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 54 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chastji and I am your host. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Feel Better Live More. Now I just want to give you a quick reminder that my new book, The Stress Solution, Four Steps to Leading a Happier and Calmer Life,

is available to purchase now in paperback as well as audiobook. Thank you to all of you who have left reviews so far. As I record this intro, there are a staggering 111 reviews on Amazon already. 104 of them have been five-star reviews, which is simply incredible. I'm delighted that the book is helping so many of you reduce your stress levels and improve the way that you feel. Now today's conversation is all about happiness and my guest is Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Sciences at the London School of Economics, expert on human behaviour and author of the brand new book, Happy Ever After, Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life. I'm a huge fan of Paul's first

book, Happiness by Design, which I read a few years ago. So I was absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to talk to Paul about how his thinking on happiness has evolved over the past few years. In today's conversation, we explore what really makes people happy, and Paul busts several common myths about the sources of our happiness. He shows that there can be many unexpected paths to lasting fulfillment, and some of these might involve living in a way that is contrary to the prevailing social narratives, such as not going into higher education or choosing not to marry, as well as caring a little bit less about living forever. Paul argues that by freeing ourselves from the myth of the

perfect life, we might each find a life that's worth living. He shares lots of practical tips that can help us all find more fulfillment and ultimately more happiness. I think you are really going to enjoy my conversation. Before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly episodes like this one. Athletic Greens are a longtime supporter of my podcast. Now, whilst I prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food i do recognize that in our busy stressful 21st century lives this is not always possible now athletic greens is one of

the most nutrient dense whole food supplements that i've come across and contains vitamins minerals prebiotics and digestive enzymes if you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you can access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation.

So Paul, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Hello, mate. You all right? I am good indeed. It's good to see you. It's good to actually be in your office here. And the first thing I've noticed actually is you've got a weights bench and some dumbbells in your office. Yeah, that's trying to find some time to train when I'm busy. Yeah, and do you manage to? Well, I manage to work out five times a week without fail. And I've done that for, well, a long time now. I don't know, 20 years, 15, 20 years.

Yeah, I just make the time to do it. Oh, fantastic. Well, look, we're going to be 20 years. Yeah, I just make the time to do it. Oh, fantastic. Well, look, we're going to be talking about happiness today, which is an area of expertise for yourself. I hope so. Yeah, good. You are the Professor of Behavioural Science here at the LSE. And it's a real honour to be here, actually. And actually, we met for the first time yesterday. We did, last night. Yeah, we were both doing an event, these 5 by 15 events at the tabernacle um and you opened

up the evening so i got to see you talk for 15 minutes which was fascinating um thank you and for me it was great to see you talk actually because i remember buying your book your first book uh happiness by design yeah um when it came out a few years ago that was a brilliant book thank you and i know you've got your new book out now which you're sort of doing the rounds at the moment happy ever after escaping the myth of the perfect life and i want to i want to sort of dive deep into into the new book in just a second but to start with you know i think for my listeners it would be useful to sort of explain what is happiness yeah so good so thank you um and thank you for your kind words i quite i quite enjoyed you too last night if it's if i i don't know i don't have to say that and it's true i did it was

good um so happiness well i mean we've had two and a half thousand years of discussion around what happiness is and so i think it's never going to get a complete answer to that but i i see it as located in experiences in the things that we do and how we feel about the things we do, the things we pay attention to and the people that we're with. So it's in our daily experiences. As distinct from in the narratives and evaluations that we might tell about our lives, right? Because there's basically two ways in which you can measure that. As evaluations, as these kind of stories, or more directly in the experiences.

I'm much more interested in the experiences. And those experiences as i argue in happiness by design i think we've got two main sets of experiences um ones that i gather up under the term pleasure and the others under purpose pleasure are all the usual hedonic adjectives of emotion feelings of joy and excitement and contentment and the negative adjectives too emotion, feelings of joy and excitement and contentment, and the negative adjectives too, associated with pain, anxiety, worry, and stress. But alongside those, I think, sit another category of experiences that are to do with how worthwhile, meaningful, fulfilling, or pointless experiences feel. So I argue that happiness is the combination of both pleasure and purpose. And therefore, happy lives are ones that contain the right balance that works for that individual

of things they find fun on the one hand and fulfilling on the other. Yeah, I really like that. It's a nice way to think about happiness. Because we are told a lot, aren't we, by the media that we need to be doing x y and z i don't know why i said z well we know exactly moved over to north america now i think i was interviewing an american chap on skype for my podcast last week uh we're told by the media x y and z are necessary to be happy yeah um and and in your new book in particular, you really start to, you know, bust some of those myths, if you will, which is really fascinating.

And actually, on some levels, a bit uncomfortable reading various things, because I think we all do tell ourselves certain stories. Before we get into that, Paul, I just want to cover it. In your first book, you talk about how we can design our lives so we don't need to think about happiness. And I wonder for people who are not familiar with your work, if you could just sort of summarize, briefly summarize, the sort of rationale behind that.

Yeah, that's a tricky question to answer quickly. So the behavioral sciences, economics, psychology, principally, additionally now anthropology and sociology and neuroscience too are telling us a very basic message that most of what we do comes about rather than being thought about we make thousands of decisions every day most of those are made unconsciously automatically fast and without thinking and actually that's a good thing because if we had to think about everything we did our heads would explode and we'd never get out of bed so the play that so the extent to which we really deliberatively and consciously think about what we do is very limited it's mostly done on autopilot through habits and the brain wants to create habit loops it wants to

create associations in the world that make life easier for itself it's why sometimes when you want to whether you have to check whether you've turned the oven off lock the house because these are automated processes that when you think about whether you've done them you don't actually know until you check so that's what the evidence tells us then you've got a lot of self-help books which are essentially around change your mind about things you know be positive do these things which you know it's kind of hard work you know you need to do it but you don't know how to implement it so drawing on the lessons that you know basically what we do simply comes about rather than being thought about how can you design your environment how can you make your life easier to make those habits easier to make it easier for you to do the things that make you feel good

to actually be positive by the things that you do and not just by the statements you make it's not for example what we're sitting here you know in your office and i'm resting my podcast recorder actually on your weights bench in terms of a habit of working out regularly by putting a weights bench and two dumbbells in your office do you think it makes it much more likely that you're going to get a workout here it does and also planning it into my diary that know, you just make sure you have time to do it. When people often say that they don't have time to do things, what they really mean is they don't prioritize it. I mean, often, you know, often we don't have time and people that are working really hard and long hours and, you know, on low pay, they don't have time. But many of us

can find the time and make the time. It's just that we don't make it easy for ourselves. The really simple lesson is that if you want to do something, make it easy. It's like what we call in the academic literature, implementation intentions. So you have an intention to change your behavior. We all have all sorts of intentions to do all sorts of things. I'm going to work out more. I'm going to read more books. But unless you have a plan, a detailed plan about how you're going to implement that intention, it doesn't happen. So, you know, reading more books or working out or whatever it is doesn't just happen. There's a series of discrete behaviors that lead you to that final consequence. And it's all about making that easy so that it then becomes encoded in habit. And then you just do it without thinking about it. And my gym time now is done almost automatically

without too much effort and thought. So yes, you're talking about physical activity. You're talking about if you want to work out more, if you want to read more, you need to make this easy. I guess that really, if we extend it out, why are you working out more? Sure, it could be for your physical health, but overall, I'm guessing working out more

improves your levels of happiness. So you've got something going on in your life. You've made it easy to do something that makes you happy. See, I don't think people... Some of the insights are really obvious, but overlooked. So listen to more music, go outdoors, spend time with friends. People say to me, well, that's obvious, I know that.

I'm like, okay, but it's so obvious, why aren't you doing it then? And you're not doing it because you're not making it easy for yourself and you you don't have this implementation intention you don't have a plan that makes those things more likely to get done so what can people people who are listening to this you think yeah i get it i've heard that before listening to music going out in nature um you know doing some form of physical activity whatever these things are going to improve my mental health and improve the way that I feel yeah I know that so I often talk on this podcast about what's that gap what sits in between knowledge and action yeah it is that implementable

plan so so um you know like so this I this this bench is a is very salient it's a prime in my office it makes it more likely that I'm going to do it because it's there. Surround yourself with people that engage in the behavior that you want to do. We're very influenced by those around us, social norms, peer effects. That's a big one, isn't it?

That's a really big one. It's a massive effect. I mean, if you're going to be, you know, if you don't want to drink so much alcohol, for example, and all your friends go out and get drunk every night, it's really hard not to, right? Then you need to sort of redesign some of your networks and peer groups which can be hard i appreciate that can be hard but if you do that it's going to just make it much more likely if you want to go to the gym find a gym buddy to go with have a fixed time day place time whatever

that you go with it just becomes then routine but basically the brain's lazy and it doesn't want to work very hard and so you need to and it doesn't want to work very hard and so you need to make it easy for itself to create good habits and break bad ones i guess in some ways you're saying let's try and take our willpower out of the equation because design power is the is the key thing willpower willpower is weak yeah you know most of us most of us are weak you know we'll give in to temptations that are in front of us so don't put the temptation in front of us make the temptation in front of you something that's good for you that you want to do more of it's going to make it more likely yeah i mean

one thing i've always said to my patients who are trying to let's say improve their diets is guys look if you're serious about this i would say make sure you control the environment you can control yeah your house yeah you know you're confronted by willpower and temptation every time you step out your front door if you're serious about cutting out on sugar let's say sugar and junk food get out of the house so that when you are tired in the evening and you fancy that that's something a little sweet there's nothing there um certainly that approach works for many of my patients it works for me it's a really

sensible piece of advice and the cravings go yeah they do you know they do go but if you're able to satisfy them very easily you know a lot of times that we do things why do we do it because it's there because we can right so if it's not there and you can't then it's much more effortful so make so make what you don't want to do more effortful make what you do want to do more easy yeah i think it's very basic it's actually really basic really obvious but overlooked insights So make what you don't want to do more effortful, make what you do want to do more easy. Yeah, I think- It's very basic. It's actually really basic, really obvious, but overlooked insights.

Yeah, and actually a lot of this, it's not rocket science, is it? It's actually, we know some of this stuff and actually it's about trying to inspire people to actually start implementing it into their everyday lives. Yeah, it's a bit, I use an analogy in the book. I'm not sure whether this works brilliantly,

but it's like you spend a lot of time designing a park for a dog and you spend a lot of effort going into the design of the park and where it can run around and the hurdles it can jump over. Then you let the dog off the lead and you just let it run around, saving the knowledge that it's going to have a good time. And it's a bit like doing that with your own life. You step back, consciously decide, put some effort in, get some detailed plans in place,

surround yourself with the right kind of people, get some detailed plans in place, surround yourself with the right kind of people, get the right kind of environment for you, make the right kinds of commitments, and then let yourself off the lead. Yeah, I like it. I really like it actually. It's quite consistent with the way I try and make changes myself with my patients. If we move on from, you know, Happiness by Design to the new book, which is, you know, there's so much great content in there. I don't think we'll be able to get through all of it in a conversation today. But you talk a lot about these various social narratives, these stories that we tell ourselves about happiness.

And I wonder if you could just expand a little bit on that. Yeah, so let me just, let me start with that by finishing with a story from happiness by design which was actually one of the most like resonant stories in the book everyone that picked up on the quote on the paperback is the book that'll make you quit your job it's the only time i ever talk about jobs once in the book really is is a friend who worked at media land um she had we she and i went for dinners uh and she spent literally i mean a whole two hours or however long we were at dinner, complaining about every single aspect of her job, her boss, her colleagues, her commute. Everything was miserable.

And then we got up and we were leaving dinner and she said, without any irony, I love working at Media Land. I was like, I looked at her incredulous, but that actually wasn't an ironic thing. Because you remember, if you go back to the beginning, there's basically two ways of thinking about happiness in experiences and in evaluations in her experience of her job it was categorically miserable in her evaluation it was a good job it was somewhere she always wanted to work her parents were proud her friends were jealous how could she not be happy there when she thought about whether it should make her happy and and so much of what we do and and how we live our lives are according to the things that we think should make us happy based upon our parents expectations our own expectations evolution historical accident social construction

without paying enough attention directly to actually whether it makes us feel good day to day so she in many ways she was telling herself a story that of course this job makes me happy. Exactly. She had a narrative of a great prestigious media organization. She had a very high status job. How could she not be happy in it, right? That's what she wanted. That's what everyone else wanted for her.

Or I guess, is it what she wants or is that what she grew up hearing about what would make someone happy? Yeah, right to be fair i think many of us can reflect on that in our own lives and um it's something i've sort of reflected a lot on over the last few years about what aspects of my job truly make me happy which aspects don't and actually trying to be honest with yourself and go come on let's just be really frank here. How much of what I'm doing is not just work in anything. How much is actually me or how much is a mirror reflection of everything I've seen throughout my life?

And I think that's what I should be doing. And so I think you've really hit on something that arguably, as I said right at the start, this is potentially a little bit uncomfortable for some of us yeah I like so it's interesting you said that because I like the idea I've always liked the idea of being challenging right I think you really any way you really get change of any kind really is to kind of challenge and question and make people feel a little bit uncomfortable at times and I kind of think I hope that I do that to people in this book I hope they sort of you know move a bit uncomfortably on their seat at times because even if it even if it just actually times and I kind of think I hope that I do that to people in this book I hope they sort of you know move a bit uncomfortably on their seat at times because even if it even if it just actually makes them reflect upon their own lives and think actually I am writing what I'm doing it is it is

making me happy to do these things x y and z um then um you know then it's then then at least I've done something I've made them question and think even if even if they don't change their behavior subsequently when I heard you speak last, you went through a number of narratives that you expand upon in your book. One of them was to do with wealth, being successful, and being clever. What is that social narrative, and where does that come from? So these are the category of reaching narratives. These are the first three chapters in the book. And they're narratives around aspiration.

They're narratives around addiction. You can never have enough. Once you start consuming money and success and education, you can't be too rich, successful, or too clever. You can just keep going and keep going and keep going past the point, actually, at which the evidence tells us you should stop. Poverty, any lack of status and ignorance are not good for happiness, but you don't need very much of these things of wealth, success and education in order to be happy. And so the sort of mantra for the first part of the book summarizes really just enough rather than more please. So reach a point at which you don't need any more of wealth, success, and education. And it's really difficult, right? Because the whole of our construction

is to just keep going and keep going and keep going. People will ask people that are even very successful, what are you doing next? Yeah. Right? It's kind of a question. What's next? What's next?

It's like, well, why not now? I mean, why does it have to be a next you know what you're gonna do next we're gonna do next we're gonna do next we're gonna do next keep going keep going keep going so hold on just calm down for a minute the evidence is very clear i think on this that you know there is a point at which you'll you'll keep going too far you talk about money yeah and one of my questions is, does money buy you happiness? It buys you out of misery of poverty. I mean, so if you're paying attention to paying the bills, feeding the kids, that's misery making. And so, you know, poverty is bad for us.

But there comes a point, again, it's like a sweet spot. Once you've got, you know, average levels of income, you're kind of, you know, doing okay. You don't have to worry about money in quite the same way as you might have done before. And that's the sort of just enough point. But then you start getting richer and richer. And then you, first of all, you get sucked into being richer and richer. So you then spend less time with people that you like being with. You have further commutes. You work longer hours.

All these things associated with being less happy. And you start worrying about your stocks and your investments and whether you've got the right portfolio of investments and things. And then you start paying attention to money in a different kind of way. So, you know, there's a point at which, again, it's kind of time to sort of step off that treadmill. And you cover some statistics, I think they're from America in your book, in terms of what is that sweet spot point.

I know it will be different for all of us, but as a rule across a population, you've seen some of this research, haven't you? Yeah, so some of the evidence, again, depends on what measures you use of happiness. But by the time you've got about £50,000 a year, you've probably reached the point at which happiness is at which income is going to maximize your happiness it's worth saying from an academic perspective these are correlational data so there's no randomized controlled trials where we've allocated people to different income amounts that would be wonderful if we could do that and see what effect it has on their as on their happiness i need to be a little bit of circumspect about what the evidence tells us um we have an accumulation of correlational data from lots of different countries that tell us roughly the same kind of thing.

Yeah, I've seen this quite a lot before as well, that there is that sweet spot that I sort of, I remember watching this 2011 film called Happy. They speak to, I think, a professor of happiness in the US. And I think he talks about this whole idea that basically once you've got enough money to put a roof over your head and feed your family, actually more money is not correlated with more happiness. And that's really what you're saying, isn't it? Yeah. And also it's really important with the income thing to talk about social comparisons because you are certainly made less happy when other people get richer. Right. Because we compare ourselves to other people nearly always upwards never downwards thankfully more than you know earning more than other people but upwards the envying that they have more um the um likelihood of filing for bankruptcy

increases in neighborhoods where lottery winners live really yeah yeah causal causal we we can we can we can see that very clearly from the evidence so you you have someone around you wins a lot of money you've got to try and keep up with money you've got to buy a faster car whatever just so you feel good in yourself well yeah because that's you know we do we we don't really know if i ask you whether you're you're well paid or not you need some reference in which to base that on don't you um and nearly always the reference is is people like us and maybe people that are just a little bit more who have just a little bit more than us rather than less so so i guess on that if we sort of extend that out then happiness in many ways is subjective in in in every way it only it's only subjective it's really interesting when people talk about

because one of the you know i've heard every possible criticism i think of happiness and wanting to say well it's just subjective i'm like well yeah but that's the point isn't it it's how we feel it's how we feel right so um i've got tattoos and people will ask me did they hurt well i'm like well i have no idea whether they're going to hurt you i don't care about the tattoo in itself it's what pain does the tattoo cause? And that's going to vary from individual to individual. And that's the subjective experience. As you know very, very well, pain medication is based upon how much it hurts.

And how much it hurts is a subjective experience. So we should embrace that subjectivity much more. Yeah, absolutely. It's not a weakness, actually. It is exactly what happiness is. It is what it is. Life is entirely lived through the lens of subjectivity. Yeah, and going back to that film, actually,

and I write about that film in my new book, The Stress Collision, I write about purpose and how I feel actually a life lacking in purpose on some level is inherently a stressful life. And I come up with some sort of strategies to help people kind of figure out how they can start finding their purpose but i i talk about the that film happy and how they start off with a um a rickshaw driver in india right uh and and what's incredible is that he lives in a you know this sort of

in a shack really he lives um they don't really have a roof over their heads but you know he gets up every morning at five his wife makes him a cup of tea says bye to his kids and he goes up and pulls a rickshaw all day he says people sometimes don't pay him they spit at him sometimes he gets drenched in the rain but he he comes back and there's this beautiful scene you should you should you should really watch it, Paul, actually. I'll try and send you a link later. He comes back and when he comes back at about 4pm, the sun shining, he sees his two kids. They run out to see him saying, daddy, daddy. And he gets into it and says, you know, in this moment, I am the happiest man in the entire world. And, you know, it goes on a little bit, but it's really fascinating. And you think,

you know, you can't help but change you when you watch that. You go, wow, you know, we think material success and doing better in our careers and earning more money is going to bring us happiness. But the reality for many of us is that it doesn't. Yeah. And it's very hard to swim against the tide of what everybody else is doing. So that's why kind of it requires for me, I think, much more than just an individual change. It's very hard to step off that treadmill. But a social change for us to have a different conversation about what kinds of jobs we value, where we seek and reward status, and the kinds of competitions in life that we set up. If we are going to be driven to compete with others, let's do it on attributes that are socially beneficial so what are those attributes that you would like to see society value more than they currently do

well pros acting in pro-social ways um when we get into the third part of the book i've got a chapter on altruism um which is again we have this narrative that at least some of what we do should be selflessly motivated by the idea that we help other people for purely altruistic reasons. That's absolute nonsense. Anything we do has some personal gain in it somewhere. Even if you're not shouting about it from the rooftops, even if you're not telling everybody how much you help people, you feel better about yourself.

You just walk a little bit taller. And that's a really good thing to celebrate. That's a really good benefit. Well, can you just expand on that story you told last night about David Beckham? Because I think that would be great for the listeners to really understand this point. Well, so David Beckham has done a huge amount of work for UNICEF. All of his salary when he was at Paris Saint-Germain went to the Beckham 7 charity. And that's a good thing.

And then his emails to his agent, I think, get hacked. And he is a little bit less than complimentary of the honours committee because he's quite like a knighthood now. He's done all this work. And he sees other people getting knighthoods for things that he doesn't consider to be

quite as worthy as what he's done. And he uses some very choice language about what he thinks about that. And people, led by Piers Morgan mostly, jump straight in as if this completely undermines all of what Beckham's done. Because now maybe a little bit of what he's done might, retrospectively, I doubt he went into doing this work thinking I'm going to get a knighthood from it, but having done it he wouldn't quite mind one it is now undone by

that selfish intention how absurd i mean the consequences the actual consequence the facts of the outcomes are that he's changed significant numbers of children's lives in ways that they would greatly appreciate whatever whatever his intentions yeah and we spend too much time thinking about intentions and motivations without tristic behavior and not enough about the consequences and this comes through in all sorts of different ways we have virtue signaling we have all these things that kind of show our well-meaningness without actually whether we've actually done any good or not yeah in many ways you're talking about being judgmental aren't you you're talking about how we are we like to

judge others we like to think oh god he shouldn't be doing it for that reason and and as you say he probably isn't doing it for that reason but after he's achieved so much he probably thinks actually that all these guys getting a night maybe i should get a night why not um give him one by the way if anyone on the honors committee listens to your podcast, give Beckham his fucking knighthood. Yeah, well, you know, I think what's powerful for that story, and I've not yet read the section on altruism in your book, so on the train home tonight from London,

I think I'm going to dig into that. But it's amazing to me, Paul, how many similarities there are and how you talk about happiness and how I talk about health. And what I mean by that is, yes, we can try and inspire people individually to make changes. You know, I talk about the health changes people can make on an individual level. And you're saying that people can actually try and design their lives for happiness. But ultimately, if you're swimming against the tide of the people around you the community is what society expects yeah actually it's very very hard um and and i think it is incredible that you know actually one of the reasons that this podcast is called feel better

live more is that my belief is from nearly 18 years in practice now is that health is not really just about health. It's what I try and do is help people feel better when they come in and see me. And not just so it reduces their risk of getting ill in the future or so that they can live, you know, that their symptoms can go away. But I genuinely believe, and again, you may be interested in your thoughts on this. I genuinely mean when people are feeling better or feeling as good as they can, they actually get more out of their lives. They're more, you know, they can do better things in their free time.

They've got more energy to enjoy their weekends and do the things that maybe they couldn't do in the week. And we both seem to recognize the importance of purpose. I talk about purpose in the stress solution. I talk about it as a way of reducing stress levels. You talk about it as a way of reducing stress levels. You talk about it as a way of actually improving our happiness. It's the same thing. It's not separate.

It's the same thing. No, no, it's absolutely the same thing. And it sounds like we're saying the same thing in terms of it's in what we do. It's in the experience we have, not the stories we tell. So the purpose that I get from being a dad isn't in the story I tell about being a dad. It's in the stuff that I do with my kids that feels like it's meaningful. That's why to come back to the beginning of the conversation is why I've been very interested in purpose as an experience and not just as an evaluation. So, yeah, it is.

That's it. The health thing is really interesting, though, and happiness. And I think you're absolutely right again that I don't just care about happiness because it's good in itself, although that is important. It's also good for other things that we might care about, too. healthier more pro-social um are more productive all the things that we want for a society are more conducive come about more likely when we have um happier population so promoting happiness across the society yeah or i mean i think the stress thing's really important i think reducing misery yeah i think that's really important we might use the same kind of measures and we might be talking the same language but i think that misery thing is really important because you know it's pathological isn't it to want more suffering in the world either at the individual level or as a policymaker and alleviates that kind of suffering is not only good for the people that you alleviate it for it

has you know these kinds of spillover effects for others too i want to move to social media because you mentioned earlier in this conversation how, let's say income, you know, we may feel we're earning enough unless we're surrounded by people who are earning a lot more than us. And then we start comparing ourselves to them. And I immediately thought of how is social media playing into this? Because social media is just, you know, competition gone crazy in so many ways. People are always comparing themselves to other people. So in your research, have you seen at all any data suggesting that since the advent of social media, we have become less happy? Well, we've seen some things consistent with the magnification of comparison and competition.

I mean, the increase in expenditure on things like weddings, expensive holidays has gone up. But it was probably going up anyway. It's very hard to establish the cause and effects there. Okay. But now you can still celebrate these things, right? It's not only that I get married and show off in front of the hundred people that are there i can now show off in front of tens of thousands of people by posting it on instagram um and so we get into an arms race essentially is that problematic well it's problematic it's actually problematic if you want a successful

marriage there's good evidence now that shows the more you spend on your wedding the more likely you are to get divorced not only do you get in debt often for it and that's going to cause all sorts of arguments thereafter but it's a signal you're signaling this extrinsic reason for marriage like look how much we love each other whereas actually if you if you really do love each other you just do it quietly and the rest of the world doesn't have to know yeah i think i think you've you've touched on a really important point there which really is extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation. How many things are we doing for that innate pleasure that we get from doing it, or how many things are we doing

because we like the social approval that that gives us? Yeah, it's worth saying, I mean, the evidence on that is not entirely clear. And we can, again, we can tell stories and we can construct narratives around things being intrinsic that might actually be extrinsic and vice versa and actually for most of what we do there's a lot there's a considerable amount of ambivalence you know pretty much anything actually is not unequivocally good or bad certainly the health behaviors that we're talking about right you know there's kind of it's very unclear whether this is on balance good or bad for me so we can construct narratives but but there's certainly something, notwithstanding those caveats,

significant in that kind of just doing it because it's good rather than because I can just show off about it. But to deal directly with the social media question, we have no randomized controlled trials that show the cause and effects on happiness or anything else of social media. So we have correlational data. The correlational data that exist are highly suggestive of significant negative effects on the well-being measured in a whole range of ways, including self-harming behaviors,

not just reports of anxiety and depression amongst young girls. Teenage and sometimes now preteen girls who have been exposed to social media more recently, right? So this is the iGen. The millennials got their smartphones when they were 18, 19, when their brains had pretty much developed. It takes till about 25 till your brain fully grows.

But they're at a stage where their brains are pretty much adult brains. Teens and preteens are getting smartphones and they're on social media at an age where their brain is still developing. They've become addicted. It's problematic. And it's problematic, especially for girls, it seems. We've seen a massive spike in anxiety, depression and self-harming behaviors amongst young girls since iGen got smartphones. Not the same patterns emerging in boys. Now, it's correlational.

There could be all sorts of other things that might explain it, but I would be pretty confident it's causal. Yeah. And this really echoes what I'm seeing in practice as a GP. I see this all the time. You heard last night in the story I told

about that 16-year-old chap. Fantastic story. It makes you a bloody good GP, by the way. No, because you are. It's like you were understanding the etiology of why he manifested these act you know these these actions not not just treating the symptoms of yeah and that's that's generally what i'm trying to do is try with uh all of my patients but also one of the reasons i do this podcast is to help by having these sort of interesting conversations with different people hopefully people listening

are going to think oh i wonder if that's relevant for me. I wonder if I could change that. I wonder if that is one of the root causes behind the way that I feel. And I really do see social media, now clearly it's slightly biased because if someone's got a brilliant relationship with social media and they're happy and well,

I ain't going to see them. So, you know, my view is slightly coloured by the fact that I'm a doctor seeing sick people. But there are lots of people who really enjoy smoking, right? There are lots of people who would willingly make the trade-offs with their life to smoke. That doesn't mean that on average, on balance, it's harmful. It is probably harmful, right? I mean, we kind of would agree that probably people would be happier and healthier.

And actually, the evidence on happiness is quite clear well certainly they'd be healthier i'm sure some people would argue actually they're happier when they're smoking well actually the evidence on that is that smoking taxes uh increase the happiness of smokers as well as non-smokers really because well they're being nudged away from doing something that many of them wouldn't like to do so so actually once you get over the addiction craving, you know, the craving of the nicotine, then you actually get over wanting to smoke. But still, there will be significant minority of people who do, whose lives are better from being able to smoke. Just like there will be significant numbers of people whose lives are better with social media in it. On balance, I suspect for some technologies technologies on on average they're going to

be harmful it's really interesting that the tech all the tech giants none of them let their children i know use social media the kinds of things that they're sending to everyone else and i do think we're going to see social media use but certain platforms like we come to see tobacco yeah i agree why didn't we do why didn't we do something about a bit sooner i think there is already starting to be a slight backlash against social media and in certain sections of the population i've certainly changed the way um i i interact with it on social media i've not come off it i'm on three channels i post relatively regularly but i'm quite careful with how much i go on to look at it because I am aware.

I think one of the big problems for me is, particularly when you talk about children and their brains haven't developed yet, or even adolescents have not fully developed. It's this whole idea that actually now we're sort of, our attention is constantly being fractured. We're constantly jumping from thing to thing. our attention is constantly being fractured. We're constantly jumping from thing to thing. Many of us are losing the ability to delay gratification, to actually concentrate and have some deep focus on something for a period of time. And I think that is something that it's a very important skill.

You know, being able to delay gratification has been associated with positive life outcomes. Yet I see that many of us are losing that ability with the way that we're actually doing things. And I think if we could just get back, if we can encourage more people to, you know, do things that, you know, maybe we were doing 10 or 15 years ago, you know, not, you know, things like, you know, playing chess or playing board games or playing a sport, things that actually require us to learn a new skill and concentrate for a prolonged period of time. Yeah. And, you know, there are, you know, critical social media, because it always depends on how we use things, not what they are. You know, there are things that, you know, so we do get the contagion effect of happiness when other people post good things,

and that makes us feel good because we get a contagion of them feeling good. So, but again, it comes back to doing it in ways that broadcast and show off things that are good for us and for society. So having learned a new sport or playing chess, it's the kind of thing that's probably not bad sharing with your friends. And you can all share these things. You can all share in these experiences. And then we start using social media in ways that are good for us and not harmful. Paul, you mention a lot in this new book about the various stories we tell each other. We tell each other as friends,

as inhabitants in our collective society. And you said that actually happiness isn't a result of a lot of these narratives. And obviously we're not going to get to go through all of those narratives in the conversation today. They're all there in the book for people to read. Is there a problem with us telling ourselves stories is that not what we

do as humans is that not the way we get through day to day by telling ourselves yeah so i so i'm distinguishing between personal narratives the telling of stories to ourselves for ourselves about ourselves from social narratives which are the expectations about how we ought to live according to these stories so you ought to get married and have children for example right and you're not a fully fledged grown-up until you do that that's the society we treat people in the work we treat single people in the workplace in ways that you'd never get away with treating people by gender or by race they get second dibs on holidays um they're seen as as if you ask people um if you

give people a set of vignettes around the characteristics of people and you just basically make them the same person except one's married and one's single people judge the married one as being much happier as being more, is being a better person. And I'll tell you which single people they think are the worst off, the least happy, the least virtuous, the least good, are the single people who have chosen to be single. Not the single people who are single because they can't find somebody yet. They're okay. But the single people that have chosen to be single, we really dislike those people you mean as a society we judge them as being not happy or we just don't judge them as not as happy we judge them as not as virtuous we judge them as not as good what's the reality

because we don't like them the reality is the complete opposite um as i've said before um i said this a lot the last few days, often in these data, the happiest and healthiest people with the longest life expenses are women who have never married and never had children. I think that'll surprise people. People who have chosen to have not married?

Yeah. Or does the research sort of elaborate on that? Yeah, well, it's hard to find that in the data. Yeah, some data, yeah. It's hard to find that in the data um yeah some data yeah it's hard to know that for sure sure um but but when when they haven't and when they haven't had children it's a good decision insofar as their health and happiness is concerned it's interesting that because i think a lot of us as you say we do judge people like that as a society and we might expect them to have lower levels of happiness yeah but we just so we judge we judge by the I'm just drawing this judgment point a little bit because it's really interesting.

I think because it creates the environments within which these narratives fester and breed is that we not only judge people because we think they should be living lives how we think they should and how maybe how we are. Right. So I'm right with kids. Everybody else should be. But also they might we might be a little bit jealous of them living lives that we'd ideally like to live if only we could free ourselves of the stories so um in a study of homophobia you basically established one of two groups you're either in the more homophobic group or the less homophobic group as men then you're exposed to gay sex and penile blood flow is measured and you see more penile blood flow in the homophobic group than you do in the non-homophobic group they're more aroused from gay sex if they're homophobic well that's pretty damn interesting isn't it because

i don't like gay people not because i don't like gay people because actually i kind of wish i was and i think with some of these narratives it's a bit like that i wish i could be more like them, but I can't because I feel constrained. So I'm going to bloody hate them. Yeah, it's interesting. I've got a couple of mates who are married and they have chosen not to have kids.

They both do really good jobs. They, you know, they're earning decent money. They go on holiday every few weeks to wild, exotic locations. And they have made a choice not to have children. And it's incredible when I talk about them and a lot of people, you know, refer to them. I'm not going to mention their names. They say, actually, you know what, part of them think, oh God, that sounds great. Wouldn't it be so good? But they almost can't

tell themselves that because they're married, they've've got kids and it's almost like on one level they're not allowed to think that and there's sort of this this clash between what you know it's all right to say that it's all right to think that actually you know what maybe that would have been a better choice but we can't really do that it's not palatable is it in society to think like that no because we expect that people you know i've talked a lot in Happiness by Design and in talks about the evidence on children. You know, the evidence on children is that they bring you moments of joy with very long periods of stress, worry, and anxiety. And any honest parent would be honest about that. But I was shocked by some of the

vitriol i got for making that very basic point bad parent they felt sorry for the kids because i was because i wasn't conforming to this narrative that tells us that you know our kids ought to just make us happy all the time and and when they don't we feel like a failure then don't we because we look oh my god my kids are you know i still you know they're three and they're still they're still not bringing me all this unbounded joy that I thought they might. It's like, well, actually, that's quite normal. Just in case people are wondering, you are a father.

I'm a father of a kid at 10 and 9. And talking about them now is very different to talking about them when I was writing and doing the tours around Happiness by Design because they were four or five years younger then. They are unequivocally much more fun now to be around than they were then well what's interesting to me is that you've got a lot of vitriol from people because your narrative and your perception didn't really fit theirs and therefore there's this sort of dissonance but actually it's okay for people to have different experiences okay for example that you might say actually they were really tricky four or five years ago but they're great now and i might say you know i've loved being a dad the whole time yeah as long as we're being honest with our

experience I think that's you're totally right it doesn't really matter does it you're totally right about that I don't like I don't care what you do or how you feel as long as it's not impacting me in harmful ways so why should I mean it's extraordinary I don't I really genuinely don't care what pursuits people have in their work lives in their leisure lives as long as it's extraordinary. I don't, I really genuinely don't care what pursuits people have in their work lives, in their leisure lives, as long as it's making them feel good and it's not harming other people and harming the people that they care about or care about them. That's,

that's just, that's just seems to me to be so self-evidently obvious. And yet, and yet we can't help ourselves. We can't help ourselves with our own children as well. Right. Can we say like, I want my kids to be happy.

That's what all parents would say. And then they'll start going into all the things that they think they ought to be doing in order for them to be happy yeah they don't actually want to be happy at all they want to do the things that the parents think will make them happy oh this is very different this is an entire different podcast conversation which i think we're going to have to have at some points sorry i know where you wanted to go hey hey no not at all i mean look this could go on for another hour easily but i know you're on a busy press tour because you've written such a great book so many people want to talk to you too mate you too mate you've got a bloody successful book out there as well i am that we're you know

obviously i can't compare myself to you that's like that's like upwards you're still selling more than i am so i don't want to be doing that we're not comparing we're not comparing ourselves but if we are going to i'm gonna i'm gonna have to find some other social comparison because because because you'll make me you'll just basically make me feel like shit hey Paul I honestly hope not and I genuinely am a big supporter of your work I think it's fantastic just to finish off before you go to your next interview um there's a question actually you know what I'm gonna have to slip it in because it's so important you talk about these narratives that we tell ourselves and i know lots of parents listen to this podcast in your book you mentioned actually one of the small things we can start doing

now with our kids to help change that narrative and i wonder if you could just share that well you've you've just read it what are you referring to i'm referring to how we as parents can um start to teach our kids that actually life is not all about money. And that maybe it's about just enough rather than, you know, many of us as parents, we put our own, the narratives that we've been told, we start putting them on to our kids. That actually, if you do this, you'll get a better job. If you do this, you're going to earn more money. And maybe we as parents can play a role at starting to change that narrative. Yeah, and we can. And also to get them to think about how they might use their time and money differently

um you know i i talk in i talk in i think in this book actually about um uh using a fee from a gig to give to charity and we're talking to the kids about what kinds of charities they thought we should give the money to the best ways to give the charities they thought we should give the money to, the best ways to give the money, the best way to deliver the benefits to the people that we were giving it to. To actually eventually, speaks to the altruism chapter again, to take empathy out of the equation. Now, empathy is nearly, I know we're tight for time, but it seems like this is an important answer. Empathy is nearly always seen as a good thing. If you can put yourself in the shoes of somebody else then you care about them but for you to put yourselves in someone else's shoes it helps if they have the same size feet and that leads us to

then care more about people that are essentially more like us and then use our ways in use our pro-social time and energies in ways that are quite parochial yeah instead we need compassion not empathy compassion is a more detached account of caring and where we really then think about where we're going to do the most good with our time and money and not just what people are like what people like us are we going to do the most good for yeah that's really profound actually more focus on kindness and compassion kindness and compassion and kindness and compassion as you know only too well are really highly associated with happiness yeah and gratitude and good health and good health and good health with longer healthier happier lives or whatever

the title of your podcast is that's that's exactly what you get from kindness compassion gratitude yeah so we should we should be encouraged that more with our friends, our colleagues, but also with our children. When we encourage social mobility or advancement and attainment, we're not talking about any of those things. We're not talking about any of those things. We're talking about better jobs, better jobs that society deems to be better jobs because they're higher status and higher paid. We're not talking about any of the things that real mobility would be about, being being more mobile to be more kind to be more great you know to be more grateful to be more compassionate paul i want to continue on the kindness and compassion uh topics and social mobility which you write a lot about in your book on a future podcast so on air i'm going to ask you

now if you'll commit to at some point oh you're going to really see this is one of the important um implementation intention plans commitment making a public promise. I'm going to make it in front of increasing millions of podcast listeners. I'm going to make a public promise to do this again, but differently. Yeah, we'll do it for sure. Definitely. Just two final questions just before your next interview. Since you started researching happiness, has the research caused you to change your behaviour in any way?

Oh, that's way too insightful a question for me to answer right at the end. Yes or no? I don't know. It's going to sound a bit grand to say I felt like I was doing all right before, but I think I'm doing all right. The research has backed up what you're doing.

Yeah, it has. I mean, there are some interesting things that were different. I didn't know that income, that happiness might actually decline at the very highest incomes. I thought it might not increase. I didn't know that it might fall.

I didn't know that divorce in highly confrontational relationships can be good for children rather than harmful for children. We tell a story about divorce being harmful for kids. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. So there are bits of the evidence that have made me question

some of what I thought I knew to be true. Yeah, that's interesting. Paul, just to finish off the podcast now, what I love to do with this podcast is to inspire people at home who are listening. I say at home they could be on a walk they could be at the gym they could be commuting um it's far better things to do at home exactly but the goal is to really inspire them to try and make some changes in their own

lives and i wonder if you can leave them with some i don't know three or four top tips on how they can start to get more happiness in their lives. Would you know something that you said last night that was absolutely right amongst everything else that you said is that small changes, big effects. And this, I think, is consistent with both of the books now is it's not in the big stuff. Don't think about what you're going to change that's going to be big.

Think about what you can change that's going to be small. It is about sweating the small stuff. It's about the things that you do on a day-to-day basis that are going to be, that you know, listeners know, that are obviously going to make them feel happier, listening to more music, listening to your podcast more. Well, then just do it, but have a plan, an implementation intention plan that makes that more likely

without then having to chase all these other things that you think are going to make you happier if you ever get there, which you might not. And even if you do, they're not going to make you happy. Yeah, Paul, I think that's brilliant advice to leave people with. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for writing such a brilliant book. Thank you so much.

That was time very well spent. It's made me very, very happy. I'll see you very soon. Thank you very much. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really hope you enjoyed the conversation and feel that you might be able to apply some of Paul's tips in your own life. As always, do let us both know what you thought of today's show by getting in touch on social media. If you want to continue your learning experience now that the podcast

is over, do head over to the show notes page where you can also see everything that we discussed today, as well as get links to some brilliant articles that Paul has written on happiness. You can check it all out at drchastity.com forward slash 54. Now, if you do feel that you're living each day on a treadmill, on autopilot, and that life is happening to you rather than you being in control, I really would encourage you to pick up a copy of my new book, The Stress Solution. I wrote this book to help people combat the really common problems that I see day in, day out in my life as a GP. How do you take back control of life and start living it on your own terms how can you feel calmer and more in control these are all themes that i write about in the book as well as leave

you with lots of practical tips that i have used for years with my patients to really good effect you can order the stress solution in all the usual places in paperback in ebook as well as an audiobook which I am narrating. If you enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or of course, you can do it the good old fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family on your social media channels. Or of course, you can do it the good old-fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family about the show. I really do appreciate

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