Good Life Project - Happiness and Money: What the Research REALLY Shows.

Episode Date: June 1, 2017

Happiness. It's what so many of us yearn for. We think it's the center of a good life. And, even though, we're often told otherwise, we believe happiness can be bought, a least a certain amount of happiness.So, what is the truth? What does the research show? Can money buy you happiness? Can it buy you a good life?The answer, it turns out, may surprise you. Today's audio deep-dive is all about happiness, money and life well-lived. And, rather than talking in generalities, we're heading straight into the rich body of research that shows us the truth. We're vaulting past all the happiness and self-help platitudes, the things we wish were truth, and diving into the actual science of happiness, money and the good life.And, you might want to hold onto your seat, because some illusions are about to be shattered. We're doing a bunch of myth-busting and proverb-smashing. Money, it turns out, may well matter more than you think when it comes to happiness, and in ways you didn't realize. Moving beyond money, happiness and good life myth-busting, we then give you specific advice on how to "use" money to make your life happier, more meaningful and just straight-up better. And, we explore the question you REALLY wanna know,"how much money do you really need to be happy and fulfilled?"Rockstar sponsors:Get paid online, on-time with Freshbooks! Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what about the money and how much is enough? These are questions that I've wanted to explore for a long time. And why not today? Over seven years at the helm of Hell's Kitchen Yoga Center and Teacher Certification School, I trained hundreds of people from around the world to teach yoga. We had a fantastic faculty. My two topics were, oddly enough, anatomy and money. We were one of the only accredited programs that I knew of that included formalized business and practice building. And when it came to nearly every other topic,

our students were all smiles and hands-on, playful, lit up, deeply engaged. But when I started the, you know, here's how to make a living day, you could literally feel the room palpably recoil. We trained people from all over the world, but the response was universal. It turns out people drawn to the practice also tend to have, let's call it, a very challenging relationship with money, especially the notion that they might ask for serious money in exchange for providing a service that's an outgrowth of a fundamental deep interest and love, something that's supposed to be, quote, pure about healing and connection. Money just makes it all dirty, they'd feel. To which I'd respond, well, if you can't live

comfortably teaching yoga, you'll have to work another job and teach yoga on the side, or very likely stop teaching altogether. And if your ultimate goal is to introduce as many people to the practice as possible, connect deeply with and help them. How is making a decision that stops you from being able to do that beneficial for you or for them? So people tend to have a pretty funky relationship with money. Money is often about something totally other than money. Respect, love, proof, shame, so many other things with so much emotion attached to it. There is an ethic that's become popular in the world of self-help

and purpose-led careership. Do what you love and the money doesn't matter, except that it does. And here's where I start to go a little more deeply off the sort of conventional personal growth tracks. If you want to feel good about your desire to find a way to contribute to the world that fills both your soul and your bank account, you'll probably like this conversation. And if you've been sitting back and resting on your money doesn't matter laurels, the conversation that follows just might change your mind. So aligned action, meaning aligning your action with who you are in the world, definitely helps lead to a sense of purpose and meaning. And that really fills your contribution bucket. And outside of monasteries, ashrams, probably Burning Man, the purpose thing doesn't pay the rent. At some point, you need to create

enough value with the work you do to be paid for it. Not all compensation, of course, comes in the form of cash. If you're a caretaker and you express this in the form of being a full-time parent or volunteer, your currency is not going to come in cash. It's a far softer, though often equally rewarding form. And still, one of the biggest questions that arises in the context of living a good life is, what role does money play in your ability to live a good life? So not long ago, I was actually invited to spend a morning with a couple of classes of high school kids. And these were not the kids of my youth, nor was the setting. The scene was a school in New York City that was known as a transfer school in a pretty tough neighborhood.

And most of the kids have spent their lives in and out of various systems, from foster care to the penal system. And many come from tougher broken homes, varying levels of gang affiliation. They'd seen things in the first 17 or 18 years that I will likely never see before I die. And I was there because I wanted to learn from them. I'd been kind of traveling the world for a number of years talking to and learning from a lot of luminaries, teachers, really highly accomplished people. And I started to realize the people I'd been speaking with were fairly homogenous. Most were middle-aged or older, middle or upper class, well-educated, worldly, and white. And most of them also came from a level of opportunity. Not all, but most. And I wanted a different lens on maybe what it meant to live a good life. So I went to

start a conversation. What does it mean a good life? I asked, and I wanted to explore a bunch of elements and I did, but I also kind of wanted to see which they'd bring up and in what order. The first topic was happiness. Okay. So apparently these kids are pretty similar to the rest of the modern world. And next came money. So I said to them, picture yourself 10 years from now. You're living a great life. How much money are you making? And the conversation surprised me here. In fact, I recorded it and here's some of what was said. So one student said, you can have all the money in the world and you still won't be happy. You need enough money to provide. You need it to be comfortable. You need enough to do stuff with, not just to fall in love with

money. You don't need money to make you happy. You can make yourself happy. Another kid chimed in, there's people walking around every day mad as shit because they're broke. And then somebody else chimed in and said, there's people that walk around and they have money in their pockets and they're sad as hell still. And then someone else chimed in and said, money doesn't necessarily lead to emotion. I mean, when you have money, of course, you're going to feel good about yourself. And when you don't have, of course, you're going to feel bad about yourself. But that doesn't lead to somebody being sad about not having money. It's not about money making you happy. It's about things in life that you can't control

that make you unhappy. And then finally someone else turned in and said, what's going to happen when you get money? That's when all the fake people are going to start coming around. People are going to start getting all up under you. And it's just so interesting. The conversation was,

it went places that took me by surprise. Here are kids with no money, little or no support, struggling to get a high school diploma. And my assumption was that they'd view money as a big equalizer, a get-out-of-paying card, a central piece of a life well lived. And while some did, beyond meeting their baseline needs, most actually didn't. Many even saw it as a source of potential hassle or social isolation or making them a target. Stark contrast to what we tend to see in the media, in music, in videos, where visions of kids coming out of neighborhoods like this, making it big and, quote, living the good life, are wall to wall with money and bling and big cars and an entourage um that experience made me really curious and more than 150 actually now a lot more than that um in many hundreds of interviews with everyone from famed entrepreneurs to corporate icons and celebs to artists not a single one has answered money when I've asked what it meant to live a good life.

And I was having trouble buying this. Is that just because it's not politically correct? So many of them had, in fact, worked incredibly hard and become incredibly wealthy. But many others who would tell you they're living great lives got by on pretty much work-a-day incomes. And I ran these experiences by a friend who in our first meeting almost 10 years ago now

bellowed his consuming love of money across the table to me. And today, this person is earning a solid multiple seven figures and said to me, I'm making a ton more money today and I'm a lot happier. Yet not two minutes after that same person offered how unhappy they become spending so much time on activities that optimize the money funnel, but don't contribute much to a sense of meaning or purpose or let them fill the days with types of things that would really light them up. So where does the truth lie here?

Should you focus entirely on aligned action and meaning and purpose and trust that enough money will come? Well, the self-help lore says yes, adding, and if it doesn't, you won't care because you'll be nourished by purpose. And that's a lovely thought. Yet, as I mentioned above, purpose, while a key element of a good life, doesn't always pay the rent. If you're filled with meaning, surrounded by people you cannot get enough of, engaging with the essence of who you are and bringing that to the world, but also scraping to pay for food, unable to pay

medical bills or buy clothes for your kids. Can you still live a good life? What's the truth, I wonder, about money? Does it really matter in the quest to live a good life? Where does money enter the equation? Is there a baseline amount that you need to be okay? And if so, how much? And will more make you happier or help you live a better life? Well, it turns out there's actually a growing body of research on the topic of money, happiness, and life satisfaction.

And for years, it seemed to validate the common platitudes about money. Once you can cover your costs, money doesn't add much to your life. So go do what you love. It gave us permission to chase other things and measure success with other metrics. Given how uncomfortable most of us are talking about and pursuing money, this made a lot of people feel good about the choices they've made, often leading to modest livings. More recently though, research is kind of blowing those assumptions apart a bit. So it turns out when it comes to money,

happiness and living a good life, the answer is like what that famed Facebook relation status used to be. It's complicated. In 1974, the famous economist Richard Easterlin revealed a pretty fascinating phenomenon. Money he offered makes you happier. The more you earn, the happier you are up until the point where your basic needs are covered.

And beyond that, happiness seems to flatline no matter how much you earn. More money doesn't equal more happiness. This came to be known as the modified Easterlin paradox. And it made sense to a lot of people. When you're living in poverty and you can't afford adequate shelter, food, or medical care, your days are filled with a fair degree of day-to-day More money is about adding discretionary things and experiences. It's about having a thicker icing on the basic needs cake. It's nice, but it's no longer a happiness game changer. So funny thing about this claim, most people desperately want it to be true. If money beyond your ability to cover the basics doesn't make you happier,

then once you hit that number, you get to kick back. Why work harder to earn more if it won't change the way you feel? Well, in an odd twist, the Easterlin paradox could be pointed to as a potential justification for what might have been perceived as the complacent life. Had we named it more for its message than its founder, it could have been called the hippie surfer hypothesis. Growing up on Long Island with its legendary East End surf beaches, I went to school with a band of brothers

who, coming from a line of hardworking, quote, successful parents embodied this ethos. They'd lifeguard and 10 bar in the Hamptons all summer, earning just enough money to fuel an eight-month around-the-world surf safari that would pretty much then land them home, largely broke, and ready for the next summer cash infusion. And it was fun for a few years, but what about for life?

So it turns out the Easterlin paradox may not, in fact, hold water. In fact, the hippie surfer hypothesis may well be a sinking ship. In 2010, legendary behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton revisit this question of money, happiness, and life well lived. So mining responses from more than 450,000 people in the Gallup Healthways Wellbeing Index over a 12-month window. They focused on really two key questions.

Is income correlated with day-to-day happiness? And is income correlated with life satisfaction? So as we learned a bit before, these two are not always the same. To answer the first question, Kahneman and Deaton analyzed responses to a series of questions about how each person felt the day before. They were looking to assess a person's overall mood for the day or, in their words, the level of, quote, positive affect. Participants were not asked directly how happy they were. Instead, they were asked things like, did you experience enjoyment during a lot of the day yesterday? Or did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? As Easterlin hypothesized decades

earlier, Kahneman and Deaton found that people's daily moods steadily improved as their income rose, but once they hit about $75,000 a year, daily mood leveled off, and more money did not lead to a better day-to-day experience. Interesting if it holds, but what about that second question, the one about money and overall life satisfaction? Well, here's where things get pretty interesting. To answer this question, people were asked to answer a different question. They were asked, please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you. And the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? So put another way, regardless of whether you happen to have been happy or sad yesterday, as you stand here now, does your life rock? Does it suck? Or is it just kind of so-so?

Turns out when you ask this question, there's no leveling off. The more you earn, the better your life. Even if your day-to-day mood experience isn't great, your life on balance gets better. Seems kind of counterintuitive at first. As we saw earlier in the conversation about meaning happiness and life satisfaction, there's a lot more that goes into a life well lived than being a happy galuxster. More cracks in the Easterlin hippie surfer paradox. So then in 2013, along come researchers Betsy Stevenson and Justin Walfers from the University of Michigan. And they too look at the relationship between money, happiness, and life satisfaction.

For their United States, they look at a 2007 Gallup study that adds a unique element. The dataset analyzed by the earlier investigators generally capped out at between $120,000 and $160,000 a year. And Stevenson and Wolfer's sample expands the income brackets all the way up to $500,000 a year. So on a day-to-day happiness side, people are asked a more direct question.

Are you not too happy, fairly happy, or very happy? And like the metric and condiment study, this measure gives a narrow snapshot in time but focuses more precisely on happiness rather than overall positive effect. On the life satisfaction side, participants rank their lives on a spectrum that ranges from very unsatisfied to very satisfied. And additional metrics are also analyzed in an effort to gather really robust results. The numbers are unambiguous. Quote, we find no evidence of a significant break in either the happiness income relationship nor the life satisfaction income relationship, even at annual incomes up to half a million dollars. Stevenson and Wolfers wonder if this is just a US-based phenomenon.

So they broaden their analysis across 25 most populous countries in the world. Same result. Across every metric of happiness and life satisfaction, as income rises, happiness and life satisfaction rise in proportion. There is no leveling off according to this data. So is that the final word? Well, with regard to money and your perception of living a good life, the research starts to seem pretty well aligned. The more you earn, the better your life. There is no point or level of income where it stops mattering, at least up to the

$500,000 level where the data ends. No excuse to say I've hit the threshold, I'm done. More money won't lead to a better life. There will always be outliers, of course, but for the most part, every dollar, euro, yen, yuan, or more will lead to a life better lived. I have to be honest, this doesn't feel good to me. My spiritually inclined hippie self, meaning-driven self, wants to believe otherwise, but still, the research is the research. Maybe it'll get disproven down the road, and I'm sure there's more going on, but it really is making me think. Now, on the question of money and day-to-day smiles, things get murkier. The latest work

from Stevenson and Wolfers points to a lockstep relationship between money and happiness. Still, the results seem to be an outlier. Most other research, including the work of Kahneman and Deaton, say otherwise. So I'm kind of hesitant to just jump onto the more you earn, the happier you are bandwagon. Plus, there's one huge limitation with all of this research. It doesn't take into account how you're spending the money you make. What if once you got your basics covered, the real unlock key for both day-to-day happiness and life satisfaction, it isn't how much money is coming into your bank account,

but rather how much is going out and where it's going. Put another way, can you buy happiness by the way you spend money? So despite any spiritual or ethical bias, you really have to wonder if money travels hand in hand with a good life, why wouldn't it also deliver you day-to-day happiness? That, in fact, is the question posed by Stumbling on Happiness author and researcher Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues Elizabeth Dunn and Timothy Wilson. As they write, One answer to this question is that the things that bring happiness simply aren't for sale.

This sentiment is lovely, popular, and almost certainly wrong. Money allows people to live longer and healthier lives, to buffer themselves against worry and harm, to have leisure time to spend with friends and family, and to control the nature of their daily activities, all of which are sources of happiness. Wealthy people don't just have better toys. They have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and meaningful labor, more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren't that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn't it? Good question by them, huh? The answer is this, at least in my mind.

It's not so much about how much you have, but how you spend it. Wealthy people, it seems, while capable of spending more on things that would make a bigger difference in their day-to-day happiness, often don't. In fact, they spend money on more and more expensive versions of the very things people with less money buy that make almost no difference in how happy they are. Why? Because apparently, regardless of how much money we have, we're all terrible at understanding the things we can buy or spend money on that makes us truly happy. The scary part is we're in denial. We think that we're great at knowing what lights us up.

So we spend a lifetime repeating the same buying patterns and wondering why, no matter how much we spend, we live in a state of perpetual malaise. Sounds remarkably similar to Rita Mae Brown's definition of insanity in Sudden Death, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. All of which begs a giant question. What does make a difference? So here are five ways to actually spend your money, each of which have been scientifically proven to move the happiness needle. One, buy experiences, not stuff. Quick, make a list of the top 10 things you'd want, and if money wasn't an option for

your next birthday. If you're like most people, the list is populated largely with things to have rather than things to do. The problem is tangible things we possess tend not to make us nearly as happy as we think they will. We get a quick hit of yay, but then our moods tumble rapidly back to where they were. We habituate to having stuff in our lives with remarkable ease. If it makes you happier, we also tend to habituate to losing stuff with remarkable ease. Experiences, things we do, on the other hand, are far more likely to move the happiness needle and keep it pegged on giggle for a longer period of time. And not all experiences are created equal.

Sex, for example, tends to generate more happiness than commuting. Go figure. A key element, regardless of the activity, is how engaged your mind is. The more locked in you are, the happier you report being after the fact. So spend money on experiences and activities that engage your mind. Two, spend money on other people. We are profoundly social beasts. Our connection with others may be the single biggest contributor to happiness in life. So it makes perfect sense then that spending money in a way that connects us to others would make us happy. But this might surprise you. Spending money

in a way that benefits others makes us happier than spending money on ourselves. So does it have to be a friend or lover? Turns out, no. We get a similar hit when we spend money on others, even when there's little or no personal connection. This effect has even been seen in students forced to donate money to a food bank to benefit people they'd never met, leading to what's been called warm glow giving. You give both to benefit others, but also to experience the warm glow or helper's high, knowing you've done something that'll make a difference for someone else. So next time you have an extra 20 in your pocket, consider buying something for someone you love. And if no one comes to mind, help a total stranger. Better yet, buy them something they can experience. Number three,

choose many little things over one big thing. What would make you happier, winning a single $100 lottery or a $25 lottery followed by a $75 one? Same total amount, right? It shouldn't matter. But it turns out it does. Turns out we're happier with two smaller wins than one bigger one. Same thing with nearly everything we buy or experience. We're happier eating one yummy piece of chocolate in four pieces over four days than we are eating the whole thing at once.

I know, hard to believe when it comes to chocolate. Small sources of joy spread out over time tend to make us happier than one big shot of gee whiz. So why is that? It's likely because as shared above, we adapt and habituate to new things very quickly. The high only lasts so long. So experiencing smaller things more often keeps the adaptation engine at bay. By the time we're getting back to baseline, something new comes our way to bump us back up. Rather than buying one big thing then, explore the possibility of a series of small pleasures that can be enjoyed over time. Four, pay before you play.

Delayed gratitude, so what's that good for? Well, apparently, it's good for happiness. We've moved increasingly to an instant experience economy and society. We buy something we want it now. Overnight delivery too long. In major cities, online retailers deliver same day or arrange for in-store pickup. Amazon now threatens to have drones deliver your stuff in a matter of hours. Affordable and compact 3D printers hold the promise of printing pretty much anything you might imagine at home. At a recent Maker Faire, I watched a printer spinning out three-dimensional objects

made from, wait for it, liquid chocolate. I know, you can tell I'm a little obsessed with chocolate. So wait has become a four-letter word, especially in the city I live, New York. Every time I leave the city and I'm, quote, forced to wait online or queue. Yes, in Gotham, we wait online, not in line, by the way. I find myself muttering and bobbing to find the joker who's holding things up. But daddy, I channel my inner Veruca Salt. I want it now. So what if now actually made you less happy though? What if instant on,

instant delivery, instant consumption was actually robbing us of a powerful source of happiness? Turns out it is. What is that source? Anticipation. The experience of committing to something that won't happen right away lets us live it in little imaginary pieces over and over in our heads before we ever experience the real thing. Maybe it's a mouthwatering dinner at a famed restaurant, a safari, or a music festival. It could be a new car or notebook computer. Oftentimes, in fact, the happiness we feel imagining the experience exceeds the hit we get engaging in or consuming it. So you imagine experiencing or using it in its perfect form when it rarely ever is perfect. You imagine the

everlasting all-day joy of new floors, but upon installation, you habituate to the bump in happiness in days. You imagine the dream meal, but forget the 45-minute wait and mushy appetizer. You picture yourself lying on white sand beaches, but conveniently forget the 45-minute wait and mushy appetizer. You picture yourself lying on white sand beaches, but conveniently forget the mosquitoes and relentless heat. Our instant delivery and experience economy is making things happen faster, but it's also killing the opportunity to drink in that free, longer-term shot of happiness that comes from signing up today and consuming tomorrow, anticipating something marvelous, very often more marvelous than the actual thing is when we get it. So think about

creating a bit more time between when you buy and when you fly. And number five, buy time. So fine. That's the answer most people would give when you asked, so how are you today? Nowadays, you're more likely to hear busy. Every minute of every day is packed. Connectivity has robbed us of the pause. You are, whether you choose it or not, always on all the time. Add to this longer work days, working weekends, the expectation of instant everything, and an epidemic of minute to minute micro scheduling, and we've got pretty much the perfect recipe for misery. Years before the arrival of mass connectivity and smart devices, researchers in the 1990s like University of Michigan's Leslie Perlow presciently coined the

phrase time famine to describe the utter crush of work versus available time people were experiencing. The last 14 years have not served humanity well in this regard. So desperate are we for time? A 2008 Pew Research Center poll showed a whopping 68% of middle class claim it to be very important, while only 12% valued wealth on the same level. Part of me smiled when I saw this. Wow, I thought, we really do value time over money. How great is that? The other part, however, cried. Our lives have become so brittle with the pace of busyness that, according to the same study, time has supplanted money, kids, work so many value time more than money,

why don't we spend more money buying our way into more time? This is precisely what Harvard professor Michael Norton and his co-author Elizabeth Dunn offer in Happy Money, the new science of smarter spending. What if instead of buying things or experiences, we bought help? What if we hired a housekeeper, an assistant, a partner, colleague, employee, in the name of doing the work that not only empties our souls, but also leaves our time banks overdrawn? What if we spent money in a way that would commit us to spend more time doing things that lit us up and slowed down? In a 2013 CNN opinion, Dunn and Norton encouraged us to ask a different question.

Here's what they share. How will this purchase affect my time? If your child keeps asking for a pet, you could pay $50 for a goldfish, tank, and a year's supply of fish food, or commit thousands of dollars to a golden retriever. Compared with a goldfish, caring for a dog comes with a big time burden and a big price tag. But what many people fail to consider is that the dog might transform the quality of their time. Having a dog commits us to going on daily walks and chatting with other dog owners at the park. Research shows that exercising and talking to others are among the very happiest ways to use our time.

In this case, dog beats fish. So where does this leave all of us? Prosperity matters and money matters. But how much do you earn and how much do you spend? The more you earn, the more likely you are to feel like you're living a good life This doesn't stop once you earn enough to cover your basic expenses, apparently On this, the research is getting clear As income rises, life gets better

Will that make you more likely to run around smiling on a day-to-day basis? Maybe yes, maybe no. Here, the research is mixed. But according to leading voices in the field, that's less about money's inability to make us happy and more about the way we spend it. As Don Gilbert and Wilson offer, when asked to take stock of their lives, people with more money report being a good deal more satisfied. But when asked how happy they are at the moment, people with more money report being a good deal more satisfied. But when asked how happy they are at the moment, people with more money are barely different than those with less. This suggests that our money provides us with satisfaction when we think about it, but not when we use it. That shouldn't happen.

Money can buy many, if not most, if not all of the things that make people happy. And if it doesn't, then the fault's ours. Despite a growing body of research, there are still some big open questions about money, happiness, and the good life. How much does money matter in contrast to the many elements of a life well lived? Can you earn or spend your way out of the sadness of a job devoid of meaning or friendship, one that wars violently with your true nature? What's worth giving up in the name of earning more and what can no amount of money replace? Are you amassing wealth in a way that allows you to fill your connection and vitality buckets along the way? Or are you abandoning everything you hold dear in the name of winning the Benjamin game? Can you earn very little, still be quite happy and feel you're living a great life? These things

matter deeply. Stevenson and Wolfer speak to these questions indirectly. While 100% of those earning $500,000 or more reported high levels of happiness and life satisfaction, a stunning 42% of those earning a poverty level $10,000 to $20,000 a year said they were very happy, and 47% reported being very satisfied with their lives. How could that be? Because making money matters, but it is not all that matters. It's a piece of the puzzle, along with everything else we've been exploring. One we can optimize, but we rarely ever do. Maybe because until now, we've never realized how much it mattered or wanted to own it. Maybe because we didn't know how best to spend it once we made it. Well, now we do. Ignorance is no longer a defense. Align your actions with your true nature

in an effort to fill your contribution bucket with meaning and purpose and joy and connection. Become lit up, a beacon, but don't stop there. If there is a clear conventional path to aligned action and wealth, follow that path. If you feel emotionally uncomfortable with the blended pursuit of money, look at yourself as a conduit, a channel to attract, amass, then redistribute wealth to those

in need. And that way, the more you make, the more you serve. And according to the research, the more you glow. If there's no clear path to aligned wealth, make it a job to find the intersection between your true nature and whatever level of income feels right to you. This will no doubt involve a process of experimentation and balancing that could easily take years. It may not be easy, and that's okay. It'll be worth it, worthy of the effort. It's time to make the prosperity engine of happiness and good living work for you, for those you seek to serve, for those who look to you to provide, rather than a pursuit that leaves us eternally empty and hungry for life and filled with blame and shame. So I hope you found that conversation interesting, useful,

maybe a little bit provocative. If you would love to actually spend more time going into the data, the research, the numbers, and the ideas that I've offered here, you can actually get a copy of this in essay form by simply joining our email list over at goodlifeproject.com and sign up for your updates.

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.