Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Matt Heath on how to be happy!

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

We talk to broadcaster extortioner Matt Heath about his new book, A Life Less Punishing. A few years ago, Matt Heath took a deep dive into why we feel the way we do and how to change it, interviewing leading international thinkers in neuroscience, philosophy, biology, and psychology on the reasons behind unwelcome emotions.     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hits, with the Jono and Ben podcast. Cheers to Dilma, making the world a better tea. Hey, thanks for having me. It's nice to see you. You've got a book, A Life Less Punishing. Now, not entirely what I thought the book was going to be. Oh, really? No, but it's actually really, really good. I've been flicking through, reading a lot over the weekend. Yeah, I thought it was going to be bad.

No, I don't mean it in a bad way, but it's a self-help book in a lot of ways. It is, yes. A book that's sort of helped you find, I guess, happiness in your life, and you've kind of put that into words. Yeah, it's sort of a two-year research into a bunch of philosophy, science, and history around emotions that make our life more punishing than they need to be. Because you were at a low in your life, personally,

and that's what set you off on this journey. Yeah, I was at a low in my life, but a lot of my life when I didn't really have any reason to be which was really annoying because you know and then you think if you can't enjoy the good times you know when things are going okay what are you gonna do when things go bad because things do always go bad there's always bad stuff coming so I was sitting there going why am I not enjoying my life when everything's pretty good you know my kids are healthy you know I've got a good job career you know I've got a full belly. You sort of talk to some people that know what they're doing

in different sort of fields as well and yeah you're taking a lot of information from them. Yeah yeah I talk to a lot of neuroscientists and philosophers from all around the world punish them on zoom calls. Is it your parents who are lecturers at Otago? My dad's a professor well he was a professor at Otago University, yeah. Yeah, so research, it's in your DNA. Well, that's what I realised, actually,

because you know, isn't it funny, one day you become your dad and you didn't notice it? You look in the mirror and you go, am I my dad? Am I writing a book

about intellectual stuff? Yeah. Yes, you are, but then each chapter which I like seems to start with you sort of telling a humiliating story about yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then kind of segueing into some sort of – so that would have been quite interesting to put a lot of those words out there as well. Yeah, because the 13 emotions are all tied to something stupid I've done in my life and sort of the way I would deal with that now. How was it? Because, I mean, you know, you have your public persona.

Yeah. You and Jerry on Hauraki and Deja Voodoo and all that sort of thing. How, because knowing you, knowing you for a number of years you're a very thoughtful, insightful human being Oh thanks Jono. Sometimes a really drunk and annoying human being

I said the book as well, all that, both sides You must have felt quite vulnerable putting out work like this Oh absolutely, in fact i was just saying before to someone thank god i wrote this book or else i'd know i'd be able to deal with putting the book out because i'd be currently riddled with anxiety so i'm going to the chapter on anxiety and going god i really need this now i've written a book with a bunch of humiliating stories in it that comes out tomorrow well i want people to read it so obviously so i don't want you

to give away all your stuff on the radio. So you get to choose one. Or maybe these guys can choose one. A story about you embarrassing yourself in front of Hilary Berry or Tim Finn, your hero from Musician. Oh. What do you want? What do you want? Well, I think embarrassing yourself in front of your hero.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I was touring with Tim Finn. So you looked up, you say in the book, you looked up to him. He was like a hero of yours as a child. I thought he was very cool. And I was really stoked that we got on this tour And I was like, oh man, I'm going to hang out with Tim Finn, this is going to be bloody great And then like about three days into the tour, we were on stage doing soundcheck, my band

And the bass player, Chris, the night before I didn't think we played the song very well So I said, let's practice that song and he goes no and it turns out it turns out the part of our thing we'd play songs but also i'd smash 10 burning guitars over chris each night like literal on fire guitars that's a lot of guitars to mow through too it was a lot it was expensive yeah um but we would spend on the tour bus patching the guitars together with gaffer tape just so we weren't blowing out all our money on the guitars but anyway i'd swung low and i'd hit him in the ribs and i didn't really know that i'd broken his ribs so anyway he was in a filthy mood with me and then um i held the bird up to his face and then he punched me in the head and then we had this huge fight on stage and i threw him down

the stairs and we ended up in tim finn's dressing room and i like threw chris through a bunch of canopies canopies canopies is thisopies? Canopies. Canopies. Tim couldn't once say, is this a joke? Is this for your show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on? Because we had this sort of stunt TV show on at the time. And in the fight, I get Chris's shoe off, and I'm beating him around the head with it.

And then I just lie over, and I have this moment. I look around, and everyone's in the room. There's the management, security. I'm like, what happened? How did I manage to get that angry? So what did Tim say to you? He was like, afterwards that night I had a beer with him and he told me this disgusting story that I won't tell you.

He's such a good guy. He was like, and then I talked to him the other day before the book came out and he goes, yeah, you were a pretty intense guy back then. You were a pretty intense guy. And then that one goes into the chapter on anger and how nothing good comes from anger. It didn't solve the fact that we were useless at playing our songs.

It definitely didn't fix Chris's ribs. And it didn't make me look cool in front of this guy, the hero. Instead, I could have just taken a few breaths and calmed down and had a more sensible approach to our poor performance on stage. So researching all of the stuff that you have and I guess going through all the different emotions, what's the one thing that stands out to you that you always think of? I want like an Instagram quote. Well, I think you can always make anything situation better in that moment, no matter how bad it's going. I think this is the one thing I learned. You can be having a bad conversation with someone and you can just go i'm gonna make it a

good conversation or you can be having an argument with your partner and go you know i'm not gonna make this something and i think for a long time in my life anyway if i got into an emotion i'd just let it burn until it was over so if my partner was annoying me i'd just be annoyed until i wasn't annoyed you know or i'd be angry till I wasn't angry or whatever you know I was I feel humiliated until I wasn't humiliated rather than actively going actually I'm not gonna feel that way I'm gonna gonna make a choice that makes that better you know and just make turn on turn on a dime and go well let's make this better because you know the past is the past the future is the future let's just make now good one thing I thought was really good we got Matt Heath Life Less Punishing his book out now

this is a professional broadcaster I keep forgetting to do that in interviews resetting is so important one thing I thought

was really cool that you do is when something goes or something tests you you imagine a person is putting that test on you

Willy Apiata is your person right so in your mind anything that goes wrong it's Willy Apiata coming to put you through a little bit of a test. He's your coach.

So it's not that you've got a flat tire and you get angry. You just picture him as your – he's set a bunch of tests and challenges in life, and you've got to see if you can get through those challenges without getting angry. And at the end of the day, you can go, I did really well, Willie. So you're on the side of the road being, okay, Willie, I've got this. He's done this to test me. Well, it's based on an ancient Stoic idea of the Stoic gods.

So they'd believe in actual gods, like, you know, the Greek and Roman gods. And they'd go, oh, that's Jupiter testing me. But, you know, I don't, I've struggled to believe in Jupiter. So I thought I'd make it Willie Appiato. Sounds like a bloody good reality show too. Yeah. Willie or won't he? He's just like, you know, he's got teams of people. Damn, I wish I'd thought it Willie Appiata. Sounds like a bloody good reality show too. Yeah. Willie or won't he? He's got teams of people.

Damn, I wish I'd thought of that in the book. It's too late now. But yeah, I was trying to think of who was the person that I most respect in the country. And I'd read Willie Appiata's book and I was like, that's going to be Willie. It'll be Willie. Yeah.

That's a great idea. I think your wallet goes missing or something like that. Yeah, yeah. He's tested you. Oh, really? Mr. Apiata, you got me there. You're testing me here, but I'm going to show you, coach. I'm going to show you that I'm good.

And so now having written the book, do you feel better now? I do, actually. Was it therapy? I do, actually, oddly. And not much better, but I almost instantly did when I started writing it because I sort of started writing it before I had the book deal. So I was like, oh, I'm going to start, you know,

I'm going to try and read my way out of this sort of funk that I found myself. And so I started the research and just doing it, and then I started putting it in my Herald columns, and then they made me the happiness editor, and then I got off of the book. But by the time I started writing the book, I'd already sort of done most of it, like most of that research, and I'd worked out a lot of ways to sort of be more – I guess, I mean, there's a cliche word around it. Everyone says, just be more grateful for the life I've got.

But it kind of feels like – and I think you say it as well, that people are kind of – we feel like we're not quite wired to appreciate those things. No. In fact, people think that humans are wired to be happy, but we're actually completely wired not to be happy because the guy that was sitting on the savannah um and went hey everything's sweet as he got eaten by a tiger about 15 seconds later and the guy that was sitting on the savannah went oh this is terrible my that's a terrible fence i've made you know what a terrible spot it's supposed to be my family's in danger he climbed a tree got his family up there and sat

up there you know so we're wired to be dissatisfied and that's why we have that voice in our head you know the chatter in our head that's always saying and it's kind of funny i talked to this neuroscientist um in the book uh and he was he was ethan cross and he was just saying we've got an arsehole and people don't understand why our voice in our head's not our buddy all the time and that's the reason because we've got someone critiquing everything we're doing to try and do something better so we survive. And that just doesn't work so well in the modern world because we don't actually need someone going at us

to survive. There's no tigers getting into the Hit Studio. We can just look on the internet comments section. Oh yeah, yeah. There are a few out-of-arsholes on the comments. Also too, you're nice. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because they're out of arseholes too. There are a few out of arseholes on the comments. Also too, you're nice to Kieran Reid,

Ursula Carlson, and obviously, you know, Jeremy Wells as well. Little quotes. Did you make them read the book to quote about it or did you just say something favourable? Well, the Jeremy Wells ones, I was saying to my publisher, no one's going to get anything from Jeremy

who I do a show with every day. I had this comment and they go, no, but he's a big name. And so that one seems disingenuous, that one. And he wrote about five just abusing me, you know. No, but he read the book. Kieran read it in one sitting, actually. He was a big fan of it, actually.

And he kind of operates in that area now with his leadership stuff. And, yeah, so Ursula didn't read it. She didn't read it. What a good name to it. She actually read it recently. Like when she put the comment, she goes, I'll just fire that through because, you know, we're friends. And then she sent me a text. Oh, I read it.

It's actually good. You read it and said I'm surprised. I was like, you're already on the cover. So it's lucky you're not trying to retract your comments. And actually is always a good word as well. It's actually good. Here we go. A life less punishing.

13 ways to love the life you've got. Matt, he really enjoyed what I've read so far. It's really, really good. So yeah, well done.