Ologies with Alie Ward - Awesomeology (GRATITUDE) with Neil Pasricha

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Gratitude: what’s the deal? Does it really make us happier? Even when the world seems terrible? Or is being appreciative a bunch of hokey flim-flam? Author Neil Pasricha started a blog of 1000 Awesome Things in 2008 and it led him down rabbit holes looking into the science of gratitude and how to better survive some really tough times. Learn about your new morning ritual, how much of happiness is genetically determined, why you should sniff a tree, honeymoon drama, simple appreciation, singing while making dinner, the gambles you take while scrolling, and how your brain means well -- but can make you miserable on purpose. Also, buy one more cactus. Follow Neil Pasricha at Twitter.com/NeilPasricha and Instagram.com/NeilPasricha Neil’s website: Neil.blog 3 Books Podcast: https://www.3books.co/ A donation went to https://performancespacenewyork.org/ Sponsors of Ologies: alieward.com/ologies-sponsors More links and info at alieward.com/ologies/awesomeology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and now… MASKS. Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that person sitting on the bus who has the same phone case as you, so you spend the whole ride wondering if you should say something and then you never do. Ali Ward, back with an episode of oligies that I'd hope lifts some spirits, or at the very least has you sprawled out on a blanket staring into the canopy of a tree. Because is happiness even possible in this, our shared global port-a-potty of circumstance? Who's being grateful to Jack? Can we train our brains to look for the good? Okay, one good thing real quick, patrons at patreon.com slash oligies who make the show

possible, you can join if you want. It's 25 cents an episode, it's a dollar a month. It's cheaper than a parking meter by the minute, my friends. Thank you also to everyone finding other oligites in the wild by wearing oligies merch, including masks. Thank you particularly for that. And for keeping the show up in the charts by rating and subscribing, genuine thanks to everyone who leaves reviews.

You know that I read all of them and then I pick a new one each week to read, like a comment card at a local diner, such as this one from LisaGoGo1234 who says, I love how Ali is immediately best friends with everyone she interviews. Oh, LisaGoGo1234, you have no idea how timely this is. Get ready for some real friend magic in this one. So awesomeology, first off, it is a word. It does exist on the internet already. It is defined as the study of awesome, naturally.

Awesome comes from a root meaning profoundly reverential, way back in the 1500s. But before that, awe referred to a feeling of terror or fright. And in the 1200s, awe even connoted depression. So awe came from fright until it meant understruck and then it meant cool, like in the early 1960s. So, depression to reverence to cool. And this episode is centered around the science of gratitude. Is there any?

There is. So today, having awe for everyday life can give your brain a helping hand out of the muck that we all get stuck in. So I myself struggle with this a ton. I found this episode to be full of really good strategies, some intriguing science, and also, most importantly, permission to treat my brain with some kindness and stop the hamster wheel to take stock of what's good. Now this guest is someone I have known about for years, but we were just introduced by

Lodology guest and video game expert, Dr. Jane McGonagall. And I was so excited because I remember his blog, A Thousand Awesome Things, and it got me through a really stressful time when I was working in a newspaper and I was just utterly frazzled. And I've always wanted to look at the science of gratitude ever since I made the great philology is not a real word, mini-soad, I think back in 2017. And because he's a person who has authored several books looking into it, I sent to eager an email asking him to be a guest.

He's a longtime humor writer. He's a graduate of Harvard Business School. He's an author, a TED speaker. He's the founder of the Institute for Global Happiness, which offers a bunch of free resources to help improve happiness in the workplace. He wrote The Book of Awesome, The Happiness Equation, and You Are Awesome. And he also hosts a podcast. It's great.

It's called Three Books. And in each episode, he reads three formative books of a guest. But first and foremost, listen to this one in its entirety because despite his many accomplishments and dissection of what makes our thinky parts happy, he's also just a normal, cool guy who understands that no one is happy all the time and that the goal is not to be happy but just a little happier. So get comfy, kick back, and hear first about a few tough things and then about your new morning ritual, why you should sniff a tree, diary entries, honeymoon drama, the illusion

of history, the simplicity of appreciation, the gambles you take while scrolling, regrets, meditation tricks, and how to wrestle with your wiring. That means well. Plus a few of my poodle, tick-tacking in and out of the room with my new buddy, awesome homologist, Neil Pasrecha. If you could say your first and last name and your pronouns. Yeah. My name is Neil Pasrecha and my pronouns are he and him.

Cool. Thank you. Okay. So first off, I've known about you for over a decade and I was a really big fan of your blog. So I've just known about you forever. I feel like you've been in my life for a decade. Oh my gosh.

That's so kind of you. I mean, I wrote a thousand awesome things from 2008 to 2012, like it was a four-year stretch like nine years ago or whatever. So whenever anyone says that to me, which is pretty rare, I think of them as like an old friend. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's so cool. Thank you for knowing me when I wasn't the version I have of myself that I am now. Early adopter over here, dude. It's true. I've seen his tech talk and I knew of his work way back when in order to get updates on people's lives, you had to mosey to their individual blog spots or WordPressers. This in that day, I don't know if you know this, arrived as group texts on flip phones. So for an approximate Eon, this guy's been on my radar.

I know your backstory, so I'm going to have to ask it anyway, but I just don't even know where to begin because I'm just, I'm so excited to talk to you. Okay. So you've been through some shit, dude, as have a lot of people, but you went through a pretty shitty time and you decided to try to get through the other side of it. Can you tell me a little bit about that first decision to just start your blog? Yeah, sure. So I just did a call back to like 2008, 2009 time period.

And what I didn't mention was that I came home from work one night and my wife told me that she did not want to be married to me anymore. And we had been together two years, married marriage-wise, but I think for like four or five years as a couple, we just bought a house, we were talking about having kids. And like, I mean, I just didn't see it coming. Like it was, it was, there was just like a, it was just shock. It wasn't anger. It wasn't, it wasn't relief.

It was just what? Like it was like a complete shock. I didn't, I didn't see that coming. And at the same time, my closest friend Chris was going through some severe mental health challenges and that culminated in an attempted suicide and sadly, eventually an actual suicide where he took his own life. And of course, as this was all happening, I'm like, okay, well, I got to sell the house and like, I like process this divorce.

I need to find a place to live. I have to like give a eulogy and I'm like, I'm a complete mess. And you mentioned that like Twitter, I just started, started, but really it was like what I had like a, I had like a newspaper and like TV and radio. These were like the distraction vehicles of the time. But when you turn on any of those things, it's all 100% bad news. Like it's still, you know, it's still like a way to learn about all the world's ills and problems.

So I was like, I need a way to distract myself and put myself in a positive mood. And so I go to Google and I say, I've been how to start a blog and WordPress just narrowly edged out blog spot as the top hit. And so that's where I went. And so I started a blog called 1000 awesome things.com just as a way to put a smile on my face before I went to bed. Now listen, Ali, I didn't know anything about these like gratitude research studies or like journaling practice study.

I didn't know shit about that. All I knew was that I needed a way to distract myself before bed. And my posts sucked. My very first post on the blog was Broccoflower, the ugly hybrid child of nature's ugliest vegetables. I mean, I put a picture of green cauliflower and I was like, how crazy is this thing? Awesome. And that was my whole entry.

The birth of the blog was just like, this is awesome today. And I went to bed. And then I wrote the next day about like, yeah, the smell of walking by a bakery and like their bacon croissants. Right? Then the next day I was like, oh, I found like five bucks on my old colt pocket. OK, I wrote about that. Over time, what happened was in, I don't know, a couple months later, I wrote a post called

old dangerous playground equipment. I talked about how bad is it that we don't have slides that burn the bottom of our legs anymore? You can't crash land in a bed full of cigarettes and milk thistle kids are wimps. You know, it was just like, it was just one of those like kids today, they stink. And the post hit the front page of Fark.com, which was, yeah, you probably know, like the six most big, you know, six biggest like social media site in the world. I think that's what they call themselves.

And then it got like 50,000 hits in one day. And then from there, I had an audience. I didn't know what to do with an audience other than to keep going. And so as you've already kind of hinted or we have the title, I wrote an awesome thing. Every single weekday for a thousand straight weekdays from 2008 to 2012 to cheer myself up. Neil started at the bottom and his first post was titled Number 1000, Brocco Flower, but some other random gems, watching cream going to coffee when you should have gotten a parking ticket, but didn't when someone pronounces your name right on the first try, when you

think you're out of clean underwear, but then you find one more pair, the first 10 seconds after you turn out the lights and wiggling yourself into a good sleeping position, finding hidden compartments in things you already own, maybe my personal favorite thing in the universe, remembering how lucky we are to be here right now. And number one, anything you want it to be. Now, his book, The Book of Awesome, became a New York Times bestseller and the number one international bestseller for 142 weeks. This resonated with people.

He went on to write several other books and built a small empire focused on intentional living and generally trying to make life suck less. Did you find before it went viral and before you started getting an audience, did you find your perspective or your mood or your optimism start to shift before that? I mean, I, the thing is, I could not see anything good anywhere, right? Like that's the problem. I think that's even more pervasive today with how we monetize news media and social media, which is with our attentions and our minds are going towards things that are like controversial

or negative or obscene or absurd. And so I just couldn't see anything positive. And therefore, when I posted about the other side of the pillow and how turning it over in the middle of the night to the cold side makes me happy and, you know, 17 comments show up the next morning. It's like, oh, my gosh, that's so true. And like, how about when you're lying on a couch and like someone just throws a blanket on you, you know, and someone would be like, ooh, I love that. And how about when, you know, and people just started like the little horrible solar system

that was my brain at the time started forming a new planet that weighted down things towards positivity. And so the gravitational force of this blog in my own mind created people throwing and sticking comments and ideas. And so it just rolled and rolled and deep got bigger and bigger into like just a giant thing where, yeah, I started carrying around a cue card every day, you know, on writing down a list of things I found. Awesome. Every day. And that practice alone will do this for you. Like if you listen, it's like, wait, what should I do?

I was like, just put a cue card in your pocket and write some good stuff you see. There you go. There you go. So that's the answer, because that's what totally helped change my thinking. And did you ever then try to figure out if, you know, a bunch of people were studying this scientifically, did something click? And did you say, wait, this isn't just me, right? Well, I mean, it was a long time before I started leaning into the science. And really, it came from the fact that people kept asking me these questions and I had no answer.

And so I got invited on the Today Show and Meredith Vieira, the host, looks me in the eye and they don't tell you the questions before you go on the biggest morning show in the world. They don't tell you, they don't they don't think it's nice to tell you the questions. I'm sitting there like fricking JLo is walking off the set. And then I'm like, she looks me in the eyes and she's like, so how do you teach all of America to be happy like you? I'm like, in my head, I'm thinking I've lost 40 pounds due to stress. I've got black bags under my eyes.

They repainted my entire face for the show. All my friends think I'm depressed because I'm living in a bachelor apartment. You know, by myself, I'm not dating. I'm not going out. I'm not doing anything other than like working on my blog outside of my outside of my day job, which is working at Walmart. And I just like fumbled through an answer. But after getting asked that question enough times, I'm like, I'm going to keep being asked,

you know, and I start looking into the research. I start picking up books like Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. Neil rolled up his sleeves and started studying up on gratitude and how it affects happiness. He was like, how does this really work? What is so and so saying about this? And the other person is saying, and then it all came hitting me in the head really, Allie, when a few years later, I fell in love with Leslie, who, spoiler alert, is my wife today. And she and I went on a honeymoon, a wonderful honeymoon to Southeast Asia,

which was awesome and great and wonderful until the flight home. And on the flight home, she was not feeling well. She was sick. And we have we had a six hour layover in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. And she's like, I need to find a pharmacy. I need to find a place to lie down. I need to find a place to like, you know, rest. And I'm like, are you sure you're going to make this 13 hour flight home from here to Toronto?

And she's like, yeah, I'm definitely up for that. So we find our pharmacy, we find a place to lie down. We get on the airplane until we take off to like, whatever, 30,000 feet of OC level. She goes to the tiny airplane bathroom at the front of the airplane. She comes back to our seats and she says, I'm pregnant. She bought the Pranksy test in the Kuala Lumpur Airport pharmacy. She did the Pranksy test in the tiny airplane bathroom at the front of the airplane. And that's when it hit home for me.

I'm like, I'm I all this stuff that's been spinning around my mind for the last few years. I need to put it into something concrete. And so I came on to Toronto. I wrote 300 page letter to my unborn child on how to live a happy life. And in that book or in that letter, which turned into a book called The Happiness Equation, that book really is just a giant letter of everything I learned on how to be happy. Or I guess you'd call it osmology. Yeah, that's what.

And great news. You do not have to be Neil's firstborn child to benefit from his research and writing. So the Happiness Equation is essentially want nothing plus do anything equals have everything. And he covers things like how to make decisions faster and why success doesn't lead to happiness, some myths about multitasking. Because when you find out on an airplane that you're sitting next to your fetus, you want to give it the benefits of a lot of scientific research, like a lot of it. Oh, my gosh, I know we do not have the 12 hours.

I would like to stay here and ask you literally everything in that Happiness Equation. Can you tell me a little bit about the three As of Osm and also how that factors into the Happiness Equation? Yeah, sure. So basically, as the blog went viral and took off, I won an award at the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences called Best Blog. You're the best. Whatever, Webby Award.

And so I won that. And then a bunch of literary agents came and asked if I wanted to have a book deal. So I said, yes, and then it turned into a book called The Book of Osm. Why don't I tell you that? Because that one, the book came out, I was invited to do a TED talk. And when you do a TED talk, you can't just say, like, I have no idea why you guys invited me here. Here's a bunch of jokes I put on my blog. You're supposed to have like a PowerPoint slide with like a framework of some kind.

That's what I thought. So I was like, oh, what the hell am I going to write? So I was like, oh, I know the three As of Osm. And so my TED talk is called The Three As of Osm. And in it, I talk about attitude, awareness and authenticity. I tried looking back at my own blog and asking myself, hey, what was it about that blog that both helped to go viral? And what did I learn inside myself?

And to me, it came down to those three things. In the speech, I did not put any brass tacks around them. I didn't I didn't sort of throw up reams of data and show all these numbers of correlations. And I just said, look, you got to have a good attitude. You got to be as aware as like a three year old is of seeing everything like you're seeing it for the first time and you need to be authentic to yourself. So you can put yourself and you're doing this so well with allergies. It's like your pure, truest self is right here.

I can feel your heart. I listened to your show and I'm like, it's like you're right beside me. And I think when you get those compliments, it's like it's because you're so authentic. And so I threw those things into a little PowerPoint slide. And I was like, that's The Three As of Osm. Then flash forward to the Happiest Question a few years later. And the root model underpinning the entire book. My entire view on happiness is this.

Basically, I think everybody is lied to as children for real. I think that everyone is told that great work leads to a big success, leads to being happy. And those six words are really important. Great work leads to big success, leads to being happy. But as I started going into the research myself, I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, how is everybody missing this? The research says it's the exact opposite.

What? If you look at Dr. Sayelib Amirsky's work, she's published an amazing report that shows that if you show up to work or show up in your day with a positive attitude, you actually end up with 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, three times more creativity. All these giant positive things come out of it. And then what happens?

Well, it turns out that you end up getting promoted. 40% chance more likely you're going to get promoted in the next year. And you're going to live longer. And like your longevity goes up. It's like, wait a minute, the model's backwards. It's not great work, big success, be happy. It's being happy leads to great work, leads to the big success. Oh, my God.

What? Holy shit. OK. And so what I mean is when you're a kid, what are your parents in you? Like if you're me, if you're a tiny brown kid in Canada, you're just like, if you study really hard, then you'll get good grades and you'll become a doctor. Like that was like the that was like the Indian parents dream, right? Like you become a doctor and and then you'll be presumably the end of that

that you're happy. Or if you're in any other career today, it's like if you if you work really hard, then you get the promotion, then you're happy. Anyone else here raised Catholic thinking that this life is for suffering. And then once you die, St. Peter lifts the heavenly velvet rope to the eternal VIP party where there's a shrimp buffet that never gives you diarrhea. I grew up with the Italian Catholic philosophy.

I'm not happy until I'm miserable. Again, the entire philosophy is about a working now to experience like a pleasure later and a happiness later, right? But it's the opposite. Again, I quoted the word from Silent Liberation, but it's like basically if you know, no, if you can cultivate a positive mindset first, if you when you wake up in the morning, you can prime your brain for positivity somehow. If you can do that, I'll say it's easy.

But if you can do that, then the great work follows. You're more productive, you're more creative, you get along. We like having happy bosses. We promote happy people underneath us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the big success, what kind of success? Well, both the career success and health success, but also longevity, life success. Only we only live for 30,000 days. That's it. That's the total lifespan, right?

And so if you're happy, you get an extra bump, you get an extra few thousand. It's worth it. I need a fainting couch right now. I'm like about to collapse. That's bananas. They do not teach us that. And obviously, and you know, more than anyone, you were not handed necessarily circumstances that would lead to a bunch of

cheerfulness, what with, you know, a marriage that fell apart without any notice and losing someone so close to you to such tragic circumstances. So how do people who are experiencing terrible circumstances or who are predisposed chemically to not feel positive? What can we do that actually physically changes our brains? Yeah. And because anyone listening who just heard me say, it's not great work. Big success, be happy. It's being happy leads to great work, to big success.

Might be sitting right now, whether they're driving their truck or in a hotel gym in Mongolia or wherever they are and saying like, I call shenanigans on that. How do you start with being happy? Like, that's your question. You're like, how do you, but how do you do that? That that might lead to all the good stuff. But how do I do that first?

And so since I referenced Simon Lovramirsky's work once already, let me do it again. She's written a wonderful book called The Howl of Happiness. She posits a model which says 50% of your happiness is based on your genetics. 10% of your happiness is based on your circumstances. And 40% of your happiness is based on your intentional activities. If right now you're the meme with the lady haunted by math equations, let me repeat that.

In the book, The Howl of Happiness by research psychologist, Dr. Sonia Lubomirsky, she postulates that 50% of your happiness is based on your genetics, straight up chemistry genetics. 10% of your happiness is based on your circumstances. And 40% of your happiness is based on your intentional activities. But remember, though, the bulk of it 50% is genetic and chemical. And gratitude is not a fix for mental health issues, nor is it anyone's failing to not feel happier.

As someone with a medicated anxiety disorder, I would never trade my prescription for journaling. But I can learn to upgrade my thinking patterns to serve my brain and my body better. And it's nice to think of my brain as kind of a jiggly little buddy up there. And I'm trying to feed it fewer moldy leftovers and more healthy options it wants. She's very careful to say it's a model, it's a framework, it's just positing it like it's not like this is the way it is. So my whole caveat on this entire conversation is like,

let's remember that we're talking about the 40%, OK? If you happen to listen to this and you have two kids, well, one of us probably a little happier than the other. There's a genetic set point that we all kind of start with. But the 40% is a lot. It means that it's four times as much as your circumstances. Like, that's a huge thing. What you do in the world is four times more important

than what's happening to you in the world, right? So in that 40%, now the question is like, well, what do we throw in there, man? Like, what's the ingredients of this recipe you're telling us to cook? And in that in that sense, there's so many things. There are so many things. And when I say them to you, I'll just give you like three to start with. OK. When I say them to you, you're going to be like, oh, of course,

because they're they're such good, obvious thing. And each of these things is supported by just a huge stack of scientific paperwork that says this is really good for you. Number one, I'll start with this journaling. Dear diary. OK. Really famous study from the University of Texas is called How Do I Love The Let Me Count the Words? They looked at couples in a relationship who journaled

and those who did not. They weren't journaling about each other. They were just doing the exercise and practice of journaling. Those who did the exercise and practice were 50 percent more likely to stay together after the three month mark. Course, I'm University of Texas. Three months is a very long relationship, right? Like any college campus.

And and so what I'm saying is journaling. Do you like first things first? Do you do you visit yourself? Do you hang out with you? Do you process your thoughts? Do you put your your mark? You put those fiery little tendons in your mind somewhere or do they just sit there and setting your brain on fire all day?

It's pretty hot in here, isn't it? Like journaling is a prescription. Journaling helps you be happy. I can't be more clear. OK. Uh-huh. That's one. I love this. Another one I'm going to go to rant on about is forest therapy. OK. Getting out into the woods.

I need to get into nature. Yeah, you do. You do need to get into nature. In fact, there's research that shows that trees release a chemical called phytonasides. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. P-H-Y-T-O-N-C-I-D-E-S. Phytonaside. It's a it's a chemical that trees release to guess what, Ali, when you breathe in this chemical, guess what?

Your cortisol goes down. Your adrenaline goes down. Like these are the stress hormones. I'm saying 20 minutes in the bushes is good for you. And if you're walking on a treadmill, showing you a picture of like the, you know, some fancy trail, that doesn't count. OK, a walk through a forest is better than a mall.

Right? You actually need to go outside. Those boots, you need to put them on your feet. Like you actually need to go into the woods. I'm telling you 20 minutes a day. And there's tons of research that also supports the idea of physical fitness, you know, physical exercise. These are also supporting. I just like to focus on the trees

because I think that chemical stuff is really interesting. Now, for more inspiration to lace up those boots and go birdwatching or bug hunting or leaf caressing, listen to the recent forest ecology episode with K-Dubs, the hiking scientist. You can march forward, breathe deep, let nature help you. Then, you know, check your crevices in private. But trees, so you go have some bark, dude. So into that.

Oh, my gosh, that is a great, great, great way to say it. OK, here's the other one, singing. Singing is really good for your happiness, especially if you do it in a choir or with a group of people. Now, I know you're thinking, hey, wait a minute, didn't I just read a story about how like a bunch of people singing in like an indoor thing, like I'll give each other covid? Yeah. Yeah. OK.

Well, the research was done before, but like guess what? When you sing in a choir or you sing with a group of people or when you're part of a social togetherness where you guys are doing something joyful like singing, it's really, really good for you. And I know that it's difficult now. But if you're living at home with the family, can you turn on some music and crank it and like get into a family dance party?

Like you can still do stuff like that. So I mean, those are just some of the little quick examples like you go on and on about things like meditation, which is really hard for people to do, but for you. Right. Master of the General Hospital shows that if you close your eyes and do even two minutes of deep breathing, you increase the activity in your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for focus and attention.

You go from living in a washing machine to looking at a washing machine. Right. Wow. It's really hard for people to do this, but closing your eyes and doing a couple of minutes of deep breathing improves your happiness. My wonderful therapist recently recommended the 445 method, which is breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for five.

I do this all the time and it really helps my brain say to my body, OK, OK, everyone, settle down. It's just cool to jets 445. Let's do this a couple of times. We good? We good? OK. So just reminder, these things I'm starting to list now here around things like journaling, huffing some bark, singing with a choir or meditating are just little things you can toss ingredients.

You can toss into your recipe to build up that 40 percent. Right. Yeah. And then how about in terms of happiness? I'm sure that you get asked this a lot and you've had to do a lot of research, but what exactly is happiness? Well, how do we even quantify that? Not everything can be simplified into words or numbers. So what the researchers do in all these studies that I'm talking about

is the use of phrase subjective well-being. There is no part of our DNA or anything that shows up in a blood test that tells us how happy we are. What they do in all these research studies is ask people on a scale of one to ten, how happy are you with your life today? They ask people, do some of these studies. Journaling, exercise, meditation, etc. And then you compare yourself with both your past and a test group

to see, hey, where were their increases? Now, if you're like, OK, that's nice. That's like the research definition, but what is happiness? Like, what is happiness? Tell me what is happiness, Neil? Yeah. Well, there's an ancient Greek definition that I love that a lot of people quote, which is a wonderful definition, which is the joy you feel while striving towards your potential.

OK, that's beautiful. The joy you feel while striving towards your potential. It's an ancient Greek definition. If you're like, well, give me someone else, give me some juice. OK, well, the book I already referred to, The How of Happiness says, the experience of joy, contentment or positive well-being combined with a sense that one's life is good, meaningful and worthwhile. Oh, so it doesn't have to be perfect, easy or smooth,

but meaningful, worthwhile and good. Right. Well, that's exactly true because if you ask anyone who just came back from a five kilometer run up a rainy hill, I feel one, I feel so happy. So I'm just trying to prove that what you just said is true, right? Like, we can separate the idea that I'm happy right now with the fact that I've done something that I feel is worthwhile and purposeful. So I feel happy because of that.

I have never given birth, but I imagine giving birth might be kind of similar to. Well, I, yeah, I haven't either, nor have I passed a kidney stone, but I'm sure there's a lot of happiness when it comes to relief also. Sure. But what about when it comes to gratitude? I mean, we're kind of nearing the season of gratitude. What does science tells about gratitude and subjective well-being? Yeah, sure. The most famous research comes from Emmons and McCullough

and what they had people do is at the end of each week, write down five things they were grateful for or different test groups, five events or five hassles. So again, you had to kind of plumb your mind for either five things you're grateful for or if you're in different test group, five events by things that happen or the third group was five hassles. Well, what they found is over a 10 week period, the participants who wrote down the things they were grateful for

were not only happier, but physically healthier. OK, this partly speaks to some of our points earlier about how happiness is an indicator on health, lowering stress, increasing the heart health, helping you live longer, etc. And so sometimes when I talk about this, people are like, well, that's nice to say. But what am I supposed to do? Like grab a notebook and carry it around writing about ice cream cones? Like no one's going to do that.

And so what I always tell people to do is a game that Leslie and I play at our house at dinner every night, which is called Rose Rose Thorn Bud. OK, so we go around the dinner table. We've got three little boys. They sometimes play well, and sometimes they run around and throw a spaghetti against the wall. But what the point of the game is is everybody goes around the table

and says a rose. Except this rose. OK, a rose. Like my boss gave me a compliment. I got an assistant hockey practice, like whatever it is, like some tiny thing you're grateful for. Then you do it again. You say another rose. OK, something else.

Again, this forces you to think about it. Ali makes you makes you sort of feel like, well, what really did happen today? OK, you end up reliving it, which is good. Then we make space for a thorn. A thorn is something that did not go well. The goal of the room, of course, is just to listen, right? And just offer empathy in terms of body language and like an understanding nod. And then a bud, B-U-D bud, a bud is something you're looking forward to.

OK, and it could be tomorrow. Well, I can't wait to watch cartoons tomorrow morning, or it could be like I can't wait to rent a villa in Tuscany when I'm 110. Yeah, it could be whatever in the future. And so the game rose, rose, thorn bud that you can play with your family, with your friends, with your partner, whatever is a nice, simple practice to bring the ground to research you asked me about into your life kind of naturally. OK, and then we are going to get to Patreon questions

because we have so many listeners who are very excited, including me, I'm a Patreon member. Oh, you are. Yeah, of course. I mean, it's a dollar a month. I mean, I got to say, it's a little steep. It's a little you're kind of pushing it there. Like I was like, with a doll, I can do a lot with a dollar a month. But my heart is cheap.

I know if I can help you pay the rent, like, I guess I'll offer a little. I appreciate it so much. I am so this is so amazing and sweet. Sometimesologists will sneak in right before their episode and become a patron so they can see what people are asking, which I always love to see them like sign up right before. But you're the fact that you listen to my podcast, I can't process it. I can't handle it. I can't process it. Oh, my gosh.

OK, we're going to get to Patreon questions. You ready? I'm ready. OK. Am I playing it cool at all in this episode? No, not at all. No shame. I honestly do not know how I bamboozle people that I admire into doing this podcast, but let's just say I'm very grateful for it. Also, I'm thankful for the chance to donate to a cause of theologists choosing each week and Neil Assetto go to performance based New York,

whose mission is to commission artists whose work challenged the boundaries of live performance and performance based New York is dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by artists from diverse genres, cultures and perspectives, and they've been raising money also to provide housing for black and trans housing insecure artists so a donation was made in the name of Neil and of writer Roxanne Gay as they are teaming up on a charity drive. And there's a link to performance based New York in the show notes.

So that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now. OK, back to as many questions as I can fit in my mouth, starting with one that may have been nagging at you this entire time. But yeah, there's a lot. A lot of people, a few people asked Sarah Wilbur, Marty Goodwin and Sarah Nielsen all asked about unhappiness. And Sarah says, why does it seem like our default is to be unhappy? Do you find that do you find that a lot of people feel that way?

Well, I want to focus on the word seem there just for a second, because I do I mentioned it earlier and I don't think I've gone on a legit enough rant about this and I really want to, which is where you get in your information. Like I just if you're listening to all these phenomenal, but if you are consuming any form of news media or social media, which pretty much everyone is and everyone is to probably like addictive levels, let's just really watch it right now, because right now those business models are completely oriented to monetizing your attention by feeding you negativity.

That is happening. Why is that happening? Well, because you got an almond sized thing in the middle of your brain from the oldest part of your brain called your amygdala. The amygdala side note is part of the limbic system, which scientists casually and kind of insultingly call the old brain. Although the brain stem is said to be the oldest, oldest part. But yes, the evolutionarily oldest inner layers of our brains help us regulate survival functions, including the question that we ask ourselves

hundreds of times a day, which is, well, this thing here kill me. Is this going to kill me? Is that going to kill me? Are you going to kill me? Is this going to kill me? Every time we do something scary, like text a crush or make a presentation, cut our bangs, write an important email, etc. Our brain is shrieking. This could kill you. This could kill you. Just heads up. That's going to kill you. Oh, man, we're going to die.

Now, in the fearology episode with Mary Poff and Roth, we dubbed the amygdala the screaming almond of terror. It's very well meaning, but a little dramatic. And that thing releases a fight or flight hormone. All day, all day, which is awesome for when you hear a stick snap in the middle of the woods and in the middle of the night. You're like, is that a bear? Like that's that is a great, good evolutionary thing.

If you are in an immediate emergency, great. Unfortunately, that thing can be totally abused. It's why we all rubber neck on the highway. It's why when you get a blood test back from your doctor, you scan for the high cholesterol. When you get a math test back for your teacher, you scan for the one question you got wrong. Yes, you have thousands and thousands and thousands of positive reviews.

But I'm guessing, Ali, that you look at the one that's one star. Sometimes you're like, where the hell the one the one jumps out for you? A hundred. Billion one in ten billion for your show. So good. But I just mean, like I'm a podcaster, too. I do the same thing. I go I go on iTunes and I'm like, wait, I mean, like one person thought my voice was bad.

Like I must I need to get voice surgery. As mentioned, Neil has a podcast called Three Books and you should listen. One day I will be on I already told him two of the books and I already regret one because my amygdala likes to fear judgment. My amygdala sees judgment as a cobra hiding in my toilet. I know that's bullshit. I'm working on it. So anyway, news media, social media are the devil. And they are totally minding our attention right now

to feed us constant negativity. So I just want to before I answer on as best as I can, you know, I will just say where you get your inputs because right now it's super dangerous to be consuming the amount of news media and social media that we are. That is totally overwhelming. You can't process that. Yeah. That's going to that's going to fry you.

So listen to this podcast and then delete everything else. But when, you know, a lot of people, actually, Rachel Selby, Florence Yon and Jen Renard asked about this particular thing about social media. Rachel says, how have we noticed that increasing technology integration and continued technological advances affect happiness? And have we noticed social media affecting happiness? I remember reading something that that refreshing social media

activates the same part of the brain as slot machines where because you don't know if you're going to get something good or bad, it's unpredictable, you keep refreshing. Do you find that is there research on that at all? Yeah, that's you just quoted it. Like that's exactly it. Like the fact that you don't know if your picture is going to get 17 likes or 300 is what makes you want to check if you got it.

If you got a consistent reaction, it's similar to that study that they always quote and I'm going to butcher it. But it's like, you know, the rats press the lever when they don't know how many pellets are going to come out. If there is always one pellet, they'll get bored. If there's always zero, they won't do it. But if it's like one zero, 17, that one, they just keep pushing it because you don't know what's going to come.

It's exactly what you call the slot machine effect on our brain. Just a quick aside, I did a deep dive fact checking this research and I'm not going to derail us reading all the research to you. But boy, howdy, there's plenty. And I'm going to link the studies on my website. But the bullet points are that anthropologists note that gambling becomes addictive because of the cycle of intermittent variable rewards. And Dr. Natasha Schull wrote the book Addiction by Design based on her

research into gambling. And she stated in a 2019 Guardian article that quote, Facebook, Twitter and other companies use methods similar to the gambling industry to keep users on their sites. And we have to start recognizing the costs of time spent on social media. It's not just a game. It affects us financially, physically and emotionally, she says. Now, what does Silicon Valley have to say?

Well, Google design ethicist Tristan Harris calls your smartphone the slot machine in your pocket. Pardon me, Harris's Google's former design ethicist. Now, in an article he published via Medium, Harris writes, does this effect really work on people? Yes, slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies and theme parks combined. So every time we post, it's like pulling that lever

and we may get a windfall of likes or not. But going viral is also a jackpot. Possibility lurking in the back of our heads. Reading all of this research, honestly, like my spine tingled and blood rushed to my face, just like I rate. So next time you have a choice between sitting under a tree for 20 minutes, looking at squirrels or scrolling, just think of social media like a smoky, crusty casino serving you cheap gin mixed with flat Pepsi.

Just desperate for you to empty your brain savings into their sweaty sausage hands. I'm so pissed. That's one problem of social media. There are others, for example, there's a psychological problem of comparing your director's cut life with everyone else's greatest hits. No matter how good that burrito you microwaved today for lunch and you coat it and you chopped up a little avocado and you put a dollop of sour cream and you even melted the little cheese

and you have this special salsa you really like and you put a little jalapeno. It was awesome. And then you go on Instagram and someone's at a lobster buffet in the Maldives. Like it's impossible to feel good about yourself when psychologically you're told that you suck all the time. Yeah, there's a physical problem with social media. We don't talk about this enough, but I think it's really worth mentioning. I went to my physiotherapist last year and I was like, my thumb doesn't work.

Like I can't move my thumb. And she said to me, all we're doing is thumbs now. You know, used to be when you were a kid, you had like people had casts. Remember signing casts? Like someone broke their leg because they jumped off the dangerous playground equipment. Well, now it's like everyone just has sunken eyes and broken thumbs. And when you tilt your head forward, you apply 60 pounds of pressure to your spine. OK. A human head weighs eight pounds.

OK, now the third problem also starts the letter P. Three P's in a row, psychological, physical. And I'll say physiological research from Australia shows that when you expose your brain to a bright screen within one hour of bedtime, you don't produce as much melatonin. That is the sleep hormone is what helps you get a deep REM induced sleep. So when you look at a bright screen within an hour of bedtime, guess what happens? You don't go that far down the rabbit hole.

Then you wake up with even lower resilience, lower happiness. So what do you do? You see what Trump tweeted when you wake up because you don't have the resilience not to check. OK. I just love how much Neil has geeked out on this and done research and cited studies. And I went and looked up every single one he mentioned and they all check out and they're going to be linked on my website. Now, social media has jacked our happiness and left us addicted. And they know what they're doing.

But back to those three P's, psychological, comparing our lives unfairly, physical, carpal tunnel, ice terrain and physiological poor sleep. Dang, that's too many P's already. I'm peed and I'm peeved. If you want me to throw another P in there just for good measure, I will say there's also a huge productivity problem where research is now showing that we spend 31 percent of our day bookmarking, prioritizing and switching. Let me say that again.

We're spending about a third of our day not doing anything, but just deciding what to do. And if you've ever decided to hang out with yourself or your loved one and watch Netflix and you're like, oh, yeah, the partner's coming downstairs. Just put in the kid to bed and let me drum up a show that we're going to watch. And by the time they come downstairs, you spent half an hour like going on rotten tomatoes trying to look up rankings and checking trailers on YouTube because you really want to get the first.

And then suddenly it's 9 20. You haven't pitched a show. You're like, well, forget it. I'm going to bed. And that's what we're doing all day. We're bookmarking, prioritizing and switching between tasks. We're not actually getting as much done, ironically. OK, so those four P's, OK, I just laid them on you. OK, recap, psychological, physical, physiological and productivity. Also, this guy has written books researching happiness.

He founded a global happiness institute and is telling you social media may be making you feel like garbage. And it's OK to cut back on it for your sanity and for your well being. You don't have to bury your head in the sand or disengage from justice. But maybe read the news on a different app, sign up for informative newsletters, go to dedicated groups for certain causes, but just aimlessly scrolling through people's workouts and brunches and vacations and hoping that you get likes on yours may not be what your brain or the world needs.

Are some of the problems of social media? Yes, it's a huge, huge problem. What I actually tell people I to do and you didn't ask me this, but I say, get rid of that phone from the bedroom. Number one priority is get the phone out of the bedroom. Because I can't, I can't smile on clock, go to Walmart. They're 10 bucks. Oh, I can't, I can't. I'm very important. I get a lot of calls.

No, you don't get a lot of emergency calls. You're lying. And if you really need emergency calls, get a landline. They're $10 now. Give the phone number to your director, reporter, your boss or your, your, your mom or whoever. So, you know, you have the peace of mind of being reach a bull. And then when that phones out of your bedroom, when you wake up in the morning, what you need to do is grab a pen and grab a piece of paper.

And I want you to write down, I will let go of, I am grateful for, and I will focus on. So I call this the two minute morning practice. Each of these three things are backed by research. I can talk about that if you want. So I will let go of helps eliminate a regret every day. I will let go of how much screen time my kids are getting. I will let go of using the disposable mask for three straight weeks.

I will let go of the fact that I have terrible mom guilt right now, because I'm totally ignoring my work to just take care of my kids or vice versa. So, and this is research from Science Magazine. The research is called Don't Look Back in Anger that shows that minimizing regrets as we age increases our happiness. OK, quick aside, this was a 2012 study. And the full title is, quote, don't look back in anger, responsiveness to missed chances in successful and non-successful aging.

And the researchers say that results suggest disengagement from regret reflects a critical resilience factor for emotional health in older age. So, dang, if you have a no regrets tattoo, keep on not regretting it as well as not regretting other stuff every morning. So I will let go of that's how you start your day. Don't have that stuff floating around all day. I am grateful for number two. We already talked about all the research behind gratitudes.

OK, the only thing I haven't said yet, Ali, is that it's got to be specific. Don't say my husband. Say when my husband Rodriguez put the toilet seat down. Don't say my dog. Say when my shitsuit Toby learned how to shake a pot. Like be specific. The specificity is partly what's actually causing you to develop those positive neural pathways in your brain to actually think of the things

that you're happy about. And third, I said, was I will focus on what look, we all suffer from decision fatigue these days, we need to carve a will do from our endless could do and should do. OK, and it should be the most annoying thing. Like it should be like calling my cable company or like making that dentist appointment or like finally putting the files in the garage or whatever. The annoying thing I will let go of I am grateful for. And I will focus on is a two minute morning practice that helps the other

nine hundred and ninety eight minutes you're awake a day be happier. And yes, the average person's awake a thousand minutes a day. A thousand minutes a day. That's all you got. A thousand minutes a day. The average person is awake for a thousand minutes a day. Oh, man. Is everyone else trying to do the math right now?

And how many hours of this? Like 16 and two thirds hours. I know you always hear like Beyonce has the same number of hours in a day. She has the same number of minutes. She also has probably more personal assistance, but still. She's doing something. Yeah. And I bet you she's not waking up and checking Twitter, though. Do you know what I'm saying?

I mean, I don't know, Beyonce. I mean, it's just been a while since we last connected. I just I just think that like those people I don't know why we're using her as an example that live their life with the deep intentionality and are thinking about how to consciously sort of imbue a bit more happens in your life. Like be intentional when you get up, OK? Don't let someone else tell you what to think when you wake up. Your phone is designed to be a push device.

It pushes stuff out you alerts, texts, notifications. It's what everyone else has on their agenda. Yeah. Like big thing here is make it what's on your agenda. OK. And that actually dovetails into some questions about self care versus selfishness. Gracie Zesha, Kristen, Hendrickson, Laura Smith, Katrina Nugent, Tony Jane, Hilary Larson and Earl of Grey Malkin, as well as first-time question asker Emily Okerlund and Kelly Seaman. Are you saying that all these people ask the same question?

Similar question? Are you just lumping them together? I'm lumping them together. Similar question. I'm just joking. No, similar questions. And Gracie says, how do you see the line between self care and selfishness for your happiness? And Kristen asked, how do you foster happiness when you have a hard time feeling worthy or you're experiencing depression?

There is an epidemic in our society today where we are not prioritizing ourselves before we are prioritizing others. When you go on the airplane, and I know it feels like a distant memory for everybody right now, other than you flying around doing your fancy film shoots. I was on a five a.m. flight on Wednesday. P.S. I was flying for work, not for fun or leisure. Also, can you do me a favor and can you cancel your holidays this year? Covid rates are surging in the U.S.

and you will save lives, possibly the lives of those most dear to you and or your own by sitting this one out and eating stuffing over Zoom. Just cancel. Just do it now. Everyone's going to be relieved. Anyway, back to airplanes. And what do they say when you're on your five a.m. flight? They said, if the oxygen mask falls out of the ceiling in the middle of this, put it on your mouth first before you put it on your kid.

And for anyone that has a three year old beside them in an airplane, like it, you know, for those of us that are parents, it's like I wouldn't do that. Like you would instinctively want to put it on your kid first. You want to feed your kid first. You want to just take care of your kid first. But the airlines are smarter than us. Sentences that have never been said. They know that you're no good. You're just no you're dead weight.

You are no good to anyone unless you take care of yourself first. You cannot pour from an empty vessel. Self care should be your number one priority. It is more important to take care of yourself because you cannot you cannot take care of anybody. You cannot help anybody. You cannot show up and do a good job for your boss. You cannot do a good job for your kids.

You cannot do a good job for your sister or for your mom if you don't take care of yourself first. And so when I hear this question, what I hear is I don't like because I get the version of the question that I often get is like, well, I'm taking care of my aging month full time. I don't have enough time to go for a 20 minute walk in the woods. Or like how am I supposed to journal because you don't know my life, dude, and you don't understand that I've got three jobs

and I'm taking public transit between them all. Like you don't get it. And what I always say is, yes, true. I don't you know, we're trying our best to understand each other. Like that's the point of humanity. But what I'm saying is could you over prioritize? You know, the two minute morning practice, for example. And then know that when you're doing that and your kid is crying

because they just woke up downstairs, you're going to be a better parent for the rest of the day. You know, could you do that if you just knew that it's better for everybody? It's not selfish. It's selfless to take care of yourself first. Yeah. I mean, it also can considering that emotions can be so contagious at times, especially if you're in like a close family unit

that taking care of yourself for two minutes or five minutes is probably going to be better overall for the people around you if you're not feeling, you know, rung out and bitter and annoyed. Well, exactly. No, no, no, you're I think that's I think that's exactly right. Is that what people say is the glass half full or is it half empty? I say it's refillable. I say it's refillable. You get to decide how full you show up every day.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's easy to prioritize. But I'm saying when you go through the difficult work of prioritizing it, you will reap massive benefits and so will those around you. Also, kiddos, your old dad, Ward Vaughn podcast has been doing these things in the last few weeks since we had this interview per professional osmologist, Neal's prescription. I am pleased and astounded to report that I feel way the fuck better.

Who knew that taking some time for myself to shower, unwind, read a magazine, rest and just be a person would make me a better friend, a better girlfriend, a better human being, a better worker. I know things are really difficult with covid scares and geopolitics and worrying about people I love who are sick. But I am so much better able to roll with things when I'm not frayed and burnt out and neglecting basic human needs like rest and grooming. Holy shit.

So if you're like me and you heard this advice, but you didn't listen to it for years, I'm giving you permission to take care of yourself. It's so important. You deserve it. We all do. Is this sappy and earnest? Yes. Am I apologetic? No. OK, good question by a lot of people. Jessica Jansen, Bob Clark, Zoe Buckley, Tristan Vaughn. Skylar L. Prim, Erica Perry, Andre, Nikki DeMarco, Sadie Baker, Katrina Newn and Madeline Winter and Allie Real,

all asked essentially about happiness amid world chaos because I feel like we are living in a time of some real bullshit right now. And I find that my boyfriend goes through this a lot. And I, as someone who was raised as a Catholic, has difficulty when I see other people in pain or when I know there's a lot of people suffering, finding happiness for myself. And Jessica Jansen wants to know, how do you feel COVID-19 has greatly affected our happiness? And Bob Clark says, this is something I've been struggling with a bit

with everything going on in the world. How do you keep up with current events in the climate crisis, racism, and basically just 2020 without losing some sort of lasting happiness? How can you stay positive when the world is literally on fire? And it looks like it's going to get worse. How do we balance being informed and empathetic and compassionate with also not getting too sucked into overwhelm? Oh, my God. OK, this backstory. Get ready. Big question.

I mentioned a long time ago in this conversation that I used to work at Walmart. And what I didn't mention is that my job was there. So I spent 10 years there. I had a number of different roles, but they were always in the HR department. And so sometimes I was in charge of leadership development. Sometimes I was doing learning and training. And then for like a pretty challenging year, I was one of these people that helped bosses like terminate their employees.

And so it was a terrible job. But also it was a real huge opportunity for empathy and compassion. Because I was, you know, helping bosses look at their teams and figure out what they needed, because they had limited budget or headcount. And then I figured I was in the room for when these conversations happened. And this wasn't the only part of my job. But it was probably the room for like over a hundred of these conversations. Oh, my God. And then I was I was the one with the Kleenex

and I was the one walking them to help their collect their bags and or their, you know, put the frame brass pitchers in the in the cardboard box and go into the parking lot in the middle of winter. And whenever I did that, it broke my heart and I couldn't sleep and I was overwhelming. And people said the same things to me all the time. Now they would say, I thought I would be here forever. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I I like I'll never find another job like it was like a complete

complete emotional like shock, like it was a horrible feeling for them and everybody around them at the time. However, I am Canadian and Canada is kind of small, like just I live in Toronto and like just in retail and you just bump into people again. And so over the years, I would inevitably bump into a number of people that were let go of their jobs. And you know what they used to say to me?

Every single one of them said it was the best thing that happens to me. Every single one. I never had anyone not say that. I traveled to Peru. I became a nutritional supplement importer. I'm working at a smaller company now. It's great. I've gotten promoted twice in the last two years. I used my severance to spend time with my daughter after her miscarriage,

like I would never have had that time if I wasn't forced to have that time. And it made me really question myself. And and like, I'm like, well, wait a minute, like wait, how could something that is horrible in the moment and you can use the pandemic or 2020 or covid or I think you mentioned the wildfires or whatever, you can use that. But how could it ever later be perceived as like the best thing that ever happened to me? That doesn't make any sense.

Obviously, things suck, life sucks, people die, climate change goes unchecked. So how is this possible? The bad things can end up pivoting us toward positive things. Well, we need some science here. And so I stumbled upon this study, which I'd like to quote for you now, which is a wonderful study. It came out in 2013 and it's called The End of History Illusion. OK, it came out in Science Magazine.

It's done by Daniel Gilbert, who I mentioned earlier with the books Dumbling on Happiness and a couple other of his peers. And what they did is they talked and interviewed 19,000 people between age 18 and 68, and they asked them essentially two questions, Ali. Number one, how has your life changed in the last 10 years? And how do you think it's going to change in the next 10? And here's what was interesting. No matter what the person's sex, gender, nationality, religion, age,

no matter what it was, they always painted a tempestuous portrait of the last 10 years of their lives. It was like, oh, my gosh, like, Jordy and I broke up and like, I got this new job and we left San Francisco and, you know, like we lost my mom. And it was just a wild 10 years out all the time. But then here's the interesting part of the study. Whenever the people were asked, well, how do you think the next 10 years are going to go? They always said the same thing, which is, well, it'll be exactly like

definitely not going to leave Boston now. Like we're obviously still going to I'm still going to be with Randy, you know, like it's like I'm these things are like consistent in people's minds. The researchers label this phenomenon the end of history illusion. We carry with us in our brains. We don't know. I don't know if it's evolutionary, if it's a primal thing. We think that things are going to be how they are now, which if you're flying high and you're doing great in life

and everything's swimming, maybe that's not such a bad thing. But if you're stuck in your parents' basement and you can't find a job, you think, I'll never get out of this basement. If you're in the parking lot after being termed, you're like, I'll never find another job. If you are in the middle of a crazy situation where you cannot see your family right now and you have some illness in your life and the pandemic has got a huge layoff in your job

and you are struggling to find work, you believe that that is how it's always going to be now in the future forever. That's that's how your brain thinks. That's how all of our brains and they interviewed 19,000 people. Everyone said this. It didn't matter if they were seven years old or if they were 20 years old. They all thought this. So when things suck, we think they will never get better

and that no good could ever come out of it. The forecast is always stasis in our brains. In this study that Neal cited, the end of history illusion authored in part by Harvard social psychologist Daniel Gilbert went on to say, quote, people may believe who they are today is pretty much who they will be tomorrow, despite the fact that it isn't who they were yesterday. We call this tendency to underestimate the magnitude of future change,

the end of history illusion. They say that it was evident at every stage of adult life that the researchers could analyze and they concluded the paper with this wallop of a sentence, quote, history, it seems, is always ending today. And so I love this study because what it tells you is we all suck at this. All of us, you know, we are uniformly terrible at picturing the end of.

OK, so now if you take into this incredible research study, my other rant on news media, social media, making us think everything's a little bit worse than it is, because that's what gets eyeballs in that. Therefore, what MSNBC's goal is to feed you Subaru ads, right? Like the whole point is to feed you Subaru ads. You know, then it's like you take those two things together and we're kind of in a bit of a pickle. Our brains aren't capable of picturing the end of anything, right?

Or change coming. We aren't good at that. And the orientation of everything we're looking at is designed to minor attention. So we keep looking at it so we can keep consuming more advertisements. Oh, my gosh, OK, so, so many questions left. We're going to get in as many as we can. A lot of people and I will list their names in and decide essentially wanted to know. Looking at you, Alayna Reynolds, first time question asker, Marcel Al. Alicia Penny, Lena Fay, Alia Myers, Annie C.

and Lo McDowell, who all had similar questions on the fleeting nature of the good times. The question that Megan Walker had, which is why does happiness often seem so delicate, but anger and sadness are hardiest fuck. Any idea is is happiness like a bunny that you're you're chasing around? We had bunnies when I was a kid, sometimes they get out and they are hard catch. Is happiness a prey animal and anger and sadness is a predator? What's happening is one type of emotion hardier than the other? I know for myself, I definitely ruminate on shitty things

in an effort to untangle or fix them, but I do not often dwell on the good times. And Neil mentions the incredible work of legend Dr. Laurie Santos, who teaches Yale's most popular course called Psychology and the Good Life, which you can also find online if you Google, quote, the science of well-being. And Dr. Santos hosts the podcast, The Happiness Lab, because she runs a happiness lab at Yale and Neil sums up some of her work. There is two ways, just two elements of happiness that add up to happiness,

which is, am I happy in my life and am I happy with my life? OK, OK, so Daniel Kahneman, who's written a very famous paper called High Income Improves Evaluation of Life, but not emotional well-being. I heard this before, Ali, it's where they talk about how like, oh, if you are making up the seventy five thousand dollars actually makes you happy. But beyond that, it doesn't do do much. OK, so emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience, frequency and intensity of things like joy,

stress, sadness, anger, affection that makes your life pleasant or unpleasant. Right. That's like in your life. How you doing? How you doing today? Now, life evaluation, that refers to the thoughts that people have about their entire life when they think about it as a whole. Right. So I don't know if I necessarily agree with the idea that like anger is hardy as fucking happy and this is delicate. I just that that that model, it's not something I agree or disagree with.

It's just I hadn't thought of it that way before. I don't I don't know if I come to it, but it does make me think of this other metaphor, which I think is helpful. OK. So if you are able to say two things, am I happy today? Like with my life, I have a good day. Like I came home, we had a great dinner and like I got to watch this on TV. And it was wonderful. We had made my special brownie dessert. Like, OK, fine, you're happy.

But then I'm happy with my life overall. Well, that's another question. It's like, did I did I make the right decision to go to that school? And like, are we happy living in this city or this country? And those are bigger questions. But separating the two is really, I think, relieving, at least I find it that way, because it lets you hold both in your mind and look at them and think about them separately, which enables you to navigate forward from there.

Is happiness fleeting? Are we imagining that? Is there something wrong with your brain? If happiness is a beautiful but very fast bunny that gets chased and or devoured by sadness, worry and guilt? Nope, there's nothing wrong with you, as it turns out. So news to me, I just went down many dark, labyrinth, rabbit warrens looking at studies and it's part of our programming.

So blame evolution that the less satisfied we are with our achievements and surroundings, the harder we strive and the more resources and fitness we have to spread our genes. So a lot of past humans who were just stoked as hell to rest on their laurels stopped striving and just died off. Now, in a 2004 study titled The Optimum Level of Well-Being, can people be too happy? The authors wrote, people who experience the highest levels of happiness

are most successful in terms of close relationships and volunteer work. But those who experience slightly lower levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of income, education and political participation. So if it feels like you have to actively fight the blues away, well, you do. And how do you do it? Gratitude, it's a practice. It is not just a cheesy, saccharine, self-brainwashing. It's necessary if you want to get some peace from your screaming

almond of terror telling you that everything sucks, because not everything sucks everywhere. It's like L. Wink wants to know, do different cultures perceive happiness differently? Madeleine Anderson, Ruta, Emmy McNeany, Rose McAthrin, Rob McGovern, Rin Abadi. Kelsey Nalfa wants to know, why is Finland or Eastern European countries are they way happier than the US? Ethan Bhattan wants to know, why is Bhutan considered one of the happiest nations on earth? So what is happening culturally? There is one giant global happiness report that comes out on March 20th of every year.

It's come out for, I think, eight years straight from the United Nations. It's called the World Happiest Report. This is one of the few UN resolutions ever agreed to by every single member state in the UN. Like everyone's like, yes, we should do this. We should declare March 20th International Day of Happiness. They did do that. That is Happy International Day of Happiness. What you should say on March 20th to people when you walk down the street.

And they then come up with this huge report, which is put together by the notable of notable list, you know, academics, positive psychologists. And they rank every single country in the world according to their happiness. And when you look in the data, you're like, OK, they're using GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption perception. Those are the six variables they use. And then they rank them. And sure enough, I think someone says like Finland is like the Scandinavian countries are at the top.

Canada where I am, US where you are. Like, yeah, they're all hanging out up there. They're like off by like tenths of a percentage and stuff. But really the way I take that report to read, here's how I take that report to read. I look into all that data. I look into all the photos. I read the whole like hundred page, gigantic research report that comes out every year. Here's why I take it to be the majority of the happiness is baseline stuff.

Do you trust the water that comes out of your tap? Do you feel safe when you walk out your front door? Can you marry who you want and live where you please? I'm not saying those freedoms exist everywhere. But what I'm saying is they make up a huge disproportionate amount of quote unquote like hygiene happiness. Like that's a really big part of it. And yeah, on top of it, the social support stuff, you know, a bunch of Norwegian dudes

will hang out in like a in like a, you know, a big bath together. And we might not do that. So you might not have the bliss of hanging out in like the social support of a bunch of Norwegian dudes, right? Like I'm projecting, but my point is there. Like the social connection is important. And we probably aren't doing that part nearly as good as a lot of the countries near the top reminder to that for most of us, we don't have to worry too much

about what comes out of our tap. But 30 percent of the world does worry about access to clean water. Even in the US, water supply pipes in Flint, Michigan are still being replaced years after contaminated water flowed through taps, affecting tens of thousands of folks, which is a reminder that systemic oppression robs people of basic security, necessities, freedoms, and thus happiness. So equity breeds more happiness for everyone. Now, speaking of toxic substances, though.

OK, well, then this also you mentioned, can you trust your tap water? And a few people asked about toxicity with positivity and Emily Oakland and Laura Stacy Cora, Lynn Hodnett and Vesper Holly, who Vesper also first-time question-asker, same with Lynn, first-time question-asker. Want to know that Lynn says recently I've heard the term toxic positivity. Is this something that's being researched? And is there such a thing or Vesper says, what are your thoughts about toxic positivity or the idea that a good vibes only attitude actually results

in minimization or invalidation of the authentic human emotion? I mean, and I imagine this is why you do rose, rose, thorn, bud. But yeah, like, how do you feel about those movements that deny the realities of suffering or pain? Going back to something I quoted earlier, if it indeed is half genetic, 10 percent circumstantial and 40 percent intentional activities, it would be hard pressed to find anybody who's like that all the time. No one I've ever met is happy all the time.

I am certainly not. OK, no one's like that. It is a practice and it's hard work. And so the endless positivity that the person is referring to is something I've only seen and I've only personally seen in some sort of like kind of phony ish way. OK, so toxic positivity means if someone comes to you and they're going through a hard time, it does not help them to say things like I'll work out and everything happens for a reason, or at least

your house didn't burn down. Now, acknowledging struggles and being authentic with your feelings and others is important. You cannot fake happiness. Even those who have incredible resources still struggle with day to day satisfaction. So remember, for your own health, for the health of others and just having the will to get you done to make the world better, you got to wrestle with the internal and external forces that lean toward

Bummertown and scientists know what can help us weather the rough stuff better. We know journaling works. We know singing works. We know going for a walk in the woods works. We know simple, basic stuff works. If you think it makes you happier because after you do your 20 minute exercise, you feel happier. You're right. Yeah, if you think it makes you happy to have a family dinner

where everyone's actually at the table and people's cell phones are away. You're right. It does because you're connecting socially with people you love and you feel good that you have, oh, maybe my relationship with my son is not as bad as I thought or maybe my relationship with my wife. Oh, we like each other after all, you know, like it's it's turns out that those things that you think are good for you really are. And sometimes I fear that as society, as a whole, part of what we're doing

when we lean on all these things, like, what does the data say? And what does the research tell us? So, blah, blah, what is what have you learned about? It's like part of what we're doing in that entire world, Ellie, is we're ignoring what we just feel. Yeah. And what we should just feel is like it's right to just take a break. Yeah, rewind, get a good night's sleep, put the phone out of the bedroom, read a book for goodness sake.

And read a book. Don't read the Internet. Read a book. Yeah. For more encouragement to read books, I'm just once again going to plug Neil's fantastic podcast, three books whose guests have included luminaries such as Malcolm Gladwell, Judy Bloom, David Sedaris, and one day, some lady named your dad. So enjoy a book, which can even be free to borrow from a local library.

Or if you download the app Libby, they have free ebooks and audio books. So save that cheddar, my babies. And you know, what's funny is like in all of the things you've listed, you've never been like shopping, buying things. It doesn't seem to do as much as by tonicides might. And OK, I'm going to ask the thing that is the toughest thing about your job, which I know I can't. I'm trying to guess what the toughest.

Can I? I've never done this before. Can I guess what the toughest thing about your job is? Yeah. OK. The thing that sucks the most about being someone who looks for the awesome in life. OK, I think the shittiest thing about your job is people assuming you're happy all the time. Oh, my gosh. No. No, I'm saying, oh, my gosh, because that's exactly what I was going to say.

Is it really? Oh, yes, I got it right. Yeah, it's like I used to even go on stages and say, I'm not an optimist. I didn't even have to like yell that because it was like the presumption was people used to call me Captain Awesome. Like they're like, it's Captain Awesome because no one could pronounce my last name, obviously. So it's like, we're not going to try to say Neil Passericha. We may as well just refer to him as Mr.

Awesome or Captain Awesome, and it didn't help that the Book of Awesome, you know, it ended up doing super well. So of course, the publisher comes back and buys a bunch of sequels. And I am too naive and simple minded to be like, no. I'm like, yes, more sequels, more money, more books spread. So then suddenly there's like five journals and calendars. And and there's like, you know, awesome sequel and book of even more awesome in the book of holiday. Awesome.

And I've awesome as everywhere for kids. And suddenly I'm making Krusty the clown imitation gruel. This is Krusty brand imitation gruel. You know what I'm saying? Like I then have completely enshrouded myself in this one word, which according to Urban Dictionary is how Americans describe everything. OK, so now what I'm trying to really do in my own life as I'm 41 now, I'm getting there, you know, so I was 28, 29, I started doing this.

I try to think about my life as I think right and speak about intentional living, right? That's the high level framework I'm operating under. Yes, the book of awesome is about gratitude. But really the happiness equation is about happiness. My newest book is all about resilience and the thing I'm working on today is about trust. So I'm really just trying to think of the gigantic huge totems of life that make life beautiful.

And how do we live these short 30,000 days with intentionality? It's amazing that you have gotten to dedicate your life to the things and exploring the things that all of us put on the back burner. And we think is going to be some sort of cabinet that we get to unlock when we deserve it. And you have gotten to explore that as a job. Like you've gotten to put that on the front burner, which is pretty dope. Yeah, and I should mention that I did all this stuff on the side of Walmart for eight years.

So like eight years, this was my side hustle, eight years. The East Indian mentality burning to my brain said, do not quit your day job. You will have no one to pay your dental bills ever again, you know. And so this wasn't like a natural thing for me. I wasn't like raised by like a jazz pianist and like New Yorker editor. My parents were like hardcore immigrants from India and Africa. They were like a teacher and accountant in the suburbs.

They were like, do not quit your day job. You already feel this by being a doctor. And so all one hand, I just want to zoom up. A second again and say, sometimes people say to me, oh, it's really nice that you get to wander around all day and like write stuff. But I think it's the opposite. I don't get to do that. I am doing that because I wander around all day.

I'm saying like, I think when you make space and time for some of the things we've been talking about today, waking up with a two minute morning practice, making space to go outside for nature walks, playing, you know, game like Rose Runth or butter on your dinner table. When you do some of those practices, guess what? Your mind relaxes. Your mind chills out. You stop getting obsessed with likes.

Stop getting obsessed. You stop. You just delete the apps off your phone. You don't even like them anymore. You know, you're like, well, I feel like a terrible person after an hour of liking insta stories. So I think I'll actually just read Pride and Prejudice, you know? And that's what I'm trying to now focus my life towards. And it's not because I'm good at it's because I'm trying to do it like I'm trying to, you know, that's it.

And what about the most awesome thing about being captain? Awesome. Awesome. I'm just now I'm just pressing your buttons. But no, we'll go ahead and guess. Since you're so perfect every time. No, what is the one? Oh, OK, guess. I this is the first time I've ever guessed I've never done this. The most best thing about being someone who looks for joy is hearing how it's

changed people's know. I wish we had a measurement device that can in one sentence capture how many different octaves someone's because that would have been like 12. That was so cute and beautiful and awesome. Honestly, it's probably that I get to make my kids breakfast and have dinner with them at night. Like, I know that sounds really trite and cheesy and simple, but I just think that I've taken a lot of flights and I've sat beside a lot of people. And if they had any gray hair for the last 20 years,

I have asked them what's your number one piece of advice for me as I live my life. I can separate the answers to that like informal 20 year research study I've been doing into two buckets. Half the answers are totally random. Like, don't put a computer in someone's bedroom or like, you know, like whatever. But the other half are all the same, which is have one more kid than you think you should. Really? One more kid than you think you should. Yeah, because they always say I had two wish had three.

I had one wish had two. I had zero wish I had one. I had three wish had four. So what Leslie and I are doing as I talk to you, she is pregnant with her fourth child. Is we've just decided that like, this is it for us. We just want to have like a giant, loud, crazy, ridiculous, messy, spaghetti on the wall family. And sometimes that means saying no to lots and lots of things. But I get breakfast with my kids and dinner with my kids every day, which is super important to me.

Oh, my gosh, congratulations. What flight did she take that pregnancy test on? She's got a computer like a computer jet from Toronto to Buffalo. Yeah, we only she only checks if she's pregnant on planes. Side note, if you can't biologically have children like me or you aren't sure if you'd ever want children also like me, then just feel free to find and replace the word kids with dogs or cats or ferrets or tortoises or parrots or succulents, all of which can be just as challenging and expensive and rewarding as rearing a person. Well, obviously, this has just been an utter joy to have you on.

I am so honored just to have your email address. I can't even tell you how excited I was to have you on. I love you. What you're doing is really special and rare. And this is a real privilege and honor. I was so scared to talk to you because I'm like, I don't I haven't done anything of no like all the people you have like I just shush. No, no, I mean like awesome ology like like compare the title.

So but I really appreciate connecting. And if there's even like what I always say to people is the goal is not to be perfect. It's just to be better than before. If there is even a nugget that resonate with one person, it was worth it. I appreciate you having me on to to to to scream at people for a bet. The joy is all mine. OK, you're the best. Bye. OK, so ask happy people, honest questions.

And remember that everyone's going through stuff, including yourself and that you deserve the moments and the tools it takes to make you feel better. So list some good stuff, start a journal, maybe make a secret locked Twitter account where you can just catalog things to appreciate. Tell the folks in your life that you love them and make new friends with people you admire. I assure you, it's very day making. So to get more Neil in your life, you can check out his website. Very easy, Neil blog.

It's linked in the show notes. And I'm also going to post a boat load of links on alleyward.com slash allergies slash awesome ology, including links to his books, his 1000 awesome things blog, his Ted talk, all the studies discussed and the organization we made a donation to in his name. You can follow Neil on social media at Neil Pezricha on Twitter and on Instagram. You can find him on Facebook. We are at allergies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at alleyward with one lonely L on both.

Like Neil is, you can be a patron of allergies at patreon.com slash allergies. And as he mentioned, my heart is cheap. It costs $1 a month to join 25 cents an episode, my babes. Now, Allergies Merch is available at allergiesmerch.com, including the new masks. We just got in a little more gratitude for my fellow sexy apes that make this show possible. Thank you so much, Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for handling merch. You can check out their comedy podcast. You are that they're hilarious.

Thank you, Aaron Talbert for adminning the Allergies podcast Facebook group full of wonderful, curious folks. Thank you, Emily White and the volunteer transcriptionists who make transcripts available for free. They're on my website for our deaf and hard of hearing friends or anyone else who wants or needs them. There's a link to that in the show notes. Thank you, Kayla Patton, who adds bleeps of modesty to the episodes so that you can download some kids safe versions. Those are on my website. Noelle Dilworth handles all the scheduling.

She is lovely. Thank you to assistant editor and host of the mental health podcast, My Good Bad Brain, Jared Sleeper, with whom I have been quarantined since March and whom I am so grateful for. And of course, the man who threads all our edits together, Mr. Mustache himself, Stephen Ray Morris, who also hosts a dino themed podcast called See Jurassic Right and a kitty themed podcast called The Percast. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you head to the Allergies Instagram provided you do not spend a long time scrolling for the sake of your own brain,

you can see Allegite and pod friend Heath Allen's excellent video reenactment of the theme song recording session. Thank you, Heath. In a word, lamau. If you listen to the end of the podcast, I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is I will reiterate, I really have been feeling so much weirdly better after this interview with Neil. And I've really just learned how much happier I am when I'm nicer to myself. And one thing I think that was behind that for a long time. I don't know if anyone else feels this, but there's a certain fear I think I've had that if I'm

happy people I love will reject me because they will feel annoyed by me if I'm cheerful or I have to be doing worse than other people around me or else they'll get irritated at me. And I think that's something I've had in my brain for a long time. And I literally asked friends who I love very much, would you be annoyed if I became happier? And every single one of them was like, no, what? Please be happier. That's all I want for you. So if you feel like people will be mad at you, if you're doing okay, perhaps sit down and think on that.

Also think, are those relationships good ones if you feel that way? So the world is not great, but there's a lot of great things and people in it. And so just like brushing our teeth, it's something to do for brain maintenance is to appreciate that. So I hope this episode helped. If it did, pass it on to people in your life who you think might enjoy it. Also, thank you for canceling your holiday plans to keep people alive. I know it's hard. Honestly, a lot of people say that they canceled their holiday plans and everyone on the family

thread was relieved. So please do that. Someone very close to me just tested positive for COVID. She was completely asymptomatic. Keep that in mind. Be safe, be good to yourself and know that I'm very grateful for you. Okay, enough sap, dad. Okay, bye bye.