The Tim Ferriss Show - #344: A.J. Jacobs — 10 Strategies to Be Happier Through Gratitude

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Charlotte's Web, which makes a CBD oil, a hemp extract that has become one of my go-to tools. Now, I have never really talked about CBD oil, and cannabis

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Starting point is 00:03:06 at cwhemp.com forward slash Tim. And disclaimer, these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on demand, which is what I do. We'll come back to that. So you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I, for instance, have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home, and it's one of the first things I do many mornings. I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20-minute ride

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Starting point is 00:04:29 you. And in my case, I quite like Matt Wilpers and I tend to do on demand and listen to a lot of and watch many of the same classes over and over, but I'm kind of promiscuous and also enjoy classes from a lot of the other instructors. They have Peloton, an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City with a whole range of styles and personalities. So you can find what you're in the mood for. You also get real-time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time. And that will help, I would say, catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada, yada, yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very impressed with how motivating it was. And it worked tremendously to keep me pushing, which

Starting point is 00:05:17 quite honestly takes a fair amount. I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So check it out. Discover this cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings the studio experience right to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's O-N-E, Peloton, P-E-L-O-T-o-n dot com and enter the code tim all caps at checkout and get 100 off of accessories with your peloton bike purchase so get a great workout at home anytime you want check it out go to one peloton.com and use the code tim to get started hello tim ferris fans my name is aj jaco, and I'm a writer and friend of Tim's. And Tim has asked me to guest host the podcast today.

Starting point is 00:06:13 He's away. He's off the grid. So he has outsourced his podcasting duties to me, which, of course, is a very Tim Ferriss thing to do. And I am delighted with the opportunity. I pledge to work my ass off to entertain and delight in you as your designated podcaster. Tim asked me to talk about the topic how to be happier in these super stressful times. So I'm going to talk about ten strategies. Most of these strategies, but not all, involve gratitude.

Starting point is 00:06:47 And that's because I have a new book coming out. It's called Thanks A Thousand. And Tim read it, and he liked it. Thank you, Tim. Grateful, of course. And wanted me to tell you some of what I learned. Because it was a life-altering project for me. The premise of the book is that I go around the world, and I try to thank every single

Starting point is 00:07:15 person who had even the smallest role in making my morning cup of coffee. And that turned out to be a buttload of people, over a thousand people, because I went deep. I went, you know, six degrees of gratitude. So I thanked the farmer of the coffee beans and the barista, of course. But I also thanked the designer of the logo for the coffee, the truck driver who drove the coffee beans, the guy who painted the yellow lines on the road so that the truck wouldn't veer into traffic. I love doing this one. I thank the inventor of the cardboard sleeve that goes around your coffee cup so you don't burn your fingers. And by the way, those sleeves have a name. They are called zarfs, Z-A-R-F.

Starting point is 00:08:05 And zarfs have been around since ancient China, made of gold and silver. So, very thankful I learned that and was able to impart it to you. But the idea was to show that every little thing in our lives involves thousands of people that we take for granted. And in the book, I talk about the most interesting, sometimes weirdest stories as I went along the quest. But the backbone of the book is the strategies, the tools I learned in how to be grateful, because it really is, it's a discipline. It doesn't come naturally to most of us, especially me. And learning how to be grateful, it's one of the most important things I've learned in my life. Because as psychologists will tell you, gratitude is a key to happiness, if not the key to happiness. I have a quote from a Benedictine monk who says,

Starting point is 00:09:02 happiness doesn't lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness. And I love that quote. It's by David Rendell Stahl, or Stohl. Not sure how you say his name. I figure he's a monk, so maybe he'll forgive me. But Brother Stahl, I think, is onto something. I often visualize my personality, and all of human nature, as having two sides. So you've got the Larry David side and the Mr. Rogers side, and they are constantly at war. The cynical pessimist and the grateful optimist. And I actually think I was born with a very strong Larry David side. But the exercises and this project was meant to bulk up the Mr. Rogers side, get him ripped, so he can take on Larry David. Because I, you know, I love watching Larry David on TV. I'd probably rather watch him than Mr. Rogers. But being inside his head, being in that frame of mind, is not a happy place, especially now. Now, before I dive into the strategies, let me give you just a little context. As I said, I'm a writer. You can hear Tim interview me in episode 211.

Starting point is 00:10:20 And my strategy as a writer is self-experimentation. I'll dive into a topic, immerse myself, like Tim, the human guinea pig. A few years ago, I wrote a book called The Year of Living Biblically, and for this one, I wanted to learn about religion. So, I decided to follow all the rules of the Bible as literally as possible, And there are hundreds of them. So, I followed the Ten Commandments, but I also followed the less famous rules. The Bible says you cannot shave the corners of your beard. I didn't know where the corners were, so I just let the whole thing grow. And by the end, I had this crazy topiary hanging from my chin. And I did spend a lot of time at airport security. I looked like Ted

Starting point is 00:11:06 Kaczynski. And the Bible also says, you know, to stone adulterers. So I tried that. I used pebbles, didn't want to spend my life in jail. And the book was about the dangers of following the Bible too literally. But it was also an exploration of whether there is some wisdom in this ancient book that might be applicable to today. And I met Tim right before that book came out, and we met in a rather unusual way. It was like 12 years ago, and I get an email, and it says, my name is Tim Ferriss. I'm writing a book. It's my first book. I'd love to ask you how you write books. What's your process? And I was like, you know, this guy has some cojones, but sure, I'll talk to him. And we get on the phone and he asks me about my process. I realize it's like the Tim Ferriss show, but no

Starting point is 00:11:59 one was listening except for him and me. And at the end of the conversation, Tim says, you know, I read an article you wrote in Esquire. I had written an article called My Outsourced Life. And in the article, I hired a team of people from Bangalore, India, to do everything for me. So they answered my phone, they responded to emails for me, they argued with my wife for me. It was fantastic, because I just got to sit back and read books and watch movies. Loved it. So Tim says he read that article, and he wanted to reprint it in his upcoming book. And I was saying to myself, well, this guy's a first-time writer, he's going to sell about 200 copies. I'm not going to be an asshat and ask him for a lot of money. So I'm like, sure, go ahead, print the article, no charge.

Starting point is 00:12:53 Cut to a year later, I get a call. Hey, it's Tim Ferriss, that guy you talked to. Just wanted to let you know that my book is coming out in a few days, and it is number one on Amazon. And I was like, what? How the hell did that happen? I mean, I've never been number one on Amazon. And the book, of course, was the four-hour work week. And my article on outsourcing my life is the basis for chapter eight. And of course, it shows that Tim has a brilliant mind that disrupted the book business. But oddly, letting Tim print that article for free, it turned out to be one of the best business decisions of my career. Not by planning, but I've had so many people who know me from the four-hour work week. So it's helped my visibility and get my message out. So karma is real. Sometimes. In this case, it was real. Sometimes you try to do a decent thing

Starting point is 00:13:55 and it bites you in the ass. But this time, it worked. So thank you, Tim. And thank you for outsourcing this to me. Okay, on to the tips. Some of these are in the book, and some are not. Some are exclusive to this podcast. And there is plenty other stuff in the book, just so you know. But here we go. Strategy number one, declare war on the negative bias, the evil, evil negative bias. Psychologists will tell you humans are born with a negative bias. So, if you hear a hundred compliments and a single insult, what do you remember? The insult, if you're a normal human being. Now, if you believe in evolutionary psychology, there's a reason for this. The negative bias, it had survival value in Paleolithic times. So, your

Starting point is 00:14:51 1,000th great-grandparents, they needed to be extra aware of dangers. The lions, the poisonous mushroom. So, that's what we are programmed to notice. But most of us are not on the savannah anymore. So this negative bias is quite an unpleasant way to go through life. A major cause of depression and anxiety. So how do we fight this negative bias? And the best weapon, according to many psychologists, gratitude. Particularly the type of gratitude where you focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the three or four that go wrong. And I've been trying to do this for years because I know the advantages of living a

Starting point is 00:15:41 grateful life. I mean, there is a ton of studies on how it'll help you battle depression, it'll make you heal faster, grateful people are more likely to exercise and eat healthy, so it really is remarkable. And I've been trying to be more grateful. So, a couple of years ago, I started this ritual in our house. Before every meal, I would say a prayer of thanksgiving. But prayer is, it's not quite the right word, because I'm pretty agnostic. So, instead of thanking God, I would start a meal by thanking the people who helped make my food a reality. So, I'd say, I'd like to thank the farmer who grew these tomatoes and the truck driver who drove these tomatoes to the store and the cashier at the grocery where I bought them.

Starting point is 00:16:32 And one day at dinner, my 10-year-old son said, you know, Dad, that's kind of lame, lame ritual because they can't hear you. Those people are not in our apartment. So if you really care, you should go and thank them in person. And I was like, that is an interesting idea. That is a book idea. So thank you for earning your supper, son. So I did. I went on a trip. I focused on my morning cup of coffee. And I went around thanking people all over the world, a thousand of them. And I would thank them by email or phone calls, or I would visit them in person. And, you know, the reactions were mixed. Some people were like, you know, what the hell is going on here?

Starting point is 00:17:19 Is this a pyramid scheme? What are you selling? But the majority were surprisingly touched. So, for instance, I remember I called this woman who does pest control for the warehouse where the coffee beans are stored. And I said, you know, I know this sounds strange, but I want to thank you for keeping the bugs out of my coffee. And she said, well, that is strange, but that kind of makes my day. I don't get a lot of appreciation. And it was kind of like making anti-crank phone calls. I felt like I was doing penance for the obnoxious crank phone calls I made in high school

Starting point is 00:17:58 to my headmaster. And it didn't just affect the thank-ease. It affected me. It gave me a little burst of dopamine. Because it was such a clear example of how I had negative bias. I was taking for granted all these thousands of people that were needed for my cup of coffee. And all of the things that went right so that I could have this brown, delicious liquid in the morning. And you don't need to go around the world thanking people to get the same effect. You just have to be aware of the hundreds of things that go right. So it's about a radical shift in perspective. And you can do it.

Starting point is 00:18:39 You can take two minutes a day and just focus on all that goes right in those two minutes. Like, you press the elevator button and the elevator comes. You get in the elevator, it doesn't plummet to the basement and break your collarbone. Or make a habit of noticing when something goes right. This has been a big change. I try to do this. So, when you're on a line at the drugstore that goes fast, make a note of that. I will say it out loud to myself. I'm like, hey, look at this. The line is going fast.

Starting point is 00:19:10 Because I know that if I don't, then next time I'm on a slow line, I will be like, oh, my God, this always happens to me. I'm always on the worst, slowest line. It's not true. It's just because the annoying ones are the ones that stick. So you've got to fight that. You've got to make the good ones stick as well. So that is tip number one. Focus on the hundreds of things that go right.

Starting point is 00:19:32 Guarantee it'll make you happier. Number two, savoring. The art of savoring. And I mean savoring in both the literal sense, like savoring a taste, and savoring an experience. Because psychologists talk about how savoring a taste and savoring an experience. Because psychologists talk about how savoring and gratitude are really linked. And savoring is all about taking a moment and stretching it out, holding on to the moment as long as possible, and shifting our sense of time so that life's little annoyances dissolve away, at least for a moment. Because otherwise, life goes by in a blur, like an undifferentiated gray goo. So, one of the best savers I met

Starting point is 00:20:13 was this guy for my coffee book, where his name is Ed Kaufman. And he works at Joe Coffee, which is the coffee shop in New York where I buy my coffee. And Ed's job, he goes around the world, South America, Africa, and he tastes all these coffee beans and figures out which one, which ones to buy. And I thanked Ed. And in return, he showed me how to taste coffee like a pro. And it is quite a bizarre ritual. You dip a spoon in and you take a huge, loud slurp,, cartoonishly loud, I'm picking up notes of maple syrup and soil and honey crisp apples. And I would take a sip and I would say, I'm picking up coffee. It's tasting to me a lot like coffee. But because of Ed, I decided, you know what, I'm going to pay him more attention. I'm going to just let that coffee sit on my tongue for five seconds.

Starting point is 00:21:27 I can spare five seconds. And really notice the texture and the acidity and the sweetness. And I started doing it with other foods, too. And it's not just foods, but it's moments. It's finding moments in the day and remembering them and putting them in your memory bank. Because I often think the way to look at life is like, I'm a collector of great moments. And I actually started a file on my computer, which I'm dorkily excited about, because it is having a big impact on my life. It is called, the file, I call it The One Thing.

Starting point is 00:22:12 So every night I add to it, and it's a list. It's a list of one thing I remember, I want to remember from every podcast, every conversation, every TV show, book. I want to remember something that was interesting or helpful and write that down in the file. Because otherwise, I forget everything. So, I have dozens of one things built up. And hold on, I can open one up. All right, I love this one. It was the one thing I learned from a podcast about Michelangelo. And it was that he didn't really want to paint the Sistine Chapel, because he thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter. And he sent these tortured letters to his friends about how, oh, he's a failure, he's a terrible painter, how could he have gotten himself into this? And I love that, because of course, you know, it's one of the great masterpieces of Western civilization. And here he was having extreme self-doubt.

Starting point is 00:23:06 So I find that motivating. I can have self-doubt because Michelangelo did. But sometimes it works out in the end. Sometimes you paint the Sistine Chapel. All right. So that is a strategy two, is to savor things, to pick moments. Strategy three is to practice six degrees of thankfulness. And this has been a big obsession of mine for the last couple of years, how everything

Starting point is 00:23:33 is connected. The book I wrote before this gratitude book was called It's All Relative, and it was about these scientists and researchers who are building a family tree of the entire world, like all 7 billion people on the same family tree, so that we can see that, as the philosopher's sister Sledge pointed out, we are family. We are all family. We are all cousins. And they're not finished. They have over 100 million people connected. But even now, you can go on there and figure out your connection to almost anyone on the planet using DNA and using these massive trees on the Internet. like Barack Obama, and it would come out, he's my fifth great aunt's husband's brother's wife's seventh great nephew. That is the actual connection. So we're very close, practically brothers. But it's the same with every part of our lives. We are the connection. And that's what I tried to do with this book on gratitude, that it takes thousands of people to create any object. It doesn't take a village to make a cup

Starting point is 00:24:54 of coffee. It takes the world to make a cup of coffee. And to give you an example, I flew to the mountain town in Colombia to thank the farmers who grew the beans for my coffee. This small town. And we got there. It was owned by a family of eight brothers and one sister, the Guarnizos. And it's a beautiful farm. They have the biggest chickens I have ever seen. These chickens are the size of adult pit bulls.

Starting point is 00:25:23 But they also have great coffee. And they showed me how the coffee beans are grown. They're inside these red fruits called coffee cherries. They look like great tomatoes. And you rip that off, and there's the bean. So I thanked them for growing the beans and helping to kickstart my day. And they said that they couldn't do their job without 100 other people from all over the world. Like the machine they use to de-pulp the fruit.

Starting point is 00:25:57 That's made in Brazil. And they have a pickup truck, which is made from parts all over the world. In fact, I looked it up, and the United States exports steel to Colombia. So I went to Indiana to thank the steel workers there. And it just made me realize how connected everything is. Just the web. And actually, I remember Tim Ferriss of The Tim Ferriss Show once tweeted a quote from John Muir that said, If you pull one thread, you realize how connected it is to everything else.

Starting point is 00:26:31 I think it was John Muir. If not, it was a cousin of his. But that was the general idea. And what I think is interesting, you know, it's a cool idea. But maybe you're asking, how does this affect my happiness, my state of mind? I think it does have a profound effect in several ways. First, reminding yourself that you're part of something bigger is actually so crucial. And there's this story I love that it sounded apocryphal, but I looked it up and it's actually true. And it's that John F. Kennedy, when he was president, he went on a tour of NASA, and they ran into a janitor who was sweeping up the hallway. And John F. Kennedy asked, what do you do here? And the janitor said, Mr. President, I am helping to put a man on the moon. And I love that because if you reframe your job as being

Starting point is 00:27:28 something that's part of a greater mission, it will give you meaning and happiness. And second, I think, realizing we're all connected, it reminds you that you can ask for help. And I went to dinner just like two nights ago with this guy. He was an entrepreneur, and he had a company. And a few years ago, it started to go south, and it was collapsing. And he thought to himself, well, I built this company myself. I'm going to fix it myself. But it just kept collapsing and getting worse and worse and worse. And finally, he had to shift perspective. He had to say, you know what? I didn't build this alone. I had lots of help from colleagues, friends, mentors.

Starting point is 00:28:18 And so once he gave up that myth of the solo success, that he did it all himself, then he was able to ask for help and ask for money. So to me, it's an important perspective that you don't do it all yourself. You build it, but you build it with help from other people. Okay, strategy number four, don't forget you're going to die. That is, I'm only half kidding that this is a useful strategy. But I'll tell you how I came to it. One of the people I interviewed in my book was Will McCaskill, who is, he was featured on the Tim Ferriss show. He's a brilliant man, philosophy professor at Oxford. He started the effective altruism movement. And I asked Will, what are you grateful for? And Will said, well, sometimes I'm just grateful that I have arms. And I love it. It was a strange answer, but I loved it because it's true. You can, it's easy to be grateful for, you know, you get a raise, but it's not as easy to be grateful for

Starting point is 00:29:23 the things you totally take for granted. And arms, I do take for granted. And they are very handy. You know, I type my book with my hands. And if you take this strategy to its logical end, it's that you've got to be grateful that you exist at all and that you won't exist forever, unless the radical life extension people are correct, which they may be, but they're probably not going to get to me. Maybe my fifth-grade grandchildren will live forever, but I'm going to die. And I think you can either find that depressing, or you can find it liberating, and realize we only have one, we have a little brief

Starting point is 00:30:06 flash here, and I'm going to try to make the best of it. And there is, I've always been fascinated by memento mori, the reminders of death. And these have a long history. In Rome, when an emperor or a general would win a war, he would ride back in his victory parade on the chariot, and they had a servant behind him whispering in his ear, remember you're mortal, remember you're mortal, just to keep him humble. And I love that they have, in many classical paintings, they have skulls as symbols to remind you that you're mortal. And Carpe Diem, life is fleeting. And I actually decided to put a skull on my laptop screen, like my screensaver. And it's not a scary skull, because I didn't want to be depressed. So it's

Starting point is 00:31:00 like a fun, light, colorful skull. But it reminds me that I am going to die. And to have this Epicurean look at life and try to enjoy it, try to make my life better, other people's lives better, because I'm not going to be around forever. All right, number five, strategy five. All right, this is a quick one. Using gratitude to fall asleep. This is a strategy I learned from a psychologist who came to one of my talks. And I don't remember the name. So thank you, you should count the things that you're grateful for. And the key is to do it alphabetically, give it a little structure. So, you know, you could start with A, and you thank, I'm thankful that my kids made apple pancakes for me on Saturday. And B, I'm grateful that the bathroom at my workplace is not very busy. Whatever. So, you do that, and I have never made it to Z. I always fall asleep somewhere

Starting point is 00:32:15 between, like, F and R. All right, strategy number six is thou shalt not have nostalgia, or at least delusional nostalgia. And this is because I do believe that glorifying the past is a thief of joy. And I really, I've come to realize that the good old days were not good at all. They were disease-ridden. They were dangerous, sexist, homophobic, racist. They were smelly. I mean, just thinking about the way streets were with horses on them. And for my first book, I read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. They don't even print it anymore, but I tried to learn everything in the world. And that was, when I read about history, that's when it became so clear that I am really happy I live in the 21st century and not 1918 or 1818. And whenever I get depressed, like if I get upset about the hotel

Starting point is 00:33:29 charging me, you know, $5 for Wi-Fi, I get annoyed. But I have a three-word mantra that I find very helpful. And that three-word mantra is surgery without anesthesia. And I just try to imagine that because that's the way all surgeries were until just a few decades ago. And I know this is a little counterintuitive because if you watch cable news or your Facebook feed, it does seem like we're on the verge of the apocalypse. And there is a lot of negative news. And granted, I do think that the last couple of years have been a huge step backwards, and we've got to fight to get back on course. But I you look at the long view of human history, that we should be thrilled to be alive now, because it is much less dangerous, there is much less suffering than there used to be. And this even I saw in my coffee, you know, because I am thrilled to have a modern cup of coffee. Because if I had a coffee a hundred years ago, I do not know what would have been in it.

Starting point is 00:34:50 Because I read a terrifying history of coffee, which had the list of adulterants. Is that a word? The list of stuff that they put in coffee that the merchants would slip in there. Anything you can think of. I mean, there was, it was dirt, baked horse liver was one, was a, they cut it with baked horse liver. Uh, there was lead, arsenic. I mean, you were taking your life into your hands when you ate, uh, in the past. So I am thankful for the FDA. I actually, one of the people I thanked was Teddy Roosevelt's descendants, because Teddy Roosevelt was the president who signed the Safe Food Acts into law. So don't wallow in the past. All right, strategy number seven. Try to discover the hidden masterpieces

Starting point is 00:35:49 all around you. One of my favorite conversations during this Gratitude Project was when I called to thank the inventor of the coffee cup lid. And his name is Doug Fleming. Actually, it's not all lids. It's the particular lid on my cup. And until this time, I had given very little thought to coffee cup lids. But when I spoke to Doug, I was blown away by the amount of passion and thought that went into this coffee cup lid. Because he thinks it's very important. A bad lid can ruin your coffee. It'll block the aroma, and that's a huge part. It can send the coffee spouting, which

Starting point is 00:36:34 decreases your pleasure. So Doug, he revolutionized coffee lids. He was written up and wired. He's like the Elon Musk of lids, hopefully a little more emotionally stable. But he designed a lid with an upside-down hexagon, so you can really burrow your nose in there, and there's an extra large hole to let out the aroma. And I loved that, because it made me realize there are these little masterpieces all around me that I take for granted. I'm looking at the on-off switch on my desk lamp, which has this smooth indentation that perfectly fits my thumb. And it's lovely. If something is done well, then the process behind it is largely invisible. But if you pay attention, if you notice these things,

Starting point is 00:37:25 refuse to take them for granted, it will tap into your sense of wonder, which is such an important part of happiness. All right, strategy number eight is go analog. So for this book, to sort of get the word out, I decided, I pledged to write 1,000 handwritten, personalized thank you notes to readers of my books and articles and send them off. And this project has been simultaneously both a huge pain in the ass and wonderfully rewarding at the same time. Because what I did was I put on my website, you can go on ajjacobs.com slash thanks, and you can fill out your name and address and a message. And that's what I loved is people have been filling out these lovely messages about the times they read my book. And they are wonderful, sometimes very weird.

Starting point is 00:38:32 I've gotten a lot of requests. I've gotten requests to write thank you notes to people's dogs. One guy wanted me to thank his ex-wife, which I thought was like conscious decoupling, and it's best. I had to draw a taco for one reader. So it's a little odd, but it is also, it is, it makes it so real to have a paper. And it's good for me as the thanker and hopefully good for them as the thankee. It has raised my happiness level.

Starting point is 00:39:05 And I really, you can read these articles about these studies that writing thank you notes can have a lasting impact on your happiness. So this one study had people write one-page thank you notes to someone who was important to them, you know, a mentor or a relative, and then deliver the thank you note in person. Read it to that, you know, a mentor or a relative, and then deliver the thank you note in person. Read it to that person you're thanking, which can be totally awkward. I did this.

Starting point is 00:39:32 I had a boss at my first newspaper, and I read to him how much he meant to me, and it was indeed awkward, but I think it was good for both of us, at least for me. And there was recently a study that said we overestimate the level of awkwardness when we thank people and underestimate how much impact it will have. So I do recommend writing the thank you notes. By the way, two other quick studies on gratitude that might be useful. One was a study, I believe it was Wharton study, that said, if you use the phrase, thank you, it is not as effective as using the phrase, I am grateful. So, because I guess thank you, it's just become so robotic. So, if you can mix it up and try to get out of just the rote thank you and try another phrase, that apparently has more impact. I tried this with my wife.

Starting point is 00:40:34 I said to her, you know, I'm deeply grateful that you took our kids to the orthodontist. And she looked at me, she's like, are you in a cult? Like, what's going on here? So that, don't use deeply in my experience, but mixing up the phrases is a good idea. And the second study I found interesting was that people who had job interviews and then wrote a thank you note were more likely to get called back. So maybe obvious, but they really do work. All right, strategy number nine is to fake it till you feel it. Fake gratitude till you feel it. And this has been a theme in many of my projects, along with Tim's projects, I think, that when you act in a certain way,

Starting point is 00:41:21 it affects your thinking, that the outer affects the inner, the behavior affects your mind. There's a great quote, I wish I had come up with it. It's actually by the founder of Habitat for Humanity. He says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. So I would say I experienced this quite a bit during the Gratitude Project. I would wake up with my Larry David side strong, the grumpy side strong, but I would force myself to call or write notes, thanking people. And just by doing that and realizing what people had done for me, all that had gone into my coffee, my mind caught up. You know, I tricked my mind by

Starting point is 00:42:08 doing the action. So, act as if you're grateful, and eventually, your mind will catch up, hopefully. And finally, use gratitude as a spark to action. And this is important because I don't want to, I think there's a fear among some people that gratitude has a downside, that it might lead to complacency, that if we're too grateful, we'll think, oh, the world is perfect and we don't need to improve, that you need to be angry to change things, to affect social change. And it turns out the opposite is true. There are studies that show that the more grateful you are, the more likely you are to help others, the more pro-social you are. And I have found this on a personal level. When I'm in a bad mood, I am not interested in helping others. I just want

Starting point is 00:43:04 to get out of that bad mood. Gratitude makes you want to pay it forward. And I saw this because you go on any supply chain and you will see things can get ugly. There is the downside. I'm a capitalist, but there is a downside to global capitalism. There is a lot of suffering and exploitation. I read one interesting study that said, if everyone on this chain were paid the minimum wage in the United States, then your coffee would cost $25. I always thought $3 was ridiculous, but that was a sort of a wake-up call. But it makes you realize that what we have, what I take for granted,

Starting point is 00:43:49 is not available to millions, billions of people in the world. An example of this was water. You know, coffee is 98.8% water. So I figured I had to thank the people who provide the water to New York. So I went upstate, and there are thousands of people working at the New York Reservoir just so I can turn on this tap and get safe water. And jobs are not always fun. There is a job.

Starting point is 00:44:16 Someone has to pick up the cow poop and the deer poop around the reservoir before a rainstorm so it doesn't flow into the reservoir before a rainstorm so it doesn't flow in to the reservoir. So it reminded me that there are these people who spend hours on this, and there are people around the world who have to walk part of the day, much of the day, to get clean water. And I was actually, I was talking to my kids because I thought we could reframe the glass half full, glass half empty. You know, I think we need to go a step back. You know, it's not just that the glass is half full. It's like the fact that we have any water in the glass at all, that you can put it under a metal tube and turn a switch and you have clean water.

Starting point is 00:45:03 That's crazy. So it doesn't matter how much is in the glass. The fact that there is water is astounding. So the paradox, the wonderful paradox is the more you focus on other people, the happier you are. I mean, I spent most of my life, my 20s and 30s, focused exclusively on my own happiness. And when you are chasing your own happiness, as the sages will tell you, you're not always going to be happy. It's too much pressure on yourself. So paradoxically, but wonderfully, focusing on someone else's happiness will actually make you happier.

Starting point is 00:45:46 All right. So, oh, and by the way, a little plug for water. I, becoming aware of this, I asked Will McGaskill, the philosopher, what is the best or a good water charity, and he suggested dispensers for safe water, which gives people the ability to clean their water in a cheap way. So, a little plug for them. All right. So, now my conclusion is I'm just very grateful that I was able to undertake this project, Gratitude. And I've become sort of an evangelist.

Starting point is 00:46:24 I want my friends to follow the gratitude trail. So it doesn't have to be coffee. It could be a light bulb or a pair of socks. And you don't have to travel the world. You can just do a small gesture like sending a note to the designer of a logo you love or looking a cashier in the eye. Mostly, I just think it's a mindset, refusing to take things for granted, being aware of the thousands of people involved, that someone in a factory made the fabric for the chair you're sitting in right now or the pants you're wearing. Someone went into a tunnel and and Mind the Copper for this microphone. So I could say my final two thank yous, which is first to thank you for listening,

Starting point is 00:47:11 and second, thanks to Tim Ferriss for outsourcing this episode to me. Hope you liked it, and you can learn more in the book. Thanks a thousand. Thank you. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me?

Starting point is 00:47:33 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

Starting point is 00:48:06 And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on demand, which is what I do. We'll come back to that. So you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I, for instance, have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home, and it's one

Starting point is 00:48:49 of the first things I do many mornings. I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20-minute ride in my undies. Hard to do that at the gym. Take a shower, and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's really convenient and has become something that I look forward to. So you have a lot of options. For one, if you like, you can ride live

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Starting point is 00:49:20 45 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, music, hip hop, rock and roll, or say low impact versus high intensity or interval. You can pick the class structure and style that works for you. And in my case, I quite like Matt Wilpert's and I tend to do on demand and listen to a lot of and watch many of the same classes over and over. But I'm kind of promiscuous and also enjoy classes from a lot of the other instructors. They have Peloton, an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City

Starting point is 00:49:46 with a whole range of styles and personalities, so you can find what you're in the mood for. You also get real-time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time, and that will help, I would say, catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now, that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada, yada, yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very

Starting point is 00:50:10 impressed with how motivating it was. And it worked tremendously to keep me pushing, which quite honestly takes a fair amount. I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So check it out. Discover this cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings a studio experience right to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's O-N-E, Peloton, P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com and enter the code TIM, all caps, at checkout and get $100 off of accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. So get a great workout at home anytime you want. Check it out. Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIM to get started. This episode is brought to you by Charlotte's Web, which makes a CBD oil, a hemp extract that has become one of my go-to tools.

Starting point is 00:51:07 Now, I have never really talked about CBD oil, and cannabis has never really been the plant for me. I know we're talking about hemp. But nonetheless, after several nights of inexplicable insomnia, this was about a year ago, I just could not get to sleep to save my life. And after other fixes failed, so melatonin, California poppy extract, da-da-da-da-da, an elite athlete introduced me to this non-psychoactive extract, and bam! Problem solved. I had some of the best sleep that I'd had in months. Now, I don't use sleep aids on a daily basis, but this has become part of my toolkit, and I hope to be exploring other applications soon. CBD oil products have exploded in popularity in the health and wellness and fitness worlds. And

Starting point is 00:51:51 Charlotte's Web is one of the top players that offers broad spectrum hemp extract with CBD in the form of oils, capsules, and topical products. Charlotte's Web products will not get you high, so that maybe that is good news, maybe bad news to you, but it does have some powerful benefits and applications. And it works with your body's existing endocannabinoid system. Endo meaning from within, like endo versus exoskeleton, for instance. So endocannabinoid system works with your body. Some of the most common uses are for relief from everyday stressors, help in supporting restful sleep, which is what I most often use it for, to bring about a sense of calm and focus. A lot of my friends use it for that. CBD is also known or becoming known for helping athletes to recover from exercise-induced inflammation.

Starting point is 00:52:39 Charlotte's Web Hemp Extract has naturally occurring terpenes, flavonoids, and other valuable hemp compounds that work synergistically to heighten positive effects, sometimes referred to as the entourage effect, which you guys can look up, making it more complete than single compound CBD alternatives, or at least that is what I've been told. I do not know much about CBD alternatives nor single compound. In any case, check it out. This stuff has really worked for me. So jump over to cwhemp.com

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #344: A.J. Jacobs — 10 Strategies to Be Happier Through Gratitude

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #344: A.J. Jacobs — 10 Strategies to Be Happier Through Gratitude

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