Don't happy be worried. It's one more thing. I'm strong and what. I was reminded of the Bobby McFerrin classic don't Worry Be Happy the other day as it was listed on the Worst Songs of the nineties.
I guess something like that that's very popular.
It was a cute little ditty. It's fine. I don't know, it's fine. People love, you know, slamming other people's choices in music too much.
You gotta hate on being happy?
Yeah, right, exactly. But don't happy be worried? Is the theme kind of sort of a really interesting study that's out researchers from the University of Toronto, Scarborough and University of Sydney. The Canuckers joining up with the Australians. Trump will be you know, annexing them both soon but anyway, for now, we'll let them have their cute little universities. But they right. We live in a happiness obsessed world.
Self help gurus promise paths to bliss. Instagram influencers pedal happiness is a lifestyle, and corporations build marketing campaigns around the pursuit of positive emotions, but new research suggests a surprising twist.
I doubt.
I'm if you're not familiar, Yeah, exactly, Trying to are to be happy might make you miserable. The researchers that the aforementioned universities found that actively pursuing happiness drains our mental energy, the same energy we need for self control, among other things. Says the researcher, the pursuit of happiness is a bit like a snowball effect. You decide to try making yourself happier, but then that effort deplete your ability to do the kinds of things that actually make you happier.
All right, well, there's the key right there. What kind of things actually make you happy? So among my favorite books I've ever read in my life the Art of Happiness by the Dali Lama, which he says, your goal every morning when you wake up should be to make yourself happy. You should spend all your time trying to make yourself happy. That's what you should do. But it gets down to the data on what makes you happy and what doesn't. And many, many of the things we
all do every single day don't make us happy. They've never made us happy. We have ample evidence from our own experience, let alone other people's experience. That it doesn't make us happy, yet we continue doing it, like eating bad food or buying stuff, or promiscuous sex or whatever it is. It has never made us in the happy. It doesn't make other people happy, yet we keep thinking that's what's going to make us happy. So pursuing happiness
every day is okay. You just need to define what makes people actually makes people happy.
Maybe this is the key. Pleasure is not happiness. Fun is not happiness, right, it can be part of it, very we men seldom. No life of purpose is what makes people happy? Yeah? Yeah, happy? Be happy. You wake up determined to have a great day, You plan mood boosting activities and work hard to stay positive. But by evening you're ordering takeout instead of cooking, mindlessly scrolling social media and snapping at your partner. Why your pursuit of
happiness might be the problem. The scientist marketing professor puts it bluntly. Quote the more mentally run down we are, the more tempted will be to skip cleaning the house and instead scroll social media.
And they're saying the same thing as the Dalai Lama says, I just I like the way he words it. It's a little more positive, pursue happiness all day, every day. That should be your goal in life, that should be everybody's goal. But now let's break down what actually makes people happy as opposed to saying don't pursue happiness, because then it seems like it's a gotta eat my vegetables, gotta you know, all negative stuff and maybe there'll be a payoff in the end.
Right. It's like the difference between pursuing money and pursuing the skills that will make you money. In a way, Katie, do you have something you want to jump in with? You look thoughtful.
I I'm kind of overthinking this, I think okay, to be honest, Well.
It's it's amazing that human beings do things that make themselves unhappy all the time, all the time. It's just it's just like one of those common things we do is make do things that make us unhappy. Eat stuff that's going to make us either feel bad in the moment or make us feel bad long term, or you know, pursue relationships that we know aren't good. But there's either sex, prestige, whatever that that makes you do it. Just we regularly chase things that we know are bad for us.
Right right.
Watching My brain was going with like, things you don't want to do, but the payoff in the end is good.
Oh, the simplest one is the staring at your phone. Nobody ever, at the end of the day says I'm She're glad I spent that much time scrolling on my phone? Nobody ever, not even for one day, right right.
I was just going to contrast do scrolling on Twitter, which I have the compulsion to do and I resist pretty well most times, versus the other day. I mean, this is as mundane as can be. I cleaned out my closet. I went through it thin, the herd of clothing, you know, shoes I don't wear, et cetera. It's neater, it's better organized. It's just it's better. And that made me happy, right like happy? Yeah, like today, I was
not pleasurable. I would love to lay on my couch all day, but I know I have laundry to do, and when I get it done, I'm going to be happy that it's done.
Yeah, Okay.
I was just reading an obituary of a fella that I barely knew, and it was post retirement, I'm pretty sure, but he filled his life with the Boys and Girls Club of the area where he lived, and it was really pivotal in guiding them through difficult financial times and growing the programs and stuff like that. I'll bet there
was very little of that was pleasurable. Some of it was because watching kids learn and grow is immensely satisfying, but there's a hell of a lot of work there, and I guarantee that made him happy to his soul.
I think the best happiness comes from accomplishments. It could be like mowing the grass. Like you're pushing the mower and you look back and you see what you've done, and then when you're all finished, you look and you think, hey, I'm really feeling happy.
So why then, evolutionary speaking, why are we is our body screaming out to now mow the lawn tomorrow? Lay on on the couch watching this football game is what It's going to make me happy? Even though you're absolutely right afterwards, I think, why did I watch? I don't even care about these two teams as opposed to you'll feel happy after your MOLLI one.
Well, the greatest minds of our time are devoted toward getting you to do things for pleasure, for their profit in a way that didn't exist. I mean even two hundred years ago there's ad advertisement, but it was not nearly as effective, manipulative and scientifically based as modern you know, like like Facebook, TikTok. My god, we as a species don't stand a chance against that sort of neurological manipulation.
Yeah, I've noticed recently. I don't know if my well, I just I guess I just started doing the Instagram reels thing. I'd never done it before. It's kind of the American version of TikTok, I guess. Anyway, what's disappointing to me is it's not like doom scrolling or something where I think why did I do that? Or it's
pretty good, it's pretty enjoyable. It feeds me lots of stuff I really like, I mean like really like, here's some rare concert footage that it figured out I'd be into that I've never seen before, and stuff like that. But it kills a freaking hour where I should either been sleeping or exercising or whatever. So it's actually it's actually an enjoyable, like really enjoyable in the time. So that's what I got to fight now, is not.
Even start I am going to further parse language. You got pleasure, you got happiness, and Michael, to your point, you have satisfaction. Maybe that's another word to think about happiness and satisfaction as opposed to pleasure.
If you don't say you're retired and you don't really need to accomplish anything.
That's when it's the most important, according to everybody I've talked to, to have some purpose.
You don't think you could just look at Instagram reels, feeding your stuff that you actually enjoy and be okay, or would you be miserable?
You'll be dead soon. I don't know. I can't state that you know with confidence. But that's I've read a fair amount about retirement, which is funny because I don't know. Probably like my job too much. But yeah, if you're the sort of person who just retires and you have nothing to do, it makes people miserable.
Do you mean even if you have things to do, you have TikTok, you have something to do.
And the golf course. I just play golf. I look at TikTok. I wake up in the morning, I go play golf again that I look at TikTok.
Yeah, I've since I started on Instagram reels. It's the TikTok algorithm scares me if it's substantially better. Like I was listening to Sarah Iger of The Dispatch saying, if you think Instagram reels is addictive, you have no idea. Because she got sucked into TikTok and then got it off her phone. She says, just so good. It's just every day stuff. I love that. I'm super into.
My daughter did the same thing.
That's why I feel with Instagram reels, like, man, is it good with coming up stuff that I like, s and l clips, concert videos, stuff that I just love. But you can't, you know, wants to live their life doing that.
Yeah, it's you know, Lord knows, I've lived a checkered life, but one gift that I got somehow or other. And this may shock you, folks, I used to take walks on the wild side now and again, not in the lou Reeds sen it's not gender bending madness, but you know, occasionally in the rock and roll world of the eighties and nineties, there were substances about and there are a couple of experiences I had where I thought, no, I like this too much. Yeah, and so it is with
the tickety talk. From what I've heard, you realize I am powerless against this.
Yeah, it is like an endless.
They provide you endless entertainment on there, especially when they figure out what you like.
I mean, you could do that for hours. I wonder if that's what happened. I wonder if I spend enough time on Instagram that it was able to Okay, now we know we got him figured out. Yeah, because it just seems like in the last week or so, it's like really grabbed me.
Well, and what sucks about that is because I thought, I I'm a dumb ass. I thought I could outsmart the algorithm because I thought maybe if I don't inn with any pasts.
You know, I don't like anything, I don't interact with any of them, but it picks up your eyeballs.
Or no, it picks up your watch time. So if you so like let's say you're scroll and you stop on a video and you spend the time to watch that video, the algorithm goes, Okay, we kept him here for such and such a second, so he's into.
That because I didn't click on it. I didn't do anything. It was just part of a stream. It's just because you watched it.
I am going to rewatch on YouTube. The Social Dilemma. The thing is so good documentary Jack, you gotta watch that. You got it, You just gotta.
Can They put it in twenty second chunks on a Instagram reel. Jeez, we can't save him. I was gonna say I had one more thing to say about this, just I don't know how good it is at figuring out stuff that you really really like. It's it's troubling, actually, and there's stuff that it would have been hard for me to find, like on my own. Oh I was, I was thinking about they fixed what used to be.
I don't know if you're old enough for this or not. Katie, you probably are back when you used to You want something, You sit down and you think, how do I have one hundred and twenty channels and there's nothing I like here? You click through and there's nothing you like. They fixed that. It's the opposite. Now you like every single thing on every channel. They know exactly what you're into. They got your sports thing, your music thing, your kid's thing. You're
just every channel is something you love. As you click through, it's the exact opposite of what it used to be right.
Leggy blonde guitar players playing golf, constant videos, sexy golfing guitarists. What's giving me lessons with.
A dog doing something funny and a kid doing something cute?
Yes, yes, see If.
You guys agree with this, false happiness comes immediately, Real happiness comes later. You have to wait for real happy.
Pretty much always is the case.
Yep, well, I guess that's it.