The Science of Happiness

we're upset that he's out on vacation and terrible. We're upset because he's on vacation in an amazing landscape, having wonderful adventures and we're in a podcast studio. But that's all right, Joe. We look forward to hearing about your saga when you come back. Yes, he's an Iceland, by

the way, Yeah, that's that's the saga. And so we're going to take the opportunity to really look at happiness as everything from a biological function or a collection of function, to how we might try and pursue happiness in the future, and really to understand where we're coming from. I thought it'd be fun to look back in the past, because, as it turns out, the English word happy in its

original context meant lucky or favored by fortune. So it didn't necessarily mean that you were filled with joy and contentment and you had great life satisfaction. It meant that you had fortune smiling on you, and good things were happening, and you were less likely to die. Right, right, Because for a lot of history, it wasn't really about finding happiness.

It was about getting a bye. Yeah exactly. Yeah. You might be that your crop has come in uh more plentiful than you had expected, and so it was a happy accident. It was lucky fortune that smiled on you. Uh. And in fact, according to at least one source, I've looked at almost every European language, the word for happy traces its roots back to the word for lucky in that particular culture, except with one exception. The Welsh. Their word for happy traces back to their word for wise.

That's that's very sweet. It's cool, isn't it. I thought it was so neat. Uh So if you, if you are Welsh and you think it's wise to be happy, I agree, yeah I I. However, of course, being English, I think it's just lucky to be happy. But no, one of the things that has changed over time is that we have as a species gotten better and better at achieving our basic needs, particularly in the developed world when we saw the various revolutions, the agricultural revolution, the

industrial revolution. These things allowed us to get those those necessities more easily, and as we were able to get better access to them, we could spend more time seeking There's gotta be more to life than this, right, Where's got to be something that will make me content and joyful and feel fulfilled with my life. Now now that I no longer have to spend nearly every waking hour making sure I don't die, what can I do with

all this time? And that's where we kind of get our modern concept of happiness, this idea of being content and joyful and fulfilled. And uh so we wanted to kind of concentrate on what it is that's going on when we have this this feeling, right, because it's more than just an emotion. It's there, there's a biology to this. Yeah, we we aren't like a hollow shell with various emotions that once sometimes one of them rises to the top

and that's our dominant emotion. We're not We're not that, We're not a collection of humors, although that was certainly an idea that held sway for a very long time time. We are very complicated electrochemical machines and meating meating machines. Yeah, and part of that means that we we there's a lot of complex chemical processes that are going on for any given state of being, not just happiness, but anything, right, if you're stressed, or if you're afraid, or if you

are feeling hungry. I mean, all of these different things have different um biological processes that are associated with them, and we don't understand all of them for any given state of being. We're we're in the learning phase, yes, especially where I mean we've said this on the show a million times. At this juncture. Um anything having to do with the brain is very complicated, and we are really only beginning to figure out how it does. Yeah. So if you're hoping that we're going to tell you

where the happy switches, we don't have that information. We can talk a lot about some of the areas of the brain that are important. Yes, there are many happy switches. Yeah, with our question mark at the end. In fact, there are a lot of scientists who don't really like to talk about happiness as a concept because it's it's so broad, it's also vague in encompasses so much that two people can talk about happiness and have very different ideas about

what they're saying, and they're trying to have a common conversation. So, for example, there's a psychologist named Martin Seligman who authored Authentic Happiness, who wrote this book, and he says, I don't really like the word happiness. I wrote this book called Authentic Happiness. Don't really care for that that I I like to think in terms of things like well being or love, or growth or meaning or flourishing satisfaction.

These are concepts that are easier to define. You could say they play a part in the overall concept achievement. It's the happiness umbrella, which I like to think has smiley faces on it, but doesn't necessarily have to. I like to think it's lined with cupcakes, a cupcake lined umbrella.

I didn't have enough for lunch today, so um yeah, it's it's it's difficult to even deal with this concept on a scientific basis, because again, if you have a large term that is not not precisely defined, it's hard to get really empirical with it. Oh sure, and anything emotional is necessarily going to be a little bit difficult to empirically defined. Right. By breaking it down into these kind of subcategories of happiness, you can really start isolating

chemicals and brain bits that have more to do with them. Yea. So we're going to look at some, uh, some of the neurotransmitters and hormones as well as some of the regions of the brain that are associated with happiness. So let's start off with some of these neurotransmitters and hormones that we're talking about, because these are the chemicals that we associate with various responses that are part of feeling happy. Uh. And we're launching off with dopamine and nora pa nephrin uh. Now,

these are hormones that do lots of things. Actually, in fact, all the ones we're gonna be talking about have more. They pull multi job duty, as at most everything does. The body is not filled with unitaskers exactly, so a lot of these hormones are not even just regulating stuff in the brain. They may have important roles throughout the entire body. And one of those happens to be something that goes on inside our noggins, but not necessarily the

only thing. So umin and Nora beneffn are important in the reward center of the brain. So rewards are reinforcers which indicate that the thing you just did was a good thing and you should do more of that. So, in other words, like if you were to uh do a physical task that ends up achieving the goal that you were aiming at. Let's say that you were throwing a spear at a wooly mammoth and you hit it

just the right spot and the wooly mammoth dies. The reward center in your brain is gonna go, that was awesome, dude, you rule. You know, We're gonna eat for days on this. Make sure you do that again. At the situation ever pops up. It's like a chemical high five. Yeah. And so it's something that is certainly associated with happiness, particularly as far as it goes as being fulfilled or satisfaction. This idea that our own brain rewards us. It's it's intrinsic.

It's not dependent upon any kind of external gift. Um. It can be associated with an external gift. If you get that promotion that you've been hoping for you might have that reward feeling. But it may also just just by doing something nice for someone, you may have that reward feeling as you see that the actions you have taken have benefited someone else. Yeah, or getting an answer correct on a test, or any number of stimuli, so

very important. Yes, then we've got endorphins, these things we all do, their hormones that act as pain killers when we're injured and can also induce a kind of sense of euphoria. Yeah. So if you if you're a runner and you've heard of the runners hide, Yeah, the runner side,

that's endorphins. That's a that's a big part of it, where you know, you you just kind of get this this happy sensation, this this pleasant, pleasant sensation, even though just moments ago your body was saying, for for goodness sakes to stop. Yeah. Yeah, it's because you've you've pushed yourself to a point where ear body is like, noah, we need some pain killers. Yea, we have got to. We got to jump to action because otherwise, uh, this person's own spleen is going to rush up to their

neck and strangle them. So I might be getting a little loose with the medical technology and terminology here. But you know this is my own personal understanding. I don't run unless something's chasing me. Yeah, I feel about the same way about it personally. Then we have serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that is biochemically derived from trip to fan. You may have heard that eating turkey makes you sleepy.

That's not really true technically true. Well, I mean you'd have to have a lot of turkey, like a crazy overdose level of turkey. I'm pretty sure you would make yourself sick with turkey before you would actually get sleepy. Yeah, you would probably end up being at least thirty turkey by that time right now. But trip to fan is

in fact where we derive uh saratonin. And again we don't fully understand all of serotonin's functions within the body, but we do believe it contributes to feeling of happiness and well being and it helps regulate our sleep cycles. So it also plays a very important role in regulating our gastro intestinal tract, which again shows how these hormones

do lots of different stuff in our bodies. And serotonin also plays a role in our appetites, so when we feel hungry, so like I said, it does a lot of stuff, but again we're not We're just getting started. We still have more to go through. There's melotonin, so we got serotonin than melatonin. These are two different things. Melantonin, though, also helps regulate our sleep wake cycle and establishes the daily cycle of various systems are circadian rhythm, if you will.

So it's largely in charge of making sure that our our various rhythms throughout the day coincide with our when we're awake and when we're asleep. This is the stuff that uh, you know, you you kind of need to be in a dark place to really start generating the melotonin. You don't want to have lots of around you all the time. It can really mess with your sleep wake cycle. Uh So people who have insomnia can have issues with

that as well. So anyway, very important obviously if you don't get enough sleep, that's going to affect your satisfaction, your happiness, as well as your health in general. And generally, Yes, and all of these systems are very much tied into each other. Um, there's also cortisol, and this is a stress hormone. Actually it makes you feel unhappy relatively, it's really it's a hormone that is released in response to

stressors by the adrenal gland. And it's important because increases the amount of sugar in your blood and makes more available to your brain. Plus makes more like tissue repair stuff available to your cells. So basically it primes your body to get stuff done. Um and along with adrenaline, it makes you ready for fight or flight, but it can also decrease the functions of your other systems. Uh and basically says to your brain like be afraid, be

very afraid. Um. These these mnicles are your body's equivalent of like red alert, divert full power to the engines, um and and you know, so that's really good in some circumstances, but overall, that's not a great feeling. Yeah, you don't want to have that be your your baseline, right No, no, no, no, not not at all. The amount of stress. And we've talked in the past about how stress can have an actual effect on your health. It's not just you know, you're feeling tense and you're

you're not feeling great. I mean it can really have a really uh negative impact absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and so not just the happy inducing chemicals but also the sad or stress inducing chemicals can have a big impact on how happy your overall being is. Right, and there are there are those who argue, obviously that the negative ones do play an important rock part because it it alerts you to potential danger, helps you stay out of that

kind of danger, get out of a danger situation. But then a lot of people also point out that we're many of us are now living in a world where those, um, realistically dangerous situations are few and far between, and yet our body will still react in a negative way when it perceives danger, even if there's no physical threat that's

facing us. Oh absolutely, you know, like like when you get nervous about going on a date um, which you know, historically speaking, is slightly less useful than getting nervous about, you know, a bear chasing you, right exactly, but you end up having the same sort of physiological response because your body doesn't have Oh, let's initiate the date hormone. It's it's not like that, No, it's more like, well, uh, you know this this the thought processes. This is scary,

so let's enact the scary stuff. Uh So, anyway, that the balance here is really important, and again we don't understand all of them in which all of these things work. Now, let's move on to some some brain anatomy. Yeah, some of the hardware. Where so we talked about reward system and the hormones like dopamine that play a part in it. There are reward pathways in the brain. They involved the frontal cortex, which has the highest concentration of dopamine sensitive neurons.

Then you have the nucleus accumbus, which plays an important part in our sense of pleasure as well as other emotions. It can also play a part with things like fear and aggression. You can kind of think of that as almost like the reptile brain in a way. And then you've got the ventral tegmental area, which is the release

site for dopamine. Yeah, the left prefrontal cortex in particular is more active when you're happy, as opposed to the right prefrontal cortex, which is more active when you're unhappy or stressed out. Interesting, and that's really cool. I did not realize that. Then you have the neo cortex, which is the part of our brain that's responsible for a lot of the the higher thinking functions like conscious thought.

That's the mammalian brain. Yes, sometimes here uh here it referred to in literature, right, because it is not something that is found in all animals. In fact, the reason why it's called neo cortex is because it's a relatively new development, as in late in the evolutionary uh pathway of animals in general. I mean, you know, it's it's only a few million years ago as opposed to a few Is that correct? Is it only a million? Yeah, yeah, you know it's I mean, you know, things have a

longer shelf life in the evolutionary time scale. So, uh. One of the important things about happiness is consciousness. It's the ability to be aware that you are happy. It's the ability to be aware of the difference between happiness and unhappiness. And there are many who argue that if we did not have that ability, this would be largely Yeah, well we wouldn't be having this conversation, be incapable of it.

But but the the consciousness is in fact a necessary item as far as being able to to be happy. And I like Shakespeare's take on this. He was not saying anything new, and this was in fact something that character Hamlet said. And you always have to remember. A character saying something does not necessarily mean the author means it. No, but he says there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so, which of course is to say there's nothing innately good or bad in anything that's going on.

It's our interpretation of it that makes it good or bad. Uh. Thus the consciousness is the thing that allows us to differentiate happy versus unhappy. This becomes more important in a later part of our discussion in this episode, but it just shows that these ideas have been around, and again, Shakespeare didn't come up with that. He was voicing something that the ancient Greeks had talked about ages before Shakespeare came along. Uh. Then there's the hippocampus, which helps us

attach context to memories um. And furthermore, it gets damaged by the release of large amounts of cortisol. So that's really interesting as well, because that means that in a in a heightened situation where cortisol is being released because you are getting ready for fight or flight type of thing, then presumably you might have difficulty recalling that situation well in the future. Thus, or while it's going on, you might have difficulty contextualizing what is what's really going on?

You might have it. It's part of why you sort of freak out a little bit in those situations. Yeah, it's also it's another good example of why eyewitness testimony is something that we should be careful about, because memories are weird things. A lot of times we end up forming what we think was the actual memory of the event that happened while it was happening afterward. Our brains are not digital cameras, and every time we recall a memory,

we are changing it. Yeah. So I think that's a little bit of a tangent, but important, I think Jonathan rant time, Yes, exactly. So. Yeah, and it gets even more complicated, right, This is just a tiny glimpse of parts of the brain that are involved with our our concept at least our modern concepts. These are kind of referred to as the big ones, I think. But but

we don't know, Yeah, we don't. We don't even know what we don't know, right, That's the that's the crazy part of it, is that we don't know how far away we are from getting a full understanding of the workings of the brain. We know that it's far more complex than what we are capable of explaining right now. And when I say we, I mean humans as a whole, not just not just two of us sitting at this podcast table. That's already been clear from our previous episodes.

But no, people as a whole. We don't really know everything. And so since we're just fearing all this out, uh, it's it's impossible for us to say right now that we could come up with a system that could manufacture synthetic happiness on demand. But that is something that we've you know, thought about. It's something that's in science fiction.

It's something that's there's their experiments with uh stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain, granted, and we're about to just talk about specific ways of doing that with humans. But you know, we don't have that that ability, And the question is if we ever come up with it,

would it really be meaningful. So in order to get to that question, we should look at some ways that we've kind of explored stimulating different parts of the brain that are associated at least in some part with happiness. UM so far, because this is absolutely a science that

is going on right now. In fact, in fact, there's the first one we're talking about is the science that's been around for a while in various formats, and we've talked about on this show before, electrical stimulation of the brain. You know, like we said, the brain is an electrochemical organ and so the electro part means that if you use some electricity, yeah, yeah, don't touch that, you never know what's attached to. But uh so, we we are

seeing some people use electricity to treat depression. This is not a new idea. It is the basis for electro convulsive therapy, which is actually used for multiple types of therapy, not just for depression. Um. And there's also deep brain stimulation, which uses electrodes to deliver electricity to areas in the brain believed to be associated with moods, specifically for depression. Again,

it can also be used for other types of treatments. UM. Now, the big difference between the two is that deep brain stimulation, as you would imagine, is invasive involve surgery. So you're talking about drilling holes into a person's head, inserting wires into their brain so that the wires terminate at the point near the neurons you want to stimulate, and then directing a charge at that specific area. All right, but

that's obviously a pretty high buy in for treating something. Ye. Usually it's for people who are suffering from very serious ailments. I mean, it might be something like Parkinson's. It's not

for treating moods. But I did read a study where it was used to treat UM, someone who had a very serious case of depression, to the point where, uh, of course this could have been hyperbole, but it was in popular science, and the author mentioned that after they turned on the electrodes and delivered electricity to the um two specific neurons in this woman's brain, she smiled. She said that the room got brighter and that she could actually recognize emotions on faces, and she said it was

the first time she had smiled in twenty years. Yeah, it's a pretty powerful story. Whether or not there was any embellishment there, I cannot say. But you know, again, it's one of those things that says, hey, you know, there is this this power in electricity to have a fundamental effect on our brains. Yeah, and right, we we have talked a little bit about the other one electric convulsive therapy before that episode was augmenting the brain part to the tech, and it published an aug if you'd

like to check it out. But just to summarize real quick, it's currently considered a really a safe and effective way to manage cases of severe depression where drugs haven't helped. And it's it's not like in the movies. Okay, your ear doc is gonna put you under general anesthesia and give you muscle relaxers, So it's not traumatic the way that you've probably seen it portray. It's not like such or where it's used as the threatening American horror story.

Nothing like that. No. Um, I mean, you know, the thing is is that we're not even sure why it works like this. Theories range from that it changes blood flow or or changes the brain's metabolism, to changing the chemical release and uptake of stuff to the stimulation of nerve cells and pathway growth. Um. But but but right, it's it's definitely a therapy that is good in these extreme cases. It does tend to affect patients memory, so it's really only a last sorts, right. We are talking

about really severe cases here. But it shows that there may be a way for us to find a means of electrically stimulating the brain in a safe manner that can dramatically change someone's life who might be suffering from depression. Now, this is not the same as saying we're going to end up with chips in our heads that will make

us perpetually happy. I don't know, i'd kind of take that. Yeah, well, I mean there's there's always the story about the the experiment where uh, scientists hooked up electrodes to the pleasure center of monkey's brains and gave him access to a button and they just kept on pressing the until they basically died. Yeah, but we'll we'll get into a little bit more of the science fiction ee kind of uh

philosophy behind the idea of synthetic happiness. But there is another way of getting synthetic happiness, right, Yeah, we just talked about the electro portion of electrochemicals, So let's talk about the chemical Yeah, we're talking drugs. So drugs, doesn't we we don't just mean illicit drugs, although clearly those leap to mind when you're talking about mind altering or mood altering substances. Uh So, some of them they alter

moods by stimulating dopamine production, like cocaine. I looked at a chart that showed dopamine production from something like having seeing an old relative for the first time in ages, someone you really love, and then comparing that to the amount of dopamine someone on cocaine would experience, and it was a dramatic difference, I would imagine. So otherwise we would just look at pictures of our loved ones whenever wanted to get high. Right, yeah, that would be like that.

That's what all the SNL writers were doing back in the seventies, is just flipping through photo books. But they also there are drugs that introduced the sense of euphoria, like endorphins, right right, Ope, it's like morphine do this by connecting to the same receptors that accept your body's natural endorphins, so they just work along the same Pathwaysically speaking,

these these effects are real. I mean, they really will have these mood altering effects on people, but they also are temporary, meaning that when the drug wears off, then you're back to where you were. Uh. They can be addictive, and I didn't mention this in the in the note, but I mean it's something that we all know. And not only can they be addictive, but you can build up resistance to them. And thus you end up having to take more and probably getting more of those negative

side effects and possibly reaching levels of toxicity. Uh. There are a lot of reasons why it's not the best way of trying to achieve happiness. UH. Correct, it could be very important for treating very serious illnesses. Oh, certainly, certainly. UM. Also note that really any substances you take into your body,

including foods, contain chemicals that can impact your brain. UM. Some foods help your body produce more of these happy chemicals, like spinach turkey we mentioned earlier, or bananas um, because stuff like follate and tripped to fan go into creating seratonin. UM. Also caffeine contain an alcohol, which are a relatively common use. Drugs all do have effects on a the central nervous system, and be can stimulate the release of stuff like serotonin

and dopamine. Right. And then we have psychiatric drugs right right. These are the regulated chemicals that usually require prescription from a certified health professional of one kind or another, and they're used to treat diagnosed conditions like depression and anxiety. Uh. They're going to be interacting with your brain and its chemicals, sometimes frequently in ways that we haven't really figured out

yet to basically just improve your mood. Yeah, Um, lots of them, like tricyclics and s s r s that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors will help serotonin find the post snaptic receptors where they'll help you feel happy. Um, at least partially by preventing the serotonin from being absorbed by other cells. So again, these are really useful tools for patients who are suffering from depression. Not meant to be

something too like a happy pill. It's still not an on switch, I mean, you know, they although they do. Recent research is indicated that even a single dose of some of these drugs can start affecting the way that your brain works, but usually it takes a couple of weeks to build them up in your system. They're usually recommended along with a course of therapy of one kind or another, more emotional behavioral therapy, and and they're they're

absolutely not a cure all for unhappiness, right. Yeah, it always makes me think of um, the Kids in the Hall. They had a feature length film called Brain Candy, where the main part of the story is the development of an antidepressant called gleiman necks, which just induces happiness, eventually inducing catatonia. So not exactly a perfect example. Um, but yeah, it actually does play into the same warning that we're giving, is that that this is something that is important, but

isn't the the happy hill. Uh well, then then there's other stuff that can actually make a real improvement to your mood that doesn't involve shocking your brain or taking drugs. Oh sure, just exercise, I mean, okay, of course it's good for you. We all learned that at the Apple six Apple iPhone six releases. Um, now that I know I can strap an Apple product to my wrist and move around, I'll be happy. Uh huh um No, No, but exercise does genuinely help make you happier in a

few different ways. Um. First of all, it increases your body's production of antibodies and t cells, which help fight off bodily invaders like bacteria viruses that can make you sick. Uh. Not being sick is pretty cool. Yeah, being sick is a real detriment to happiness. Yes. Um, it lowers the levels of cortisol in your bloodstream, that stress hormone that we've mentioned a couple of times. Before here um. And also it stimulates the production of endorphins, as we talked

about at the top of the show. Right, So, out of the three of these, the exercise is the one that I can heartily recommend because it certainly has a suite of benefits and so it's one of those things that can contribute to your overall happiness without having the detriment of requiring surgery, I mean, or or your memory

or eating a lot of spinach. Right, yeah, I mean I love spinach, but yeah, yeah, no, I mean I'm no Popeye, but at any rate, So with these synthetic ways, not not the exercise one, but the drugs and electricity, where we're artificially introducing happiness, would they work. And this kind of ends up getting to the question of what is happiness? Right? So in the video I mentioned we could talk about a world where let's say you have

a very tough existence. Uh, you know, day to day life is hard, and maybe there's very few things that are rewarding to you in your life, but you have access to the happy switch and you can turn on the switch and you feel genuine joy and euphoria, but your life doesn't change at all. So you still have this tough existence. Does is that true happiness? And that's a question that I think is subjective. It depends upon

someone's view of what happiness really is. Yeah. Yeah, we're ranging into the slightly less scientific concept philosophy and morality and all of that. So for me, this is my own personal point of view. I would want to try and have a life where I am putting all the things I can in order so that I can pursue a happy lifestyle as opposed to having a switch that just makes me feel happy. Even if objectively, if I were able to remove myself from that situation, I would think, Wow,

that's one miserable guide down there. But that's me personally, because it goes beyond the chemical. For me, I tend to be very pragmatic in most cases, and this one case, I think, now I kind of want the what would feel like genuine happiness to me because to me, this does not feel like it would be genuine. Um. But again, it's all depends on your definition. Well. Yeah, and and you know, there there are everyone I think on the planet is going to have a slightly different answer to

that question. Um. But there are certainly many people who are pursuing that kind of thought, especially through the field of positive psychology. Yeah, this is an interesting approach to psychology. It is an attempt to have an empirical study of happiness, but not the biological side that we've already talked about, rather the elements of life that would make someone feel

happy by kicking into gear those biological processes. So the biological processes are important, but really what the positive psychology is looking at is what are the things in life that give us these feelings? Um, you know, what sort of activities do we need to do, what sort of experiences do we need to have? What kind of life can we sue to have a happier existence? Sure? So, well, I mean, you know, for for example, I'm sure that

that exercise plays a part in positive psychology. I mean, even though it is a chemical process in your body, but it's it's ranging into that well, help your help,

help your brain help itself exactly. Yeah, it's it's one of the things identified as this makes you feel better, right, So that falls right into the sort of stuff they You know that the studies look at people who have different lifestyles and kind of judge happiness, not obviously Taking an empirical approach to any kind of social science is difficult. It's challenging. It's not impossible, but it is really challenging because it largely relies upon things like surveys, which require

people to give honest answers and generally cooperate. Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's a little it's a little trickier than saying, Uh, you know, what is the force of gravity on this planet? Well, we dropped this thing. It felt at this rate the acceleration was such. Thus it is this Like, that's something you can pirically described through an observation. Uh, what makes people happy gets a little more fuzzy, and it is

by a large subjective. Now, there are large broad categories that some researchers in positive psychology have identified as being important for the pursuit of happiness. And I should say that I'm going to talk about three different types of uh, lifestyles or life pursuits that some people in positive psychology. Yes, of course, as in any scientific field, especially the softer scientific fields, there is disagreement on on exactly what these should be and what they mean. But but but what

are these basic three things? Okay, you've got the pleasant life. Now, this is the idea that you are spending your time seeking experiences and relationships to trigger your sense of satisfaction. So this would be the people who, uh, you know, they go on an adventure holiday so they can go to someplace they've never been before and experience the the local wildlife, for the local cultures, to really immerse themselves in something new, and they get satisfaction from that. Or

they like to go out and make friends. They take time to get to know people, and they gain satisfaction from forming these sort of relationships. It also falls into the same category as people who buy stuff, you know, the retail therapy where they they see something really cool and they buy it, and there's that reward center again, the fact that you get something cool that you think is really neat. You do feel a sense of pleasure

from this. Uh, this tends to be the one that most people are Most of the researchers I've read have said is the most fleeting. The idea that once you do achieve whatever it is you're doing, whether it's buying a brand new toy or going on that great vacation or getting that achievement unlocked. Yes, yeah, the gradually it wears off and you have to do it again in order to you know, you can't just do one amazing thing and then you're happy all the rest of your life.

You have to continue with. So then it becomes your life becomes Forrest Gump, where you're just constantly of course with him. It just happened by luck, which goes back to that earlier definition of happy. But you know, you would be pursuing this all right, or your your level grinding basically, and and also beyond that, there are people who have said, well, and it's it's not even as simple as this, because you would need to seek out experiences that, uh, that reflect who you are as a person.

So Lauren, for example, let's say that you despise travel. Let's just say that you hate the idea of travel. Then pushing yourself to go and travel and have these experiences might not result in you being happy, even if

the experience is legitimately amazing. Your feelings about travel might be so negative, right, I might be so stressed out about flying or about um, you know, getting places on time, or about interacting with a new environment I'm unfamiliar, or leaving behind people that you really like and you know that's that's where you really place or exactly. So that sort of thing could mean that you don't come away with this happy feeling. However, if you indulge in things

that you really do enjoy. Let's say that you just love reading a new book as often as possible, then something as simple as going out and finding a book you haven't read before could bring you true joy. So you're petting kittens, just going on a quest to pet every pet all the kittens that could be that could be it. And that's the thing is that it all depends upon you picking the right sort of experiences. It's not just to have experiences, it's to have the right

kind based upon who you are. Then you have the good life. Now, the good life is a great song by Wheezer, but it's also when you are feeling really engaged in the activities that you're doing. Oh, I'm serious, it's a great song, shaking booty, it's a great song anyway. So good life is all about being really engaged with the things you do, whether that's hobbies you do or if it's your job. It's fantastic because it means you get real satisfaction and you feel a sense of well

being about the work you do. So for those of us who are fortunate to have jobs that give us a lot of this, I mean, I'm not saying that my job is free of stress, y'all, because because it comes with a whole, big old pile of it, but it does. Know what, our amazing dream jobs are are amazing, amazing, and the fact that we're able to do it is

something that gives me a real sense of satisfaction. This tends to be viewed as being more sustainable than the pleasant life because if you land something or you find something that gives you pleasure whenever you engage in it, whether it's a hobby or a job or whatever, then that tends to be something. Unless it's something that is reliant upon a depleted resource, it's something that you can

repeatedly continue to doing. Right, um, you know, maybe being part of an improv group or gardening or other activities like that that that have a larger arc of work to pay off. Yeah, and that's one of those things that uh, you know, it's it's easy to say is attainable, but I realized that, I mean, I worked for seven years in a job that did not give me that

kind of reward. So it's it's something that again tends to you know, you might go back to that lucky definition of happy, sure, but it's it's also highly individual and and a thing that you can work towards. Yes, yes, so certainly don't take any discouragement from what I'm saying. I would love to hear that all of our listeners have found amazing either hobbies or jobs or both that really give them that kind of satisfaction. The third life is the meaningful life. And all of these names sound

pretty pretentious. I will admit a meaningful life is all about participating in and contributing to something larger than yourself. So that might be your community, or it might be a cause that you really believe in. Maybe you get involved in, like a nonprofit organization that you really feel is doing good work, and you gain satisfaction and well

being from that. Sure, maybe raising children or adopting those kittens that you like petting so well, yeah, although there are some studies that suggests that the whole raising of children thing contributes more to unhappiness than happiness, I'm serious. I think that the two singles well, that the two childless people sending in front of these microphones should maybe not comment to I'm just saying what the studies say. I don't make any I don't make any guesses on

my own. Um. They do say that marriage married people tend to be happier than single people, but people without kids tend to be less unhappy than people with kids. And I think a large part of that is just that when you're a parent, you have a lot of responsibilities and things to that that weigh on you. It doesn't mean that children can't be a joy. Obviously they can be, but there are a lot of I take a lot of joy from other people's children. I do too,

especially when they take their children away. I take a lot of joy at that point. No, no, no, you hang out, you have a great time, and then you give them back, right, yeah, You load them up on sugar and give them some loud toys, and then you hand them back to mom and dad. Uh uh yeah. I hope my sister is not listening to this podcast.

She knows what my plans are. It's okay, so at any rate, Um, there these are three broad categories, and again, not all positive psychology researchers and scientists really fall into the saying that these are like the three big ones.

In fact, some of them break it down into more some of them dismiss the idea entirely, but thought it was an interesting approach because it does kind of help define happiness uh and the the things that give us pleasure into different uh, different categories that we can easily talk about. So again, it's really hard to talk about happiness in an empirical, scientific way. What gives me a

meaningful experience may not apply to anyone else. Maybe when I travel to a destination that seems completely mundane to everyone else, for some reason, it has an attachment to me. Maybe it reminds me of something from my childhood, or there's just something there that I really get attached to. But someone else could go to that same location and feel nothing. There's nothing wrong with either of those scenarios, but it does make it hard to talk about empirically.

We can't say, like, if you go to this place on the map, you'll be happy. And that's another one of the issues, right, is that everyone wants to know the answer of what will make me happy, and that unfortunately the answer lies inside you. Yes, and don't. That doesn't mean that, you know, you have to go all Temple a doom and do the whole callieba thing. That's I know, it's not not necessarily recommended, although you know, if you feel like that's your true I'm not going

to tell you. But no, philosophically, we're saying inside of you. But it's also interesting that a lot of the positive psychology findings seem to reinforce some folk wisdom like money can't buy happiness. This is where things get even more complicated. So money can't buy happiness? What's that about? So again getting into the idea of using money to buy things to make you happy, that sort of stuff. It's high. Yeah, and you have to keep on doing it, and that's

settled for most of us. The limited resource uh and is not a game you can play indefinitely. Uh. But it is interesting that money can in fact help stave off unhappiness, which not a huge surprise. Right. If you're if you're, if you're, if you can't provide for yourself and your loved ones, then of course that's going to make you less happy. Absolutely, you're going to be under

an intense amount of anxiety and stress. Uh, it is very difficult, difficult to pursue a happy lifestyle when you cannot provide for yourself or your end or your loved ones. Um So. Daniel Kaneman wrote that in the United States, happiness levels off though incomes around seventy dollars per year, because at that income range, you can pretty much meet your basic needs that you would. With that you can

buy happiness past. You can at least stave off unhappiness or stave off the things that would require you to be worried on a day to day basis about your existence. Right you you have enough money to provide food, uh, medical treatment if necessary, house, that kind of thing, or at least a shelter of some sort. But then found that if you go beyond the seventy five dollars, it doesn't contribute to more happiness. It's not that, you know,

the scale continues to go up. So if you add another hundred thousand to that and you're making a hundred seventy five thousand dollars a year, you're not suddenly a hundred thousand dollars happier than the seventy in person. But I'm sure that there's other studies that would argue with that finding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think a lot of it depends upon how you frame the question. And this is again going back to that fuzzy soft science approach.

It It all really is dependent upon your methodology. And if you ask a question one way in one study in another way in another study, you could ask the same people and get questions different enough to jump to opposite conclusions. So you can say, we surveyed some of the wealthiest people in the world, and they are happier than anyone's. Well, we surveyed those same happiest are met wealthiest people in the world, and they say they're no happier one day to the next. And then you get

into this oh yeah yeah. And and there there is, by the way, an entire branch of scientific study devoted to figuring out how to ask questions as empirically as possible in all of these wibbly wobbly kind of fields. Yeah. So there's a study that Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers did that suggests that the wealthy are more satisfied with their lives than the rest of us. And when we say the wealthy, they were talking about people who are making like, you know, millions of dollars or at least

several hundred thousand dollars. Uh. Then you have Coneman's approach where he said that it leveled off after seventy five dollars. Uh. They said the discrepancy may come down to the nature of those questions. Knomen was focusing on everyday events like how do you feel from one day to the next, Are you happier? Are you are you consistently happy? Do you have your ups and downs? Whereas Stevenson and Wolfers were looking at broader questions about life satisfaction. Do you

have the ability to pursue the things you want to do? Uh? And that ability to pursue things that you want to do is both a blessing and a curse. So researcher Robert Kenney did a study on really wealthy people. He has cut off was twenty million dollars of assets. Yeah, so we're talking about people who have got some cash to burn, and he found that they had greater temporal and spatial freedom, meaning that they had the time and ability to pretty much do whatever they wanted to where

they wanted to. They had the money where they could if they wanted to travel the world for a full year without ever you know, eating at the same place or sleeping at the same place twice. They could totally do that. But with this freedom came so many options that a lot of people would become paralyzed by all

the options. They wouldn't know what to do. They the world was open to them, and with all of that unending possibility came the intense pressure of well, if I do this one thing, then I'm not doing all these other things. So it's the same sort of argument you get when you have uh Like, let's say that you are given a choice between three options or a choice

between ten options. It maybe that the people who are given the choice between three options are happier with their decision even though they had less variability, because they're only missing out on two other things and they can feel reasonably certain that the thing they picked is yes, the best friend. The more options you have, the more you start that doubt starts to creep in, like, well what

if I had picked this other thing. I had a discussion with how Stuff Works editor Scott Benjamin this morning, where we use the specific example of menus, and that the more menu items you have, the more you start to doubt whatever it was you chose. Even if what you ate was delicious to you, you're still going to be doubting it. We ended up settling on the Cheesecake

Factory as being the chief. I was about to say, I sometimes the Cheesecake Factory feels like a circle of hell to me because I just look at the menu and I'm like, I can't I can't even handle that. I brought it up, and Scott immediately said, that's what I was going to say too, because I we're I

think we're all in agreement. And Scott said that he had read or he had talked to us server and was told that if you look at all the items on the menu, and I think that includes everything, there are two d choices I don't even understand, right, which means that anything you pick like even when you're thinking about drink, appetizer, meal, and dessert, there's still a huge

number of things you weren't able to try. Well. Apparently the wealthy suffer this terrible hell that you speak of on a day to day basis because they have the freedom to do whatever they want, and that paralyzes them into not doing anything or to choose something and doubt their choice. So it's a different type of stress that they go under, very different from what those of us who cannot afford this kind of lifestyle. But but that stress is still real and it's still impacts happiness. Oh sure,

of course. So it maybe that there is a quote unquote happy medium where we can have this freedom, an enough freedom to be able to do something interesting without having all the options in the world open to us, sure, and also without potentially burning yourself out on buying stuff. I mean, because there's only so much stuff you can buy. First of all, even if you're wealthy, like eventually, unless you're gonna become a hoarder, you're not going to be

able to continuously buy something whenever you're feeling unhappy. Anyone who has heard of the whole retail therapy thing knows this. You know, you get this, and it's it's something that's easy to indulge in. So it's something that a lot of people turn to. I am guilty of this. Yeah, definitely. I've gone on like, let's just see what games are available on Amazon I have I have or Steam Gosh,

Steam is so boy. I've bought games that I've yet to play on Steam on multiple occasions because I thought, oh, this will be fun, and then really, what the fun part was was the acquiring of the game. I haven't even played the game. So but yeah, wears off and

you can't keep doing it indefinitely. Also, I suspect that some of the discrepancy between these studies might have something to do with that that concept of happiness being a different quality for everyone, of different things making different people happy, and it being basically impossible to compare one person's idea of happy to another person. How can you empirically measure how happy a trip makes you versus a really cool

new Matt lip gloss makes me? I mean, you know, don't discount the lip gloss for me here, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Well, how how happy that lip gloss makes you? Incus me make at my desk? Me too? So say we all that we work with a video studio and four K cameras, terrifying that stuff on, Yeah, I work

with that on a regular basis. But now you're exactly right, you know, without precisely defining what element of happy this you're looking at, that alone makes the question too complicated, right, Because it may be what is your overall satisfaction with your life. For a wealthy person, that might be very high. But there may be other elements that they associate with happiness that they do not possess, and so it again.

It's another reason why a lot of people don't like the term happiness to describe this, because it's it's so broad and encompassing that you could do really well in one area and really be really deficient in another, and thus you come away with it saying I am not happy, but I am this other thing, like I might be very healthy. That should be part of it. So very complicated issue. Uh. Now, the hope is that positive psychology will help us identify more and more of these factors

and come to an understanding. And it may even be this one to one understanding where each person comes to his or her own conclusions about what is important for them as a person to have a satisfying, fulfilling, uh and ultimately happy life. And I hope that that is the case. It is. I actually enrolled in a mook positive psychology, so I am I'm still following it. It had just started, so I didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to read up on it very much yet,

but it is really interesting. The people who teach it are uh, they are very qualified psychologists. Um, so it's not coming across as like welcome to the commune, here's your here's your patch for vegetable sort of thing. But it is really interesting to see how that that plays out. And uh uh, I'm my hope is that in the future we're going to be able to provide for the basic necessities for as many people as possible and give us the opportunity to pursue the things that make us happy.

So it's it's one of those things that I think is pretty far off, and it is an idealistic, optimistic view of the future. It's kind of that Star Trek

version the Federation kind of concept. But also I think it'll get easier to mitigate people's unhappiness once we work out that that science angle of figuring out how the brain is interacting with the body and all of the chemicals and all the electricity, and see what we can do to at the very least in in in the cases of of diagnosable conditions, really help people out in

the in the best gentlest, least side effective ways possible. Right, Yeah, this idea of of when we have distilled the things that really cause distress in people who who should not be feeling right exactly, the people who are are are feeling more cute distressed than they otherwise might, right, and being able to alleviate that. But I absolutely do look forward to that future as well that I think anything where we're talking about helping people that always is the

future that I think that is. That's the one I want to see and it is what keeps me being an optimist even though you know, again I say being an optimist doesn't mean that you put blinders on. Being an optimist to me means that you look out for the challenges, you acknowledge that they exist, and then you figure out how to meet them and get beyond them.

So I encourage everyone out there to really critically think about the things that make you happy, the things that give you satisfaction, the things that provide for you joy, and to really you know, embrace that. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, if if you have any any really great ones are or any very particular ones that that you think are are pretty unique to you, then we want to hear about them and maybe maybe you say nothing in the world makes me happier than racing my pet

box turtle I want to hear it. Yeah, yeah, definitely, Or or if you have any life hacks about that kind of thing, yeah, I mean maybe not relating to box turtles, right right, just happiness in general. Yes, yeah, that that clarification is appreciated. Although if you have any life hacks of box turtle racing out here, that too, definitely. So in order to get in touch with us, since you're coming up with all these great ideas for you, should let us know what you think on Twitter, Facebook,

Google Plus. We have the handle FW thinking over at Twitter and Google Plus. Just search FW thinking over at Facebook. Our page will pop right up. Join the conversation, tell us what makes you happy, and we will be happy to read every single email. I think you have any suggestions for future episodes that would also make us happy. This means we don't have to come up with them. Let us know your thoughts and we will talk to

you again really sooner. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places