Money and Happiness

of money. Right well, I'm second generation, right yeah. And and hard scrabble worked for it. Really wanted that hard scrabble life, the professional scrabble circuit. That's an entirely different podcast episode. It's hard to make a living on that, but but it does exist, and it's fascinating. From what I understand. It's about as lucrative as entering into like the Toddler beauty pageant circuit. Yeah, I think it. It may be as comfortable to that, but but but slightly

less crazy. Slightly. I refer to this idea of this nineties like ideal of the American dream, where you know, you had the perfect lawn, you had just bought a house in a car, and everything was okay because you had those things right and and if you weren't happy, it was achievable if you could only work hard enough to buy these things. It was all about work hard by the things that will give you the life that is happiness. But does it really work like that? Does

money really buy happiness? Well, that's the big question, isn't it. And it's certainly I threw this question out on Facebook yesterday. I did a little blog post, and I found that a lot of people just you know, instantly say no,

of course, that money didn't buy you happiness. Because that's become an increasingly popular, uh, little bit of wisdom to keep around in your head, especially as we live in a world that is so fascinated with the lives of celebrities and the wealthy and so you know, ruled over by by that class of people. It's comforting to remind yourself, Oh, they have all this money, they live this grand life, but they're not really happy, and therefore I can feel

a little better about not having what they have. Ironically, I feel like Oprah actually brought this idea to the masses. Yeah, right, because she does a lot of self you know, introstruction and work with her audience on what is happiness and so on and so forth. So I feel like she seeded this for a lot of people. Yeah, I think so. And but it is such a tricky issue because if you hear, because because we respond both ways to it, right, even some level, you hear a rich person or a

celebrity complain about their life. On one level, you have that voice that says, oh, well, money doesn't buy happiness. There you go. But on the other side, there's a voice that you want to say, oh, shut up, you own an airplane. If you own an airplane, you don't have the right to complain about your life. Like we we kind of we kind of feel it both ways.

But found up in the is a little bit of envy and this idea again that if if you just had access to their money, you would spend it right and you would do it in ways in which you would be happy exactly. I mean, we think that even as we we stare right in the face of studies that say, of you know, the people that that win the lottery um are either either it doesn't improve their lives or makes them less happy. We we always think, but if I want they won the lottery, I'd know

how to spend it. I would use it appropriately and actually improve my life. I would be the exception of the rule. So those are the types of things we're going to explore today. But before we do that, we should probably say that when it comes to happiness and wealth, there is a major impact made when you are below

with the poverty line. That's right. The World Health Organization is called poverty quote the world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering because when you look at poverty, living below the poverty line in this world brings increase risks of violence, infectious disease, chronic disease,

mental health problems, sleep disorders, and chronic stress. And in many cases we're talking about an individual's financial inability to meet their own basic needs or the basic needs of their dependence. Yeah, and we were starting about basic needs. We're talking about biological needs eating, right, Um, these are things that we have to use to survive. So if you can't meet that need, it's terrible, right, of course,

you would be very unhappy. The thing, though, is that once you can meet those basic needs, and once you can rise above that poverty level, it may not be like, oh hey, it's it's smooth sailing from here on out. But the effects of money begin to taper off. And this is actually from a House to Works article that we of on happiness and money, and it says that homeless people in Calcutta, for instance, score a mere two point nine on a seven point scale of happiness, while

multimillionaires in the United States rank around five point eight. However, if you look at the Inuits in Greenland and Masai ranchers in Kenya, they are just as happy as those high society Americans, scoring around a five. So again, here's that those effects of money tapering off. Yeah, it seems to be diminishing returns. It's kind of like, uh, like when you're when you're really hungry and you you dig

into that delicious meal. You know, that first bite is amazing, and then as you begin to fill up, it becomes lesser. I think I've seen sea studies that say that like the seventh bite, after you take the seventh bite of something and then you're just you're just eating. You're not enjoying the food at all. In your you're in you're beginning to get even, you know, even closer to that

level where you're not even hungry anymore. It's just pure recreational eating without any actual value to you as an organism. And if you think about it, to your your brain really can sustain that anyway, because that first bite is really um sort of the bells and whistles of the dopamine in your system saying, oh, a reward. But if every single bite was like that, you would never put your fork down. Yeah. And in this we're getting into, you know, kind of the complex notion of happiness that

we've touched on before. What what is happiness? We're talking in this podcast about about potentially buying happiness, but that in itself is elusive. Is a happiness? That moment that you bite into that meal is happiness? The knowledge that you created a recipe for that meal? Is it? Is happiness? A moment in time? Is it an overarching theme that covers a grand uh length of time? Well? And is happiness forkful after forkful really sustainable even if it's been

bought on a silver spoon? Right? And So in order to really get to this answer, we have to start looking at meaning versus happiness because they're bound up in each other. There's no way to to to talk about one without the other, really right, So happiness we can you know, as elucid as the term is, we can say you can still say things like, ah, well this neal makes me happy. Uh, this gadget makes me happy. My family makes me happy. Uh, this trip makes me happy. Uh,

this pill makes me happy. But can you can you plug in the word meaning in all those cases, this gadget gives my life meaning, this pill gives my life meaning. This uh, my family gives my life meaning. To to what degree to these statements match up with each term? Yeah, And so you have to start looking at this idea of happiness or well being. And for some economists, well being is seen as a rising when benefits outweigh cost.

For the centers for disease control and prevention, they've just find it as requiring good living conditions and positive relationship. For spiritualists, you see that it's a pleasurable state that is the sum of the positive and negative thoughts and feelings that arise when we reflect on our lives. When we reflect on our lives, because that's when the meaning part comes in. Yeah, and I think that goes beyond spiritualists too and gets into areas of philosophy and even

psychology as well. But uh, but yeah, you start thinking it's it's more about those moments in life when you really reflect and ask yourself, what's the point of all of this, what's what's what's the meaning? Why am I here? What am I doing? And and that's where the meaning, that's where the meaning comes into play as opposed to the happiness, unless you're adhering to kind of a hedonistic philosophy, in which case the worm kind of uh turns back

on itself. But if you think about it this way, happiness, as we have discussed before, is ephemeral, it's leading at the moment to moment thing. But meaning gives you context, It gives you a sort of richness of that bite of happiness. I think most people would think that meaning is just nested within happiness, when in fact, it is happiness that is nested within meaning. It's really sort of a byproduct of it. Right, Like for instance, when I when I say name somebody who has led who has

led a meaningful life? Like what are some of the iconic examples exactly Gandhi or you know, or or a mother Teresa type figure. These are the the individuals that come to mind. But you don't necessarily think, oh, Gandhi he was he was a happy guy. I mean, and I don't think of Gandhi is an unhappy guy. But you don't necessarily attach the happiness onto his meaningfulness. You

think more, uh, more about struggle. You think more about about putting yourself second and putting happiness second to a cause and to the you know, the betterment of the world itself. Although you look at someone like the Dalai Lama and you see perhaps he has both. Yes, indeed, here's a man who is a meaningful life uh and does seem to be rather jolly. Yeah, So keep that example in your mind. Us as we go through these sort of scales of wealth to happiness and scales of

wealth to meaningness. And we're gonna do this by taking an example of a study by Shigihiro Oishi, who is from the University of Virginia psychologists and Ed Deaner a University of Illinois psychologists. They conducted a study to better understand how wealth would influence both happiness and meaningfulness. And they examine the reli relationship between a country's wealth and

the well being of its citizens. That we're talking about thousands of people, um and these people completing an annual Gallop survey in one hundred and thirty two countries, And so they would report how happy they were and whether or not that their life had some sort of purpose or meaning. And then they would look at a scale from zero, which would be the worst possible life, to ten,

which is the best possible life. And that's where they got masses of data and takes eased out this idea of happiness and wealth, and so in the scale, we would easily imagine that a ten would be an almost unattainable level of happiness, like no mortal human could contain. That if you reached a ten, you would sprout golden wings and ascend into the cosmos right whereas a zero you your life would be so miserable that how could

you You You would just pop into non existence. There'd be no way you could continue because your life would be such um, such such a pool of suffering. So what did they find? Overall, people from wealthier countries were generally happier than those from poorer countries. Now again, think about the ephemeral effects of happiness moment to moment, and so I want and so forth. And to reach an average life satisfaction score of four out of ten, people needed

to earn about seven hundred dollars a year. For a score of five, they needed to earn three thousand dollars a year, and for a score of six, they needed to earn an average of sixteen thousand dollars per year. For a seven, it's pretty good on the scale, right, they needed to earn an average of sixty four dollars a year. So all right, yes, we see that there's an idea of more happiness in wealthier countries here, but

what about meaningfulness? Well, and not only let you say, not only this the wealthy country, but here we see the actual income level influencing happiness. Because it's easy to say, like, okay, a rich country, obviously they're gonna arguably have have a better support system in place, They're going to have better resources for for everyone. Um, it's going to be safer. You know, you can go down the list of all

the positive benefits there. But but what I like about the cities that also and what is more problematic about the study, especially to the whole money camp by the happiness thing, is that it says that you actually see the lineup of the money that's coming into the life and the happiness enjoyed in that life. Indeed, right, but

it tells a good story of that. So the other story is that they found is that between nine five and of respondents from poverty stricken Sierra Leone, Togo, Kyrgyzstan, Chad and Ethiopia reported leading meaningful lives on that scale. Now only two thirds of the respondents and wealthy countries like Japan, France and Spain believe that their lives had meaning.

So what is happiness without meaning? Here? Well, I think we can we can probably all point to moments in our own life where we can say, well, that was a moment that was happy, but was it meaningful? You know? Um? And maybe more than moments, maybe whole decades of our lives, we can look back and say, well I had a lot of fun, but did it mean anything? Um and uh.

And not to say that that meaning and and fun, not to say that meaning and happiness can't line up, but or that they're mutually exclusive, but but you can well imagine someone setting in a you know, say a fancy penthouse, Uh, you know, kick back, enjoying, say some sort of video game on the latest system, the largest screen, the coolest sound system, and uh, is it a meaningful experience? Though?

Is it something that they can look back, that they can have that that moment of reflection and say, what is my life about? Why? Why do I exist? What's the purpose of everything? And I would argue that it's it's hard to say that enjoying an awesome video game on an awesome couch in front of an awesome television set lines up with that that sort of existential reason to be right. And we've talked about this, that's the problem of consciousness. Why are we here? What are we doing?

So the question then becomes why would people in poverty stricken countries have more meaning or feel that their lives

had more meaning? And Adam Altar, who wrote a New Yorker piece on this, says, perhaps because poverty strips people of happiness and the short term when those terms ding ning ning that we've been talking so much about, Perhaps because of that, it forces them to take the long you to focus on the relationships they have with their children, their gods, and their friends, which become more meaningful over time.

And indeed, you could you could probably argue that they're they're they're forced to depend upon those social structures more.

You know, they're they're less financially self reliant, and therefore it's more of a community situation as opposed to the you know, the lone individual standing in line to get the latest gadget and then taking it home to enjoy in their in their cavernous den, which we'll talk about in a moment, but just in case you're wondering if there are any other studies that maybe are more Western centric will Indeed there are. There's one by psychologist Roy Baumeister,

who we've talked about before in the context of willpower. Yes, all those chocolate cake experiments where you would attempt somebody with a chocolate retreat and see what could effect it would have on your your willpower. Yes, all those interesting experiments where you would you would see to what extent various stimuli would have on your ability to exist the

temptation of delicious chocolate cake. Yeah, as you said before, he's that guy in the street corner with a lab coat and a chocolate cake, Beware Beware of Roy biomaster Um. But he and a team of researchers asked four Americans between the ages of eighteen and seventy eight about whether they felt happy and or meaningful when it comes to

their life. Did they have meaning in their life? And he found that people were happy when their needs and desires were met in the present, but that this immediate fulfillment was largely the relevant to meaningfulness, and that the respondents derived meaning from considering the whole of their lives, including the past, in the future, and happiness was generally a reflection of how they felt in the present alone.

So Yes, the happier people, they were more likely to report that they lead easy lives, that they were in good health, and to feel good much of the time. They could buy whatever they wanted without any financial stream um.

But people who felt that their lives were more meaningful, on the other hand, were likelier to have experience fulfilling social relationships, engaged in acts of charity, taking care of the children, thought about struggles and challenges, challenges including you know, the act of prayer in this as well as other more community centered activities. So yes, you have this big study from Shikhiro Oishi and at dinner, but you also have Balmeister's smaller, us centric one, which is mirroring the

same effects of meaningfulness versus happiness. I like that you mentioned struggle earlier, and it brings us back to this idea of a meaningfulness being tied up with the story of our lives and sort of the story shaped nature of our own self awareness. Uh So at the end of the day, you have to you have to place yourself within a story and think also about the kind of stories we actually engage with. The kind of stories you would pay to see the movie theater or reading

a book. They're generally the stories of struggle. I mean, it's the base of the basic plot line, the rise and fall the Uh you don't want to see a movie about about a man or a woman who had everything uh they ever wanted, right, Um, you want to see the movie about someone who lost everything and then figured out what was important in their life, or someone

who rose from nothing to to achieve something. So these are the archetypes that we have to fit our our own lives in in order to find me At least, I agree, because I think we are so much the storytelling brain. That's how that's how we operate. We have to have that story in order to make sense of our lives and move forward. And I even think about the fictional movie The Matrix, in which the storyline there was that the alien overlords at some point had tinkered

around and made the human lives very easy. They had no challenges and in essence, they had no meaning. So what happened is that all the humans died off because of course they were harnessing their their bodies energy right um in those little pods, and so they had to put into the stories of the humans lives some sort of challenge obstacle in order to get to that idea of why am I here? What? What is the point

of being alive? Indeed, yes, I think that's that's an excellent example of it, just the idea that a life without struggle is not really a life. Struggles are the things that define our existence. To give us that story and ultimly give us meaning. Alright, Uh, on that note, we should probably take a break, and when we get back, we're going to talk about like you've got some change, you burning a hole in your pocket, and you want

to spend it and to try to be happier. Let me talk about the ways in which you might be able to do that. All right, we're back putting a price tag on happiness, all right. So of course Forbes has some some articles on this, right because Forbes is very interested in in economics and um how to pursue

that in in the best way that you can. And one of the articles talks with Elizabeth Dunn, who is a co author of the book Happy Money, The Science of Smarter Spending, and she talks about one of the ways that has the most impact with money and happiness is to purchase experiences, not things. Yes, buying an experience as opposed to a material instead of simply going and even waiting in line to buy that new gadget at

the store. It's about taking a trip to an exciting location, or even even not that exciting a location, but but taking a little adventure, right Or going to a concert, checking out a new musical actor, an old favorite, going

to a play, that sort of thing. And she cites in August two thousand and fourteen study called Waiting for More low anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases, which tracked about a hundred college students in twenty two hundred randomly selected adults to see how they felt about material goods and experiences, and they found that participants were excited about both the thing and the experience, but they were

overall more positive about the experience. Moreover, material purchases were more likely to be tinged with feelings of impatience. So I think you had already mentioned before, like sitting in line for something. Here's a good example. You're in line for the newest gadget. Do you feel collaborative and easy going with your fellow line waiters or do you feel kind of like itchy and competitive? Yeah, I would I

would imagine it tends more towards the competitive side. Now. Certainly, as we were discussing earlier, really savvy companies such as Apple has tried to make it more of a community, right, more but more almost a religion where you're not in line with other consumers with whom you're competing, but rather you're you're gathered with like minded individual wolves who were there to to get another slice of the future, right, Because then you can kind of look at it as

that line for the experience, right, So your in line for for a you know, a theater ticket or a tour, and all of a sudden you're talking with your fellow line waiters about how cool it's going to be. You're right, Apple has completely hacked into that because now we have people in line for the experience of Apple. And did you know that you can ask Serri her favorite color and she will tell you it's this blue green color

that she can't quite articulate. So it's like waiting in line to get into a fish show talking went to your other your fellow fish fans and discussing, you know, the set list at this show that came through last year, that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, at its essence, it's about community and and and it's a highly social

bonding sort of experience. Yeah. And then I think the the imaginative state going into it is key too, because you think about you know, when you're looking forward to a new video game coming out or a new gadget. You know, you're you're reading these articles about it, you're looking at screenshots, you're looking at some footage, but ultimately, you to your point, you just impatiently wanted You're like, I want that thing in my hand. I want to I want it in my video game machine so I

can be playing it. Why am I not playing it already? Why do I have to wait a year? Whereas when you're getting excited about a trip, there may be a little in patience. You might be thinking which might work week or over? So I could, you know, actually let

the fun times begin. But you get to, uh, to involve yourself in the planning of that trip, right and picking out what you're gonna do and daydreaming about the thing you're gonna do, kind of like daydreaming about how you're going to spend that lottery money, except it's actually going to happen. Yeah, And you can involve others in that planning to exactly and their experiences. Oh I went to you know, this beach or that beach, or you know,

to get excited themselves about your upcoming experience. Right, I mean, you're it's you're you're engaging yourself with society on some level, even if you're only traveling with one person and just encountering, you know, people on the way. Uh. A trip is an adventure that's going to forge a new story for you, Whereas you know, a gadget, a video game, Uh, some sort of material possession and new code. Those things are gonna They may carve a story, but it's a much

smaller story. Indeed, and Done also says that a second category isn't this this spending on other people is another way to achieve happiness with money. And when I think about this, I just think about this as being a different version of the experience. Really, but you're you're buying an experience for someone else, or you're creating an experience for someone else, And that's the altruistic act again, a

community social based act here. Yeah, if nothing else, like bare minimum, you're buying yourself that that that moment where you give something to somebody else and you get to see the look their face hopefully and you you'll get to feel good about yourself. And uh and if nothing else to you're you're taking your mind off of yourself

and putting it onto someone else. You know, you're you're sort of breaking free of the default mode network for just a moment and and putting the taking the spotlight off of your own story and putting it on another's, or at least having your story meet there's yeah, and there are scouts of studies that support this this idea that there's a link between happiness and um, your own

ability to provide that gift of happiness to someone. In fact, done in one of her studies, It was a two thousand and eight study gave college students either five dollars or twenty dollars to them by the end of the day. Now half were instructed to buy something for themselves and then the other half were instructed to buy something for someone else. And what do you think, you know, how

did they rate their levels of happiness for that day. Well, it turns out that the altruistic endeavor was the one that generated the most happiness. Yes, And they say that that may be boil down to something called self determination theory, which states that human well being depends upon satisfaction of three basic needs relatedness, competence, and autonomy. So in this circumstance where they were giving away that money or buying

something for someone else, it meant those three conditions. So we're talking about bonding um, free choice, and just having the ability to do it in the first place. And this brings to mind an important point that's brought up in the house Stuff Works article. Can money by happiness by Jennifer Horton, which is a nice examination of some

of these same issues. UH. And this article points out that you do see highly successful UH wealthy individuals who are scoring highly on the on the the Happiness contentment Um meter, but a lot of this generally stems from from the success and enjoyment of one's job rather necessarily than the size of the paycheck. So again it comes more down to UH, to the the experience, and to the into determinalism as opposed to just a fat check

at the end of the week. Indeed, now um in terms of giving away money or buying experiences or even getting a big fat page, one of the things that Done says is that you have to restrict access or make something special. In other words, buying something for someone every single day could diminish your feelings of happiness. Right. It's just sort of again that analogy of forkful of cheesecake.

You know, first it's going to be the best. Yeah, you know, no matter what the fantasy is, no matter what the the dream is, if you have enough of it, it's gonna get old, it's gonna get sick. It's you're going to adapt to that environment and you're going to want a different environment. You're gonna need something greater and greater to to thrill you or at least satisfy you and give you that feeling that you're leaving leading this happy life, which taps into two things. Here will power

and as you said already, fantasy. And if you think about those two terms side by side and you think about watery winners, wow, you have a really great discussion or even study about how happiness plays out. Right, Yeah, Because suddenly you go from zero to five, right, You're you're you suddenly have all of this money to buy the happiness that you've wanted, and you start spending on things, right.

You get that, you get that car that you think you need, You get that the house that you think you need, um, and pretty soon you you just have to keep buying things to maintain that level of newness and happiness. Right. Yeah. And there's this idea that you'll have more choices, Yes you will, but that doesn't necessarily make someone happier. In fact, we've talked about that before.

It's you go depletion, and which you have all of these things in front of you, and you spend so much mental energy on it that you are depleted for making good decision in the future. And again here comes the short term long term thing, because if you are trying to fill that void by buying, buying, buying, your serving constantly the short term. And that's where you see that lottery winners are something like twice as likely to declare bankruptcy than the general population. And it also just

ties back into that old adage. You know, you know, at the end of the day, if you you're still going to be the same person, right, You're just gonna be surrounded by more stuff, or maybe you'll be in a fancy your house, but you still have to look at yourself in the mirror. You still have to ask those questions about meaning, why am I here? I have a really fancy car that I just bought, But how

does that change my story? Yeah? In fact, that gets down to this idea of perhaps all of us are pre loaded with the set point of happiness that can change over time. Right. I guess if you were to do that in a in a way that was really intentional, but if you didn't, there there may be sort of a set point that we all gravitate to. And again,

lottery winners were examined for this. It was in nineteen eight study by a team of psychologists from from Northwestern University in the University of Massachusetts, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and they found that lottery winners were not significantly happier than control group participants, and that patients with spinal cord injuries did not appear

nearly as as unhappy as might be expected. Yes, I mean the spinal injury thing comes into play because on some of you could say, individuals are sustained as a sufficient injury have fewer choices, whereas money seemingly brings more choices. Money money's free speech, right, money is more freedom to do things in the world, And yet it doesn't really

pan out that way when you look at these statistics. Yeah, And to further this idea of set point happiness, psychology, professor Gildrick Schmack found that once couples married, their life satisfaction measures generally changed in the same direction, suggesting that environmental factors like child's birth or a job loss would

affect their well being. But with you again, if you take the long term view of them, he found that their participants happiness level was relatively stable over a course of twenty two years, So again perhaps the influence of this set point. All right, but at this point you're probably wondering, well, what can I do if I have the money to spend and I want happiness, I want meaningfulness, I want all of these things, and I have a little money set aside, how do I spend it? You

would go big. You would look for three things. You would you would look for a time, You would look for giving all truism, and you would look for experience, and you would try to wrap all three of those things up into one thing. Yeah, like an example that comes to mind, and this is not something big on a financial level. But so you're giving a gift to

a child. You don't just give them a thing. As much as they want that thing, would pray and would prob be happy to run off in the next room with that thing, but you give them something that you do together. You give them the experience of building said thing or playing said thing if it's a game, right and uh, and so you're getting there, getting that gift giving rush. You are getting the experience of doing something with the with the child. The socialization as well as

the story of doing it. Um, all these things that wound up into one and you're giving of your own time and so investment. Yeah, and so what this all underscores is that there is some sort of meaning achieved. As you said, there's a story to go along with this. Perhaps it's this is my grandchild and I'm and I'm helping to add to you know, his or her life in this way. And maybe it's even a life lesson that they want to impart. So you know, that's this

hopefully a good one, right. Yeah, there's the Fisher Price Life Lesson series you can get. It's some of them are pretty rough, but but they're important. Well they're all plastic. Yeah, so that's good. Um. Yes, I think it just all boils down to the ability to take stock of your life, find meaning, and also be thankful for the things that you do have because, as we know, just you might get that quick dopamine surge from buying something, but again

that that's ephemerals, that's not gonna last. Yeah. So, I especially as we begin to sadly enter into another holiday season, I would advise everyone when you when you add something to that Animazon wish list, when you buy that gift for someone else, or you know, buy something for yourself. Think, think about it in terms of meaning and story, like what what is the what meaning am I adding to my life for someone else's with this purchase? All right, well, hey,

let's we've got a little time here. Let's call over the robot and read through some listener mail. All right, this one comes to us from I'm gonna say p s K for sure. I don't want to butcher your name, so we'll just go with initials. Um PSK says. Hey, guys, I'm a longtime listener. I love the show. I'm writing to you because I just heard your podcast on the flow state. I'm a practic practitioner and performer of what

are called the flow arts. Basically, it's prop manipulation using poi, hula hoops, contact balls, and a lot of other objects too many of the name here. The reason we are called flow artists is because the main purpose of our art is less entertainment and more about achieving a flow state, a feeling of perfect synchronicity and awareness with our chosen prop, a way of losing ourselves in our flow. For years, I thought this was something new that people were latching onto.

I had no idea there was legitimate research into flow states, or that a flow state could be achieved through other tasks besides prop manipulation. Now that I think of it, though, it makes perfect sense, and now I'll try to achieve flow more in my daily life. Anyways, thanks for the podcast. It was very informative, even for someone who considers himself

well versed in flow. If you or your audience would like to see some of the things that people are doing through flow, I invite you all to search POI that's p o i uh in YouTube or even visit my own groups you tube channel the Way of the Circle. Thanks guys, take care by all right, So that was awesome. I love that we have a flow artist among our listeners. Um. You guys are always amazing us with all these different things that you do. Um. I will try to butcher

PSK's name. Okay, p send kiddo. I think P is the initial Okay, all we had was the email address on this one. Yeah, we apologize in advance anyway. Thank you for running in. Yes indeed, so hey, you want to find out more about happiness, well, head on over to Stuff to Blow your mind dot com because we

will get it to you, um happiness. That is, in fact, I visit the landing page for this podcast episode and will include links out to other podcast episodes that deal with happiness and our quest for happiness, as well as links up to blog post videos. On the page yourself, you'll find links to all of our social media pages. You can go follow those accounts and keep track of what we're up to, and you can also get in

touch with us, share your thoughts with us. Maybe even have an unusual experience that brought you a lot of happiness. It wasn't a trip, it was unexpected. Let us know about that, and you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com