S7E9: Lord Richard Layard: Top 5 Daily Happiness Actions and Mindsets Proven to Dramatically improve your happiness…

Welcome to Success Engineering. Hello everybody. Welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. So today we wrap up our three part series on happiness. So I've been interviewing three of the co-editors of the World Happiness Report. So John Helliwell Lara Aknin and today we have Lord Richard Layard on.

So Lord Richard Layard is along with John Helliwell he's one of the first economist to start studying happiness and its effect on economies, its effect on gdp, its effect on societies as a whole. He started the organization called Action for Happiness, which will talk about this. So we actually lay out the five most important things you could do on a daily basis. Basically five habits.

To be happier on a daily basis, along with five underlying mindsets and principles that you can adopt to actually, you know, scientifically shown to improve your happiness. So we talk about that. He's also very instrumental in the world wellbeing movement. You know, we think of wellbeing on an individual level. He talks about that as well, but he's rolling it out with these incredible people, incredible team. For the world. Right. It's absolutely amazing. So, we'll, we'll get into that too.

And what are some big levers that they're working on addressing in terms of mental health and wellbeing across, you know, multiple different countries that they're doing? So work is absolutely incredible. Again, I know you will get a bunch out of this. I've gotten a ton out of it. It's been. Awesome getting to talk with these people and really learn a bunch about happiness and what really makes us happy. So, and you can connect with any of these programs that he's doing.

Action for Happiness, you can participate in that. The World Wellbeing Movement. Um, what's cool about that is it's working from kind of a top down approach. So how do we actually convince governments that wellbeing is important, and that way you measure it, that it actually produces tangible results, even in terms of gdp. How do we convince, um, businesses that it's important? So really, really cool stuff.

Working from the top, you know, top down in that, working from the bottom up and action for happiness, doing the world, happiness, sports. Amazing. So, so yeah. Today we have Lord Richard Layard on I'm here with Professor Lord Richard Laird. He's a e economist that has worked for most of his life on how to reduce unemployment and inequality. Founder for the Center of Economic Performance at London's School of Economics. He's written multiple books on Happi.

So from Happiness, which is lessons from a New Science to Thrive, which is all about mental health and his latest book, which is Can We Be Happier? Which is fantastic. I'm excited to jump into it. Welcome to the show here, Richard. Happy to have you.

because it tells you, uh, as an individual, how you should be living, how you should, how should you be living? You should be trying to produce the most happiness that you can in the world, which incidentally is a pledge taken by members of action, of happiness, uh, that you mentioned. Mm-hmm. So that's the personal message. What you are trying to do in your life to create happiness in the world, including of course for yourself.

The second thing which follows of course, um, is what should governments be doing? Indeed? Why do we have governments in the first place? Thomas Jefferson said, uh, that, life and the happiness of the people is the only proper purpose of government. And I think actually, if you think, why do we have governments, it's difficult to think of any reason, uh, that we have a government other than to make life better for ourselves as we experience it.

So this is the criterion which was laid down, not just by Benton, but. Most enlightened people 200 years ago believed that the way you defined, uh, a good society, the way you measured progress was by the happiness and, uh, satisfaction, uh, of the people. And I think that's been a, a hugely powerful idea. It's influenced a, a great deal of social progress, but somehow, because you couldn't measure. uh, until recently, uh, it got displaced by one thing that you could measure, which was the gdp.

Mm-hmm. And so we had. In the 20th century, in the present century, this extraordinary worship of G D P, I mean, everybody knows that income is not the only thing that makes you happy. You know each one of us. So we just have to think for a second But what makes us happy? What made us happy yesterday? It's not all to do with earning, earning a living. It's all kinds of things to do, uh, with our health, mental health, physical health.

Health of relatives friends than to do with our relationships with people, uh, in our family. Very important, of course, our friendships. Um, and then of course, at work. Uh, happiness at Work is extraordinarily important and we hope we can come back to that and, and happiness in the community.

And. when you do the studies of what accounts for the huge variation and happiness in any society, you'll find that those factors, health and relationships explain more of the variation, uh, than income does. But income, of course, is, is important. Uh, we, we shouldn't print. It's not especially at the bottom hand, um, but it's. A whole part of this movement that we are talking about to redefine success. I think that's how you, that is exactly. Think of the series to redefine success.

Success consists in, in success for a society consists of having people who are really enjoying their lives and flourishing. Success for an individual comes in, contributing to that. Uh, so of course it involves experiencing it, uh, yourself, but of course it, it, it involves at least as much, uh, contributing to the happiness of others. These are not completely separate.

Because, uh, if they were, it would be very difficult to have people behaving medically if they didn't get some kind of inner payoff from ethical behavior. What people have found now, uh, uh, the thing I particularly like is these, uh, neuroscience experiments.

So they're, were the people up in the lab and they get them to play these games where you can either cheat or you can collaborate and the, and they find that when they collaborate, They get a buzz in that same part of the brain, uh, which is where they get rewards from other good things that they enjoy. So there's an enjoyment to be got from helping other people. And frankly, the prospects for the human race would, uh, have always been pretty poor if people didn't enjoy helping other.

Including strangers, not, not helping people just because that they'll reciprocate, but helping them because that's kind of what you do. That's, that's part of being human. Yeah. So I mean, there's obviously the two aspects of being human aren't there. There's a, the very selfish thing that you, you are the most important person in the world. That's quite difficult for anybody to completely banish that.

A little bit of our inherited nature, but the other bit, Liking to help people, wanting to help people, enjoying other people. And I think a, a philosophy and the value system has to do, it's to support the outward looking altruistic part of human nature against the, the more selfish. Part of human nature. Um, I, I think that the religions have done that for centuries, uh, to an extent. They've also done some bad things, but they've done that.

But they have less and less support, um, in modern populations. So that, that's why we founded this movement action map, is because in the secular society, It's really important that people have some clear philosophy of life. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think that their philosophy of Bentham and others, um, Is that inspiring philosophy that what you are trying to do in your life is to create as much happiness as you can in the world a and as little misery.

That's the pledge that members of our Action for Happiness Movement make. We got about 300,000 now, um, who are also practicing. Uh, through help from the movement in terms of really good online materials, but also, uh, groups where they can, uh, learn better how to practice that way, uh, and where they go on. Then meeting up with fellow spirits, um, on at least a monthly basis to, to be uplifted and inspired with help from the materials of the movement. So we're looking at that movement.

For, uh, thousands and thousands of groups to emerge of like-minded people who want to improve the world In that way, it's not so easy, better to get together with like-minded people, uh, occasionally to be inspired to regain your sense of perspective. Kind of like when you go into a church, you, you, you regain the sense perspective. Now you need to have other structure. Help you to do that. Uh, and I think that's, uh, one thing which action of happiness hopefully, uh, is offering people Yeah.

Talk

So the, the, the 10 keys of happiness is the, the intellectual framework, which is based on positive psychology. And

And then the other five are the general underlying mindset that you need to have all the time. So it's a direction, a resilience, uh, positive, uh, um, acceptance. Acceptance particularly of yourself. But also of course, of other people, um, and meaning. So those, are the principles. What I will tell you, uh, is that we take this as a framework for these monthly meetings. So we have a kind of. like churches have a sort of liturgy, an annual cycle of thoughts and experiences. Mm-hmm.

Um, so we take these 10 keys plus January and December for more general as a sort of framework. Um, but I think you asked what, what were we doing specifically? So before Covid we had these, these group, uh, courses and then from them emerged. Ongoing groups, uh, and the courses, uh, we evaluated in a pro with a proper randomized, uh, wait list control.

Uh, and we found something which amazed even me, that the, in the increase in the person's own happiness, uh, two months after taking the course, As compared with the control group was as big as the increase in happiness, which somebody has when they move from unemployment into work or, or when they find, uh, a partner that they want to share their life with. So, wow, these are big, big, high impact experiences. Uh, I'll tell you something else, which. Please me a lot about this study.

We found that the people joining these groups were not just middle class because of the way we, we, we managed to advertise them both locally and of course on the web. We were getting a complete spread of people and it it spread of people in terms of income, but we are also getting a spread of people. In terms of happiness. In fact, we got rather more people who are, uh, at the bottom end unhappy and rather more people at the top end who were really, really, uh, quite thriving. Interesting.

And, but what you see happens in those groups is that these groups, these people share on the basis of complete equality That really never happens. An ordinary society. It happens to a degree in church. You all kneel down, but it doesn't happen in ordinary society that people with such different, uh, positions on a spectrum, albeit income, albeit happiness, are all there on exactly the same basis, um, sharing. So, it seems to be a quite a powerful thing, uh, this philosophy.

Um, shared in this way through, you know, well designed materials, um, in including, you know, they conclude video talks, all kinds of things. It improved not only the people's own happiness, but of course we want a happy world. People's compassion for other people, um, and of course their mental health. Uh, so that was what we found. This is before covid. Now, because of Covid, we've had to go online.

So these groups and these courses are currently online, um, rather than face-to-face and there are, there are some advantages obviously, in terms of mm-hmm. travel and so on, and doing it online. So it's, it's somewhat online, but my own. Is that we'll get back to, to face-to-face because I think there's nothing more powerful, um, in relating to somebody, uh, face-to-face. I mean, some people can, you, you can relate to on the screen, like I can relate to you on the screen.

that guy but not everybody is right. So, I'm looking forward to that. Have

So like to, to look at, you know, hedonic adaptation where you have that initial spike and then after a little while, do you still see the maintain, um, the maintain and the happiness? I'm curious if you've done the reaches. No,

Um, can you talk about where can people start to learn how to accept themselves, um, and even move towards like loving themselves and actually, you know, enjoy being in their own skin?

I think a lot of people, uh, Uh, put yourself critical. Um, and, and of course we know why this is an, an in evolutionary sense that people are more anxious than they need be. Uh, because in the Savannah, if you are not anxious, you probably get eaten by the But, but, but actually our fellow beings are, are much more charitable than lions. Mm-hmm. We could come onto that. That's an important point.

Yeah. Most people underestimate the goodness of other people and their generosity, um, because that's kind of built in. But self-criticism, um, is, is allied to that form of anxiety. The trick, uh, that the speaker that I'm mentioning, um, was advocating. is, suppose you're blaming yourself for something you did. Imagine yourself being a friend of yours mm-hmm. and, and hearing you saying. you know, I feel about terrible about that and think, what would that friend say?

And of course that friend would be saying, no. I mean, everybody makes mistakes. It's not that bad. Uh, time will heal it quickly. Just forget about it. And, and you actually are a pretty. Person, think about the, your strengths rather than your weaknesses. This is a, thing which Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, has always stressed. Um, focus on your strengths rather than weaknesses. Don't spend your time trying to eradicate your weaknesses, build on your strengths.

Uh, I think that's a, a very good thing. So something which I've found very helpful, which is, which I'm completely different from this, um, is the diary o of, uh, a remarkable woman called Eddie Hillen. She was a Jewish lady living in Amsterdam, uh, under the Nazis. Um, and, and she was determined not to fear, but to live. Enjoy life as long as, as you had it. and the way she did this was that on a daily basis, she. Communed with what she called the deepest and best in herself.

We've, all of us got all kinds of preoc preoccupations stresses in internal, external, but there's a sort of core of us that we need to be in touch with at regular intervals. And we need to believe in, uh, that inner core, the sort of best part of us and to commune with it. And so I try and do that on a daily basis. I suppose that's my more serious answer to your question. Um, how to accept yourself and, you know, it can almost be a physical experience. Communion with the best part of yourself.

I also quite like the way of thinking about the future of the world, um, depending on, uh, each of us communing. With the best part of everybody else, connect with the best part of everybody else, which of course will then bring up, bring out the best in other people if that's what we are trying to connect with, rather than what I'm afraid many economists, uh, tend to do, which is to appeal to what you might think as, as, as the lower people's lower motives.

I think people, I fear agree, like, like you to appeal to their higher motives, uh, and, and to respond because. The appeal to the higher motives, uh, as I think that, uh, I sometimes go to a Quaker meeting. I'm not, I'm not a member. And George Fox said, go cheerfully about the world. Um, Responding to that of God in everyone. Mm-hmm. And that's the same sort of idea that you're looking to find the best in everybody.

And I think that's a, a real lesson for, uh, entrepreneurs as much as for people in in friendship or in public life. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of times it's easy. Then you expand that out to strangers, like people that. You just meet on the side of the road and you just go like, Hey, I want, I actually wish that you would be happy. I wish that you'd be at peace.

Um, the minute we say like, Then, then it justifies the actions that we do to make that person less than in whatever area. And that goes into all the work that you've dedicated your life to, whether it's on unemployment and inequality and, and all of that. But, um, I wanted to get back to the point that, that you brought up about that myth that we can't trust people as well as the reality actually shows. Can you talk about the, some of what it's been done with wallets

where, which go from sort of 70%, um, in, Scandinavian countries to about 7%. In some other parts of the world, Can you believe these answers to a question like that. So fortunately it started with the Reader's Digest. People have been doing these experiments and dropping wallets in the street, you know, with money and them, but with an address there and seeing as they get returned. Uh, and I think in Oslo and Copenhagen, every wallet was returned. And much smaller fractions.

Uh, I think down to about like 40% in the US I think. Then the question is, what do people, other people who didn't see these wallets, what fraction do they think will be returned? Mm-hmm. and in almost every country, the fraction the number of wallets returned was about double what people thought would happen. Um, and I think that's very interesting.

I, here's another extraordinary fact that came outta this study that, um, they tried putting different amounts of money in the wallets, and the wallets that got most returned were the ones that had the most money on them. Mm. Um, which is not what standard economics wouldn't predict, but it, it, it's to do with fellow feeling.

You know, you can feel the pain of the other person if they lost a wallet with a lot of valuables int it, and you, you are going to take more trouble to, to get it back to them. So, yeah, there's, there's lots of evidence of this thought. In general.

many people, uh, certainly in my generation read the novel called The Lord of the Flies, about how, in this case, uh, young children, youngest children, um, sort of devoid of a police force and other sources of, um, pressure to conform how, how they will tear into each other. Completely untrue. There's a wonderful book by, by somebody called Waka Bregman called Humankind Rather Beautiful titles. It's kinda two separate words, but also one separate, one word. Oh, gotcha. Humankind.

So he, he rec records the story, a true story of what happened when a group of, I'm not sure what nation they came from. Anyway, a group of boys did get marooned on an island. Mm-hmm. and they behaved exactly, uh, the opposite of what the Lord of the FL said. They, they really pulled together, and of course, that's what happened in, in challenging situations. people don't go around looting or whatever. They didn't in the Blitz in England, they're not doing it in Ukraine.

they pull together when a challenging situation. So human age has got a lot of good in it.

It's been a challenge, but the effects have not all been bad. People started talking to their neighbor. Yeah, it

So it's a similar kind of question around, you know, when you have this crisis, you know, people rally together around the crisis and you might see that initially, but it's a difference between like acute pain and chronic pain when you're in chronic pain and then we, you know, Recessions and you know, what the world's going through right now.

Um, I'm curious, just on the mental health aspect, have you started to see how that's affecting, you know, people kind of the sustained nature of these crises?

And of course, children being kept away from school with also a big problem and, and pressure on on many families, um, having to spend all their time together. Um, Really, really challenging. So yeah, that's been a, very big problem. The plus side is that the, um, it's led people to stop neglecting so much, this incredibly important factor. So in our work, trying to explain the variation of happiness across people or the incidents of mis. Across people.

As I mentioned earlier, the single biggest factor is simply the, the answer to a very simple question. Have you ever been diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorders? Just that one question explains so much more than income or, uh, any other factor. And, uh, it is extraordinary that, uh, our healthcare systems worldwide. Um, pay so little attention, particularly to those common mental disorders for which there are really good psychological treatments, if people are getting treated at all.

And, and that's the first distinction, obviously, that if you have the physical problem or you break your leg or whatnot, you automatically treated. But if you break your heart, you don't get treated, uh, something like. 40% is the highest fraction in any country, a fraction of mentally ill people who are in treatment, um, which is deeply shocking.

So, we persuaded the British government to put on a big program to, um, make evident based psychological therapy available to, uh, anybody suffering from an anxiety disorder like PTs, D O C D. Phobias, panics all those things or, or depression. We managed to train up a really good workforce rollout services measure the outcomes. And I think it is very important if we want to get mental health treatments widely spread, that we measure the outcomes and we show we're getting something.

In return for the money spent, um, measured the outcomes. Uh, we had within an average of not more than, uh, eight sessions average, um, a recovery rate of 55% and an improvement rate of 75%, um, which is, which is what you would expect given, given the trial. So it's worthwhile. Uh, paying attention to systematically rolling out a service with, uh, high standards and, properly, trained workforce. Our system has been called Improving Access Psychological Therapy.

It's now being copied in about seven to eight countries around the world. Mm. And, if anybody has got their time or energy or influence, listening to this program to do something about this. I'm not, I'm not a, a psychologist at all, but I, I, um, have been involved in, in trying to. And successfully making this happen when we're treating now, uh, nearly three quarters of million people, uh, a year. having started about 15 years ago.

So this is something that can be done, I think is really important. If our objective is to have a more successful society in the terms of really defin.

You know, rollout on a massive kind of scale. So you did it in the uk, you're doing it in these other different countries like, and this, you know why you can get into what you're doing too if this, this is better on the world's wellbeing movement, but what does that look like in terms of on a governmental level, how do you start implementing that change? How do you do it on a company wide level? Like how do you top down, implement these big societal.

Um, in an insurance based system, the training and the provision are more separate. Um, but on the provision side, it's crucial, of course. Uh, It's not stingy when it comes to the number of sessions that an insurer will fund. I believe in many countries, you know, it's six sessions. And, and then you, you know, there had to be a complete fundamental reappraisal. Can you have any anymore? I mean, it's extraordinary. It's like saying, you know, um, okay, you, your knee's in trouble.

Um, you can have the first half of the operation and then we build review et worth doing the other half. I mean, it's. It's deeply shocking. And of course, the, the costs involved in these mental health treatments are tiny. Um, I mean, we pointed out, the cost of these treatments, is, part. Got back by savings on physical healthcare. So something like a third of people with mental health problems also have a physical health problem. Mm-hmm.

it's been shown that those people, if you treat the mental health problem, um, their reduction in physical, physical healthcare for their physical problem will be enough to pay for the, uh, psychological. Treatment. Mm-hmm. So that's an A no-brainer, isn't it? Just within the healthcare system with or within the insurance system. Mm-hmm.

at the level of a government, if it's a national health service, there's also all those savings on, um, disability benefits and, uh, lost taxes and so on, which also, Uh, provides savings, at least as great as the original cost of their psychological therapy, which is partly how we got this, uh, service established in, in the first place.

So in the country, with insurance system, you've gotta have sensible, sensible attitudes by the insurance providers, but you've also got to have a parallel, um, drive to, to train the. Mm, so so it's a more difficult Yeah. Operation to concert, but it's very, very important that it's concerted, of course.

So this movement, the World Wellbeing Movement is a top-down movement. A partnership of 12 or more of the world's leading companies, um, are funding it. Um, and it, it, its aim is twofold. One. Get, business leaders to take the wellbeing of the workforce in particular, uh, a lot more seriously and use evidence-based ways of improving the atmosphere at work. But, and two, uh, to persuade governments that the aim of their government should be the wellbeing of the people.

But let, let's just focus on, on work at the moment because. I mean, almost the most extraordinary finding, uh, from all of wellbeing research is based on these diaries studies You asked somebody to reconstruct yesterday, and you write down now by, uh, what they were doing, um, who they were with and how they. felt Scoring and their, their happiness and the time of day when people, this is true in both America and Britain, when people are least happy is when they were their boss.

I mean, this is something. So deeply shocking to me. The person who should be inspiring you, recognizing your efforts and so on, appreciating you, um, is putting you down. Uh, this is is absolutely not the way to improve the bottom line and suddenly not the way it's produced, uh, be society, which is one way, reason why. The relationships at work are figuring so high in people's overall evaluation mm-hmm. Of, of their own happiness. So, so what could be done about this?

Well, I think first this is what the World Wellbeing movement wants first. That, that every company measures the wellbeing of people because you. You tend not to take things, uh, seriously, uh, enough if you don't measure them. Uh, assuming they can be measured, which this can be readily done.

And the, uh, world Movement is aiming to establish a sort of canonical, uh, set of five questions, which all companies will ask so that any company can see how it's doing compared with other companies, and act, act accordingly. Now, how would it act then if it wanted to improve the wellbeing of this workforce? I think there are a number of, of areas. I mean, first there's, there's the empowerment of workers.

We know that if workers feel they can have some influence over their work situation, that they are much happier than if it's just dictated from above. And they've been really good experiments like the, uh, so-called STAR experiment, which was led from M I t. Um, The, uh, system of taking decisions about how the work is allocated, um, within a team. it's done with much more, uh, participation by the team members, um, than had been there before. And it's been evaluated.

It reduces quits by a third and so on. It's just such an obvious way to improve the, uh, wellbeing of people in a team. Obviously, you want the team leaving a leader to be appointed on basis of ability to lead. That's not. Uh, but common, there's been a survey which showed that, uh, that psychometrically, the typical, uh, leader of the team was not somebody who had the equalities for leading the team, uh, as much as many other members of the team.

This is a, big issue, but then there's the issue of avoiding dysfunctional things. So a lot of pay is very dysfunctional at the moment. Mm-hmm. Um, if people are working individually, of course performance related pay, where you can measure the individual's output, uh, it is totally reasonable and natural. But if they're working in a team where you can't measure the contribution of one person compared with another.

it's very dysfunctional to try to import some kind of ranking because, uh, it has the effect of hurting more people than it, than it motivates and rewards. And it's, um, also been shown not to be, Uh, conducive to improved productivity. So to get away from fourth ranking I think is incredibly important. Then of course, there's the whole attitude to mental health. Uh, we must have team leaders who are comfortable saying to somebody, uh, are you okay?

And if they say, well, um, I dunno really, uh, to be able to have that conversation, to know that there are ways in which people can be helped. Encourage them to get the help, if they have to take time off to enable 'em to do it, if they need to re return afterwards gradually to facilitate that. The whole mental health consciousness is very important and. I'm really encouraged that many organizations are much more mental health consciousness.

I mean, it may surprise you that, for example, a really, uh, um, Pioneering organization in this field, uh, has been the Bank of England Oh, wow. You wouldn't think that is surprising. I couldn't, I couldn't cover couple of talks there. They've got a very flourishing mental health. Network and everybody is absolutely clear that this is, it's not stigmatizing. This is something you've gotta be able to talk about. It happens to most people. At some point.

Let's support people understand it, know that it's not the end of their life. If they go through it, they'll come back the other end and, uh, can be even better, uh, after that. So, A sensible approach to, to mental health is also obviously something which is the feature of any good workplace. Wow, that's, yeah, that's tremendous.

So, uh, I think you could perhaps start with messaging coming from the international organizations, uh, like the European Union and the O C D in. Asking their members to put people's wellbeing at the center of their policy design. Mm-hmm. that, that's a big step forward. Uh, there are five countries that belong to the so-called wellbeing economy, government Alliance, uh, which is New Zealand.

Uh, they made a splash, and of course they've got another charismatic Prime Minister by having a so-called wellbeing budget. Iceland, and uh, fin. Uh, actually all three are women prime ministers, which is interesting, and so does Scotland, which is also also a member of this alliance. Um, and Wales is the fifth, but, this is step by step process.

So it's a huge step forward with what they've done, but they've not got got to the point, which I want governments to eventually, and it'll take years for this to happen where. Instead of when you do the cost benefit analysis on the policy, you ask, how does this policy contribute to, to G D P? You're asking how does this policy contribute to the wellbeing of the people?

So to, to back that up, you know, you've got to have the wellbeing, science and the methodology which people like ourselves are trying to, uh, develop to the point that it can be, can be used. um, reliably by finance ministries and treasuries, um, to say how much should go on different things. Um, I mean, obviously you, you can't allocate, um, resources without some kind of an overarching idea of what you're trying to achieve.

And I think it, it is pretty barbarous that, the metric at the moment is, is GDP and growth. Mm-hmm. uh, whereas it should be people's wellbeing. Yeah.

The relationships, you know, and then action for ha, happiness, like you're talking about from the ground up. But can you talk Al also about, um, as we kind of wrap up here, can you talk about your book, um, can we be happier and one where people can go to get it, but then also, you know, what, what they'd get out of it. I can show it.

That's action for happiness and the kind of things we've talked about, but then we go through teachers, school teachers, we've talked a bit about that. Uh, managers, we talked a bit about that. Health professionals, we talked a bit about that. Families, we haven't talked much about. Family conflict, which is one of the major sources of misery, of course, or lack of a partner.

The, the both of these are, are major sources of misery, but I am very keen that family conflict and domestic violence, which people do talk about now, shouldn't be thought of as criminal justice issues. These are health issues, mental health issues, and there are actually. Good treatment. A fine volume of of treatments for family conflict. These should be available through. The healthcare system.

Um, I think when this happened over the next 25 years, it will make a big difference to our society. Um, and domestic violence of course. Likewise, um, I mean other very untreated areas incidentally, uh, is addiction, which is, is quite shocking and a lot of drying out clinic. Then the psychological backup to deal with the underlying problem that got the person into the condition in the first place is, is deplorably rare. So, but then we, then we go into onto communities.

um, community safety, people feeling safe in their communities, feeling they belong in their communities. They know people, um, uh, have rewarding experiences, but cities are laid out in ways that make people feel they belong. All that's very important. Then I go on to my my own professional economist. Politicians and then scientists.

Cause I, I do think that any anybody who takes the Bentham philosophy seriously, uh, and is embarking on a, a research career, for example, I mean, they would naturally think, I don't say everybody should, I mean, they should also of course, follow their curiosity. But I think a natural thing to say is, you know, which, which, what area? Um, that I work on could make most difference to human wellbeing. And so I say of course, number one, climate change. Mm-hmm.

um, cheap, cheap, clean energy, uh, should be attracting the, the best minds in a society. Mm-hmm. uh, and then I say pain relief of. Of course, pain relief, massive issue, uh, physical pain and mental pain. So many, uh, of these issues are, are really, so deeply un understudied. Mm-hmm. it's a matter of a general way of thinking about everyth. That, I'm advocating, isn't it, it's not just a little bit, it's a total way in which you think about.

Where would you like them to go to? Well,

Um, but also, also look out for public debate about wellbeing as a proper, um, goal for for business, for its workers, because that will be good for them and for the bottom line. And also for, for governments, and I'm looking to see a, a big change in the, the nature of the public debate about the world. We want, um, a challenge, uh, A worldwide challenge to the growth fixation. I'm not against growth. Growth will happen. You can't stop growth.

Uh, I mean, it is extraordinary that nobody thought of putting wheels onto a, um, a piece of luggage until recently. That's economic growth. It'll go on forever. Um, but the obsession, um, with growth r rather than the meeting of human need, uh, I think is something that really needs challenging. Mm-hmm. and, uh, let's hope all of you can contribute to this great debate and make wellbeing the centerpiece of that debate. Mm.