Hello everybody, and welcome to the best ever you show here in YouTube format and over on our podcast if you're listening or watching. We're so glad that you're here with us. I'm Elizabeth Hamilton Garrino, and with me is my guest Alfonsis. Obey you wanna? I got it right, Obey you wanna? Did I say it right? Yes? Definitely? Yay? All right, there's happiness right there now. Alfonsis is the and I could really be
doctor. He is the author of this book, the Happiness Formula, and I'm going to put that in there a little bit closer because hope over hunger equals happiness. And we're going to talk all about happiness and your book. And thank you for being here, Thank you for having me please. Yeah. So you've done a lot in your life. I don't have you completely memorized, but you've been you know, been a doctor and taught, so
probably would thousands be safe to say? Oh definitely. Can you tell us us a little bit more about yourself and what your website is, so it's from you, all right. My website is www dot Triple Hproject dot com and I'm a physician, scientist. I have taught in many medical schools, teaching medical students and residents that miss younger doctors that are trained to be to specialize. And I have been doing research on human hope since I was a
medical student. And the instrument that I developed even as a medical student for measuring hope was adopted by Coca Cola, General, Mottos, Veteran Administration, and many other institutions. I got it as a project that was funded by the NIH and the National of Medical Fellowship And since then I have been doing
research on hope. And then when happiness became a big deal after Martin Seligman became the president of the American Psychological Association, that's when I started to find out why the psychologist has zero in in more hope onhappiness rather than hope, because hope is what is missing when people attempt suicide. So I would think that hope is more important than happiness. So I was trying to find out we're talking about the same thing. Can you have one without the order?
And that is what led me to the research and that brought about the happiness formula that we are talking about today. Let me go back to you in med school and ask you why happiness? Why the topic of happiness? What sparked that moment for you to go down this path? Okay, In medical school you rotate through different sections after your pre clinical years. You go through
pediatrics, you go through surgery, you go through psychiatry. When I was rotating through psychiatry, that's how I met to patients who we admitted for attempted suicide, and that's how it became very interested in the study of human hope. Hope was my study. I was not studying happiness until the movement of positive psychology came on with Martin Seligman, and that is when I started to ask why happiness, Why not hope, since hope is what is absent when
people attempt suicide. And that is how I found the relationship between hope and happiness that led to the formula. You know, if I can personally just tell you a little bit of a story here about hope. My father is a topic of my first book, Percolate, Let Your Best Self Filter Through, which was a hay House book, and it talked all about him having a stroke at age sixty back into two thousand and four and surviving and surviving
things that people just don't generally survive. They called the ICU crew, called him an ICU warrior. They put him in a comb and all the things that go with multiple strokes and brain bleeds and things like that, and he survived from two thousand and four to twenty eighteen and phenomenal, no memory loss, no anything. Just had field cuts and a little bit of mobility issues as a result and things like that, but nothing to you know, nothing
to correspond to the level of stroke injury that had happened to him. But anyway, my father taught me so much about hope in those moments and that whole entire time of him being ill. Hope, I think is what hope and faith carried him through. Absolutely. It wasn't necessarily about happiness, because every day certainly wasn't happy, But he had a lot of hope and he would cling to hope. All humans do. We are all hoping. Remember
now that we are all obsessed about the future. Okay, we are all obsessed about the future, sure, and hope is the only antidude for any anxiety about the future. There's nothing else you can do, no matter how much money you have, how much opportunity you have. Today nobody knows about
tomorrow, and is what gives you informed the courage to live on? Yeah, did you have any personal experiences other than that moment in school with your own struggles or confidence for them that matter, with hope and happiness and things like that. Have you ever had a moment where you're like, oh, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. I'm going to cling
to hope or whatever. Have you had? Have you have personal things that you would share if you don't want and you can just take a definitely much after that. As a medical student, a young medical student, you know, I thought, you know, life was easy. I've always passed all my exams. I'm in medical school. In fact, I was enrolled in two degrees. I was studying biochemistry, getting a PhD in biochemistry and an MD for medicine. And so when I saw people that attempted suicide and they
just thought that today it's just like yesterday. Tomorrow is not going to be any different, was the use. I was very very well became very well connected with the idea of hope, so that if we can't detect a decrease in hope Ellie enough, we can't prevent suicide. That was the whole idea about studying hope, and I made it scale for measuring hope. But later on in life, of course, I have many instances well, I hope. It has been very very good for me to keep it's grounding almost like
gratitude and so forth. I've nearly well, I have lost my life to and come back from life threatening food allergic reactions. I have terrible life threatening food allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish, and have a medical a lort On and a whole bit. And it's boy, I don't think I knew hope and faith and gratitude and all those things until my father got really sick. I felt like I was a victim for the longest time.
And there's there's so many worse things that can happen to you and so forth, food allergies, you know, but for me it was it was crushing and so and I just I know that feeling of clinging to hope and things that are like almost like a higher vibrational energy than the low to guide you through those moments and so forth. Like I'm thinking about, like lives you must have saved over the years, with all the things that you've done, you just must be like this have saved lives, the the pleasure has
been mine. And but as you know now, countries are now trying a proposed by the United Nations to use the happiness of its citizens as the barrel metter for measuring how well the country is doing, because how happy, how happy the citizens are is the true test of how the country is doing most than GDP. You probably I could. I can see that if you're walking around. So who's the happiest? So that's what we that's what countries are
trying to use now. So this happiness formula comes at a time where we really need to measure happiness. People talk about happiness, but there's no way a good way of measuring it until this formula. Yeah, so tell us about Oh sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you at all. That's just that's just me. Do you who's the Do you know who the happiest country is or city? Like? Is there is it happening? Like where we truly are measuring these things and there's results. There is what they call the
Happiness World Happiness Report that comes out every year. It just came out the newest one just came out March twenty eight, just weeks ago. Yeah, but the way they I use, the method they are using for measuring happiness is very highly flawed, and that is why I am challenging them, telling them to use a better method, such as is in this book. They are just asking people basically how satisfied you feel with your life from zero to
ten? And people, you know, we say seven, eight, nineteen five three, And I'm saying that is very too simplistic and very poorly informative and hugely hugely rudymetry as a way of measuring happiness. Because the person who is happy is the only one who knows how happy he or she is. And when you just ask people how are you doing, which we ask people every day, they say, oh, I'm doing fine. How are you doing? Oh? Everything is fine. People don't even think about it,
they just answer it. But happiness has courses. There are things that provoke happiness. How do those things come about? And that is what this book is all about. If you know your score of hope and your score of hunger hunger meaning compelling desire. If your hope is higher than your hunger, you are happy. If your hunger is higher than your hope, you will be unhappy. Most people are in the middle with moderate hope and moderate hunger.
But those people with very high hope and low hunger those are ones we call flourishing individuals. And those with very overwhelming hunger but low hope those are the languishing individuals and in between and most people. So knowing where you are in the spectrum is very important. Yeah, how do we know how? And this can be quantified by in the book, there is a hope scale
and the hunger scale on you. Once you know your hope scale, are you divide your hope scale by your home guy scale, what you get is your personal happiness index, which is called pH I. For the first time, we can now quantify happiness and you know where you are. So you would really have to sit people down and ask them these questions and really spend ten minutes with them or so or maybe more to maybe not that much, but to actually to actually come up with the score the result and then yeah,
minutes, but more than one question are you happy exactly? Because you can't get that much information just just from one half the people lie anyway, Oh yeah, I'm great. Thanks and also sometimes people boast oh yeah in the West, now in the East. In Asia, people are trained to be modest when they are assessing themselves, so they in Asia and in the Eastern cultures people are likely to say five or six from zero to ten,
but in the West they might say eight, nine or ten. Also, there are people who see that as a political as a patriotic issue, and when you say how satisfied are you are in the country you are in, can say nine or ten as a patriotic issue. Some people would see it as a political statement, as a time to say how bad the government is doing and say a three or four. Okay. So there are so many things that are there that gives a destructed picture. Finland for the past six
years has been declared the happiest country in the world. But because they are using the wrong method. I don't think Pheinland is number one. The Finnish people they have the highest they are the highest users of anti despressants in Europe. Wow. The air suicide rate in Phinland is higher than the suicide rate of Afghanistan, which is supposedly the unhappiest country in the world see and so
is definitely wrong. Y Yeah, so what about Okay, so we know the formula, that's it's right on the on the book, and then the questions are in the book to follow through, so you can do this yourself at five minutes. Yeah, but what about if yeah, it's not complicated all I just looked at it again. What if there's outside factors at play here? Like if you're asking me how hopeful happiness and happy I am and so forth during COVID, you know what if there's an outside force happening,
I are you likely to see different answers in those moments? Yeah? You know, it took me ten years to get out to get to these. So all the factors are in in this equation. Your hopes, your assets, your hungers, and your aspirations are plugged into the into the equation to find your personal happiness index. So everybody had different issues, different hungers, different hopes, different assets, these set different aspirations. Yours is plugged in
into the equation and we get your happiness index. It's not just asking you how hopeful are you? In fact, the world happiness doesn't even appear in the two. Does this change throughout our lifetime? For example, if you I'm fifty five now if you ask me these questions and so forth, now my answer might be different than when i'm you know, twenty. Yeah, it depends on your life. What is going on around you and inside you. That's what determined if those things change. If they change, of course,
your skore will also go to change. Your skoll is not going to change. If you find your remote control, you lose your cocky. When something in life relevant a chorus happens, Yeah, a life changing event,
yes, that will affect what a person that happiness index. What about if I know I'm asking different snares and things like that, and you'll probably come back to what you're saying, but I'm going to ask anyway, what if I'm feeling like I've got that kind of feeling like something's off or I need to change something or I need to do something, but I don't know quite what it is, you know that kind of feeling? Can this help sort through that? If I'm feeling less, you know, less hopeful and so
forth? Will show it on that if I've got that feeling going on, if I'm like, okay, I need to now I've been married twenty five years, so but I'm going to use this as an example of I said, Okay, I need to get divorced, or I need to move, or I need to do this or that. Will those types of things show up in this as hunger? Definitely? Definitely because what I'm not getting divorced, don't worry everybody. Yeah, you know, in this we don't even
ask about marriage, that you married, how much do you make? How many children you have? We don't even ask that. Really, okay, something the question that I ask as something as applicable to everybody. This scale can be used to assess a millionaire who lives in London or a fisherman who lives in a village in Kenya. This same scale can be used. Now you've heard about miss rebel millionaires and happy peasants. Okay, so money is not Money is important in happiness, but it's just not the only thing,
right, Yeah, No, I love this. It's so where are we going to see you next? Or we're going to see you in the political realm? Where are we going to see you next? To get this implemented worldwide? Well, uh, I'm not into into politics, but yeah, what I do now, I'm the CEO of Happiness Project USA. We train and certify happiness coaches. Just like you were saying a while ago. Somebody who wants a direction alive and it doesn't know how things are going, you
can go to a happiness coach. Happiness coach will measure, will give you the questionnaire, and you will know your personal happiness index, and so you know where you are and where you want to go, and the happiness coach can walk with you to increase your overall subjective well being. I love that. Now you have three granddaughters, right, I'm reading this right to you have two sons and then three granddaughters. Just do you ask kids things like
this? Or do they get the one question are you happy? Or do they get no questions at all? These these hope This happiness formula is for adults. Okay, exactly, yeah, okay, yeah, there are ways, There are ways of measuring the happiness of children. Children. Yeah, they are now ians. These just they are just about now allens, did you say now? Now? Yeah? When you when you when you answer the questions, they have food and comfort you answer the questions, and they
have somebody they trust that would be there in terms of emergency. So the five human hungers. If you satisfied for the children, they are happy the five human hungers. But the five human hungers being met is not enough for adults, because adults are always talking about tomorrow, and that's how hope comes in. Yeah, we get anxious, don't we. You know, I think this would be such a cool book or a second book for teenagers preteen
like twelve to eighteen, because there is such an alarm rate. I'm just gonna call I don't know what. I don't know what the scientific term is for it or any but anxiety, depression, suicide rates, unhappiness, and so forth. And this might be just a lovely thing to have in a doctor's office. I have that. I have many people who bought five. Yeah, just not just for them, go to give to a nephew and
nieces. Yeah, seen eight year old, especially those one just graduating from high school and getting into college, to have the right mindset about important things in life and to do the right thing. Yeah, it's a good I'm just thinking, just as a mother of four sons too, this is a lovely parenting tool to sit down and you know, maybe once a year you say, you know, how are you doing? And you know, here's here's something especially for scientific brains. I have for scientists, three scientists and
one leadership guru. And they love this kind of stuff where it makes sense and it's logical and it's quantifiable and things like that. They love this stuff, and I think, I think this is a fabulous conversation piece because as parents were always trying to are you really happy? Are you okay? You know, those types of things, and it just seems I don't know if that if that's your intended use or anything like that, but I could see a use like that for it. The the the reason why I wrote the
book four reasons. Number one, I wanted to share with everybody the very simple formula that I discovered by chance. I didn't set out looking for a way to measure happiness. I was doing research on hope when this formula suffaced. So I want to share this formula, very simple form that allows us
to measure happiness, which has been very difficult. That's number one. Number two, I have a five minute questionnaire A two that can differentiate flourishing individuals from a languishing individual and in between those two extremes can determine who is happy, very happy, unhappy or very unhappy. So this is a tool for monitoring anybody, yourself or somebody else to see how you are progressing in your
well being unhappiness. So and I also wrote it for happiness coaches to telling them the two to use and how to help people who have different issues about hope, hunger, unhappiness. And the fourth reason is for individuals. Individuals to tell you a basic routine that you can use every day to find and sustain a flourishing life. It's all there in the book. That's a great book. All right, Well, thank you. I just want to thank you for being with us. It's been wonderful to have you on best every
year. You're gonna hold it up to give your book. I don't know if you have it you or not. Yeah, there it is, Yeah, beautiful, Thank you so much. Everybody. You can buy book. It's called the Happiness Formula, and the and the tagline is a scientific, groundbreaking approach to happiness and personal fulfillment. And as I'm reading it, I want to make sure people don't know that it doesn't read like a textbook, and it doesn't read like math or anything like that. So don't be afraid
of the word equation or anything like that. It's it's it's very it's very well worded and very Amazon. I'm post Noble. You can see the reviews. Yes, the reviews are very sand, aren't they. Yeah. I love it when our our Best Ever You network has people on like your you know, such as yourself, and we get behind the author and buy the book and do the reviews and things like that. So we'll see what we
can do for you. But it's been absolutely wonderful getting to know you and uh and thank you for all of your wisdom and for writing such a great book. I'm affording forward to reading the rest of it. I just got the book, so I'm I'm excited to dive in. And if we have questions, should we approach you on your website? Do you on my website? You can get me on the Psychology Today. I'm a contributor to Psychology Today. You can get me on my website. You can get me on
LinkedIn. Oh good, Yes, and you're on Best Ever you know. I saw. I think we just I can't remember, but I think we just put an article of yours in our magazine, So I can't I can't totally say that for sure. But I think I remember your name in the magazine and trying to pronounce it, and I think we got it now. So wonderful to meet you. And I hope you'll come back and we can do tinier clips of shows about happiness, hope and and other things that you
want to talk about. Because it's all right, everybody, Thank you so much for being here with us. And again, here's the book. And Amazon's a great place, like he was saying, Barnes and Noble Books, millions available wherever books are sold. So thank you all for being with us, and and take care and have a great day. Everybody. Thank you, bye bye,