Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 330. The psychology of happiness About this episode Happiness often feels like a simple goal - something we’re told to chase or “find” if we’re lucky. But it’s not just about good moods or quick wins. True happiness is more subtle, shaped by how we show up in life, the people we surround ourselves with, and the meaning we create along the way. In this episode, we dive into what happiness really means in your twenties and beyond - why it can be so hard to hold onto, and how it’s tied to more than just feeling good.
We’ll explore:
Why happiness isn’t a permanent state, but a shifting experience How everyday habits and relationships quietly influence our sense of happiness The PERMA model of happiness Why chasing pleasure doesn’t always lead to fulfilment Busting the 3 biggest myths about happiness Simple, real ways to build happiness for now, and for the future If you’re tired of chasing constant happiness and want to explore a more genuine, meaningful way to experience joy – this one is for you.
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2:40 Jemma Sbeg? Hello everybody and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.
2:59 Jemma Sbeg? Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course, break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, my friends, let's, let's talk about happiness. We're going to talk about what it means to be happy. Seemingly very, very simple, right? Such a simple word, probably the first emotion that you think of when you think of emotions. And yet, if you are a human, you will understand that it is incredibly elusive at times and actually a lot more complex than we have been taught to think of it as.
3:45 Jemma Sbeg? Humans have been talking about happiness for as long as humans could basically talk from, I don't know, ancient philosophers like Aristotle, who believed happiness was like the highest human good, to modern day neuroscientists who are obsessively studying the brain's reward system. Humanity has been on what feels like a relentless quest to uncover the secrets of a happy life since humanity was, I don't know, invented, existed, since its origins. But I personally think finding happiness these days, and like I'm talking real happiness, like real deep. Life satisfaction and contentment and joy is really, really hard.
4:29 Jemma Sbeg? We are bombarded with images of the perfect lives we see on social media. There is this, you know, increasingly wide gap between rich and poor. We are often convinced that happiness is like a destination that we can reach if we just work hard enough. If we buy the right things, if we achieve the right milestones. And it's probably no surprise that this narrow view is a huge part of the problem. It sets us up for disappointment. It makes us feel like failures when we don't reach the same level as the people we see online. Or we aren't able to have the same lifestyle as people making millions and millions of dollars. And I think it also, I think a bigger issue with how we view happiness right now is it's a singular thing.
5:14 Jemma Sbeg? Happiness is a state, a singular state that we want to be in as much as possible. And I don't think that we really have an appreciation for how perhaps less positive emotions actually contribute to satisfaction and contribute to emotional wellbeing. I think we just think of happiness as the ultimate goal without realizing everything that it takes to get there and everything that we don't actually require to be happy. So today we are going to break down the myths, misconceptions, and of course, the science and psychology of true, genuine, lasting happiness. And we're also going to go beyond quick fixes, quick fixes for feeling more happy.
5:58 Jemma Sbeg? You know, everyone knows that seeing your friends and exercising and meditating and journaling is going to make you feel good. But what about some deeper psychologically backed strategies that can actually make this?
6:15 Jemma Sbeg? Make happiness more deeply ingrained and more effective to actually find. That's what I really want to talk about. Some of the things that are perhaps hidden in the psychology research, some of the strategies that are hidden in academia that I think should be more popularized, that I think we should be talking about more when we talk about a happy life. So there is so much that we're going to discuss. We're going to discuss whether like money makes you happier. We're going to discuss whether it's possible to be happy, always the happiest country in the world, the happiest people in the world, everything you can think of that has to do with this topic, we will be there. We're going to sink our teeth into it. So with that, further ado, let's get into it.
6:59 Jemma Sbeg? So first things first, and I know this is going to sound so silly and so basic, but what are we actually talking about when we talk about happiness? What do we actually mean here? Again, I know it sounds silly. I know we probably think we have a good grasp on this by now, but just like humor me for a second, okay? The field we actually need to turn to is not just the field of psychology, but the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology is basically like a unique branch of this discipline that is dedicated to studying what makes life most worth living and also what makes people happy. And that honestly sounds like the most amazing job ever. Like imagine your only job is just to figure out how to be a happier person.
7:42 Jemma Sbeg? But researchers in this space have spent decades trying to find, trying to measure, trying to define happiness amongst other things. And they found that in reality, it's a lot more than just a single emotion as we've been taught to view it as. There's actually two types of happiness, hedonic and neudemonic happiness. Hedonic happiness is, I think, the kind of happiness most of us initially think of. It's basically the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Very like, a very simple equation. This is like a combination of the feel-good stuff, like the rush you get from a compliment, the satisfaction of a delicious meal.
8:25 Jemma Sbeg? You know, going on a roller coaster and then the subtraction of negative stuff like not feeling pain, not feeling sad, not feeling heartbreak. This is basically a utilitarian notion of happiness. We can basically determine how happy someone is by summing up the pleasures and subtracting the pains. The experience of positive effect, just like the moment to moment feeling of joy, that is hedonic happiness. But the problem is, is that those moments are often very short-lived and they're often tied to external stimuli.
9:05 Jemma Sbeg? Hedonic happiness is really focused on the pleasure or the joy that we get from having things, seeing things, being around certain people. Unemonic happiness, on the other hand, it's about living a life of meaning and purpose and self-realization, even if maybe day to day you aren't experiencing as many external highs. This concept really at first started with Aristotle. We've already said his name once. He's definitely like a key person in this discussion, but he essentially suggested way back in the day that true wellbeing doesn't come from pleasure alone, but it comes from
9:44 Jemma Sbeg? fulfilling your deeply seeded potential and living a life aligned with your values. Think of like the profound sense of pride that a parent feels watching their child graduate, or like the quiet contentment of like a volunteer who has dedicated their life to a cause they believe in, even when it was hard. Think about people who train for multi-day hikes or triathlons and it's hard work and it's painful and to be honest, it probably really sucks, but then they complete it and they just feel this deep sense of accomplishment, even if they hurt all over. These moments may not always be easy.
10:27 Jemma Sbeg? They're definitely not filled to the brim with pleasure, but they are incredibly rewarding on a much deeper level and they are a more sustainable form of happiness. Now, both types, hedonic and eutemonic, are incredibly important for overall wellbeing, but they contribute to our lives just simply in different ways. A great framework for understanding these different facets, which you've probably heard of if you've ever spent any time in positive psychology or psychology in general, is the PERMA model, which was developed by the psychologist, Dr. Martin Steilman. He is like a key figure within the field of positive psychology. And he basically proposed that, again, wellbeing is not a single feeling.
11:09 Jemma Sbeg? We know that by now, but it is built on five measurable elements. And these five elements obviously create the acronym PERMA. So let's start with P. P is positive emotions. This covers like the hedonic side of happiness, the good feelings of hope, being in love, feeling grateful, giggling, smiling, all those like nice, soft, floaty feelings that we experience, hopefully day to day. E is engagement. This is the state of flow. We talk about this all the time. It's the state where you are so completely mesmerized, absorbed, challenged by an activity, but also equally enthralled by it, that you lose all sense of time and self.
11:54 Jemma Sbeg? Now, we find this in our hobbies. We find it in our creative pursuits. We find it in challenging work. We also find it when we are pursuing or living out our purpose. Actually, one of the initial like conceptions of flow or how we initially discovered flow was through this Russian psychologist who wanted to figure out what highly successful people all had in common, whether they were ballerinas, whether they were CEOs, whether they were. Athletes, doctors, whatever it was, and all of them had this flow relationship with their work. R, I feel like this one's very easily explainable. It's just relationships. Um, there are probably very few, if not no, people in this world who could be
12:38 Jemma Sbeg? seriously happy without having strong, positive relationships with other people. That is a fundamental human need and it's also one of the most powerful predictors of wellbeing. What I really like about this perma model is the inclusion of this and the fact that happiness is not a solo experience. It's a joint one, which I love. M, similar to E, is meaning, having a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging to something bigger than you. Having a, maybe a, a cause that you're working towards, a spiritual practice, something that tells you like, oh, I'm here for a reason. Existence does have a point and I'm living out that point. And finally, A. A is accomplishment.
13:21 Jemma Sbeg? The feeling of striving for and achieving goals. This provides us with a sense, with a sense of mastery. It provides us with a sense of competence, which is also another essential human need. So according to this theory, true happiness, again, it isn't one thing. It's a blend of all these elements. Research has consistently shown that individuals who score highly or even moderately on all measures of perma tend to report greater life satisfaction, greater overall wellbeing. They are happier compared to people who score, you know, low on these things or also compared to people who score really high on just a few of these things.
14:03 Jemma Sbeg? So for example, someone might make a lot of money and they might have seemingly a lot of friends and get invited to a lot of parties and events, but If they don't have meaning or many day to day positive emotions, they may actually be less happy than someone who makes a lot less money, maybe only has a few close friends, but has a strong reason for being, has a strong sense of personal accomplishment and a strong sense of engagement in their life. It has to be a blend, right? It's like trying to make a cake only with two of the ingredients you need. What this theory really says is you need all of them. There's so much research on happiness and wellbeing. And I think it really begs the question, like, can happiness actually ever be measured? Like, you know,
14:48 Jemma Sbeg? I just talked about this comparison between these two people. Is that comparison actually possible? Is there like a statistically, scientifically, mathematically, is there, does the happiest person in the world actually exist and could we find them? Well, here's the thing, happiness can be studied because of its components can be measured. But it's really crucial to understand a key distinction. We can't actually directly measure the feeling of happiness itself. Like, we haven't actually gotten to that point. We can only really measure like the behavioral and psychological signifies that indicate a happy or flourishing life. So, for example, you know, you can't directly measure sickness in somebody, but
15:31 Jemma Sbeg? you can measure a person's body temperature or a person's white blood cell count, which is an indicator. And these, you know, things like purpose and relationships and engagement, they are the body temperature, the white blood, white blood cell count of happiness. And this is where models like Perma become so powerful. The elements within this model, they're all observable, they're all quantifiable. That's what makes it a really great psychological tool to understand, perhaps.
16:02 Jemma Sbeg? Where someone may be lacking or why someone may be flourishing more than another person. So scientifically, we can measure individual indicators of happiness. But in terms of finding the happiest person in the world, it's going to be very, very hard. Because happiness, it remains completely subjective. It is experienced differently between people, which is why discussions around like optimism versus pessimism sometimes come up. It's a core question, you know, at the center of happiness research. Are some people just inherently more happy than others? Are they just born that way? Well, it turns out some part of that is true. Some people do have a genetic predisposition to finding better engagement, having more positive emotions. But it's a bit more complicated.
16:47 Jemma Sbeg? Our level of happiness and the way we experience perma basically is influenced by a combination of genetics, life circumstances and intentional activities. So there's this thing called the happiness set point theory. It was famously proposed by the researcher Professor Sonia Lubramisky. She basically suggests that a significant portion of our happiness, around 50%, is kind of something we're born with, born with. It's determined by our genes. We are born with a genetically determined baseline level of happiness that we tend to return to even after major life events. And we don't really know any differently.
17:32 Jemma Sbeg? Think about, you know, there are certain people you know who just always seem really cheerful, always seem really resilient. They always bounce back really quickly from setbacks. And then there are other people you know who tend to be more reserved, super cautious, who tend to just find themselves lingering on setbacks even when they don't want to. Some of this isn't a matter of choice. A significant part of this is inherited. We know that through twin studies. Studies comparing identical twins and fraternal twins consistently show that identical twins have far more similar levels of happiness, even when they've been raised in different families.
18:12 Jemma Sbeg? Considering that identical twins share 100% of their genes of DNA and fraternal twins only share about 50%, this suggests that a substantial portion of our happiness, I'm not going to say substantial. A portion of our happiness is hardwired into our DNA. And this genetic component explains why even after major life events, both negative and positive, we tend to return to our baseline level of happiness over time. So this really brings us to life circumstances. Now, life circumstances actually make up the smallest part of this equation. They tend to contribute to only about 10% of our overall happiness and wellbeing.
18:56 Jemma Sbeg? So, life circumstances, it includes all the external factors that make up our lives. So, income, marital status, health, even our appearance. Logically, we often assume these factors have the biggest impact on our happiness. You know, after all, like, a pay raise, a new home, a new relationship, feeling good in your body, that feels like it would make us significantly happier for the long haul. However, in reality, it's a different story. This is largely due to a phenomenon we know as hedonic adaption. We quickly get used to new circumstances, whether they're good or bad. So like, the excitement of a new car or a big salary feels amazing for a little while.
19:41 Jemma Sbeg? And then, the feeling kind of fades and we return to our emotional baseline. This doesn't mean that these things don't matter at all. You know, financial security, for example, is crucial for reducing stress and can seriously lift someone's wellbeing if they are, you know, in poverty. But, the impact on our long-term happiness after we've had this benefit or had this thing for a while, does tend to become limited and does tend to drop off. The most empowering and actionable part of this model. And let me just say, it is a model. It's not always gonna be a hundred percent. It's definitely like, there is evidence for and against it, but... The most actionable part of this model is made up of our intentional activities. What we choose to do with our time.
20:26 Jemma Sbeg? This forty percent represents the portion of our happiness that is entirely within our control. And it all rests on the conscious things we do and we think about on a regular basis. So this category includes things like behavioral activities. So slowing down, engaging in acts of kindness, exercising regularly, spending time in nature, making art, giving back to the community. Cognitive activities, practicing gratitude, reframing negative thoughts, cultivating an optimistic mindset. And then volitional activities, committing to meaningful goals, increasing our education
21:11 Jemma Sbeg? levels, building strong relationships, savoring positive experiences. By consistently engaging in these intentional activities, we can deliberately, actively increase our levels of happiness regardless of our genetic set point and regardless to a degree of our life circumstances. In short, you can't change your genes, you can't predict your circumstances, but having the right mindset and your daily habits and choices are still incredibly powerful tools for cultivating lasting joy and wellbeing. And I think that the thing is, is that even though genetics might seem like it makes up
21:51 Jemma Sbeg? a bigger slice of the pie, there's not a single person who is like completely determined to be unhappy in every single moment of their life. So that forty percent of intentional things can still, for every single person, shift the balance and shift the scales for them. Okay, we're gonna take a short break here, but when we return, let's talk about some of the myths you may have seen swirling around about happiness recently. You know, are we becoming less happy? Will making a lot of money make you more happy? Well, hopefully I have some answers to those very questions, plus of course, some tips. So stay with us.
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26:34 Jemma Sbeg? I've recently been having a lot of discussions with my friends recently about, like, are we a, are we a sadder generation? Is this generation just bound to suffer because of the fact that the world literally feels like it's on fire? And in some cases, in the past couple of years, has literally been on fire. It seems like every time we catch up, like I was at the beach with my friends, I was at Bondi Beach the other day. And it's like, the first thing we discussed is like, did you see the horrible thing that happened in the news? Did you see what like that government is doing this time? Did I tell you about like these awful protests and how awful my job is and however worked I am?
27:15 Jemma Sbeg? And all that like, you know, my financial situation is bad and I've lost my job and blah, blah, blah. It's like every single time we hang out, the first thing we have to just get out of the way is like, all right, let's just address how shit the news is and how terrible the current state of the world is. And, you know, pretend for as long as we can or like try and like get a respite from it. And try and pretend that it's not making everyone more miserable day by day. It's hard to kind of keep your head above water at the moment. I've really been like pondering it, probably because of social media and how I think people are being more open about the fact that they're struggling
27:57 Jemma Sbeg? and are like really acknowledging that the circumstances of the world are pretty dire. Are we becoming less happy as a collective? Is this, has there been a noticeable change in happiness levels? So there are a couple of groups, a couple of organizations that attempt to answer this very question year after year. They also do a bunch of work around how money, economics and happiness tie together. And they also assess happiness levels in each country. Turns out the happiest country in the world, by the way, is Finland, eight years in a row. As of 2025, if you're from Finland.
28:34 Jemma Sbeg? Tell me what's happening in your country that is making that the case because you guys are some happy folks. But one of these attempts is the World Happiness Report. It's conducted year after year by the University of Oxford in collaboration with, I think it's either Oxfam or the UN. And then also Gallup, the like survey company, surveys, yeah, they do like surveys and polls. And the results have shown a pretty stable average level of happiness over the past few decades. Everyone's kind of sitting around like the seventy mark, like not fifty where things are getting terrible, definitely not a hundred.
29:13 Jemma Sbeg? However, recent analysis has revealed a really concerning trend, particularly in younger generations. There have been and has been a noticeable decline in happiness and the life satisfaction of young people since around two thousand and ten. For the first time since these studies have been conducted in countless countries, young adults are less happy than their older counterparts. And obviously, we want to address happiness and unhappiness in every single age group and every single population. But we've kind of always assumed that our youth is like this nice golden bubble
29:56 Jemma Sbeg? or should be this nice golden bubble for as many people as possible. So the fact that that golden bubble has seemingly burst is obviously making a lot of people super concerned. Researchers point to a lot of different factors, but of course, like it's an ongoing discussion. The rise of social media is a big one. Everyone kind of wants to pin it on that. And in some ways, I do think it's responsible. Like the rapid emergence of technology has made it really hard to experience happiness subjectively without comparing it to someone else. But there have been recent articles and books written which are saying. Blaming social media is actually just like a complete red herring. Like it's really, when you look at it, the impact of it is not as severe as other things like economic
30:40 Jemma Sbeg? conditions or um a sense of optimism for the future. But people do continue to say that it is a main contender um in the twenty twenty four World Happiness Report. They did manage to explicitly link um the decline in youth wellbeing to increased internet usage. I actually saw a recent article from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which noted a specific collapse in the wellbeing of young people, especially women around two thousand and thirteen. What did that coincide with? That coincided with the widespread adoption of smartphones. Um but again, economic hardship, a sense of political instability, increased
31:22 Jemma Sbeg? loneliness, they are all also to blame. I think technology is just the easiest one to kind of pin it on because it is the thing that has most rapidly, I think, changed about society in the last couple of decades. But again, like back to this is that what's really concerning is that it's mainly young people. And we have, again, always adopted this belief based on this very famous U-shaped curve of happiness that you should be the happiest version of yourself in your late teens and in your twenties. And, you know, it's midlife where you should be really starting to perhaps feeling the pressures of career and family
32:01 Jemma Sbeg? and financial responsibilities. A lot of that is now moving up. People are adopting this sense of like anxiety and stress and fear a lot earlier. Um and there are so many explanations for that, but I feel like our twenties are no longer this time for experimentation and this time to be a little bit carefree. It feels like you have to get serious a lot quicker. Um it's also why we're starting to see people have quarter-life crises. That's like a new term that's only been introduced in the last maybe fifteen years. It used to always be about the midlife crisis, this point where people really had this like moment
32:44 Jemma Sbeg? Clarity and confusion and just like existential dread around what their life really meant and what they really wanted out of their life, that's happening earlier. People are feeling less positive. Um, and the thing is, is that we're not seeing much of a change in like that midlife low point. People like in the later years are still kind of experiencing the same levels of happiness, which is a good thing. But it is really going to show that there is this remarkable shift. The early twenties high point is no longer the, is no longer the norm. Happiness feels harder in our twenties for a lot of reasons.
33:25 Jemma Sbeg? Um, things that aren't new, you know, there's this massive social displacement or social splintering where all our structures of friendship just kind of like explode the moment that we graduate high school or uni and you know, we are expected to do so many things at once, build a life, build a career, build new social circles, build a primary stable romantic relationship. Also whilst we're in like a new, you know, environment, also meant to build like financial wealth. Um, and so I think that a lot of us are really, really struggling and a lot of us are really thinking like, oh my God, is this like the next forty years of my life? Not necessarily the case. Um, a lot of people think about that U turn of happiness
34:09 Jemma Sbeg? or that U shape of happiness and think like, all right, cool. Once I turn thirty, it all goes downhill. But it is important to remember that it's, this is a model. It's not an individual diagnostic tool. It's not saying that every single person's life will follow this like peak in twenties, drop down in your forties and fifties and then come back up in your like sixties and seventies. It's just saying that in terms of a collective, if we were to put a hundred thousand people in the room and, and plot their happiness, there would be this general kind of flow or general pattern. Doesn't mean that you can't be the outlier. Doesn't mean that people don't shift up and down that scale over the years.
34:53 Jemma Sbeg? Like you may have like a really great year at forty five and then, you know, at forty six you get fired and the average of that is kind of in the middle. It doesn't mean that there is a lack of positive emotions in midlife. I really don't want that. To spread, like, people are still experiencing happiness despite the model saying that there is a dip. The dip doesn't go below fifty. So it is like, people are still on the up mostly happy. But the fact that that's shifting earlier is really showing that the global rate of happiness is kind of diminishing. I just wanna make sure that we put that in there so that no one's like sitting here maybe on the cusp of thirty, maybe on the cusp of
35:34 Jemma Sbeg? of their late twenties thinking, oh, my god, wow, I've got to strap in for this like part of the roller coaster. No, absolutely not. There is still joy and great stuff waiting for you. So with that all being said, I do wanna break down some of the other key myths that we might be being sold about happiness, whether deliberately and explicitly or kind of implicitly. The first myth being you can be happy all the time, or you can only be happy if things are going really, really great for you. Oh, my goodness. If only I had known how false this was, it would have saved me a whole lot of confusion in therapy sessions,
36:18 Jemma Sbeg? specifically therapy sessions where I would like sit with my therapist and basically be like, please, like, give me the secret to eliminating all non-positive emotions. Like, give me the secret to not being sad. Give me the secret to curing my grief. Surprise, surprise, there was no secret. It's just a part of life. The idea that we should be in a constant state of bliss is not only unrealistic, as I think we have all learned, it's also deeply unhealthy. Life is a full spectrum of emotions, and to be truly human, I think you realize this like the older you get, is to experience them all, that's like the whole point. The modern obsession that we have with like perpetual positivity sets us up for failure. It also leads to a lack of what psychologists call
37:03 Jemma Sbeg? emo diversity. And we've talked about this on the podcast before, but let's just revisit it. So there was this groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology back in two thousand and fourteen, so over a decade ago now, that introduced this concept of emo diversity. And it draw it drew an analogy from the environment and from ecology. Just as biodiversity, we know is totally crucial for a healthy ecosystem. Like you need the bugs, you need the dirt, you need the swamps to have the pretty birds and the bees and the flowers. Emo diversity points to the fact that we need a variety and relative abundance of emotions for psychological health. Basically, you need the disgust, you need the fear, you need the embarrassment, the sadness
37:48 Jemma Sbeg? to have the amusement, the awe, the hope, the gratitude. The researchers, which were led by Dr. Jordi Quoebach, found that people who experienced a wide range of both positive and so-called negative emotions, they were actually less likely to suffer from depression and they were more of, I would say, better equipped to handle life's challenges, which is so counter to, I guess, what I once believed, what a lot of us believe, that is, to be happy, you must experience as much happiness as possible. You have to load it up, you have to make it like burst at the seams. Like this is an equation where the more of one thing, the more happiness you have, the more the output will be a happy one. That doesn't seem to be the case.
38:34 Jemma Sbeg? What they found time and time again, the takeaway is that you need to be in touch with all different sides of yourself and how you respond to certain hard and great things in order to feel good. All of our emotions serve a purpose. Suppressing them firstly just means that they're going to crop up when you least expect them and don't want to deal with them and you won't have the skills to deal with them. But also you will miss out on the fact that, you know, sadness and grief is a sign that true love and deep love has been in your life. You know, anger can motivate you to confront injustice. Anxiety is like a great warning system for threats or a sign that something in your life needs to change.
39:19 Jemma Sbeg? Like, these are all messengers, they are all crucial parts of our emo diversity, of our emotional ecosystem. So when you just chase constant happiness, it might actually lead you to emotional suppression and it might actually make it harder for you to be happy in the long term. Myth two, which is kind of similar is when I get this or when I get there or when I get that, I will be happy. Viewing happiness as a destination. I think we've all said it before, like, okay, I just need to get this promotion and then I'll be super happy. Um, when I get the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the partner, like, everything's gonna lock into gear for me. I just need to get past this bad period at work. I just need to fix this thing. I just need to achieve that thing.
40:04 Jemma Sbeg? I just need to master literally everything. This belief, I'm gonna just say it loud and clear, is a trap and it is a common one at that. Once we get to that point that we have put and we have fantasized about, we put so much of our promise for the future in, the goalpost just moves further. It moves further and further and further. And we have this thing that we've so desired and we've realized that we've placed a lot of our bets on this thing, making life better. Meanwhile, the foundation around it is not there for us to actually be happy. This concept, it's known as hedonic adaptation. Basically, we get used to both positive and negative circumstances.
40:49 Jemma Sbeg? So even if a really great thing happens to you, it still doesn't always feel like it means a lot long term. And you basically get used to the happiness that initially elicited. So this concept was first proposed by the psychologist Donald Campbell, Philip Brickman, I think in like the nineteen seventies. And the basis for this concept was a really famous study on lottery winners and accident victims, two sides of like the spectrum. And they found that, you know, whilst the lottery winners experienced this like initial surge in happiness and accident victims experienced a deep drop in their wellbeing.
41:33 Jemma Sbeg? Over time, both groups tended to return to their original happiness baseline, that same happiness set point that we mentioned earlier. Our brains, they have this remarkable ability to adapt to new circumstances, both good and bad, which is a great thing. You know, it also means that when terrible things happen, hopefully a lot of people can rebound. So, you know, whilst achieving a goal might give you a great rush, we do quickly get used to it and we start looking for the next thing to make us happy. The new car, the new fancy gadget, the new relationship. Yeah, it feels amazing at first, the novelty then wears off. You know, I always use the analogy of like getting a new piece of clothing and being
42:16 Jemma Sbeg? like, yes, finally my closet is complete. Do you ever have this feeling where you're like, oh yes, finally I don't need to buy any more clothes. I have everything I need, everything that I thought the best wardrobe would have. And then like you wear it a few times, you get sick of the next piece and you're like, oh my God, I don't have any clothes. Like, I know it's a silly analogy, but that's the same thing that's happening here. Obviously, that doesn't mean like give up on working towards things you want or achieving goals or, you know, giving yourself a sweet treat or like a fun little prize every now and again. Um, not at all. Like, these are all important contributions, but they are not the foundation and they cannot be happiness's only sustenance.
43:00 Jemma Sbeg? It's like when you only focus on the external stuff, it's like trying to build a house by starting with decorations or starting with the wallpaper or the furniture, when you don't even have the walls yet. It is a much more internal experience or a daily habit than a one-off. And that's probably counter to what we've been taught, but it's important that we know that. Now, I mentioned lottery winners before. They actually come up quite a bit when people research happiness, as it turns out, especially when people want to answer this question, does money make us happier? Well, you, I don't know if you already know the answer, you may or may not, but you may not know all the research behind the answer. So, stay with us, we're going to talk about that and so much more in just a second.
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47:16 Jemma Sbeg? Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information-driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day-to-day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day-to-day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership.
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48:06 Jemma Sbeg? So we're breaking down some of the myths of happiness, which brings us to one of the most significant, which is myth three, money will make me happier. We've all heard that phrase, like money can't buy you happiness or money can buy you happiness. I don't know which way you are hearing it, but it, which one of those is true? So what you need to know, if you want to answer this question is you need to know of a very famous 2010 study done by Nobel Prize winners, Daniel Kamen and Angus Steaton from Princeton, Princeton University, I was gonna say Columbia, but from Princeton University, which basically they wanted to answer this question. They wanted to really just like for once and for all investigate this, give us a clear answer.
48:52 Jemma Sbeg? And what they found was that emotional wellbeing does tend to rise with income up until a point. And that point in the year 2010 was $75,000 a year in the US, which is about $110,000 now when we calculate for inflation. Beyond that point, more money didn't seem to make a significant difference to people's daily feelings of happiness. This is because having enough money to meet our basic needs and to live comfortably without the stress of bills and financial insecurity, that initially has a huge life-changing impact on our wellbeing. I was actually listening to the comedian Robbie Hoffman talk about this the other day.
49:37 Jemma Sbeg? Frickin', I think she is the funniest person alive. I find her absolutely hilarious, but she grew up really, really poor. I think she was like one of 10 kids and she like spoke really candidly about how when she started making money as a comedian and as a writer and as an actress, like that changed her life. But she was like, you know, I have a lot of, now I have a lot of rich friends who have come into even more money and they're like, oh yeah, I didn't really experience that. Like I was always kind of okay and kind of stable and they're like, this didn't really change anything to me. You know, beyond the basic needs plus some fun money, some non-essentials, maybe some travel, money cannot alleviate the problems that were already there, especially for people
50:22 Jemma Sbeg? who were already struggling. A more recent two thousand and eighteen study actually adds a fascinating nuance to this. They found that whilst people with higher incomes tend to experience more positive emotions centered on themselves, like pride or a sense of accomplishment, lower income people are more likely to experience more positive emotions related to others, like love and compassion. In this paper, it was published in the journal Emotion, these researchers concluded, and I quote, "What seems to be the case is that your wealth predisposes you to different kinds of happiness. Whilst wealthy individuals may find greater positivity
51:04 Jemma Sbeg? in their accomplishments, status, and individual achievements, less wealthy individuals seem to find more positivity and happiness in their relationships, their ability to care for and ability to connect to others." Which, to me, I don't know about you, that sounds like a much more enriching and sustainable source of happiness. It's gonna, I know, I'm sorry, it's gonna sound cliche, but what is the point of an accomplishment if you don't have anyone to share it with? I felt this like when I published my book, right? Yeah, it was great publishing a book, and I felt such a sense of pride, but then I got to do this whole big party with like my friends and my family and the people who had helped me and done such amazing things to support me whilst I was doing that. That
51:49 Jemma Sbeg? was like the best day of my life. Like, that was amazing that I got to, you know, do that with them and got to like have an open bar and like shout some drinks and eat cake with them and, you know, that was more meaningful than the individual accomplishment of it all. I will say, the thing is, is that money may not buy happiness. To play devil's advocate, it does buy convenience, which may actually give you more time to be around the people you value and to do the things that you love, which does contribute overall to happiness. For example, you know, if you can afford to buy groceries online at that extra cost, meaning you have more time to spend with your kids, you probably will be happier. Or if you can Uber rather than public transport, meaning you have more time in the morning
52:33 Jemma Sbeg? to slow down or to get to a function early or to like spend time on self-care, you will be happier. But at some stage, it probably also isolates you, which is why I think a lot of rich people are only friends with other rich people. And like, I kind of wonder, you know, what happened to like The people they were friends with when they had no money or when they were really struggling. Um, where did those people kind of go? It's like when people always wonder. I saw this on Instagram the other day, like when Dua Lipa goes on vacation with her like childhood friends, like, does she pay? Like, or do they pay? Like, at some point, I think money can also become something that puts, puts like a brick wall between you and other people.
53:19 Jemma Sbeg? So if happiness isn't about chasing money, it isn't about chasing constant pleasure, it isn't about chasing external achievements. What can we actually do to cultivate it contra, you know, counter to what everyone's been saying would be able to help us? So I'm gonna give you four practical, of course, psychology backed strategies that go beyond like journaling and exercise, which we know are important, to hopefully like enrich your life in a seriously deep way. At least I hope. So I want to give you two tools for now and two tools for the long term. Starting with my first tool, which is to make a happiness blueprint. So my therapist actually taught me this as a way to savor positive experiences.
54:05 Jemma Sbeg? When something good happens, you receive a compliment, um, you know, you watch a really beautiful sunset. You have like a really amazing like aperol spritz, like you, I don't know, meet a really cute shelter dog, like, don't just let it pass. Pause for a moment. Like consciously focus on the sensory details and the feelings that this moment evokes.
54:30 Jemma Sbeg? You can, you know, share that experience with someone else. You can write it down on your notes app. If you follow me on Instagram, you know, I do this thing called a smile file where every month like I, um, take photos of things that make me smile and I just put them into an app on my phone and then sometimes I'll share them. You can even just like simply replay it in your mind. This act of savoring helps your brain cement the positive memory and extract maximum joy from that moment. Research has shown that people who regularly savor positive experiences, like the first bite of a dessert, kind of like that. Like they report high levels of happiness, lower levels of depression.
55:11 Jemma Sbeg? From this moment of savoring, your mind and your body then know what it means and what it actually feels like to be happy, rather than happiness just being like this fleeting thing that you don't concentrate on. This is your happiness blueprint. You know, in times of stress, when you're upset, when you're fighting with someone, when you're uneasy, you can actually take that moment and cast your mind back and just center in that sensory experience. You can actually revisit those feelings, they're more accessible to you. It's like when you smell a perfume from like that holiday that you went on and like you're immediately brought back there, or you like listen to a song and it brings you back. Even if you can't physically be in that position where that memory took place, if you have
55:54 Jemma Sbeg? savored it and if you have solidified it in your memory, you can return to that feeling deliberately. Next, let's focus more on how we can make happiness a shared emotion, rather than a solitary practice by really engaging in active constructive responding. So when someone you really care about, your friend, your mom, your boyfriend, I don't know, a colleague you really like, shares a piece of good news with you, take a second to think about how you respond. There is a psychologist, her name is Shelley Gable, and she has done all this research on close relationships, and she's found four common responses that people will have to good news.
56:35 Jemma Sbeg? Active constructive, passive constructive, active destructive, and passive destructive. Most of us, even with good intentions, we fall into the passive constructive category. Your friend's like, oh my god, like I had this really great day at work, and you're like, oh, that's so cool. That's great. And then you, that's it. And that friend like kind of feels a little bit shut down. In contrast, active constructive is responding like that thing happened to you. Instead of just saying, congrats, you'd be like, that's amazing, like, tell me everything. You know, what was it like? What happened? What did your boss say then? How should we celebrate? You know, when you enthusiastically engage with someone else's good news,
57:21 Jemma Sbeg? it creates a really powerful feedback loop of a shared positive emotion. The act of celebration makes the other person feel validated and seen. That's a, that's a total win. And that in turn amplifies like the joy for you as well. It's like a process called capitalization, actually. And the research confirms enthusiastic responses make both people happier. The way that I think about it is like a tennis ball that gets like faster and faster and faster. It's like you hit it back and forth between two people. Like, it's like, oh, my God, the speed. It's like going up and like everyone's excited and it's magnifying this like experience. Rather than just like one person hitting it and it like goes really fast for a second. And then it just like kind of bounces away and you have to like do that thing where you chase the ball.
58:06 Jemma Sbeg? If you've ever watched challenges, there is like one scene, well, the scene, the scene of that movie. That is exactly how I imagine this process of emotional capitalization. So next are two tips for the longer term. I'm kind of liking this like, um, this happiness is a shared emotion theme we have going on. So we're gonna keep that going and talk about, um, the benefits of pro-social spending. We have obviously debunked the myth that money can buy true happiness. But research does suggest that how you spend your money can significantly impact your wellbeing.
58:47 Jemma Sbeg? There was a series of studies done a couple of years ago by Elizabeth Dunn. They were published in the journal Science Magazine. And basically they said that it's not having money that makes you happier. How you spend it is really like, that's the kicker. And they introduced this concept of pro-social spending. Basically, they found that. Individuals who were randomly assigned to spend a small amount of money on others, walked out of that experiment feeling a lot happier than those who, you know, just spent the money on themselves. This finding has also been replicated across various cultures, across various income levels, across various genders and ages.
59:30 Jemma Sbeg? It's not about spending tons of money on lavish gifts or giving away all your money to charity. It's about buying a friend a coffee, you know, shouting around a drinks on a Friday, donating to charity, buying like a small trinket for your sister or your, for your mother because it made you think of them. Or, you know, leaving just like a little bit of an extra generous tip. Spending money on others consistently activates the brain's reward centers, produ- producing this like warm glow of giving. And I think you know what I'm talking about. Pro-social spending also strengthens our social bonds. It gives us a sense of identity as a kind and a generous person. It makes our relationships stronger, all key ingredients for lasting happiness.
1:00:16 Jemma Sbeg? An important caveat here though, as much as we love pro-social spending, if you're going to engage in this, like, please just make sure it's within your means. Like if it's going to lead to financial struggle, it's obviously going to have the opposite effect. And also crucially, don't do it with the thought that you want something in return, because that will actually create a lot of resentment. This is something my mom has said to me since I was a child. If you are going to do something nice, the nicest part of that act is not expecting anything in return. You've got to just do it because you want to and they could never pay you back, never do anything in response. That's fine. That's fine.
1:01:00 Jemma Sbeg? Finally, our final tip for happiness is to cultivate a coherent narrative for your life. Make a story of your life. Our brains love stories and the story we tell ourselves about our happiness and about our resilience and about, you know, the journey of it all is incredibly important. The practice of like cultivating a narrative, essentially it means that we look at our experiences and we intentionally reflect on perhaps why this is not just a series of random events, but All of this contains meaning and everything, even the hard things had to happen. Now, it's not saying that everything happens for a reason. It's saying that things happen and then I can apply a reason.
1:01:45 Jemma Sbeg? And I can apply a kind of journey map to those experiences. A bunch of researchers have looked into this. A bunch of them have found that when you help or encourage people to see their life as kind of a bit of a story with different chapters or to see their life containing all the positive and negative things as going somewhere and as having meaning and all those moments as being important, even if they sucked. They do feel happier and they're able to reframe moments of adversity, not as like random tragedies, but as really pivotal turning points that help them return to a sense of agency and make them feel like they have control.
1:02:31 Jemma Sbeg? You give your life a sense of meaning. You give your life a sense of purpose. If we're going to return all the way back to that initial model of happiness, the perma-model. Those are two really foundational things that I think a lot of us have kind of lost as we've become less religious and less spiritual. And we've noticed that impact. We've noticed that when you don't have a sense of meaning or coherence to your life, it all feels kind of random. It feels harder to feel happy about your circumstances. So that is my final, final tip. Ultimately, like to wrap the episode up, I think the biggest conclusion you can take away is that science tells us that happiness is, it's gonna sound so cheesy, I'm sorry, bear with me, but it's not the destination, it's the journey.
1:03:16 Jemma Sbeg? I'm sorry, I know it's so cheesy and it's also not about having happiness all the time. It's about savoring it when you do. And, you know, for my 20-something listeners, which is probably all of you, it's okay if these are not your happiest years. Like, I've definitely had some fricking dark times in my twenties, which are well documented on the podcast. So if you're really struggling at the moment and thinking like, this is it, this is the happiness drop-off they all talk about. Firmly and resoundingly, that is not the case, not at all. This is a hard period of life because you don't have as many emotional and financial resources that you will hopefully have the older you get.
1:03:58 Jemma Sbeg? And a lot of it will get easier, you will gain coping skills. And a lot of it is again, just part of the story. It's part of the story of gaining resilience. It's part of the story of reconnecting with real happiness. And you know, that's the thing about happiness. I can give you all the psychological strategies and tips and research and whatever. Happiness is just sometimes so freaking random. And it just like shows up on a Wednesday night and just shows its face. And it's like, oh, hey, and you just suddenly feel great. Or like it just randomly shows up on a Saturday evening or a Saturday morning. And you didn't do anything differently. You didn't plan for it and it's just there.
1:04:40 Jemma Sbeg? So like, hold out for those moments, like hold out for those glimmers, right? Because they do come around and when they do savor it. Like I had this amazing day the other day and it just, just super random. Did not set out to have a great day, it just happened. And I was like, oh my God, I've got to really make sure that I remember this. And you know, it, it was helpful to like return to it in the kind of weeks that have followed. And be like, yeah, oh my God, I'm excited for another day like that. And isn't it such a nice surprise? Like, I'm not sure when it's going to come, but I know it is. So that's kind of my final message for today's episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I really hope that it's contributed something to your knowledge and to your sense of meaning in life. If you have made it this far, leave a TV show recommendation down below.
1:05:24 Jemma Sbeg? Like the happiest TV show that you know, that you always watch when you're in a bad mood. Like if we're talking about intentional tips for happiness, anytime I'm unhappy, I always watch Modern Family. I love that show. What is your Modern Family? Maybe it is Modern Family. What is your show that you think everyone should watch that always brings you joy? I can't wait to read some of your responses. I need a new TV show. I can't re-watch Modern Family for the 10th time. It's getting a little bit embarrassing. I'm not like, I'm not like a teenager anymore. Like I need to move on. With that in mind, I want to thank our beautiful researcher Libby Colbert for her contributions to this episode. I want to remind you all to follow us on Instagram at @ThatPsychologyPodcast to make sure that you are following along on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
1:06:07 Jemma Sbeg? the iHeartRadio app, wherever you are listening, and give us a five-star review, only if you feel called to do so. I appreciate you listening this far, and as always, be kind, be safe, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very, very soon.
1:06:28 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on, and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
1:07:05 Jemma Sbeg? I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year, and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns, so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.
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