How To Finally Let Yourself Be Happy, Solved

Everyone’s obsessed with being happy—but what if that obsession is the very thing making us miserable? Drew and I explore what actually makes us feel good—and why most of us are chasing it in all the wrong ways. We unpack what philosophers like Aristotle and the Buddha got right thousands of years ago—and how modern science is just now catching up. We talk about hedonic vs. eudaimonic happiness, why more money and status don’t necessarily move the needle, and why most self-help advice completely misses the point. Happiness isn’t something you get. It’s a side effect of doing the right things for the right reasons. So, if you're tired of chasing "more" and ready to actually feel a little less miserable, this one’s for you. Get your free PDF guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/happiness CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:42 Is Happiness the Right Goal? 00:11:22 The Origins of Human Happiness 00:11:44 Hedonia vs Eudaimonia 00:15:51 Epicureanism 00:24:00 Eastern Perspectives 00:27:55 Modern Happiness Research 00:30:10 The WEIRD Problem: When Happiness Research Goes West 00:41:27 The Three Components of Happiness 00:47:24 Hedonic Adaptation 01:00:34 What Does—and Doesn't—Make Us Happy 01:01:16 Drugs and Alcohol 01:08:03 Sex 01:15:49 Money 01:23:50 Fame and Status 01:34:40 Physical Attractiveness 01:38:06 Geography and Environment 01:40:31 Love and Relationships 01:41:59 Friendships 01:44:44 Having Children 01:49:50 The Experiencing vs. Remembering Self 01:53:33 Baseline vs. Circumstantial vs. Intentional Happiness – Where to Focus 01:54:15 Genetics 02:00:30 Circumstances 02:02:56 Intentional Actions 02:06:54 Relationships 02:11:31 Gratitude 02:13:53 Altruism 02:19:27 Experiences vs. Stuff 02:22:52 Implementing Intentional Happiness 02:25:02 Chapter 6: Don't Pursue Happiness; Remove Unhappiness 02:29:45 Social Comparison 02:32:10 Maximizers vs. Satisficers 02:34:40 How Happiness Changes Across the Lifespan 02:52:24 Happiness Myths 03:05:28 The 80/20 Guide to Happiness 03:17:03 Lessons Learned ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/217i5ys5 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Welcome to the Solved Podcast, the most researched and evidence-based personal growth podcast in the world. I am three-time number one New York Times bestselling author, Mark Manson. This is my lead researcher and co-host, Drew Bernie. We're back. We're talking about happiness today. Now, for those of you who are new to the show, the whole premise behind Solved is that we go so deep, so hard on a topic, we research it so thoroughly and comprehensively, that you will never have to listen to another podcast on this topic ever again. And this is a great one to do, because A, there's 8 million podcasts about happiness out there, and B, it's actually not that complicated of a subject. So, we're

• 0:42Mark Manson?

  going to cover all the ground. This is a very well-researched topic. There's very established data on what makes you happy and what doesn't. Philosophers have been writing about this for 3,000 years. So, I think we can cover all of our bases in a few hours. Feel pretty good about this. If you're a returning listener and like the show, please give us a follow and a review. It helps us with the algorithms, helps bring in new people, helps us solve their problems in their lives. And as always, we have a full, comprehensive PDF guide to go along with this episode. As you know, there's a lot of information. We're like blasting you with a fire hose of information and advice and takeaways. And so, if you ever get lost or feel overwhelmed, so if you go to solvedpodcast.com/happiness, there is a

• 1:27Mark Manson?

  free PDF guide there. It is 100 pages long. It has a full summary of the episode, all of the research in it, all the actionable items, all the takeaways, and all of our references and citations, so you can check our work. That is solvedpodcast.com/happiness. Now, as I mentioned before, happiness has been done, and redone, and redone again, many, many, many times over, on many podcasts. There are like hundreds of books on it at this point, popular psychology books. Our goal with this is to synthesize and compress as much of the usable information as possible into something that is actually practical for you to use and take away. Because honestly, Drew, it's not about being like capital H happy.

• 2:11Mark Manson?

  It's really just about being a little bit happier than yesterday.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  A little less miserable?

• 2:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  A little less.

• 2:16Mark Manson?

  Actually, that statement is gonna end up being much more accurate.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Sorry to spoil it for you, yeah.

• 2:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, much more accurate than I think people realize. So, without further ado, this is Happiness Solved.

• 2:36Mark Manson?

  So, I want to start with a story about a philosopher who is one of the most associated people in history with happiness and the concept of happiness. And this is John Stuart Mill. He was an English philosopher from the 19th century, and he is, I guess, considered the primary proponent of a school of thought called utilitarianism. Now, utilitarianism, for people who aren't caught up on their ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is the idea that we should all strive to create the most happiness for the most amount of people. So, any decision you're making, any policy by government, any, you know, way that we structure or organize society, it should all be based what brings the most happiness to the most amount of people. Now, what's interesting about John Stuart Mill, he didn't invent utilitarianism.

• 3:20Mark Manson?

  It was actually his father and his father's colleague, Jeremy Bentham, who came up with utilitarianism. His father was a man named James Mill, and James, when he had John Stuart Mill as a child, decided to conduct a little experiment with an N of 1. When John Stuart Mill was born, James Mill said, "You know what? I'm going to raise my child myself. I'm gonna homeschool him. I'm going to dedicate all of my time and energy to him, and I'm going to raise him to become the most virtuous, rational, and happy person in the world. I'm gonna take everything I understand about science and philosophy and human flourishing,

• 4:01Mark Manson?

  and I'm gonna channel it into my child, and he is gonna become a perfect human." Typical, you know, parental narcissism for everybody listening, except the difference was that James Mill was actually an incredibly brilliant scholar and philosopher. So, he approached things in a very interesting way. Enough, pretty early on, he got incredible results for John Stuart Mill. So John Stuart Mill, he learned to read not only in English, but in Latin by age three. He was fluent in ancient Greek by age eight. I think by the time he was a teenager, he spoke like eight or nine different languages. He'd read all of the old classics in their own languages and dialects. I think he had already like translated the Bible from its like original Aramaic, like crazy, crazy stuff.

• 4:46Mark Manson?

  Like this kid was a prodigy, essentially. And the entire time that James Mill was raising him, not only was he raising him as an intellectual prodigy, but he was instilling these values and beliefs in him of like pursuing the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. That everything you do, all this studying, all this reasoning, all this understanding that you're developing, it's so that you can go into the world and promote the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Now, do you want to guess what happened to John Stuart Mill?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I've heard this story before, I think, not just with him, but like it's a common, common story throughout history. But why don't you go and tell us?

• 5:22Mark Manson?

  He had a mental breakdown.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:25Mark Manson?

  The, the man who was raised to be the happiest person on earth by the philosopher who spent his entire life studying happiness, had a complete mental breakdown by age 20 and became suicidal.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the experts got it wrong once again.

• 5:39Mark Manson?

  Shocker.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:40Mark Manson?

  Absolutely shocking.

• 5:44Mark Manson?

  So John Stuart Mill had this existential crisis, complete breakdown. He becomes an adult, obviously, he's like realizing that all the stuff that he's doing is like not really working, that he was essentially raised on all these faulty assumptions and he just has this like complete meltdown at a certain point. And he wrote something really interesting in his journal around this time, which is he said, "Ask yourself whether you are happy and you will immediately cease to be so." He proceeded to go through a thought experiment, which he asked himself, he said, "If I could snap my finger and everything in my life immediately reverted to the ideal version of what I want."

• 6:28Mark Manson?

  Like, society became exactly what I wanted, all my relationships became what I wanted, all my problems went away. If I could snap my finger and that would happen, would I be happy? And the conclusion he came to was no. And that really, I think, fucked with him and really messed with him. But I think, I like the story of John Stuart Mill because it is, it's almost like a hyperbolic version of what the rest of us go through. I think most of us grow up with a naive understanding of happiness. This idea that like, well, if I could just get the job I wanted, then I'd be happy. If I could just marry this type of person, then I'd be happy. If I could just make this amount of money, then I'd be happy.

• 7:12Mark Manson?

  And sure enough, the more we tend to focus on those things, the more we tend to focus on happiness, the further removed we become from it. And the more miserable and anxious and depressed we get. And I think this is particularly appropriate because there's a little bit of a paradox in the 21st century in that today, the population is better informed, has more access to mental health care, has more experience with therapy than any other generation before, yet rates of depression are at all time highs. One in three people suffer from some degree of anxiety disorder. Like, the list of mental health ailments goes on and on and on. So, it kind of raises this question of, are we approaching happiness in the wrong way

• 7:57Mark Manson?

  to begin with? And if we are, how should we be approaching it? Now, I think John Stuart Mill is ultimately representative of how our intuitions around happiness go wrong, right? We tend to assume that happiness is a feeling that you should be able to summon at will. There was a thing that went viral maybe five or six years ago, I think from novel Ram Vakhan, where he said, he's like, happiness is just a choice. You can just decide to be happy. There's not a whole lot of evidence supporting that. We'll get into whether that's true or not. A lot of people assume that happiness is a reward that you experience for achieving something in your life, for attaining something in your life, for having certain experiences.

• 8:36Mark Manson?

  Is that true? Or is it just a side effect of something else that is going on? We're gonna discover that later on as well. A lot of people, especially people with certain upbringings, assume that happiness is the result of deserving it, from working hard enough or doing the right things.

• 8:54Mark Manson?

  Happiness is like, it's almost like you have to be like, pre-qualified for happiness, as if it's like a fucking insurance rate or something. A lot of people assume that happiness can be solved with the right techniques or tactics. You know, it's like, I think these are kind of like the morning routine people. You know, it's like, well, if I get up an hour earlier, the data says I'll be happier, because that's what happier people wake up earlier. Like, is that true? Not necessarily. And then finally, a lot of people assume that happiness, if you figure everything out in your life, happiness should be a constant state that you're in perpetually in any given moment. And, once again, I think that's kind of a naive and childish way of looking at it.

• 9:38Mark Manson?

  In some ways, yes, happiness can be ever-present in any given moment, but I don't think that's a realistic way of looking at it. And when we get into the three versions of happiness later, and what they are and how they're different, I don't even know if you would necessarily want to feel happy all the time. So, ultimately, what we're gonna discover is that happiness isn't really something that you pursue in and of itself. It is the side effect and the by-product of pursuing something else. Do you have any comments, or qualms, or moral dilemmas? Before we move on, Drew, you are staring at me with a...

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, a dead blank stare.

• 10:18Mark Manson?

  How happy are you right now, from a scale of 1 to 10?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  One question I would add to is, like, is happiness even the point? Right? You're kind of getting at that, but just like, maybe keep that question in mind through all this too. Like, how, it's really, to me, I think it's kind of bullshit for one. It's just not a good, it's definitely not a good goal to have, as we'll see, in and of itself. And I'm just not, I think it's just, it's way overrated. It's way overrated. I don't even know if we should be spending a full episode on happiness, honestly. That's maybe a hot take, I don't know.

• 10:51Mark Manson?

  Spicy, spicy take from Drew Bernie.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Just keep that question in the back of your mind, yeah.

• 10:56Mark Manson?

  Maybe we'll return to that at the end. Like, is happiness overrated?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  I think it's a good question to ask ourselves when we're done with this.

• 11:02Mark Manson?

  I would argue that this episode is probably necessary, if anything, to simply convince people of that point.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 11:09Mark Manson?

  That like, this actually might be something you shouldn't think a ton about.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Right, which is gonna sound crazy to a lot of people, I think, but hopefully we can convince you that it's maybe not all it's cracked up to be.

• 11:23Mark Manson?

  All right, so let's let's lay some philosophical groundwork, because theories about human happiness have been around for 2,500 years, 3,000 years, and in this case, like, the ancient world and the ancient traditions like, really went into happiness pretty thoroughly, and in my personal opinion, it hasn't changed a whole lot, as we'll see. So we'll start with the Greeks, as we usually do. Probably the most popular and practical and, to this day, used framework around happiness comes from Aristotle. It's his framework of hedonia versus eudaimonia. We talked about this quite a bit in our episode on values, but I'll just, I'll review it very briefly.

• 12:05Mark Manson?

  So hedonia is basically worldly pleasures, things that feel good, you know? Eating a really good pizza is hedonic, having sex is hedonic, making some money is hedonic. It's like temporary, exciting, pleasurable, feels-good stuff that like, passes relatively quickly. The problem with pursuing hedonic happiness is that transitory nature of it. You know, it's like, you eat pizza and have sex tonight, and you're happy tonight, but then you wake up tomorrow and you're like, well, now I need something else to be happy. And so you kind of end up on what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill, where you are just constantly chasing the next high, the next exciting thing, the next thing that's gonna make you feel good.

• 12:49Mark Manson?

  And so it's it's not a stable or reliable way to base your happiness. You might be very happy in that single moment, but over the long span of your life, or over multiple months or years, your happiness is more like a roller coaster. It goes up and down and up and down, and the waves and crashes are quite dramatic. And

• 13:09Mark Manson?

  Unsettling. This is as opposed to eudaimonia, which Aristotle defined as loosely means like kind of like a fulfillment or satisfaction in oneself. It's the idea that like your actions are valuable and meaningful and that you are doing the right thing with your limited amount of time on earth. It's a much deeper and more philosophical version of happiness. And what's interesting about hedonia versus eudaimonia is that you can be experiencing quite a bit of displeasure, but still be experiencing eudaimonic happiness. An example would be like changing a baby's diaper. It's like, nobody likes changing a baby's diaper, but if you're a parent, you probably

• 13:52Mark Manson?

  take a lot of pride and satisfaction of taking care of your kids. So that would be an example of having eudaimonic happiness, but not hedonic happiness. Now, the nice thing about eudaimonic happiness is that it is sustainable. It lasts over a long period of time. Generally, if you do something that feels very meaningful and useful and profound in your life, you will still derive satisfaction from that many, many years later. And you will look back and feel good about yourself for doing the thing. So in Aristotle's framework, he argued that generally we should pursue eudaimonic happiness and just let hedonic happiness happen. If it happens, great. If it doesn't, that's fine, too.

• 14:33Mark Manson?

  And in his framework, eudaimonic happiness was achieved by living virtuously. So Aristotle had a series of, I think it's 17 or 19 virtues, things like courage, wisdom, temperance. Basically, if you are able to live up to those virtues, those virtues would give you a life of satisfaction and meaning, and then that would create kind of this long-term sustaining happiness that would carry you through the ups and downs that are inevitable in anybody's life. So it's already here, very early on, that we're finding this pattern that we're going to see a lot, that happiness isn't something that you pursue or find itself. And in fact, pursuing happiness, pursuing what you think is going to make you happy in the short term is likely going to backfire at some point.

• 15:17Mark Manson?

  But it's actually by pursuing some sort of other meaningful action that has nothing to do with happiness. Will generate happiness as a byproduct. So Aristotle's argument would be that if you act virtuously, if you say, I don't know, stand up for a cause you believe in, or support your friends and neighbors in need, that's a virtuous action. And that the byproduct of acting virtuously is that you will develop a strong eudaimonic happiness. You'll be satisfied with yourself. You will feel that your life is full of meaning and so on and so forth. Now, there was another framework from ancient Greeks that I think is also worth talking about. It's much less talked about, or I would actually say it's probably the most misunderstood

• 16:03Mark Manson?

  framework from ancient Greece, which is Epicureanism. Now, generally, anytime Epicurus comes up, it's mostly because people shit on him. And it's because like the really simplified version of his argument is that he said life's about pleasure. Life's about feeling good. And pretty much anything you do, you should you should just try to maximize feeling good as much as possible. There are some things that when they get compressed to the size of a tweet, like, don't really, like, they lose most of their signal. And I would say Epicureanism is like a prime example of this. Like, the tweet version of Epicureanism sounds ridiculous. It's like, OK, clearly, that's not a good way to live your life, just maximizing your pleasure. If you actually dig into Epicurus and what he wrote and what he thought,

• 16:49Mark Manson?

  it's way more nuanced than that. So, so basically, Epicurus distinguished between two types of pleasures. There are kinetic pleasures, and then there are catastomatic pleasures. Say that three times fast.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Catus, what is it?

• 17:03Mark Manson?

  Catastomatic.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Catastomatic, OK, OK.

• 17:06Mark Manson?

  And I may not even be saying that correctly.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  All right.

• 17:09Mark Manson?

  So kinetic pleasures, in this case, kinesis means movement, right? These are very similar to the hedonic pleasures, right? So these are the active pleasures that move in and out of your life very quickly, things like eating and sex and playing games and, you know, being entertained. Whereas catastomatic pleasures are static pleasures. They are durable, long-lasting pleasures. So things like friendship, things like gaining knowledge, you know, reading, learning about something, having a sense of peace in your life, contentment. You know, these are all catastomatic pleasures that...

• 17:53Mark Manson?

  I guess in Aristotle's framework, you would kind of associate those more with eudaimonia, but for Epicurus, those were, he considered those pleasures as well, right? It's like, it is pleasurable to just be a good friend, or, you know, read a good book. Now, similar to Aristotle, Epicurus argued that because kinetic pleasures were so temporary, one should focus more on the catastomatic pleasures. And he kind of, the thing that differentiated him from Aristotle is he did a little bit of a mental jujitsu that we're gonna see also come up quite a bit. He made the connection that catastomatic pleasures, or those long-lasting pleasures, they actually have less to do with doing something, or having something, more than

• 18:38Mark Manson?

  they do removing pain or discomfort. And so Epicurus actually argued that happiness is not gaining or acquiring anything, it's removing things that bar you. Basically, happiness is kind of the natural state, and then our goal is to actually just remove the unhappiness from our life. So it's remove any, any pain that we might be feeling, remove stress, remove discomfort, remove bad relationships, conflict. It's, it's like, don't strive towards things that will make you feel good, it's just remove the things that make you feel bad, and then that catastomatic pleasure will naturally

• 19:23Mark Manson?

  result. Whatever's left over will just naturally be very pleasurable. And this state of having a lack of stress in one's life, he called ataraxia, which was basically a kind of a calmness or a serenity that you strive for as a result of removing all the things that impede it. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because it's very similar to the Buddhist approach to happiness, right? So in Buddhism, life is defined by its suffering, and that suffering is defined by what Buddhists call dukkha, which is an attachment to...

• 19:58Mark Manson?

  You know, all the things, all of our desires and cravings in life. In Buddhism, the practice is about removing those cravings, removing those desires. So, you know, letting go of the need to be right, or the need to indulge yourself, or the need to feel a sense of status, or whatever. And so, in a very similar vein, it's happiness isn't defined, isn't like a positive thing that you necessarily like chase or achieve. Happiness is the byproduct of simply removing, or in the Buddhist case, letting go of all the things that are preventing it.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Okay, I do have a question here.

• 20:35Mark Manson?

  Go.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so Epicurus, if I remember right, like even the modern hedonist, because hedonism is still somewhat of a philosophical framework that people use even today. And Epicurus is often uses some of the foundational work to hedonism, right? But the hedonist even too, they think that, you know, the removal of those things, removal of pain, removal of suffering from your life, obviously that's a, that gets you towards some form of happiness. But even things like what Aristotle would call eudemonic happiness, or eudemonic activities at least, that would add to your long-term happiness, those even have a hedonist, or hedonic value to them too, right? Like that's

• 21:15Mark Manson?

  Sometimes.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Modern, modern, like they say, okay, oh, you, you're volunteering at a shelter or something like that, and it's obviously not like a enjoyable thing necessarily, but the hedonist, even that, you get some sort of hedonic value, you feel good about that on some level, right?

• 21:28Mark Manson?

  Right, which Epicurus would say that that would be like a catastemic pleasure.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right, right, okay.

• 21:35Mark Manson?

  It's like a enduring satisfaction that you get from it. A lot of this is just semantics, I think. I think, you know, Epicurus is often associated with hedonism. I've seen generally people who are defenders of Epicurus redefine his philosophy as Epicurianism, because I think hedonism has just gotten such a bad

• 21:56Speaker 01

  There's a bad connotation.

• 21:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, really bad connotation over the centuries. I do think one of the reasons he gets kind of skewered quite a bit is that like, he really showed no, like generally speaking, all All of the other schools of thought, both religious and philosophical, they kind of have this, there's almost this like aesthetic quality to them. And by aesthetic, I don't mean like visually appealing. I mean, like self-flagellation, like, you know, you should suffer for your, your happiness and satisfaction. Like you owe a pound of flesh to, to like, live a life worth living. Whereas Epicurus like saw no reason for that. He was like, yeah, dude, if you just want to like drink wine and have orgies, like, and you're not hurting anybody, go for it. Like, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:38Mark Manson?

  Whereas Aristotle was like, whoa, you have to be virtuous. And Buddhists would be like, no, you're attached. You know, Epicurus was like, nah, dude, knock yourself out. So I do think his, it's not so much he like, said that that was what created happiness. It was just that like, he had no qualms with it.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 22:57Mark Manson?

  So putting all this together, we're already seeing two common threads that I think we're just going to continue to see over and over again throughout this entire episode. Which is, the first of which is that happiness is not achieved in and of itself. Happiness is a byproduct of doing other things. And then the second thread is that happiness is probably more practically achieved, not by finding the right things to do, but by simply removing the impediments to having it. So it's actually, it's probably higher ROI of your effort to remove the stress in your life than to like, go find what's going to bring you eudaimonic happiness or catastrophic pleasure, right? It's like, instead of like worrying about the soup kitchen and how much you're volunteering, like it's,

• 23:41Mark Manson?

  you're probably just going to get way more mileage of like deleting that toxic friend out of your life. Like, that's the 80/20. I'm really getting ahead.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Mark Manson?

  But like, that's like upfront. And I mean, we're going to come back to this later with a lot more depth. But like, that really is kind of, you know, the long and short of it.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I guess you could see it as a little bit of a tension, like this eastern, western philosophy, a little bit. You mentioned like in the east, so the non-attachment in Buddhism especially. And then there's like, with Aristotle and the virtues, living virtuously versus the non-attachment in the east and west. Are those necessarily mutually exclusive? The way I've actually tried to like, kind of reconcile those in my, in my own head is, you know, strive to live virtuously and achieve the things you want to achieve, but don't be attached to the outcomes. Do you think that's? Is that just my Western mind trying to like not be able to sit with paradox and just be able to reconcile that? Or is there something to that, do you think?

• 24:42Mark Manson?

  I mean, I think that's a valid interpretation of it. You know, what's interesting, I went back for this episode, I went back and reviewed some Buddhist stuff that like I hadn't really looked at in 10 or 20 years. And I'd actually forgotten that, like, so the word dukkha that is like kind of associated with the first noble truth of Buddhism, which is that life is suffering. What's interesting is like dukkha doesn't have a direct translation in the English. And it actually, it's like, it's actually a metaphorical word. So dukkha actually literally means like the gap in a wheel that's turning like in a cart. And then I think the prefix do means like, it's like broken or off. And so the whole concept of Buddhist, of suffering in Buddhism is basically it's like a broken wheel.

• 25:28Mark Manson?

  That's still being driven on a cart. It's out of balance and out of harmony. And you see this in Confucianism as well as like everything in like kind of the whole moral order. And Confucianism is like built around social harmony. It's like, it's all about balancing and be in like adding value to the people around you and not causing more problems than you, than you solve. I mean, again, we talked about this, I think we talked about this last episode in the emotions episode, like in the research, they find that people from East Asia are like, are able to hold contradictory thoughts in their head.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  The dialectical thinking.

• 26:02Mark Manson?

  Right. And I think, I think some of that is just because so much of their, the basis of their understanding of human happiness is about balance and trade offs and

• 26:14Mark Manson?

  and understanding that there's like in any given experience, there's both pleasure and pain are going to be present in different proportions. The Western approach is like very individually focused and

• 26:27Mark Manson?

  and I guess kind of idealistic. Like it's, there's this idea of like, there is a right way to do everything. Whereas I think in the East, it's more, there's more of an understanding of like, no, like you're just, every situation is going to be challenging in a new way. And you're just gonna, you're gonna have to like, keep adapting. And you're definitely not the first person to kind of like create that overlap. And there definitely is a lot to be said about like doing things with like, without expecting a certain outcome, like that is a good thing to do. But in terms of like the actual.

• 26:57Mark Manson?

  Literature itself, like, I mean, that probably is a little bit of a westernized interpretation of eastern philosophy.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Right, I'm trying more to just kind of sit with that and be like, oh, okay, there's just, these two things can exist at the same time and kind of be intention of that's okay.

• 27:11Mark Manson?

  But yeah. The weird thing is, is like, and this is, this has kind of been a more recent thought of mine, especially like, I mean, as you know, like Aristotle just keeps coming up in this podcast over and over and over again. So at this point, I've like ended up going back and rereading a bunch of his stuff. And like, like to Aristotle, a virtue was an ideal that like you could approach and you could never embody, right? It's like, justice is a moving target. So it kind of ends up back at like that Buddhist concept of like, you know, just finding balance in, in everything. You know, so, so Aristotle was like, you should pursue justice and temperance. Well, it's like justice and temperance are moving targets. And as you move through your life, they're going to mean different things to you based on what's going on around you. So it's like, the result is kind of the same, it's just

• 27:55Mark Manson?

  the framing is completely different. So these two threads that we're talking about, right? The first one is that, you know, the best way to happiness is like by not pursuing happiness. And then the second one is that the highest ROI is to actually just, instead of trying to be happy, remove unhappiness. And that's going to get you further. These show up quite a bit in the modern literature. The first 60 to 80 years of psychology was very much focused on alleviating suffering, you know, was finding people who were deeply depressed or had some sort of mental illness and like figuring out what was going on and diagnosing them and trying to get them to like feel okay again. And it really wasn't until, you know, Martin Seligman and a number of his colleagues, I believe in like the 70s

• 28:35Mark Manson?

  or 80s, started asking like, what about making, taking people who are already feeling okay, but like just feeling even better? Like, what if we could take on a, on a scale from one to 10, instead of spending all of our time trying to get people who are a three and a four up to a seven, what if we took people who are at a seven and, and we found a way to get them up to eight and nine consistently? And it was, it was, at the time, it was a, it was relatively revolutionary. And, and so a lot of the early happiness research started in the 70s. And a lot of that early research is just like, super cool, mind blowing. A lot of counterintuitive results came out of that.

• 29:14Mark Manson?

  But by the eighties, especially with like Carol Riff and a couple of other people's work, like you kind of just end up back at Aristotle. It's like, oh, yeah, there's hedonia and eudaimonia. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's a thing. That's the whole, yeah. Okay, we got it. And similarly, you know, it's, it's when you look at, we're going to get into all the happiness research around things like sex and money and relationships and, um, you know, what area you live in and, and material possessions and like all the different things. And it's, and again, and again, what we're going to find is like, it's not so much about like having the Lamborghini or the giant house. It's more just about like not being broke and not being

• 29:58Mark Manson?

  alone, you know? It's like adding more doesn't bring more happiness. It's just, you just, you remove unhappiness to a point where you're satisfied. And then like, that's kind of the game.

• 30:13Mark Manson?

  With that, I will turn it over to you and we could start digging into some of the research.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  They, they did. We started studying this from more scientific point of view, right? And like you mentioned, the seventies and eighties positive psychologists kind of started to become a thing and they wanted to know what, what constitutes human thriving, right? What, what influenced that? The problem with that, however, uh, is what they call the weird problem in social sciences, right? Now, the weird, weird is a, is an acronym. Okay. Um, and it stands for, uh, Western educated, industrialized, rich and democratic populations. Okay. Now, if you take that, that's about 15% of the global population that lives in those societies, right? It's basically North America, Australia, New Zealand. Western Europe.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. That's about 15% of the world population. However, about 90% of the studies done in the social sciences has been done on those populations. Okay? So our view of what constitutes something like happiness, which is a complex psychological phenomenon, right? Is based largely on about one in six people throughout the world. Based on the psychology or the the social makeup of one in six people throughout the world. So we're ignoring a big part of the the globe and making these grand generalizations. Now, it's become more and more apparent that this is what we've done. And we've tried, in recent years especially, we've tried to mitigate some of those, some of the problems with that.

• 31:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  But with something like happiness or any other complex psychological phenomenon, obviously, cultural influences are going to have a big impact on what makes someone happy. The cultural influences, the traditions, the history of a country, the genetic makeup of a population, all of those things contribute, and yet we've only studied a fairly small slice of those. And on top of that, too, a lot of times we only study college kids, too, right? Like, it's not even necessarily adults with full, fully grown prefrontal cortexes, right?

• 32:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  So, so that's kind of the weird problem in a nutshell. And so to illustrate, like, so in North America, in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and these places, like we talked about in the emotions episode, we tend to value these high arousal, positive emotions, right? And we kind of equate that with happiness, or we're more prone to equate that with happiness, right? When, if you look at a lot of different parts of the world, those things are not valued nearly as highly as we do. We talked about this in the emotions episode as well. Just to give you an example, in East Asia, like in China and Japan, they value much more calm states, balance, social harmony. Those are what they associate with happiness when they think of of happiness just in in general.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  For example, in in Japan, there's this proverb that the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered down, right?

• 33:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  They also have this concept of ikigai. I believe that's how they say it. It's kind of like, loosely translated, it's like life purpose, but it's specifically a life purpose when you're fulfilling a social role, right? So you find happiness in in doing your duty. And it's not this ecstatic individual achievement that we place so high in the in the West. You know, if you think about China, too, I just saw a scholar talking about the difference between China and the US. And, you know, China has like a 5,000-year history. And it's just littered with famine, war, anarchy. There were times where there weren't even a government there. Where, as you look at a lot of Western cultures, especially with colonial traditions like the United States.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  You you show up in the new world and you you you stake out your plot of land and by next year you can be trading some crops for hard currency and everything just gets better every single year.

• 33:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  In the United States especially, we've never like dealt with an invasion, like a large scale invasion of another country. We, when things do go bad, we freak the fuck out, we do everything we can, right?

• 34:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  To make sure they're not going bad anymore. It's a very different way of thinking about this, whereas in China, you know, they've learned to deal with this 5,000 year history, that's very checkered, with these ideals around family and social support, right? Your your devotion to the clan.

• 34:16Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And so it's a very different way of thinking about the world.

• 34:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  And yet, what we've studied mostly in the social sciences so far has been these weird populations.

• 34:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  And so Russia is another example too, like, you know, especially in the West, we think of Russians as just like cold miserable people, right? Sorry to the Russians out there, it's that that's kind of what, but they too have a very long history of, you know, being invaded and famine and, like in World War II, right? They lost something like 25 to 30 million people. The United States lost 400,000.

• 34:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Like, just think about that, like, there's a very different, you come out of an experience like that with a very different worldview.

• 34:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Okay, especially around things like happiness and that, the Russians have some interesting sayings, like laughter without reason is a sign of stupidity. I think if anybody knows a Russian, they would absolutely agree with that, right?

• 35:05Mark Manson?

  I totally see a Russian saying that, yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  If you laugh a lot, you'll cry a lot too, like, there's just, you know, and then in the Middle East, like exhibitions of being overly happy are often met with, or often, you're seen as you're you're trying to cause envy in other people, so they're kind of kept down as well.

• 35:23Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And then, we've already talked about the Buddhist perspective too, about the non-attachment, happiness being one of those things, if you're striving for it, that's a form of attachment, you need to get away from. So there's this, like, when we talk about the research, keep that in mind, and we'll try to point that out when it does come up, but this idea of what happiness is, I think a lot of us think that it's a universal thing, and what we're gonna find out is very much not, right?

• 35:47Mark Manson?

  I was struck, in the research, we came across one of these like cross-cultural studies.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:52Mark Manson?

  And in one of them, they asked, one of the, they asked a Japanese man, they said, "How much, how much do you think about happiness?" And he looked at the researcher, he was like, I've never thought about it once.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just like, I've never even, what are you talking about? Right? Like, just not how I approach the world. Like, a lot of cultures, like in Japan, if there's social harmony within the group, then you're happy. You can't be happy alone. It has to be only experienced with the people around you that you love and care about. Right? So there's that. And then, okay, so this also gets into things like the World Happiness Report. We see this every day. We're talking about this.

• 36:25Mark Manson?

  Don't get me started.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  We see this every year. The World Happiness Report comes out and they rank countries. Who's the happiest country? And inevitably, it's always a Scandinavian country. Lately, it's been Finland the last several years, last decade or so. It's like Finland has always been the top or near the top.

• 36:39Mark Manson?

  Oh, can I?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Get in here.

• 36:41Mark Manson?

  Can I? Because we were gonna do a YouTube video on this. And it never happened because it's just Finland's a long way away. I wanted to do a video on this because Finland is one world's happiest country, seven years in a row. And if you actually look at the way the World Happiness Report is compiled, they do it. What's the name of the ladder?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  The Cantrell Ladder.

• 37:02Mark Manson?

  The Cantrell Ladder. So they do it, they use a thing called the Cantrell Ladder, which is basically they go around the world and they ask people on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is your best ideal life and 0 is your worst possible life, where are you currently? And generally speaking, everybody kind of lands around 6 or 7. And, but Finland has consistently been at the top. It's been like 7.8 or 7.9. Now, what's really interesting is that if you actually go talk to Finnish people, they're all like, what are you talking about?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  The rest of you must be miserable because we are not.

• 37:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, have you been to Finland? But what's interesting, so I have a couple Finnish friends in my life, and I talked to them about this, and they said that in Finnish culture, there is a strong ethos of not expecting too much out of life in general, but out of yourself. Like, there's a lot of pride, like, people are, it's a big part of the culture to be humble and to not just, you know, don't dream too big, you know, don't set yourself up for disappointment. You know, just keep things simple.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  They even have a phrase for it. It's hantelaki.

• 38:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So they, basically, if you take that cultural aspect and then you combine it with Cantrell's ladder, which is like, you go from country to country and you say, On a scale from one to 10, where 10 is the best possible life you can imagine for yourself, and you have a culture that has trained you to not imagine great things for yourself, then yeah, you're probably gonna look around and be like, "Yeah, I'm an eight." Or "I'm a nine." Like, things are pretty good. And I look at stuff like that, and I have so much skepticism of like, "Are we even measuring the same thing?"

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:48Mark Manson?

  Like, how do you even measure this stuff?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, just know again, I think this is an artifact of kind of the weird psychology that we talked about, and it's that we... People from these countries come up with these surveys, and then they give them to everybody in the world, and that's an artifact of it, is that they're emphasizing just one little part of what they define as happiness, and it turns out that it's kind of bullshit. Because if you do other surveys that say, you know, they have more of an emphasis on the collectivist culture around you, the collective happiness around you, that changes it completely. And it's more East Asia and Latin America that gets to be... They're happier than they are on the World Happiness Report. So, whenever you see that, take it with a grain of salt. That's kind of the takeaway from that, anyway. Yeah, and it's not to say that like where you live doesn't have an effect on your happiness.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  We'll get to that at some point, right? It's just that it's a lot more complicated than that, and there's just better ways of thinking about it, rather than just asking people going around, "Are you happy? Are you happy?" That's a terrible way to measure happiness, for one. And yeah, yeah, we'll get to why that is a little bit, too.

• 39:49Mark Manson?

  Cool.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Okay, so, like you mentioned at the top here, Mark, there are kind of three types of happiness, or three components at least to happiness, that we want to go over, and you've mentioned a couple of them already. We're gonna add another one. First, though, I want to talk about that... We just went over kind of the science behind it, you know, there's a scientific approach. It's very hard to measure something like this, though. What science is trying to do is trying to make this objective, but obviously, happiness is a very subjective thing. And so it's very hard to get a grasp on like an objective measure of this. But we've done an okay job of it. I do think the framework that we've come up with from a scientific perspective is informed by a lot of these ancient traditions and everything like that. And I think we've kind of come to a pretty good definition of it, and these three components of it, anyway.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And so we'll kind of get into how we measure them and all the nuances around them, okay? So the three main parts are affect, there's life satisfaction, and then there's meaning/purpose, right? This kind of maps on to like the hedonia, that's the affective part, right? This is how you feel kind of on a day-to-day basis. Moment to moment. Moment to moment even too, yes, very much so. Whereas the life satisfaction is more like the eudaimonia. It's kind of when you step back and you think about, okay, how is my life going at this point? And then, of course, there's meaning and purpose. And we'll dive into each one of these, okay? The meaning and purpose more about like your existential significance in the universe and the world around you. Okay? So we'll break those down and we'll talk about what influences each one, okay? So with the affect, again, that's the feeling part.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Moment to moment, day-to-day existence, whether you feel good or bad. The affective side of happiness is it's more influenced by your circumstances around you or the environment or anything that's happening in any given moment, right? So it's very much, it's very volatile on a day-to-day basis, right? Contrast that with life satisfaction, the second component here, the eudaimonia, right? This is when you step back and somebody asks you, you know, how is your life going? And you'll kind of step back and look at it from a big picture and say, am I satisfied with what I've achieved so far? Do I like how my life is going just on whatever terms that I've defined them as? Would I change anything? How much do I regret? Right.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Kind of those bigger questions that we'll ask ourselves. That is much less influenced by kind of environmental changes or the day-to-day ups and downs that we experience. And it's a little bit more durable, a little bit longer term. It can go up and down, but it's more on the basis of like weeks or months or even years as opposed to like the day-to-day fluctuations that we see in affect. We talked a little bit about this in the emotions episode as well. It's like there's kind of two components to your emotions as well. And then that kind of gets us into the third component, which I don't, I don't think is, it's not quite as.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  As developed in the scientific literature, but there it's becoming more, which is the meaning and the purpose. We talk about this a lot.

• 42:47Mark Manson?

  You know, this came up when we talked to Arthur Brooks.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:50Mark Manson?

  And I, I like it. I like that he kind of lumps this in with the other two, especially because when you look at the scientific literature, literature on purpose, it does have such an outsized effect on mental health, psychological wellbeing, like all these like different measurements that we're talking about, like our day to day effect, our life satisfaction. So it feels appropriate to me. He was actually the first person that I came across who like added that in. And I really liked it when I talked to him. So, and he like explains it very well. So yeah, big fan of that. And as you know, like, I'm like all about meaning and purpose. Like, you know, life satisfaction is great, but like ultimately, if you have a strong sense of meaning and purpose in your life, if you feel like you're like giving

• 43:35Mark Manson?

  yourself to some greater cause or greater good, it makes all those other fluctuations feel manageable.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Right, right. There even, there's even evidence to suggest that like a sense of meaning and purpose in your life can be completely independent of whether you're satisfied with your life or whether you're feeling good or bad at the moment either.

• 43:54Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  So this is the most durable out of all of those components of happiness. If you find something that's meaningful to you, it's very unlikely that that's going to change. There's obviously things that could change that in the long term, but you know, like parents raising children, especially they've done some studies with like parents who raise disabled children. And that is not a fun existence, obviously. Day to day, they experience a lot of negative emotions. They're probably not super satisfied with their lives, with their lives, but.

• 44:24Mark Manson?

  Can you get angry emails on that one?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  But, but they feel a strong sense of meaning. Well, hold on, I gotta point to this. Okay. I'm getting, I'm getting to something here.

• 44:31Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  They, they feel a very strong sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, which kind of like the rest of it doesn't matter at that point. Not that it doesn't matter, but that it's like, it's trivial compared to what they, they feel like they're doing, that their daily purpose that they have.

• 44:43Mark Manson?

  The point you just raised, I think is important, which is like, because what you run into with happiness research, and this has long been my problem with it too, is like, it's, it's.

• 44:53Mark Manson?

  I guess it's the so what problem, you know, like you can start digging into all these studies and find all this stuff like, oh, well, if you, you know, you have this many friendships, you'll be a little bit happier. And like, my reaction is usually just like, well, so what? Does that mean I should go like, optimize how many friendships I have, or like, figure out like, how many social interactions I have per day? Like, so what? And even something like that, I think if you talk to parents who have raised, like, struggled to raise a child with special needs, or if you've talked to somebody who's like, overcome a lot of adversity in their life, and they, maybe they haven't experienced as much life satisfaction, or they haven't been as happy as a lot of other people, there's still that so what? I mean, this kind of comes back to the happiness is overrated piece, which

• 45:36Mark Manson?

  is like, if you've lived a meaningful life, and you've done things that are, feel incredibly impactful to you, like, who cares?

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Whether you were happy or not?

• 45:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Why does that matter so much?

• 45:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally agree. Each of these three levels, or the components of happiness, they are differentially kind of sensitive to hedonic adaptation, okay? And what's hedonic adaptation? So we've talked about hedonia, and the hedonic treadmill, basically, is what we're talking about. So when you experience, say, a big gain in your life, you get more money, or you're in a new relationship, or, you know, you acquire something material, and you, you enjoy it, you quickly adapt to that as your new reality. They call that hedonic adaptation. So you get a new car, let's say, or a new house, and it's great at first, and you love it, and you're like, I love my life. Within a few months, you're like, ah, this fucking car, I gotta go, you know, change the oil again, or it's, you know, it's broke again. You know, the new house you buy, it's great at first, too, but

• 46:33Speaker 01

  then you're like, eh, it's fine, whatever, but I wish I had a bigger house now.

• 46:36Mark Manson?

  Refrigerator's leaking.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Refrigerator's leaking, yes, from personal experience. That's, that's hedonic adaptation, okay? And each of these levels of happiness, each of the components of happiness, are, are sensitive to it in different ways. The, the most sensitive one is your affect, obviously. You're gonna feel, your affect is the most volatile, so it's going to change the quickest, right?

• 47:02Mark Manson?

  So it's, I watched a movie last night, it was a great movie, I was really happy for an hour, and then today-

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Next morning, you're-

• 47:08Mark Manson?

  Don't care, whatever.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Whereas life satisfaction, if you achieve an important goal or something along those lines, you're probably going to be satisfied for a little while about that. That can last for a few months, maybe even a year. That's great. And then meaning and purpose is much less sensitive to fluctuations in these hedonic adaptations that we have. Okay. Because if you find something that's meaningful or purposeful in your life, it's just, you don't really care about all the externalities around it as much, right?

• 47:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I think a good way to think about it, it's like probably, and by the way, this is not in the literature. I'm just kind of spitballing this. You know, affect is probably measurable on minutes to days. Life satisfaction is probably measured in months to years and then purpose and meaning is probably measured in years to decades.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I would, I would, I would agree with that too. My thing with this too, though, is I think most of us, I'm certainly guilty of this, we approach this backwards. We start with affect. We say, I want to feel better right now. And so we look for ways to feel better right now, which there are plenty of those. Especially in modern society, there's plenty of ways to just feel better in the moment. And then we think, okay, if I can feel better, then at some point I'm going to achieve some sort of satisfaction about my life. And then I can finally find some meaning and purpose that I can pursue. I think we have that absolutely backwards. And I think that's the whole point of this episode, actually, is to, is to point that out. Is that you, I think it's a better, more durable

• 48:40Speaker 01

  sense of satisfaction and happiness that you will achieve if you focus on finding meaningful pursuits first.

• 48:46Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  And then you'll develop some sort of satisfaction around your life. Like, oh, this is all right. I've, I've accomplished this thing. I feel good about myself. I feel good about my life. I feel good about what I've done for the people around me. And that brings on these nice emotions that we're trying to harvest, right?

• 49:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And doing it that way, it, it almost like inoculates you towards the downswings, the other things, right? So it's like, if you're pursuing something very meaningful in your life and it doesn't quite, like, things aren't going great, you're having a bad, bad month or a bad year or whatever. It's going to sustain you through that period. You're like, you know what? This really sucks. This is really hard now, but. Hey, it's worth it. This is worth doing. And same thing with the negative affect. You know, it's like something goes wrong, or you know, your kid's being a brat, or you know, whatever, the car breaks down again. It's like, if you've got that that higher meaning

• 49:42Mark Manson?

  or purpose tethering you, you're just gonna be more resilient in dealing with all the bullshit.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. One kind of metaphor I came up with this for this too is that a lot of times we treat happiness like farming. Like, we're planting little affect seeds who can harvest, you know, happiness, emotions at some point, when really what we should be doing is more looking at it like we're a builder, like we're a construction worker of some sort, and we're building a building that has a solid foundation, and it can weather the storm. Yes, it still needs maintenance. Yes, you still have to keep it up and everything like that. But you're building a building that can withstand all the storms of life, whereas like, you know, a field is just exposed and you're screwed and it's gonna, you have bad years and good years and bad days and good days and all that kind of thing. So I thought, I don't know, that's kind of one way to think about it anyway.

• 50:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I'm just kind of thinking about, I mean, we're gonna get into age later, but it's interesting, because when I think about it, generally speaking, I think young people over-index on affect or hedonic happiness. They're kind of always looking for the next thrill. And I imagine middle-aged people are a little bit over-indexed on life satisfaction. You know, it's, when you think of somebody who's having a midlife crisis, they're probably having a crisis over, did I do enough? Did I accomplish what I wanted to? Am I like, am I proud of myself? Could I have done more? And then, but really, it's, I guess,

• 51:12Mark Manson?

  you know, and I guess it's older folks that like generally finally get around to the the larger meaning and purpose, for the most part.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there is kind of a developmental aspect to it, for sure. And we will get into this more, we'll have a whole section on how happiness can change throughout the lifespan and what you can do about that, too, and kind of how you can match your, your life at whatever stage you're in to optimizing for happiness. Not that you should be optimizing for happiness, but, but. It just kind of works that way.

• 51:40Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Uh, is there anything you can do about that? I mean, sure, there is. At the same time, too, I don't know. Um, when you're younger, you know, do you, do you regret like partying a whole bunch and chasing girls and stuff like that? I'm, I don't really, you know, I'm kind of glad I did it in some ways. There's things I wish I would have done differently. Sure.

• 51:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Um, it's funny because I, I don't regret. I don't regret the hedonic stuff.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:03Mark Manson?

  I regret how much I prioritized it. And, and I think maybe this is, this is an interesting thing because when I look back at my younger self, I mean, I, I did care a lot about the hedonic stuff.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:13Mark Manson?

  But at least for me, I think I mistook the hedonic stuff for being life satisfaction stuff.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yes, okay.

• 52:20Mark Manson?

  I thought that if I went out more and had more friends and had more crazy experiences or traveled to more places, uh, that that would give me a lot of life satisfaction. But it turns out it was just kind of the hedonic treadmill and in a very fancy disguise. So.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I mean by people, like when I say that people I think approach this backwards.

• 52:43Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Is that, and I think just developmentally, for whatever reason, we're kind of wired that way to

• 52:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  chase this, uh, uh, progression backwards anyway. So start, we, we think that that, that attaining some amazing affect is going to give us some sort of life satisfaction. And that satisfaction has meaning within it, when it's absolutely the other way.

• 53:02Mark Manson?

  It's the other way around.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, sure. If you can, if you're in your twenties and you can flip that on its head, great. I, I think like that could be a wonderful goal. Most people don't do that and that's okay. And we'll talk about, again, we'll get into the

• 53:16Mark Manson?

  The age.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  The life trajectory and the age stuff. And there's still things you can do about that and just kind of accept where you are too.

• 53:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  At some point.

• 53:22Mark Manson?

  I want to, I want to go on a little sidebar here.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Mark Manson?

  About, um, related to hedonic adaptation. Dan Gilbert has this fantastic book, Stumbling on Happiness.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, great book.

• 53:32Mark Manson?

  He, he has a concept that I love, which he calls the psychological immune system, which is basically like, our psychology is kind of almost built to return itself to a seven out of 10.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:43Mark Manson?

  Consistently, right? So it's like something great happens to you, you win the lottery. Awesome. You're a 10 out of 10 for a few days, then you're a 9 out of 10, then you're an 8 out of 10, and then pretty soon you've completely adapted to it and you're like a 7 out of 10 again. You like settle in there. Similar thing if something bad happens to you and you just kind of always come back to a 7 out of 10. And what's interesting that he points out is that our perceptions of our situation actually alter themselves. Our beliefs about ourselves and about the world around this will actually alter themselves to push us back into the 7 out of 10. Let's say you grew up poor and then you win the lottery and you're like, "Oh my God, I'm the luckiest person in the world." But then you go buy a nice house, you move to a nice part of town, you buy a nice car, and suddenly

• 54:27Mark Manson?

  you're surrounded by other people with a lot of money and a nice car and a nice house. And suddenly you're like, "Oh, John Smith across the street thinks he's better than me. Like, oh, I wish I had a house like that, or I wish I was doing this instead." And it's like, suddenly your mind has found new explanations and rationalizations for like why you're not a 10 out of 10, you're a 7 out of 10. And what I love about Gilbert's concept, because again, if you listen to like a lot of self-help gurus or, you know, quote unquote wisdom on the internet, they're basically telling you, they're like, "You can be a 10 out of 10 anytime you want. Just be grateful and remember the things that are 10 out of 10," right? And it's like, sure, fine. Like, you can, I guess, technically.

• 55:11Mark Manson?

  It takes a lot of mental effort. But Gilbert's argument is that you don't necessarily want that because the 7 out of 10 is actually, it is an evolutionary feature and not a bug. Like, it's the creature that is a 7 out of 10 on the happiness that is always looking for ways to improve itself. It's a creature that's 7 out of 10 that is always going to be mindful of new opportunities or new things it could try, or potential threats that might come around the corner. And it's almost as if like, being a 7 out of 10 is the most adaptive. You know, in the emotions episode, we talked about how like the whole point of emotions is just to be adaptable to one's environment in the most effective

• 55:53Mark Manson?

  way possible. And it turns out, I think, 7 out of 10 happiness is probably what makes us the most Most adaptable to our life in general, right? It's like you're dissatisfied enough to keep striving and keep trying new things. But you're satisfied enough to like not put a gun in your mouth and and like get out of bed in the morning. Right? So I always loved Gilbert's framing of that. It makes a ton of sense to me and it also just comes back to the main point of like, maybe you shouldn't be trying to optimize happiness. Like we're going to talk about baseline happiness in a second and then kind of that like rubber banding back to seven out of 10. That happens to everybody pretty much all the time. I think it's an interesting way to to frame the hedonic adaptation conversation.

• 56:37Mark Manson?

  And I also think it's something that you can leverage to your advantage. Like people don't think about this, right? It's like people, people get bummed out that they're like, oh, well, if I start making a bunch of money, eventually I'm going to take it for granted and I'm not going to be like super happy anymore. That sucks that I'm going to adapt to it. Well, it works in the other direction too, right? It's like if you're afraid to take a pay cut, maybe to to go into a new career. And that's because like making less money is very scary to you. Well, hedonic adaptation works in the opposite direction as well. That pay cut is going to feel awful for the first month or the first three months. But a year in, it's going to feel normal and you're going to feel fine. And you're actually going to be working on something that you care about a lot more.

• 57:22Mark Manson?

  So again, it's like optimizing for that meaning and purpose and not worrying so much about how you're going to feel in the short term.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. And it's like going back to the Buddhist point too, it's like just accepting that you're going to feel a seven most of the time.

• 57:34Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Like that in itself is kind of liberating too. And it pulls the emphasis off of the affective part of happiness as well, just in the day to day moment to moment stuff. You're like, oh, I feel like shit. Well, that's okay. You're not going to feel like shit forever.

• 57:47Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Right? And and that's that's part of the psychological immune system is because it's bringing you back to a set point. You're right, it does change based on your surroundings, but there's there's kind of like, if you do, if you can learn to just kind of accept that that's how it is. I don't know, there's a freeing liberating aspect to that as well.

• 58:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Without being complacent too.

• 58:05Mark Manson?

  So it's like strategic dissatisfaction, you know? It's like just dissatisfied enough to be like, you know what? I should get up and go do something.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  There's a, I mean, there's an evolutionary wisdom.

• 58:15Mark Manson?

  There's a lot of wisdom.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Right?

• 58:16Mark Manson?

  There's a lot of wisdom in it because and again, Gilbert talks about this in his work, but he's like, you know, if you're a 10 out of 10 all the time. You're basically walking around being like, everything's awesome.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:26Mark Manson?

  Why do anything?

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Fucking annoying is what you are. God, I hate those people.

• 58:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah, but I mean.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I don't consider myself a pessimistic person, but those people annoying me just as much as the Debbie Downers.

• 58:37Mark Manson?

  There is a certain amount of, I mean, it is, it's unrealistic, right? Because you don't, you don't adapt.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:44Mark Manson?

  Right? If you're, if you feel 10 out of 10 all the time, why do anything?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:48Mark Manson?

  Why change anything?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  I just, I can't trust anybody who has a 10 out of 10 all the time either. You know what I mean? You're like, what are you?

• 58:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Bullshit.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:54Mark Manson?

  Or on drugs.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say a lot of cocaine. That's a 10 out of 10 all the time on cocaine. Yeah.

• 58:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:04Mark Manson?

  Should we talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  We should absolutely talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll.

• 59:10Mark Manson?

  Kind of the only reason I'm here.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  I know. I know. This is, it's all been a facade, right?

• 59:14Mark Manson?

  Like, my calendar said sex, drugs, rock and roll, and then I showed up and it was a happiness podcast.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got me.

• 59:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  You're just staring at me now?

• 59:22Mark Manson?

  I was like, oh.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Sorry to disappoint you, Mark. Let's keep, let's make this really fucking boring and nerdy, how about? Yeah, sorry. No, but really, so what, what are, like, some of the factors that make us happy and what don't? I think there's, I, I think some of these, you're gonna think that, you know, oh, of course I didn't think that was gonna make me happy, but ah, there's like a little bit of nuance in here we can talk about as well. Let's kind of just start at the top here of, of the list we came up with.

• 59:46Mark Manson?

  These are some of the most common things or experiences that people associate with, with happiness. So I think we're, we're gonna talk about money, we're gonna talk about relationships, we're gonna talk about sex, we're gonna talk about, uh, giaga, like where you live, like all the things that people associate with being happy or miserable. And we're gonna like, actually get into the research of like, how much do these things actually affect whether you're happy or not?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Right, right. Okay, so let's start with drugs and alcohol, right? So the, uh, artificial happiness that we try to manipulate our happiness with, maybe. Obviously, these are very common. It's a very common way for people to either achieve some sort of new affective state or even happiness in and of itself. It's got this quick fix appeal to it, right? You have a drink, you pretty much instantly feel better, you know? You take a hit, whatever it is. They do cause these, like, immediate surges in dopamine and serotonin and all that in your brain, right? And so you do get this short-lived pleasure from that. Everybody kind of knows that. Everybody also knows the, the, you know, risk of addiction and all of that and the downsides to that. The thing is, is that when you have these artificial spikes of say dopamine or serotonin

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  or whatever in your brain, your brain often is kind of like its own immune system too. It kind of shoots the other way.

• 1:01:00Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  And so you'll experience a lot of negative affect after those things wear off. You know, withdrawal that we know about.

• 1:01:06Mark Manson?

  The best description of alcohol I've ever heard is you're borrowing happiness from tomorrow.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, man, I used to have such bad hangovers. That was so true. That was so salient, so true for me when I would drink.

• 1:01:17Mark Manson?

  The other thing I want to say here, and anybody listening who's like, done a lot of drugs.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Mark Manson?

  Will confirm this. Sometimes I'll hear people say like, oh, but if you're on drugs, like, that's not real happiness. Like, you're not actually happy. And I'm like, man, I don't know what shit you tried, but like, if you get the good stuff, like.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:35Mark Manson?

  Like, that is legit euphoria and joy.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:01:38Mark Manson?

  And it's, uh, which, again, should, the lesson there should be, maybe we should under-prioritize euphoria and joy. Like, if it's that easily accessible for such high a cost.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:51Mark Manson?

  Maybe we shouldn't make it such a priority.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Right, right. Absolutely. Your stress system too, I mean, it screws with your whole stress system.

• 1:01:58Mark Manson?

  Fucks your whole body up.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  It does. Your stress response, uh, it's basically, it drags that, uh, that your affective state and even your life satisfaction, it can drag that down over time.

• 1:02:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:02:10Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  And then what you end up doing is you're just kind of like, this is how the addiction cycle starts, right? Is you're trying to achieve that again, so you need more drugs or alcohol to do it, and it just gets into this vicious cycle. Okay?

• 1:02:19Mark Manson?

  I think we're all aware of that. One way you could look at the addiction cycle is that you're trading life satisfaction and purpose to get more short-term effect, right? So it's like, okay, make me feel really good today, and then I'll give up a little bit of life satisfaction, a little bit of purpose. And it's like, the first time you do that, that maybe that feels like a good trade, but then it's like, the 10th time you do it, you're like, uh, and then, you know, you get to the 100th time you've done it, you're like, okay, my life's a mess. I'm a mess. I hate myself, you know? And that's kind of how you end up in that spot.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so, obviously, using substances to alter your mood. I mean, okay, here's the thing about it though, too. There is some value in, in, let's say, social drinking.

• 1:03:01Mark Manson?

  Okay. Or you could even take something like an antidepressant.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, well, what do you mean?

• 1:03:08Mark Manson?

  Well, you just said substances to change your mood.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I got you.

• 1:03:11Mark Manson?

  So I was thinking, I just wanted to say like, we're not, this isn't.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  No judgment here.

• 1:03:15Mark Manson?

  Well, this isn't even necessarily like exclusive to like, say, party drugs, right?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Mark Manson?

  Like, this could be something, this could be like a pharmaceutical or whatever.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And if you need that, obviously, you know, if you've, you have some sort of mental health disorder or something like that, obviously, I'm not, antidepressants are great. They've helped a lot of people. I'm not, not shitting on those by any means. But more if you are intentionally, kind of like, just trying to alter your affective state, especially on a regular basis, that's something you probably want to look at.

• 1:03:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Now, that said, though, I do think there's a place for drugs and alcohol in society, recreational drugs and alcohol in society.

• 1:03:51Mark Manson?

  Let's fucking go.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what you're here for, right? This is what you're here for. Alcohol itself, it's a great social lubricant. It's, I mean, like, come on, like, if you have a drink and you're around some people you don't really know too well, it's a good way to get to know people. I'm not gonna sit here and shit on alcohol all the time, just because I don't drink. I actually have been, the last couple of months, I've been having a drink here or there. It's always been in a social setting. I haven't done it alone. It's been like, half a glass of wine here. Okay, with dinner, when I'm out with friends. I have no urge to drink alone anymore.

• 1:04:22Mark Manson?

  I'm looking at you judging.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  I know, I know. I knew I was gonna do this.

• 1:04:26Mark Manson?

  Welcome to LA.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  It's not a regular thing. I don't like, it's not even a weekly basis or anything like that. But like, one or two a month, I've had, you know, in the past few months.

• 1:04:36Mark Manson?

  I do think there's an interesting argument around, like, let's talk about like, moderate use, right? Like, moderate alcohol use, or moderate, I don't know, marijuana use, or something. Or even moderate, like, psychedelic use.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Mark Manson?

  Like, there might be an argument of, you know, if, let's say, if mild drinking helps you make friends, and, you know, lowers inhibition, and, you know, like, helps you relax on the weekends, so you're more effective during the week, that's probably not true.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:05:04Mark Manson?

  But, you know, like, to me, the argument would be social.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:07Mark Manson?

  Like, it's like, gets you out of the house, gets you doing, building relationships with people, like, as we'll see in a little bit, you know, relationships matter a lot with happiness. So I guess I could see that argument, a little bit. It's still not great.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Again, it's not, no, it's not great. It's not great for your health or anything like that. If there's a big social component to it, I think you could make an argument for it. In certain situations and in great moderation as well. I'll give you a little bit of an example, like since I've lived in Colorado, there's, I mean, there's a lot of breweries in Colorado, there's a big alcohol culture there, but there's also very much a big active lifestyle and social kind of culture there as well. So like you go on a hike and you might bring a beer with you or you go, you know, go on the ski slopes, you like stuff a couple in your coat for, so when you're on the lift, you know, and you like have some beers, but you're with your friends, right? Okay. When I lived in the Midwest, it was like, you're just drinking the drink. That's when you just go out to drink, you know? And there's, there's more of just a drinking for the drinking sake culture around it.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  And I think that is where you need to really kind of exercise a lot of caution around those sorts of things. Okay, we're getting off on, I didn't want to go this, this deep on alcohol, but I mean, obviously heavy users of drugs and alcohol over the long term are less happy. They show this over and over addicts, obviously, that's, that's very obvious. Light to moderate though, in social settings, if you're gonna do it, okay, just be very, very intentional around it is, is what I'm saying. Okay. Uh, so let's go to the sex part, Mark. Oh, okay. Okay, I'm, I'm interested again. Yeah, all right.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Mac, I'm not to brag, but I've tried this and it's awesome. Okay. It's, it's great. I'm so, I'm so proud of you. Yeah, I know, right? It finally happened.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  I mean, okay, look, uh, like physical intimacy, sex, uh, it's, it's a very human part of life, right? It's a very, uh, it's a great part of life. Overdoing it and doing it for the wrong reasons, I think, is where we run into trouble. Regular sex actually does correlate to like a better sustained mood for people. So your affect is actually moderated pretty well and, and elevated over time, uh, up to about once a week is what they find, okay? Anything beyond that, it's kind of like, eh, there's a pretty diminishing return pretty quickly. Okay. Okay. And really what they found too, is that it's more of the quality of the connection that you have with the person, um, even if you're, if it was casual sex or, you know,

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  you're single and you're kind of dating around. So it's how hot they are, basically.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there's probably a pretty good. Okay, look, look.

• 1:07:47Mark Manson?

  That's what I'm hearing.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  There's a, okay, there's a thing like, you know, there's kind of this idea, I don't know how true this is, but the research actually is showing this, you know, like Gen Z is having less sex. They're using less drugs and alcohol and stuff like that. There's, there are definitely times where I'm like, maybe you guys just need to have a beer and get laid. And that would fix a lot of your problems. I'm not going to say that it's not going to lead to life satisfaction, not going to lead to a lot of meaning in your life.

• 1:08:08Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  It could improve your week, right?

• 1:08:10Mark Manson?

  It could definitely alleviate a lot of anxiety.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:13Mark Manson?

  Which seems to be a big problem among young people. You know, it's interesting, I remember so early in my career, I was a dating relationship coach. And I remember particularly with, with men, like especially young men, they seem to have this like, it's like if they're not having sex, it's, it's like they're.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Or in the deserts, you know?

• 1:08:35Mark Manson?

  And it's like this cosmic injustice that's been inflicted upon them. And I remember I wrote, I wrote an article, this is a long time ago, this is probably like 2010 or something. But I wrote, I actually went and I looked at the research around sex and happiness and sex and life satisfaction and sex and health outcomes. And yeah, you do get a mild boost if you are sexually active on a number of these things. But like, it's not like if you're not having sex, it's not the end of the world. Like you're not really losing a whole lot if you're celibate or if you're not having sex for an extended period of time. I remember I posted an article about this and like all of the 20 year old dudes like fucking rioted on my blog

• 1:09:17Mark Manson?

  in the comment section and they're like, easy for you to say, fucking blah, blah, blah. But it's, it is true. Like, I mean, especially like if you go look at, um, I mean, they've like done research on, on like nuns and monks and stuff, like people who are celibate and like. Perfectly fine. Like it's

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Well, how much of that do you think it was a little bit of a personality thing too? Because you and I have also found over the years, you know, we've done like some surveys on married couples. You know, you've written several articles where we've asked people, you know, like, you know, how important is sex? And there's such a mixed bag.

• 1:09:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  And it definitely, there's a personality thing to it. Probably a developmental thing to it too. Yes. If you're a young male and you're I mean, that's hormones raging and all of that.

• 1:09:59Mark Manson?

  For sure. And I would say culturally too.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Culturally, sure.

• 1:10:03Mark Manson?

  I think this is less true today, but especially like when you and I were growing up, like you were taught as a young man, like your status is equivalent to basically how many girls you can sleep with. So I look at that and I'm like, it has nothing to do with the sex. It has everything to do with a bunch of young men who are very insecure about their place in the world and how much value they have in the world. And, and they're using attention from women, sexual interest from women as like a metric to judge themselves. And yeah, that measurement's not going so well right now. So they're, they're very upset. I think that's probably still true for the most part.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:10:38Mark Manson?

  I remember when I got married, we sent an email out to the audience and said, for everybody who's happily, been happily married for more than 10 years, like send us your best advice. And I think we got like 600 or 700.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  I think we got 1,500 actually.

• 1:10:55Mark Manson?

  Okay, 1,500 submissions.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Mark Manson?

  You and I went through everything and we kind of like aggregated it into like 10 or 15 basic pieces of advice. And one of the items on that list was, I think I call it like sex was the state of the union or something like that. It was like your sex life needs to continue and persist and be healthy and fun and whatever. And I remember the initial version of that article had that in it because a lot of couples told us that or a lot of people told us that. And I remember as soon as it was published, another group of people

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:26Mark Manson?

  sent in hundreds of emails saying, that's bullshit. I've been with my partner for 35 years and like, let me tell you, it's not all like, things get old and dusty after a while and like, and that's okay. And so we actually ended up removing that. Like I remember so many people emailed in saying that, that we ended up removing it from the article or Or did we revise it?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  I don't, I can't remember either, but we did something with it.

• 1:11:51Mark Manson?

  We did something. And basically, the conclusion I remember coming to was like, some people in the world connect a lot through sex and prioritize it. It's, it's something they care a lot about. And then there's some people in the world who like, don't prioritize it. They, and they don't really care about it and they don't connect through it super strongly. And I would say if you are one of those people who like derives a lot of connection and intimacy from sex and you care a lot about it and it's like, you have a very high sex drive and that's very important to you, then yeah, that's probably important in your relationship. The same way like, plenty of things can be important in a relationship if it's something that you both value and you both care about.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:34Mark Manson?

  But if it's something neither of you value or neither of you care about, then it's probably not a big deal. And so it was, I just, it's an interesting story in that, how many people, just how like polarized it was, like how many people emailed in saying like sex really mattered in their marriage? And then how many people emailed in saying, no, no, no, no, no. Sex really doesn't matter in the marriage. Like, it's all about trust and friendship and respect and, you know, living well together.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, so I, it's an individual thing. It's a personality thing a little bit and just your relationship with, yeah, how well you connect with somebody through sex or, or physical touch or whatever it is.

• 1:13:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. How hot they are.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  How hot they are.

• 1:13:16Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll, I'll leave you with this one stat for this section, okay? Which I found just fascinating. Increasing from monthly to weekly can exceed the happiness gains of increasing your income from 15 to $50,000 annually.

• 1:13:33Mark Manson?

  15 to 50?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  15 to 50, somewhere between 15 and 50, like increasing, so increasing the, the frequency with which you have sex from

• 1:13:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Monthly to weekly can have the same effect as increasing your salary from 15,000 to $50,000 a year. That's pretty crazy.

• 1:13:47Mark Manson?

  Well, I know what I'm doing with all my employees next year.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Oh, that's gonna be an HR nightmare. Oh, God.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:14:00Mark Manson?

  It got very awkward in this room, Wolf.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Please, no.

• 1:14:09Mark Manson?

  Time for your annual review, Drew.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna keep going here because the next section is money. I want to talk about that race, Mark, and not in that way, okay?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Okay, let's keep going, please. So, speaking of money, uh, how, how much does money actually influence our happiness? And that's actually a pretty complicated question. The, the kind of the conventional wisdom is, oh, you can't buy happiness, right? Well, that's true, you can't buy happiness, but you can buy a lot of things that might resemble happiness, or at least take away a lot of misery, right?

• 1:14:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  There's been all sorts of research that's gone into this, especially in the last about 20 years or so. Tons and tons of research went into, you know, what's the effect of earning more money on your happiness, or losing money, or, you know, global GDP, or your country's GDP on happiness? All of those things have been studied to death. And there was never really much of a consensus up until very recently. And I think we're forming more of a consensus around it, you know? So, a lot of people have probably heard this idea that, you know, in the United States, anyway, if you're making, uh, you, you need to make at least $75,000 a year to, to, oh, like, gain some level of baseline fulfillment or happiness, and then anything beyond that, it's not, it doesn't have a whole lot of effect.

• 1:15:35Mark Manson?

  Really diminishing returns, and like, yeah. The, the conventional wisdom for like 20 years was like, anything past middle-class income was diminishing returns. And then it was like, past 100K was basically no returns. But that's changed.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:47Mark Manson?

  Like, just in the last five or 10 years, they've like, really, they've actually discovered that money does correlate to happiness, as far as they've measured it, but it, it just levels off dramatically.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a little, there's a little more nuance to it now, what they found. So, yeah, for a long time, there were kind of these two warring camps even. Oh, no, the more money you make, it just keeps going and going. And a lot of people are like, nah, that doesn't seem quite right. And then there was this other camp saying, nah, no, actually, like, it's kind of shit after 75,000, 75,000 to 100,000, maybe you just don't get a whole lot out of that, right?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  What they actually found, this is actually 2023, was this study that came out. So it was pretty, pretty recent, less than two years ago. And it was from Daniel Kahneman,

• 1:16:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Nobel Prize winner of a psychologist and Matthew Kellinsworth.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  They had what they called an adversarial collaboration on this study. And what they found was that there's these different cohorts and they respond differently to money. So you have one cohort, which is what they call just kind of, they don't call it this, but I'll call them the miserable people, right? And yeah, they respond a little bit to money up to that 75,000 to 100,000 mark. And this study since 2023 is about 100,000. They respond, they do gain some life satisfaction and even affective gains up to that mark. And then past that, there just no amount of money is going to make them any happier. Okay? Then you have kind of what the conventional wisdom found, which was, yeah, you're, you do gain up to that level two, and then you get a little bit, a kind of incremental, small

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  increases after that, fine. But then they have also found this third group where they're just happy no matter what. Like, you give them money, great. You give them more money, even better. More money, more money, and they just can't be satiated. They're like, yeah, I love it. Keep it coming. And they just get happier and happier and happier. So there's like this perpetually unhappy cohort, and then this perpetually happy cohort, and the people in the middle is what they found. So it kind of depends on your relationship with just kind of your baseline happiness and also your relationship with money. How would influence it?

• 1:17:53Mark Manson?

  I just think that's fascinating.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  And yeah, it's a fascinating finding that they found. It kind of resolved, like I said, a big nerd debate that they had for over a decade. Like, this was like a 15-year kind of back and forth going. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:04Mark Manson?

  Psychologist beef.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Psychologist beef is a big nerd war, like I said. I would say that for the most part, for most people, money does have a diminishing return.

• 1:18:13Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Okay. I would put myself in this camp for sure.

• 1:18:16Mark Manson?

  And I do believe that even the people that do continue to increase happiness from money. It's a logarithmic curve.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  It still is, but it's a steeper one than the others. Yes, you're right.

• 1:18:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it is a lot. So it's like going from, you know, 100K to a million is like the equivalent of going 50K to 100K in terms of happiness or whatever. So it's, it's.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  For the most part, that's what they find.

• 1:18:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, those numbers are not. I just made those numbers up, but like that's, that's roughly what the proportionality looks like.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Is that what you, is that your experience, I think, too?

• 1:18:49Mark Manson?

  Um, I generally, yeah.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Mark Manson?

  Like, I would say, yeah, once, like, getting the six, like, six figures feels a lot better than five figures, and then getting the seven definitely feels better than six, but then it's like, yeah, like, at some point, you just kind of stop caring. What I've noticed just anecdotally, or like, both with myself and then just like a lot of very wealthy friends. And I guess this kind of maps to what you're saying is like, everybody seems to kind of have a number that once they hit that number.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  I'm going to talk about this, yeah.

• 1:19:21Mark Manson?

  They just kind of check out.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:22Mark Manson?

  Like, I, I hit a number, I don't know, like, pretty, pretty quickly after my book blew up. That like, I was like, okay, I'm good.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Mark Manson?

  Like, I'll take what, yeah, if you want to give me more, I'll take it, but like, I'm not really stressed, like, I don't really think about, you know, how much money I'm making, how much money I want to make. And I've noticed that with, with other people, you know, I've, I have friends who, um, you know, they, they hit six figures and they feel that way. They're like, okay, I'm good. And then I like, and then I have friends who are at eight figures and they're still not satisfied.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's just, it does seem very personal on some level.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think it absolutely is. I mean, and obviously too, going back to the whole relative thing, the people around you. We kind of talked about your, your, your psychological immune system. It's a same kind of with money is that, you obviously are going to compare yourself to the people around you as well. So if you move into a fancier neighborhood, then you're going to feel

• 1:20:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  less adequate, right? Or whatever it is. But same too, like with the, the country you, you live in is obviously going to make a huge difference. So, you know, those numbers were thrown out, 75,000 to 100,000, that's like the United States, North America. If you're living in like in Latin America, it's, it's closer like 30,000 or 40,000 or less than that, maybe even in some areas too, depending on country. So it, it's relative and then there's, you get different, um, kind of increases or decreases your happiness based on.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  The people around you as well.

• 1:20:44Mark Manson?

  So the TLDR is that money does make you happy, but it's it's complicated.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Mark Manson?

  And it passed past a certain point, past like probably a decent middle-class income. It's it's a probably diminishing returns and then and then B, it's also probably predicated on a bunch of other factors like who you're surrounded by, where you live, your personality, you know, all sorts of other things.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You've said this before too, or we've talked about this before anyway, where you said, you know, money, yeah, sure, it's not going to buy you happiness, but it can really take away a lot of misery too.

• 1:21:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Which is, we'll get into that.

• 1:21:23Mark Manson?

  Which will come back to that.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll keep coming back.

• 1:21:25Mark Manson?

  The buy away unhappy, that was actually something my dad told me, which I find very wise, but he told me, he said, money doesn't, the money doesn't buy happiness, it buys away unhappiness.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Mark Manson?

  Which that has definitely been my experience is like, most of the stuff like in my life today, like, don't get me wrong, it's awesome having like, nice stuff.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45Mark Manson?

  A nice house and everything, but like, past that, like, past like having a nice house and a decent car and all that stuff, like, really, most of the satisfaction, it just comes away from like, buying away friction, like, not worrying about how much my Uber costs and like, something comes up and I miss a flight, like, I'm not really sweating.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Mark Manson?

  It's not a big deal.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:06Mark Manson?

  So it's just, it's like, it's just all, the stress that doesn't happen is really actually what the value of it is.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Now, for sure, for sure. Okay, we'll, we'll leave that at that and we'll keep moving here, okay? The next one is fame and status, okay? Um, I don't know, I don't know how much, do people think that being famous is still like an awesome thing? Is that like a, is that a widely held belief?

• 1:22:33Mark Manson?

  Oh dude, you're in LA.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, okay.

• 1:22:36Mark Manson?

  You're such a Midwestern boy.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  I guess so.

• 1:22:39Mark Manson?

  They definitely do.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  I, okay.

• 1:22:41Mark Manson?

  They definitely.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Okay. I, I just.

• 1:22:42Mark Manson?

  I've personally met, first of all, there are, there are a handful of people in our industry who've like.

• 1:22:50Mark Manson?

  Explicitly said, like Tim Ferriss wrote a whole, he wrote a, like 10 years ago, he wrote a huge blog post about how his whole goal was to become famous and how miserable it made it. It's actually a great blog post for people to check out if this is like something that they, they think about a lot. But I'll tell you, like, it's interesting, because I'm with you, I'm like, I never really cared.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Mark Manson?

  And it's, but it's been interesting living in LA. Like, I've, I've probably come across three or four people since I moved here who are obsessed with getting on TV. Like, it's, it like occupies all of their mental energy. All day, like, they're, they're auditioning for shows and they're trying to get on reality shows and they're like, you know, they're trying, they're trying to become contestants on game show, like, it is like, it is their focus 24/7. And of course, they're like an actor and they're, or they've got a screenplay or like all this shit, like, they've got like their, their Hollywood dream, but like, you know, they, they're just obsessed with like getting their foot in the door. If like, oh, if I can just get on a game show, and I can show the producers that I'm like really

• 1:23:57Mark Manson?

  engaging and entertaining, then maybe I can get invited on to like, you know, some big reality show, or, you know, like, they've got this whole thing mapped out in their head. And I, I just sit there like, kind of looking at them in horror as they describe this to me and, and don't understand.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I have no problem with like people having dreams and want to do big things or anything like that. I just like the, yeah, the, the obsession with the fame part to me is.

• 1:24:20Mark Manson?

  There is, yeah, there is a, there is absolutely, like, the stereotype about LA, like, there, there is absolutely a segment of the population here that is just like absolutely fame and status obsessed. And it, and it is really gross.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the research bears out that it's, there's a weak correlation with certain aspects of happiness. But I mean, it often decreases happiness at a certain point. I, I think, kind of what you were just mentioning there, you're seeking a lot of external validation. That leads to a lot of anxiety, a lot of instability. I think. One thing too, you don't realize, or that people don't realize when they're thinking about, oh, I want to be famous is like the lack of privacy that comes with it. The public scrutiny that you get, I don't think people realize how unwanted that is at all. If you're constantly, you know, some, the, a, an idea of you forms in the media that you might not have any

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  control over, that just to me, I don't know, that's never said, never sat well with me. I'm a big fan of Bill Murray. I'm not a big fan of like a lot of movie stars, but Bill Murray is like, I really like Bill Murray. And he had this one thing, he's like, you know, if you want to be rich and famous, try just being rich first. Because there's not a whole lot of downside to it, but he's like, the fame part has not gotten me a whole lot.

• 1:25:37Mark Manson?

  Cause the rich will, well, cause often people who want to be rich, it's, it's just a proxy for status. Like, like I think a lot of people who really covet a lot of money, it's like, it's not actually like, they don't really want the luxury or the jet. I mean, some people do, but like, in my experience, like most of the people that I know or have known who are like, really want to become rich, it's kind of a status play. Like, it's like, they just want to like, they want to ball out and, and have people want to like, get the attention and, you know, have people want to be friends with them and, and all that stuff. So yeah, I do think there is some wisdom to that. You know, one of the things that I've noticed, um, just among like, my friends who are like internet famous, um, the ones who, who struggle with it a lot.

• 1:26:23Mark Manson?

  I think it's, it's not even like, it's not even the lack of privacy per se. I mean, that is part of it. But it's the, you never know when you're being watched. So yeah. When I've talked to friends about this, they're like, yeah, I really only get recognized like a couple of times a day. But I'm, it happens enough that I'm, I'm like constantly worried that I'm being watched, right? So a friend of mine said that like, if he's in public and his kid starts. Misbehaving or just like throwing a tantrum. He said, he's like, it sucks, but I'm like, I'm mortified because I'm worried that one of my fans is going to be here and like, is going to be watching my kid just like be a fucking demon and start making like judging.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Now he's a bad parent.

• 1:27:10Mark Manson?

  All right, or pull out of the phone and be like, wow, this so and so's kid is like a total, you know, a lunatic or whatever, or like if he wants to yell at his kid, right? Like, he doesn't feel free to do that, or, you know, it's all sorts of stuff like that. So I get how like that, that paranoia can kind of imprison somebody, but I don't know, I feel like this is very personality driven.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah.

• 1:27:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like I think what I've observed is that some people have a personality that's like, pretty predisposed, like managing fame and attention. And then some people have personalities that are not predisposed, and I think if you just look at the range of celebrities, like some celebrities have handled their fame wonderfully and like gracefully, and some celebrities have not.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  And yeah, Britney Spears, yeah.

• 1:28:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and so it's like, I do think a lot of that comes down to personality. Like, that was one thing I took away from working with Will Smith is like, he loves being famous. But he loves people. He loves people, he loves being at the center of attention. He loves performing. He's extremely extroverted. And yeah, you spend, you spend a day with him and you're like, okay, yeah, he's built for this. He's totally built for it.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, and I think you're kind of, with the status thing, you're kind of getting at where I wanted to go with this, which was, a lot of times we have these, like, we have this desire to be famous or high status in some way, and really what we, yeah, a healthier form of this is looking for kind of status within your own close social group. I think that there's a healthy way to do this, too. You can achieve status by helping other people that are close to you, and not being like famous necessarily for it, but you achieve status in your social group through, through helping or through pro-social behavior. I think that's a better way to channel that, kind of like you, you need some external validation, well, fine, do that with the people that actually matter and care, you care about.

• 1:29:03Mark Manson?

  It's interesting, though, because it's, I mean, I agree with you. You know, one of the things that we've talked about before in the past is like, how people are over prioritizing the global and under prioritizing the local, like, it's.

• 1:29:17Mark Manson?

  It's, I think, and I do think a lot of this is just can be laid at the feet of social media of like people being too cognizant of what a thousand random strangers around the world are going to think and like not cognizant enough of like what the people next door think. And, um, and so, yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice of just like, stay local, think about the people around you, you know, try to build status among your friends and coworkers and family. And then like, fuck, fuck everybody else.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Mark Manson?

  Like it's, it's gonna be like, don't even have to go into it. There's a million stories out there of, you know, depressed and drug addicted celebrities. It doesn't make you happy. It's not gonna fill the void. So in case it needs to be said.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  What do you think? Okay. So you, you're probably, you're the most famous person I know.

• 1:30:10Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Okay. And you're, I mean, I don't want to stoke your ego too much here, Mark, but you are probably-

• 1:30:16Mark Manson?

  You clearly don't know many people.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you're, you are probably one of, if not the bestselling author of the last decade, right?

• 1:30:25Mark Manson?

  Uh, I'm not the, but like, I've sold a lot of books.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  You're up there. You've sold a lot of books. Okay.

• 1:30:30Mark Manson?

  And I am online a lot, like.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. You're internet famous for sure. Okay. There's that. Um, how do you think this has affected your happiness or has it?

• 1:30:39Mark Manson?

  I do think it's net positive. Uh, I, I also think I'm like, kind of the perfect level of fame, which is like, I, I only get recognized periodically, you know, like it once a week, twice a week, maybe, which is the perfect amount. It's like, it's just, it's a nice little ego boost, but it's not so much of an ego boost. Like it doesn't interfere or, or get in the way of like anything I'm trying to do. But I also think some of it's my personality. Like I, I kind of don't give a fuck what people think.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right.

• 1:31:10Mark Manson?

  Like, I just, I really don't care. That was the other thing that I noticed, like, when my career took off is like, I started getting invited to all these, like, you know, events with fancy people and famous people and billionaires and stuff. And it's like, talk about hedonic adaptation, like, you know, it'd be really exciting for like- An hour or maybe even an evening.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Mark Manson?

  But yeah, after pretty quickly, I was just like, who cares? Like, what am I doing here? Like, I have nothing in common with these people.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:44Mark Manson?

  What am I doing here?

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  It's all just high school, kind of, at some point.

• 1:31:47Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  It's a big status game.

• 1:31:48Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:49Mark Manson?

  But it is funny, like, I don't know, I do think it's a net positive, aside from the ego boost, like, this kind of gets into the irrationality of human beings, like, it is funny how much it kind of greases, you know, greases the process of, or greases the wheels and like various processes or opens certain doors. Like, like, one thing I know that a lot of, like, high-end hotels and restaurants will do these days is like, when you make a reservation, they will look up your social media account. So like, they'll look up your Instagram or TikTok. And if you have a lot of followers, they treat you differently.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's like, there have been times where I will show, like, I'll book just a random hotel. And I show up and there's a gift in my room, there's a letter from the manager, there's like, I got like a free upgrade to like a presidential suite for nothing. I like literally talked to nobody. And it's just clear, it's like, okay, they Googled me, you know, like, so, and they're hoping I take a picture and put it on Instagram.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Mark Manson?

  You know, like, so there's a lot of perks like that, that are just funny.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was Bill Murray's, like, he said, you know, be rich first because being famous is basically just got me a good seat at a restaurant before.

• 1:33:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:33:03Mark Manson?

  That is most of it.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Who gives a shit?

• 1:33:04Mark Manson?

  That is most of it. I mean, it does get you in the rooms that normally you wouldn't get into.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:33:08Mark Manson?

  And so, I mean, that is nice. So, yeah, the next one, physical attractiveness. And this is similar to the fame thing, like, what's super interesting about this, and I can verify this from copious.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:33:20Mark Manson?

  Being hot makes you happier.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:33:23Mark Manson?

  Gather around, kids.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, look how happy Mark is right now.

• 1:33:25Mark Manson?

  Let me tell you what brings me all of my happiness. No, but seriously, being physically attractive does correlate to a slight amount of of greater happiness, but it's not because you're hot. And it's not even about how you feel about yourself. It's actually about how people treat you. People tend to treat physically attractive people better. There's a thing called the halo effect, which is basically like if somebody's very physically attractive, we tend to unconsciously assume that they are more trustworthy, more competent, nicer.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Smarter.

• 1:33:56Mark Manson?

  Smarter, all these other things. And so the more physically attractive you are, generally like the better people react to you. And because they're reacting better to you, it generally improves short-term effect.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  You have better social skills because you're treated, you know, from a young age, you're treated a certain way.

• 1:34:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So it is a minor kind of little baby boost to short-term effect. But there are costs.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:27Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's defend the hot people. Let's defend you, Mark, sorry. It's not all just benefits.

• 1:34:33Mark Manson?

  Let's defend the ugly people.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if I can defend the ugly people here, but there's some research to suggest that that highly attractive people or attractive people, they have a kind of a higher social pressure to maintain those standards. We just talked about that they are smarter, that they are kinder, that they are better people. Fashion models too, what they find too, with people who make money based on their looks, long-term often have are kind of maladjusted. They'll, they report lower well-being, they have increased stress. And just like, like I said, they're just more maladjusted over time too.

• 1:35:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  I think another thing too, this, this one I can kind of see a little bit more is that they have more difficulty forming genuine relationships because there probably always is kind of going on in the back of their mind, like, do they just like me because I'm attractive? Like, I imagine like an attractive woman probably thinks that a lot too.

• 1:35:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  You know, or maybe it's just jealousy or envy that these people are feeling. And so that's why they're getting this attention.

• 1:35:35Mark Manson?

  I think there's probably an interesting analysis on like the difference between physical attractiveness and like self-image. Right. Because there are a lot of extremely attractive people who have terrible self-image. And there are a lot of people who are not super attractive, who have like a very good, healthy self-image. And I feel like that the your self, your self-image is probably way more determinant of how happy you are, how good you feel. Then like your actual physical proportions necessarily.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, but it's a, it can be, you know, if it's too big of a part of your identity, especially, you know, like I'm getting older now too, and I can.

• 1:36:13Mark Manson?

  It sucks.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  It sucks. Yeah.

• 1:36:15Mark Manson?

  It sucks looking in the mirror and be like, ugh. Where did that ring?

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Gray hair and these wrinkles and all this. And so if you base too much of your identity on that, obviously over time, you gotta find out, that figure out another way to have some validation.

• 1:36:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I don't want to dwell on it too much, but that's kind of, it does matter for your happiness to some extent.

• 1:36:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's get into another one. Okay, geography and environment. So a lot of people, I think, feel like if I could just change where I live, change who's around me, then I would be happy. Right. And it's not quite that simple. Definitely, you know, you've traveled around a lot. You've lived in a lot of different places. You've seen happy people in places that are supposed to be miserable versus not. And I've seen the same as well. Basically, though, what they found is that it's primarily not the location itself. You know, we think like move to a place with a beach, you know, like come out to LA and it's nice weather.

• 1:37:06Mark Manson?

  Nice weather, sunlight, yeah.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Whatever it is. That does matter a little bit, but it's usually more about the kind of the social and institutional context of a, of a region that have way more impact on your happiness. Okay. Let me just, I'll give you like kind of at the national level, what they found is things like GDP, gross domestic, gross domestic product, right? Social sport, healthy, a healthy life expectancy. A longer, healthier life expectancy, the amount of autonomy or freedom you get in a given region, the generosity of the people around you, and absence of corruption. Okay, those actually have way bigger influences on your happiness based on the location where you're at than the

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  location itself. I think it kind of goes back to the hedonic adaptation thing, too. Like, you move out to Southern California and it's nice every single day almost, but you just get used to it very quickly. And those sorts of things, anyway.

• 1:38:03Mark Manson?

  I can confirm California makes you soft.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:38:06Mark Manson?

  It does. I bitch about anything. I can.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will say things, though, like, say you're living in, like, Chicago or Minneapolis and you have seasonal affective disorder. Moving to Southern California or Phoenix or something like that, that's probably a good move.

• 1:38:21Mark Manson?

  Some sort in like some sort of health condition.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. So those things do absolutely matter, but I don't think it's quite the way that people think it does. I don't know. I've been, I've traveled a lot as well, and I find happy people everywhere, and I find miserable people everywhere. So I just, I think this one we usually probably give a little too much weight to.

• 1:38:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. What do you think?

• 1:38:42Mark Manson?

  I think weather is the big thing that people overweight. Like, there's quite a few studies on weather and happiness, and it like, does not matter.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if you go back to the World Happiness Report, and if you believe those stats, which we don't, but like, the Scandinavian countries, they're cold as hell and dark in the winter, and people are, they're fine there, right? So, yeah, definitely. So now for a big one that does have a lot of influence on your happiness, which is love and relationships. Or at least, you know, we tend to think that has a huge influence on our happiness, and it does to some extent. You know, one of the longest running studies on happiness, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the one that it began clear back in the late 30s, is still going to today, till today, Harvard has kept that up.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  It's found that meaningful relationships, especially like spousal relationships, are one of the biggest predictors of happiness. There was even one of the lead researchers, that lead researchers changed over time, but one of the lead researchers said that happiness is love, full stop. Like, that was it. Like, decades of research, and that's what they found. Out, right? And I do remember too, hearing about one of the happiest individuals they've ever measured on this study was probably one of the most boring ones too. He was just this guy, he was a teacher.

• 1:39:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  He had like two or three kids, he loved his wife, lived in a middle-class neighborhood, all of that. And he was like off the charts on happiness, right? But, and he cited his relationship with his wife as one of the greatest sources of happiness that he had. Obviously, a toxic or unhealthy relationship is gonna have a lot of downside to your happiness too. It's gonna influence it negatively.

• 1:40:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  So you wanna avoid those more, more than seeking out any, like, a bad relationship is worse than no relationship.

• 1:40:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  I guess is what I'm saying there.

• 1:40:23Mark Manson?

  That's definitely true, especially when it comes to romantic relationships, like, because we're about to get into friendships.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:30Mark Manson?

  And it's interesting because there, I think people tend to assume that if they're single, they're gonna be miserable. So they need to have a partner.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Mark Manson?

  But it's actually, you're better off single than having a bad partner. Whereas with friendships, people tend to under-prioritize friendships, but you're actually like way less happy if you have no friendship.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Right, right. Well, let's just get into that, let's just talk about friendships because, yeah, I think you're right. I think people, we way over-index on the romantic side. There's way more content on Instagram and all social media about your romantic relationship and how to have a good one and how to be happy in it and everything like that. When actually, I think for the vast majority of people, it's gonna be the friendships in your life. It's kind of your chosen family, right? That, that will influence your happiness to a much, much greater degree. And then not only that, if you are single, I think one of the best pieces of dating advice is to go make more friends.

• 1:41:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Like, that's my dating advice for most people is like, go make more friends.

• 1:41:23Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  And you'll just meet more people that way.

• 1:41:25Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Expand your social network. And then as kind of a byproduct of that, you'll probably meet somebody that you really like and you can get naked with, right? Like, that's

• 1:41:33Mark Manson?

  What it's all about.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  I think that's what it's all about too, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:41:37Mark Manson?

  As long as they're hot.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Now they should be using your friendships to labor you just to get laid. That's not what I'm saying.

• 1:41:44Mark Manson?

  Yes, just manipulate your friends into introducing you to a partner.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Social bonds in general, though.

• 1:41:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  This is one of the, I mean, over and over and over again, this is what they find, is that this is probably the biggest contributor to your happiness, whether you have a strong social group or not. And, you know, in the, especially in the United States where we've gotten so individualistic, we, we hunker down in our apartments and our houses and we don't connect as much. We were just talking about being over indexed on the global and not enough on the local. This is a, this is a problem I think we all are starting to face a little bit more honestly now. And I think it's about time we do. Obviously, social, your social connections have a huge, huge impact on your happiness. And that's just, I mean, we're social creatures. We need that, right?

• 1:42:29Mark Manson?

  I think one of the reasons why people probably over index on romantic relationships.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:33Mark Manson?

  I just thought of this is that, you know, friendships are generally, they probably play more to effect and life satisfaction, which is a little bit shorter term and, and, you know, milder words. Like your romantic relationship really hits on the purpose and meaning drum.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Mark Manson?

  Very hard.

• 1:42:54Mark Manson?

  In fact, it's, it's probably one of like the quickest routes to a, a large amount of purpose and meaning. So it just occurred to me that that, that might be why people over emphasize that and under emphasize the social friendships.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the perception. I think there's a lot of meaning and purpose you can find in friendship, though, too.

• 1:43:14Mark Manson?

  What about kids?

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  What about kids?

• 1:43:17Mark Manson?

  Cause for a long time, there was, I don't know, there was like research around 2010 that, that found that parents were less happy than non-parents. About 10 million people lost their collective shit on social media. And you don't really hear about that, that study anymore. So like, where did we land on the, the kids and happiness thing?

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Well, let's go back to our definitions of happiness, our three components of happiness, right? You have your affect, you have life satisfaction and meaning, right? Uh, it's true. Parents, when they're parenting, they are less happy from an affective and a life satisfaction viewpoint. They're absolutely less happy. They're underslept. Usually they're stressed over their kids. Their kids are probably being little dickheads, you know, and they're just, they're worried constantly about their kids.

• 1:44:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  They're probably stressed financially to some degree. So yeah, uh, there is a lot of things to be unhappy about with children. You know, I saw recently, um, you know, uh, not too long before we were recording this, I saw something from Chapel Rohn, the, um, musician. And she's like, uh, none of my friends who have kids are happy. They're just, they're, they're, you know, they're miserable. They're underslept. I see no light in their eyes or something along those lines.

• 1:44:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, she's in her twenties. Okay, fine. Um, the thing about it is, is that it's really getting at those, the, the, the affective part and the life satisfaction part while you're parenting.

• 1:44:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  But nearly every parent you ever talked to will say, it is the most important, meaningful thing I have ever done is to raise a child. It has nothing to do with, you know, getting enough sleep and making sure your morning routine is optimized or whatever.

• 1:44:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  That's such a shallow kind of empty form of happiness that I think people who criticize people with children on that basis, um, are, are getting at that. I just think it's, that's, that's a very naive, um, definition of happiness that you're getting at when you're saying, oh, parents are miserable people.

• 1:45:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  It's not that at all. It's that they've given up a lot of those other things to raise a child and have a, a very, a huge source of meaning in their life.

• 1:45:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  This is what we're designed to do, quote unquote, by evolution, right? We're, we're designed to propagate the species. So like, what more meaningful thing to do is there than that? This is coming from two men who do not have children.

• 1:45:32Mark Manson?

  Yes. By the way, yeah, side note, I also think, I, I find it interesting that comments, cause you, you do hear comments like that quite a bit, especially among, you know, our generation and younger. It's funny though, because there's so many other things in life that require like a massive amount of sacrifice and short-term misery and struggle and stress. Then people don't say those things.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  And nobody shits all over him for that, yeah.

• 1:46:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like I've never heard, for instance, you could say exactly what Chapel Rowan said. You could say the exact same thing about anybody who's started a business. Right? It's like multiple years, not enough sleep, stressed out of your mind, like no money. You know, like it's constantly living on the edge of bankruptcy. And, and yeah, like, but nobody looks at that and it's like, wow, they seem so miserable. Why would you ever start? No, it's, it's the opposite. It's like, it gets romanticized and people are like, oh wow, they're so brave. And they're like going for their dreams and like, good for them, you know? And it's, I, I, I feel like you could come up with multiple examples of that. You know, athletes, right? It's like athletes are stressed out of their fucking minds.

• 1:46:42Mark Manson?

  They're literally training from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed. And yet we like, we celebrate that. We don't, you know, we're not like, oh wow, they look so miserable. Like, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 1:46:56Mark Manson?

  Is this landing like?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Mark Manson?

  I just, it's strange that we pick children as the one thing to like, kind of shit on.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, all those other things too, you're choosing to do that. You're choosing, if you choose to have children, sometimes you don't choose to have children. It happens, I get that. But you're choosing to have children or you're choosing to start a business. You're choosing to be an athlete or whatever it is.

• 1:47:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't quite get that either.

• 1:47:17Mark Manson?

  And it's those commitments, right? It's like, when you are giving up your short-term happiness and your short-term satisfaction for that long-term meaning, purpose, um, and long-term life satisfaction. Like that is, that, that's, that's the magic sauce, right? Like, that's actually kind of what life's about. Like, that's how you get off the hedonic treadmill. That's how you, that's how you build a sustainable, you know, like that is the eudaimonia. Like the stable eudaimonic form of happiness is, um, you know.

• 1:47:54Mark Manson?

  Being able to commit to things.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:56Mark Manson?

  Over the long run.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not saying you, I'm not saying the opposite either. I'm not saying you need children to be happy.

• 1:48:01Mark Manson?

  You have to be happy, yeah.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  That's not, there's plenty of that.

• 1:48:04Mark Manson?

  But you have to commit to something.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  You do have to commit to something and it probably is going to be painful.

• 1:48:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  And you probably are going to sacrifice something and it's probably going to suck.

• 1:48:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  You know, maybe it won't suck as much as, as raising a kid does at times.

• 1:48:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  But you might also not be getting that, that, the backend meaning from it as, as much either. So.

• 1:48:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  All right. We just went through this whole list of things that may or may not make you happy in different ways.

• 1:48:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  I think a good way to kind of, a good lens to put these through is going back to Daniel Kahneman, that, that same psychologist from Money Studies, right? He has this idea called the experiencing versus the remembering self. Okay? So he says that just mentally, we have these two kind of different modes. One of them is the experiencing self. That's kind of like the affective. We're processing the affective states as they're coming in. These affective states, according to him, last about three seconds. Okay? That's, and we're experiencing life in about three second increments. Okay? The emotions that come up, the, whatever's happening around us, all the evaluations we have around it, that's the experiencing self. Okay?

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  But then we have the remembering self too. And the remembering self is the one looking back and kind of forming a narrative for your life. And coming up with an interpretation of why these things happen or the meaning around them. Two different selves that we have and we're often optimizing for them at different times or at different, in different ways. A really good example is with children.

• 1:49:27Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Right? Like I just mentioned, parents, while they're parenting, their experiencing selves are miserable. Right? But when they're looking back on that experience, they think, wow, that is the most important, most significant, most meaningful thing I have ever done. How can those two things, they, they seem like they're just opposites, but they're really not. It's just there's two different levels of looking at the thing.

• 1:49:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  Okay? The remembering self, Kahneman argues that the remembering self is actually probably more important for our happiness. Just like the, the example we just used with children illustrates that, I think. And it's because we use that remembering self to write the narrative of our lives, to interpret the events of our lives, to make meaning out of our lives. So, you know, when you're, when you're looking at these, all these different things, you look at from the drugs and the alcohol and the sex, you know, that's pretty high on the experiential self. There's lots of positive emotions that come from those, but maybe not so much in the remembering self. Derek Sivers, you know, your buddy has this really good line in a book that I love to quote. He says nostalgia is just memories minus the pain, which I think kind of gets at this.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  That's such a good line. I love that line. Nostalgia is memory minus the pain. And so we don't typically remember the emotions. I mean, think back on any part of your life, you don't remember the day to day emotions.

• 1:50:41Mark Manson?

  We have a strong bias towards the positive side of our memories.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  And the narrative that we constructed around it, right? And so I think that's just a really good way, whenever you're thinking about, will this, you know, increase or decrease my happiness, using it through the lens of the remembering and the experiencing self. I think that's just a really good way to look at that and say, okay, how is my remembering self going to kind of interpret this at some point?

• 1:51:03Mark Manson?

  I think that's very similar to, I think Jeff Bezos has this thing, which is like the regret minimization model, which is like, he said, anytime you're faced with a difficult choice, take the option that you are going to potentially regret not doing. You're optimizing your entire life to just minimize the potential of regrets as much as possible. And it turns out that a lot of the things that you end up regret not doing are suck in the short term and are very difficult, but it's like, if you're trying to head off the regret before it happens, you just push yourself through it.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The remembering self really does get to the life satisfaction and the meaning much more than the affective state where the experiencing self kind of lives.

• 1:51:42Mark Manson?

  Just a reminder before we move on, that if you are feeling overwhelmed or this feels like a lot, we do have the free PDF guide at solve podcast.com/happiness. It goes over everything that you're listening to here, including much more. It has all the references, links, book recommendations and so on. So solve podcast.com/happiness. Let's move on.

• 1:52:07Mark Manson?

  All right. So we keep talking about hedonic adaptation, like the idea of like, okay, something great happens, you buy a new car or get a boat or whatever, and it's like, makes you happy for a little while, but then you revert back to kind of your baseline level. I think it's worth talking about where is that baseline level? What determines that baseline level? And how much of happiness is nature versus nurture? How much of it is actually in our control? And how much of it is up to genetics or up to our circumstances? And there's actually a ton of science on this, and I think the results are actually quite interesting, because I think the percentages land in regions where people wouldn't expect. So let's start with the first one, which is genetics.

• 1:52:48Mark Manson?

  As a psychology nerd, I love how psychologists go about figuring this out. So if you think about it, it's actually extremely clever. If you have twins, identical twins, they have the same genetic material. Now, take those twins and assume that they're separated at birth. Now, you have two genetically identical individuals who are raised in completely different environments, by different parents, and went to different schools and hung out with different kids growing up. This is gold to a psychologist. This is like absolute gold, because now you can actually control for genetics and actually see what is making a difference in the person's life. And so there have been a number of researchers. I believe the most prominent one was a guy at the University of Minnesota,

• 1:53:33Mark Manson?

  who like literally spent his entire career just scouring the country, looking for twins separated at birth, so he could like run a bunch of psychological assessments on them. And sure enough, when you run these assessments, one very surprising and interesting thing pops up, which is that twins that are separated at birth and grow up in completely different environments tend to be closer in their levels of happiness than two siblings who grow up in the same house. Now, what does that mean? That means that genetics is actually accounting for more happiness than a brother and sister, or two brothers, who grew up with the same parents, go to the same school, play with the same kids growing up. That's mind blowing. That's something that I think most people wouldn't suspect.

• 1:54:17Mark Manson?

  And I think it's something that doesn't get broadcast a whole lot. Like, that's not a headline that like people get excited to share on Facebook. You know, it's like, "Oh, most of your misery is determined by your genetics." Yeah. Good luck.

• 1:54:34Mark Manson?

  But it's not that simple. Like, it's not that deterministic. Sonia Lubimirsky, friend of the podcast. She's been on the show a number of times, hung out and talked with her many times. She's one of the preeminent researchers on happiness in the entire world. She is doled out, roughly speaking, that about 50 to 55% of your happiness is genetically determined. And then the other 45 to 50% is determined by your circumstances and your actions. We're gonna get into those in a little bit as well. So, one way to think about it is that your genetics are primarily determine what your set point of happiness is.

• 1:55:11Mark Manson?

  So, when you go throughout your life, you know, if you constantly ask yourself on a scale from 1 to 10, how happy am I? Most people land around 7, 7.5, 6.5, somewhere in that range. Most people, most of the time, are gonna say around a 7. But some people, they're more like a 6 most of the time. Some people are more like an 8 most of the time. A few people are more like an 8.5 or 9 most of the time. A lot of that set point is determined by simply your genetics. And it's not just your level of happiness. It is how optimistic you are, how quickly you recover from setbacks, how much you savor positive experiences, how sensitive you are to stress.

• 1:55:55Mark Manson?

  A lot of this is simply genetically based, it's personality based. One way to think about it is that some people have a talent for happiness, the same way some people have a talent for music, or they have a talent for public speaking, or they have a talent for math, or whatever. Some people, happiness just comes easily to some people. It comes naturally. And some people, they have to do a lot more work for it. And like anything else in life, it's not fair, but that's just how it works, right? And if there's anything that I think we've learned from this episode so far is that happiness is overrated. So, if you're one of the people who's not naturally gifted at happiness, don't worry about it so much.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Can we, too, just talk real quick about, like, what does that mean, that you're genetically predisposed? Like, actually, what is that? Because people here that are like, "Oh, it's your genetics." And it's like, "Well, then, just kinda leave it at that." Can we just talk real quick about like kind of what that actually means? Like I dove into it a little bit and like, for example, if you, there's genetic differences in say the serotonin or dopamine receptors in your brain, or how much serotonin or dopamine you produce in your brain, or how well you process it. There's things like endorphins too. It's like the exercise induced endorphin release that you get after exercising, right? Like you feel good, runner's high or something like that. That's actually partially genetically determined as well.

• 1:57:10Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  So hormones related to stress, you mentioned stress, how reactive you are to stress. So how much say cortisol or other stress hormones that you produce in any given situation and how well you process those, your body and everything like that. That's partially genetically determined as well. Interacts with the environment, of course, but then another one too, I found was that like your circadian rhythm, like hormones associated with circadian rhythm, like melatonin, how much your body, your brain and body produces, or how well it metabolizes it, or when it's produced. So obviously there's a environmental component to that. When it gets dark, your body starts producing melatonin. But there's a genetic component to it as well, like how much it gets turned on or off. So how much you sleep even too, is regulated by that, which influences your

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  happiness.

• 1:57:56Mark Manson?

  Oh, we'll get to that.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  So yeah, yeah. So I think when people, because sometimes I remember just hearing that I was like, genetics, you know, determine your happiness or determine whatever your mood or what I'm like, how the hell? And so that's, I just wanted to pinpoint that and let people know. There's kind of like these mechanisms, underlying mechanisms, both from like a molecular level all the way down the middle, like your level to like the brain structures, how your brain is even organized to is partially genetically determined.

• 1:58:22Mark Manson?

  I think it's important to point out, and we're about to get into strategies on like how to move your, your set point of happiness slightly in one direction or another. It's almost like the center of gravity for your happiness. It's like, it's like the baseline that all else being equal, you will naturally return to. But there are plenty of actions and habits and.

• 1:58:45Mark Manson?

  Behaviors that you can develop or implement into your life that can move that baseline up slightly. Or make sure that you are more consistently having more positive experiences on a day to day basis.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Definitely, yeah, it sets the boundaries, but you can kind of play within those boundaries for sure.

• 1:58:59Mark Manson?

  Totally, totally. So the second category is circumstances. And this is the one that I think everybody overestimates. The circumstances is like, you know, the place you grow up, how much money you have, the environment that you're in, the weather. You know, your job satisfaction, whatever, your physical traits, all these things like the circumstances, basically like the the environmental factors that are outside of your control or outside of your direct control. That our brain consistently plays a trick on us and tells us that it's, oh, it's that, it's their fault that I'm not happy, right? It's like, oh, if I didn't live in this city, I would be happy. Or if I was three inches taller, I'd be happy.

• 1:59:43Mark Manson?

  Or if I was made an extra $10,000 a year, then I'd be happy. Like this is, the circumstance is the thing that our brain naturally overrates and puts way, way too much weight on. And researchers come to the conclusion that circumstances probably account for roughly around 10% of our day to day happiness. Generally speaking, we will return to our baseline over and over. It's really only if our circumstances become chronic or extreme in one direction or another. That it really moves the needle over the long term. So things like living in extreme poverty, suffering from chronic pain, going through social isolation, losing a significant relationship.

• 2:00:24Mark Manson?

  Like all those things will alter your baseline happiness. Over a long period of time, not permanently, but like over a long period of time. It is interesting that, so they do have a lot of data on the actual correlation between income and happiness, marriage and happiness. Physical attractiveness and happiness, job satisfaction and happiness. And like what percentage of your, the variance of your day to day happiness is attributable to those things? And it is shockingly low.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  It's quite small.

• 2:00:55Mark Manson?

  It is very small. So income comes in around 3% of your variance in happiness. Marriage explains about 2% of the variance. Physical attractiveness explains about 1% and job satisfaction accounts for around 2%. These are all extremely small. correlations like in the data itself like the the R is like around point one one five, which is so small that I think in a lot of fields, they wouldn't even publish that like they're just like, what's the point? It's a small effect size for sure. Yeah, super small. And then that brings us to the last category, which is your intentional actions. And the good news for all of us is that our intentional actions, it's the one category that we can control.

• 2:01:38Mark Manson?

  These are the things that we choose to do on a day to day basis. And these things account for roughly 35 to 40% of our happiness. So we have a lot of legroom to work with in terms of like boosting our day to day happiness, making ourselves happier happier people. That's the good news. The bad news is, is that the the actions and behaviors that consistently drive happiness are probably all the things you already know and are not doing. Right, right. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. Yeah, one of these things. Let's get into it. The first one, I mean, I feel like we hit this every episode. Diet, exercise, sleep. I'm sorry.

• 2:02:19Mark Manson?

  Sorry, guys, like it's I'm not gonna surprise you. Yeah. But let's start with exercise in particular. I think exercise, particularly when it comes to mood and happiness, is like pretty, pretty shocking. And it's and it's the amount of effect it can have. You know, one way to frame it is that imagine if there was a pill that improved mood, reduced anxiety, alleviated your depression, boosted your self esteem, enhanced your brain function. Oh, and it also improves your sleep quality, makes you physically sexier and helps you live longer. And it's free. What would you say, Drew? Sign me the fuck up. Exactly. Yeah.

• 2:03:04Mark Manson?

  But then now imagine if I told you, oh, that means going to the gym. Yeah.

• 2:03:10Mark Manson?

  You're like, I'm out.

• 2:03:12Mark Manson?

  I'm out. Never mind, I don't want it anymore. Right. It is like when you put it in those terms, it is just so shocking. Like if if exercise was a drug, it would be, it literally would be a miracle drug. Yeah. It would be a miracle, like it solves everything. Yet, nobody does it.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Right. Even just like going for a walk, like that lifts my mood.

• 2:03:35Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's short term. Yes, it doesn't last a long time, but it lifts my mood and lets me get shit done.

• 2:03:40Mark Manson?

  The crazy thing, the craziest thing is that when you look at the research on exercise itself and like, what drives most of the benefits, people who go for a walk for 30 minutes a day, experience like 80% of the benefit as the gym rats do. Like the dudes who are in the gym two hours a day, like lifting heavy shit, like just go for a walk. Like, it's literally that simple. Yet, we don't do it. Sleep, I don't need to tell you how much sleep matters. Anybody who has, who has tried to go to work on three hours of sleep knows how absolutely fucking miserable it is.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not just that you're tired too, right? It's that you're, you're dysregulated.

• 2:04:20Mark Manson?

  You are irritable, you're angry, you're sad, you're mopey, um, you feel pessimistic. It is, sleep affects your mood and, and your emotions like dramatically.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I wake up in the middle of the night too, I just have the worst thoughts. Like if I'm up at three o'clock in the morning, I'm just like, oh my God, my life is over. This thing is, it's just, it's awful. And then I wake up and I'm like, okay, I'm fine after a little bit of sleep. So, yeah, definitely.

• 2:04:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, totally. And then of course, diet, nutrition. I mean, obviously you want to be metabolically healthy and all that's like, all these things are interrelated. But like with diet specifically, there's quite a bit of research on like, uh, vitamin and mineral deficiencies. You know, vitamin, vitamin D3 and, and, uh, you know, magnesium and fish oil and all this stuff.

• 2:05:06Speaker 01

  B12, I think is one of them too.

• 2:05:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, if you're lacking in any of these, then, um, you'll definitely take a hit to your, your general day to day mood and, and your mental functioning. So I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, uh, eating broccoli does make you happy. So, believe it or not.

• 2:05:25Mark Manson?

  And then the big one, relationships. Honestly, like, if there's anything in this episode that should be in a bright neon sign flashing in people's face, it is the quality of your relationships will ultimately have the largest effect on the quality of your happiness, how happy you are on a day-to-day basis. And that's not just, it's not just the, the quality, it's not just your romantic relationship. It is the, it is all, it's the aggregate of all of your relationships. Do you have a strong social support network? Do you have friends that you care about? Do you, are you surrounded by people who, who care about you, who have your best interests at heart? And yes, the people that you are close to, is that a healthy intimacy that you have with them? Do you have good lines of communication?

• 2:06:10Mark Manson?

  Do you feel supported and cared for? Probably the longest-running psychological study in the world is famously known as the Harvard Study. So it started in the late 1930s. As time went on, they started following up with them. I think probably what happened is that the, the medical stuff wasn't super interesting, but they like, they realized that they had this incredible psychological data set and they're like, oh, let's keep this going. So they followed up with these men throughout their entire lives. And it's still going today. It's like an 80-year-old study. I imagine most of the original participants have passed away by this point. But it is, it is basically, it was a longitudinal study where they followed, I think around 1,500 men from, starting around like age 20, throughout their entire lives.

• 2:06:53Mark Manson?

  And every few years, they would check in with them and give them just these massive surveys of like, what's going on in your life? How's your marriage? How's your job? How much money do you have? Where are you living? So on and so forth, decade after decade after decade. And then finally, in the 90s, George Valent, who was the primary administrator of the study at the time, like, the study's so long that they've like, now gone through like, three head researchers who have like, been administering it because they just, the study outlives them. Right, yeah. But at the time, George Valent was running the study and he, he wrote a book about the results, where he said that, full stop, I could sum up the entire 70 years of data in a single word, which is love.

• 2:07:38Mark Manson?

  It's like... Happiness equals love. Happiness equals relationships.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  The hippies were right.

• 2:07:43Mark Manson?

  I know, the fucking Beatles, dude. The Beatles had it, had it right all along. All you need is love. You know, in our, in our episode about emotions, we talked about how the, our relationships co-regulate our emotions with us. That, that like we are, when we say humans are a social species, what that means is that like our, our biology, our nervous system, our, our like, our cognitive system, like we are intertwined with each other. We need each other to function correctly. And that is part of the role of our emotions. And happiness to a great extent is like, is living in a state where your emotions are well-regulated. Like where there's like, we'll talk, we'll talk about this in the next section, but it's like, nothing is fucking up in your life at the moment,

• 2:08:28Mark Manson?

  that you feel aligned with everything you're doing and everything feels smooth. And, and there's like no impediment to pursuing what you want to pursue or becoming what you want to become. And having good relationships around you is like key in doing that. So, relationships are huge. We are, we're probably due to do an episode on relationships at some point soon. I'm sure we'll, we'll do many episodes on relationships or various aspects of relationships. So, if there is one takeaway from this episode, it is, the biggest driver of your happiness is going to be the people you surround yourself with.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  Just one point I want to tack on there too. I think there's, there's kind of been a lot of this idea that's out there. It's like, well, you know, but relationships are hard. People are flaky and nobody wants to be friends anymore. Nobody wants to follow up and nobody, you know, all the, the dating market is a mess and blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay. And so people are like, well, I'm just not going to try. I'm going to give that up. It's like, okay, yes, relationships are difficult. Yes, there's a lot of friction involved. What's the alternative to that though? If you, I'm just going to be a lone wolf. Social isolation, that's going to make you way more miserable than like, having a handful of difficult relationships in your life that you have to navigate.

• 2:09:38Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  So, just to point that out, I think there's a lot of people who are like, well, you know, absolutely. Screw people, like no.

• 2:09:45Mark Manson?

  And we don't, we don't have to get into this now, but like, I would argue that. A little bit of friction in relationships is a feature, not a bug. And healthy, yeah. Yeah, that's part of what makes you grow in a relationship. Right. It's part of what makes a relationship meaningful. But anyway, we'll save that for another episode. Yes. In terms of things that you can actually do yourself relatively immediately, now, this moment, probably the number one action is practicing gratitude, doing a simple gratitude journal, or gratitude prompt, or gratitude meditation. Like, if there is a hack that exists for happiness, that will like move the needle very slightly in roughly two or three minutes, gratitude is it.

• 2:10:30Mark Manson?

  Like, that is, that's the king out of all the interventions and all the little self-help exercises, like, that is kind of the one that survives and comes out on top. Another one is experiencing flow. And flow is basically that state of getting lost in whatever you're doing. Like, feeling kind of when time just starts floating by and you forget where you are and you're just so immersed in whatever activity you're doing, that you kind of lose sense of the outer world or anything else that's going on. So flow is generally, I think it's representative of living in alignment with things you care about.

• 2:11:12Mark Manson?

  I think it's also representative of working on something that is like very meaningful to you. I think flow, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent. I think sometimes flow is one of these things that it's like, I think it's the effect of stuff that's important. Right. Flow is downstream of meaning, of purpose, of value alignment. Right. Of competency, skill, developing skills. But it's one of those things, this happens often in psychology, is that like psychologists discover the effect and then they assume that it must be the cause. And so they're like, oh, you just need to get more flow in your life. And then they like start coming up with all these tactics and hacks to get flow. And it's like, well, no, if you just kind of figure out the meaning and values thing,

• 2:11:56Mark Manson?

  then flow happens naturally as a side effect. Right. Anyway, the point is, is that what the listener can do right this minute is just think about the things in your life that put you in the flow. That you lose yourself and you lose track of time. And just do more of that. Because that's where the good stuff is.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  Right. It goes back, start with the meaning and the purpose side. And like you're saying, that flows from that.

• 2:12:21Mark Manson?

  It flows, it all flows from that. Booch. Next one. This one is super interesting. Altruism.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:12:30Mark Manson?

  Helping others.

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:32Mark Manson?

  Acts of kindness is sometimes what it's referred to in the literature. So Don Aknin and Norton in 2008 had a seminal paper that was like a bit of an earthquake at the time where they discovered that people who spent their money on other people were happier than people who spent money on themselves. Which is super fascinating. And it's, I don't know if you've read this study, but it's like, it's actually really interesting what they did. So they started out, they just took like cross-sectional survey data. And I think the survey just happened, it was like some sort of happiness survey and it just so happened that it included, I think, how much people gave to charity or something. And the researchers just like ran an analysis on it, like looking for correlations and one

• 2:13:15Mark Manson?

  popped up of like people who gave more money to charity tended to be happier. And so the researchers were like, huh, that's super interesting. So what they did next is they went and they found people who had just come across like a windfall of money. So lottery winners, people who just inherited a fortune, you know, I guess like startup founders who just exited for a hundred million dollars, like basically people who just went from middle-class, normal to super fucking rich really quickly. And what's interesting about this is that by this point, there had actually been quite a bit of research on lottery winners and like. The fact that they don't end up happier most of the time. And in fact, a lot of lottery winners become miserable and go broke because of the money.

• 2:14:00Mark Manson?

  So there was already quite a bit of data and research on people who had had windfalls. And so these researchers went and found people who had had windfalls. But instead of tracking what they did with the money for themselves, they just tracked how much these windfall people spent money on others. So how many of them went and like bought a house for their mom? And bought a car for their cousin and paid for their sister's college tuition or whatever.

• 2:14:23Mark Manson?

  And sure enough, what they found was that, you know, all lottery winners see this huge spike in happiness early on. And then, you know, within a couple of years, it like resets the baseline level. What they found is that the more people with windfalls spent on other people, the slower that return to baseline was. And in some cases, it never completely got back there. And this like got them really excited. And so the last thing they did is they just rounded up a bunch of participants and they separated them into two groups. And they gave one group, I think it wasn't much money either. I think it was like $40 or $50 each, you know? So they gave one group of people each $50. And they said, go spend this on yourself.

• 2:15:07Mark Manson?

  And then they gave the other group of people $50. And they said, go spend this on somebody else and then come back afterwards. And then they measured people's happiness both before and after. And then, of course, like a few days or weeks out. And sure enough, the people who spent money on other people, which again, like you're somebody literally handing you 50 bucks, which like I think our intuition would always just be like, oh yeah, I'd rather get 50 bucks than like have to go buy something for somebody else. Right. But sure enough, the people who had to buy something for somebody else all came back and on average stated that they were significantly happier. So acts of kindness, generosity, charity, there you can be a little bit selfish with it,

• 2:15:52Mark Manson?

  which is just like understanding that like this is going to make you feel really good. Yeah. And I, again, I think it comes back to the meaning thing, right? Because it's like when you spend something on yourself, you're optimizing for effect and maybe a little bit of life satisfaction, which.

• 2:16:09Mark Manson?

  Depending on what you spend on, which we'll talk about here in a second.

• 2:16:13Mark Manson?

  But when you spend money on others, that I think that gives you meaning and purpose much more than it does.

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:16:19Mark Manson?

  Positive effect.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think there's kind of this idea too that some people get for some reason, they're like, oh, I don't want to make too much money because then I'll turn into an asshole or something. You know, you run into people like that and you're like, you can help more people if you have more money.

• 2:16:32Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:16:33Speaker 01

  Right? And that's one of the benefits of having more money is that you can help more people and you get to decide how you're going to help more people that way. And so, you know, when your resources are more limited, then you have to focus on yourself. Yeah, I think that's probably one of the reasons why poverty, you know, it does kind of make you more miserable is because you're just constantly thinking about your own survival and your self because you have to.

• 2:16:53Mark Manson?

  You are, but yeah, you are by necessity self-absorbed.

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:57Mark Manson?

  Right? Like you literally don't have the bandwidth.

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  That's not a moral judgment, I'm just saying.

• 2:17:01Mark Manson?

  It's just like.

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  Ground level truth.

• 2:17:03Mark Manson?

  When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, like you have to think about yourself. You can't think about anybody else.

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:07Mark Manson?

  Totally on board with that. And I'll just say too, like anecdotally speaking, I, I strongly believe that money doesn't change people. It amplifies who they are.

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that.

• 2:17:20Mark Manson?

  All of my observations is that people who are stingy when they didn't have money are even stingier when they have it. People who are greedy when they didn't have money are even greedier when they have it. And people who are very kind and generous when they don't have money are even more generous when they have it. So it's, I don't think money changes people much.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  Well, that, and that when we talked about money, that kind of bears out in the most recent research too, right? If you're miserable without money, you're going to be miserable with money.

• 2:17:46Mark Manson?

  Exactly. It's not going to move the needle much past a certain point. Isn't that so ironic though? That like, like the people who are happy without money are the ones who become happier with it. Dude, I love the human mind. It's so fucking interesting. All right, last one, experiences versus stuff.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 2:18:03Mark Manson?

  So this one, this is another really good one.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  The millennial philosophy, right?

• 2:18:07Mark Manson?

  Dude, this hit, this hit, hit our generation hard.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think we were right about it.

• 2:18:12Mark Manson?

  I do too. I do too. Over tourism of half the planet aside, it's.

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. There's that.

• 2:18:18Mark Manson?

  It is like, I mean, it is correct and I do think it is something that our generation got right. Like basically, the the short version of it is that, you know, let's say you want to spend $5,000.

• 2:18:31Mark Manson?

  You can either spend it on a really nice shiny object, or you can spend it on an experience. Generally speaking, people who spend it on experiences, experience more happiness and that happiness is sustained for a longer period of time. Bonus points if that experience involves other people you care about.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, yeah.

• 2:18:47Mark Manson?

  See relationships. So it's like, if you're just like some optimization nerd who wants to optimize for happiness per dollar spent, spend on experiences that involve other people. This is something that that you actually hear come up quite a bit. Like if you listen to a lot of the kind of like the personal finance gurus like, you know, Ramit and Dave Ramsey and Scott Galloway, people like that, like the thing that they always say is like, the best part about being rich is spending money on other people. Like that is actually what drives like all of the meaning. And again, it's because experiences are meaningful. This kind of comes back to what you were talking about, about

• 2:19:29Mark Manson?

  the experiencing self versus remembering self. Like when you buy a thing, it's fun in that moment, but then the hedonic adaptation kicks in and you get sick of it. And then on top of that, stuff, especially expensive stuff, has upkeep, it has maintenance, it falls apart, it's like, you have to worry about it and clean it and do all sorts of crap.

• 2:19:52Speaker 01

  Programmed obsolescence too. It's going to go out of date at some point.

• 2:19:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like trends change in 10 years. You you actually hate it, but it was so expensive.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  Cool CD player you bought.

• 2:20:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, my, my, my.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  $700 CD player.

• 2:20:06Mark Manson?

  My beautiful DVD collection.

• 2:20:10Mark Manson?

  It's, you know, stuff is very tenuous and and you don't think about those long term trade offs when you when you get that short term boost to to to affect. Whereas experiences, you get to enjoy it in the moment, but you also build the memory. And and if you do it with somebody else, you build the relationship, right? So you get your remembering self gets to benefit from that experience for years and years and years afterwards. So you know, this is why it's better instead of buying your mom like, I don't know, like a new iPhone, you know, it's like. Take her to the beach, you know, get her a spa day together and you know, it's like that.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  Spend a weekend with her. Yeah.

• 2:20:52Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Cause it's like those are the things that you're going to still be enjoying and remembering and caring about, you know, 10, 20 years later. iPhone's going to go out of date in like six months. So.

• 2:21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And just to highlight, that's the hedonic adaptation is really like, it's much, much stronger for physical objects or things that you buy material versus an experience that you have. You know, experiences are novel, even, you know, you're hanging out with the same people, but it's always a little bit different. So there's a novelty to it. And that's why you don't adapt to it as much. So yeah.

• 2:21:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  Okay. So Mark, I think there's going to be some people who, you know, we just went through this list of things that have intentional activities that you can do.

• 2:21:32Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  And it's like, okay, well, okay. So now I need, I need to get exercise and I need to hang out with people. And, you know, maybe I need to like get into nature. We didn't really get into that one, but that can help you boost your mood and everything like that. Like when, who, when the hell do you have time? Like, what am I supposed to do? Go to the gym and then I'm supposed to go see friends in the same night and I'm supposed to get a half hour, two hour walk, you know, two hours a week in nature is apparently a good mood booster too. When the hell am I supposed to do these things? Well, I recently came across, I think it was a newsletter that Oliver Berkman put out and, and he was making this point. He's like, you know, this seems overwhelming when you're trying to get into this. And he's like, why don't you go for a hike with your friends? You get exercise, you get nature and you get social time right there. Like try to combine these activities as much as you can, because you don't have

• 2:22:15Speaker 01

  to do each one separately. I think we get a little too compartmentalized around some of these things. So like trying to combine these activities in ways that are synergistic and actually like kind of create something that's even, even more fulfilling than just doing each one individually.

• 2:22:29Mark Manson?

  And yeah, and it's also like, you don't have to do them all, all the time. You know, it's like pick one and work on that, right? It's like, like if you're.

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  Keep it simple.

• 2:22:37Mark Manson?

  If your sleep is shit, like just focus on your sleep for a while or, or, you know, get a little more exercise. But yeah, absolutely. You can, that is like one of the nice things I will say about living in LA is like so much of social life out here is like built around these things.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Doing things. Yeah.

• 2:22:54Mark Manson?

  It is, is like people are. Are very health conscious out here. So like, so like dinner parties often revolve around healthy food. People like meeting up with friends often revolves around like a hike or surfing or even like fitness class, things like that. And there's, there's plenty of nature out here. So it is like, I think that is probably again, why the relationship piece is so central and important here. Because if you find people who are already doing these things and just go do it with them. Yeah. A, it makes it way easier to do it. And B, you get to build those relationships, which is, uh, which is great.

• 2:23:35Mark Manson?

  So I actually want to return to this kind of epicurean idea of don't pursue happiness, but remove unhappiness. Because at this point, we've, we've now kind of gone through all the pertinent research around what makes you happy, to what extent does it make you happy, uh, what doesn't make you happy, but most people think it does. And I do think there's an interesting pattern that shows up, which is that the things that consistently make you happy are almost entirely within your control. And then the things that are out of your control, your circumstances, it's, it's less about getting more of it, and it's more about just removing friction and impediments, right? So it's like, take money, for instance, like having tons of money doesn't move the needle nearly as much

• 2:24:20Mark Manson?

  as just not being broke. Um, or having tons of sex with tons of people doesn't move the needle basically at all. Whereas just not being alone. Right. It does, you know? So it's like, when it comes to the circumstantial stuff that we tend to obsess and worry about and complain about, it's not about maximizing those things. It's simply just removing the unhappiness, removing the friction from those things. One of the reasons I want to return to this concept is because it, it ties into what we were just saying is that like, you don't have to do that much. If you're broke and really financially stressed.

• 2:24:55Mark Manson?

  It's not that you need to make a fuckload of money. It's like, you just need to make enough to not be broke. Some stability, right? Right? And if you're lonely, you don't need to have tons and tons of friends and be going out every, every night. You just need to not feel alone. Like, it's, the bar is actually way lower than you think. And I just want to kind of return to this Buddhist idea of dukkha. You know, the, the, the broken wheel that is spinning. Cause I think now that we're kind of informed about all the research and everything. I do think, at least for me, it, it, I see it a little bit differently in that really what alignment is, is that

• 2:25:37Mark Manson?

  you're able to live your life without feeling impeded or obstructed in any significant way. It's like whoever you want to be, whoever the ideal Drew is in your mind, the more you can just remove the impediments to that ideal Drew, the happier you're gonna be. Like happiness is this, it's not an active state that you find. It is, it is rather the absence of obstructions and impediments to the things you care about. You almost don't notice it. Yes. Like in a way, you don't notice it. Right. Right? Absolutely. Actually, I have a fantastic quote about this that I love. This comes from the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who ironically was an incredibly miserable person. But we won't, we won't get into that. He was a brilliant writer and a brilliant philosopher.

• 2:26:22Mark Manson?

  And this is probably the, my favorite thing that he ever wrote. So he wrote, "Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will. If we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted. It has to have experienced a shock of some kind. On the other hand, all that opposes, frustrates, and resists our will, that is to say, all that is unpleasant and painful, impresses itself upon us instantly, directly, and with great clarity. Just as we are conscious not of the healthiness of our whole body, but only of the little place where the shoe pinches, so we think not of the totality of our successful activities,

• 2:27:07Mark Manson?

  but of some insignificant trifle or other which continues to vex us. All happiness and gratification is therefore the mere abolition of a desire and the extinction of pain." I fucking love that. It's so good.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  And it's so true too, you just don't notice it. And it goes back to if you're trying to pursue it, then you're not going to get it, right?

• 2:27:29Mark Manson?

  Exactly, which is, you know, in Subtle or Not Giving a Fuck, I wrote about the backwards law, which is, you know, in the book I defined it as the pursuit of a positive experience is itself a negative experience, and the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience. And I think this really explains that, which is that when you're pursuing happiness, what you're actually doing is subtly reminding yourself that you're not happy.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:55Mark Manson?

  Whereas when you simply accept unhappiness, what you're actually doing is subtly letting go of the impediment to how you want your life to be, which then makes you happy. It's this beautiful paradox that takes place, and I think it's something that's ever-present, and it's something that we often miss and forget in a lot of subtle ways. I do want to bring up just a couple other psychological points that tie into this, which I think are ways that we invent impediments for ourselves mentally, ways that we invent trifles that distract us from the whole success of our being. The first one is just social comparison. You know, there's the cliche that comparison

• 2:28:40Mark Manson?

  is the thief of all joy. You know, I think the conventional advice is just like, don't compare yourself to others. I think that's unrealistic. I think as humans, we are kind of wired to compare ourselves to others. Like, we care what other people are doing, and we care, we are concerned with like, whether we're living up to the social expectations around us. What I always tell people is, don't try to stop comparing yourself to others. Rather, compare yourself to better people, and for better reasons, right? So it's like, comparison, sure, it can make you feel bad. If you get on Instagram and you see somebody who's like, way more attractive than you, has way more money than you, and is doing way cooler shit than you, and you compare yourself to them, then like, yeah, you're gonna feel bad about that. But if you think about like, your role models, or

• 2:29:25Mark Manson?

  your heroes, or the people who inspire you, like, the people you look up to, a mentor, that's also a form of comparison. When you look at somebody who has deeply inspired you and motivated you to like, be better yourself...

• 2:29:40Mark Manson?

  That's a positive result of comparison. It's like, wow, they're amazing and they're further down the road on the path that I'm on. I want to be more like them. I want to like, watch what they're doing and try to learn something from it and see if I can become better. Like, that's a form, that's a, I would say that's a healthy form of social comparison. And similarly, like, you should compare yourself to people for the right reasons. So like, don't compare yourself to people's money. Compare yourself to their character. How kind are they? How satisfied with themselves are they? How much integrity do they have? Right? Like, I don't really give a shit if the person sitting across from me has like 10 times more money than I do. But I do give a shit if they're a fucking liar and a scumbag. Right?

• 2:30:21Mark Manson?

  Like, and if, and if they're like, have so much integrity that they make me feel like I'm a liar and a scumbag, then that's actually good. I actually want to spend more time with them and try to compare myself to them more because it's going to make me better. So I think it's just be cognizant of your social comparisons and make sure that you're, you're making the right comparisons and you're making them for the right reasons. The second thing I want to talk about comes from Schwartz's concept of the paradox of choice, which is the idea of the maximizer and the satisficer. That basically there are people who go through life trying to maximize everything. They're trying to like, optimal, like optimal health, optimal happiness, optimal productivity all the time. Things they purchase even too.

• 2:31:03Mark Manson?

  These are people are like, give me the top 10 gadgets on this or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It's basically perfectionism. And the problem with that is that you're setting the bar consistently so high, you're setting yourself up to be disappointed about pretty much everything all the time. And again, because you've set that bar so high, as Schopenhauer points out, you're constantly going to become aware of all the ways that your life is not living up to your expectation. And whereas a satisficer is somebody who sets the bar at good enough and then just aims for that. You know, so it's like they shoot for 70 or 80%. And if they get past that, great, but... If they don't, they're not gonna, they're not gonna worry about it too much.

• 2:31:47Mark Manson?

  We're just kinda talking about the happiness benefits of this, but I will say that there's like, there's a lot of other important repercussions of this as well. I remember seeing, I think it was one of that Amazon shareholder letters or something, but I remember like Jeff Bezos wrote once. He said, "The optimal decision is made when you are 70% certain it's the right thing to do." And that blew my fucking mind.

• 2:32:10Speaker 01

  Right, right, because a lot of people hear what you just said about the maximizer versus satisfying. Well, then what about shooting so high? Well, Jeff Bezos.

• 2:32:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:32:17Speaker 01

  It's like 70%, that's good, let's keep going.

• 2:32:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  There's a productivity aspect to it, yeah.

• 2:32:21Mark Manson?

  And I think it's because like, the, to go from 70 to 90% probably takes twice as much effort as it takes to go from zero to 70.

• 2:32:30Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:32:31Mark Manson?

  And to go from 90 to 99, it probably takes another 2 or 3X.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  And you're gonna learn a lot more by just doing and going.

• 2:32:38Mark Manson?

  Just do it, let it fail, and you're gonna learn quickly, and then you're gonna adjust, and then you can make the next decision. And then the side effect of that is that if you are, if you're, if you're satisfying, if you're only looking for good enough, it's not gonna bother you, all the ways it doesn't live up to perfection, which is imagined anyway, it's not gonna bother you and mess with your head all the time. So those are a couple of ways that we self-impose our own unhappiness, is that we compare ourselves to unrealistic standards, and we demand unrealistic results from our, from our own actions.

• 2:33:15Mark Manson?

  Why don't we talk about age really quick?

• 2:33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:18Mark Manson?

  Just because we do see variance in a lot of this stuff.

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:33:24Mark Manson?

  Depending on how old you are. And I think it's because our audience spans from teenagers to, you know, 75-year-old retirees. I think it, it's probably useful to touch on this stuff.

• 2:33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's useful, it's, you mentioned this earlier too, that there, you know, it does seem to be, we prioritize different aspects of happiness throughout our life, and that's, that's definitely true. I think the point of all of this is going to be, first of all, these are just kind of like averages, right? These aren't set in stone, so if we go through some life stage and... You're in that life stage and it's not your experience. Of course, there's variation throughout all of this and we'll talk about why that is. But I think it's important to also realize kind of what the, yeah, what the average experience is in your, whatever life stage you're going through. And be able to adjust and, and kind of adapt to that as you go.

• 2:34:11Mark Manson?

  Know that you're not a weirdo, basically.

• 2:34:13Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, or if you are a weirdo, know why and that's okay too. Yeah, that's, that's totally fine. Basically what they've found developmental psychologists have looked at happiness through the lifespan. And basically, you know, a lot of people think you're probably, you're happy when you're young and then it just is a downhill slog from there. And that's just not how it works at all. They consistently have found what they call a U-shaped curve. And generally speaking, and but there's different aspects of happiness that are highlighted at each one of these stages, but typically in your youth, you know, late teens, twenties, early to mid thirties. You're, you're generally kind of happier for the most part. You have higher affect anyway.

• 2:34:55Speaker 01

  Usually because you're, you're chasing experiences that are high affective states, right?

• 2:35:01Mark Manson?

  Everything's new.

• 2:35:02Speaker 01

  Everything's new.

• 2:35:03Mark Manson?

  Everything's new, which is exciting, which is fun, which is, yeah.

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. What you're really doing is you're kind of exploring emotionally who you are, more or less, right? And so you experience a very wide range of experiences and emotions through these stages. And you kind of get a sense of like what, where your emotional sense or center of gravity is during this time. But there's a lot of ups and downs as well, right? There's even a research to show that like in brain imaging studies. Younger people, there's, there's heightened activity in brain regions that are associated with reward and with even just emotion to, like the emotional networks fire more strongly. And you could think about it like, if you're older and you're listening to this, you think about when you were younger, like things were just more intense, right?

• 2:35:47Speaker 01

  They were for me anyway. I know like emotional intensity in my late teens and twenties, like everything was just so intense.

• 2:35:53Mark Manson?

  Everything's the end of the world. Everything's the best thing ever.

• 2:35:56Speaker 01

  Or it's awesome, right? Like, oh my God, we went to this concert and it was amazing. And you get old and you're like, eh, whatever, right? That's kind of what's going on there. There's, there's higher levels. Of those emotional highs, but you also have more anxiety during this time.

• 2:36:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:08Speaker 01

  You have, there's more even anger and sadness are experienced more intensely during these periods as well. So I think if you're, if you're younger and you're going through that, just know that that's like, that's part of the human experience is to experience these things much more intensely.

• 2:36:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  At that age, both the highs and the lows.

• 2:36:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  Again, this is kind of a period for exploration and emotional exploration especially. And this, this intensity, this emotional experience during this, this intense emotional experience during this period. It really kind of drives you to these life building activities. I guess what I'm going to call life building activities like your career, like seeking relationships.

• 2:36:48Speaker 01

  Figuring out your own independence, like how that works. So this is just kind of part of the evolutionary toolkit that we have. And that's what you're experiencing. So I know there's a lot of you like young people like, oh my God, like, why am I, why do I feel this bad?

• 2:37:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:02Speaker 01

  Well, wait till tomorrow. You're probably going to feel awesome for one.

• 2:37:04Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:37:04Speaker 01

  Also, this is just, this is part of life. And I know that's not, when you hear that, when you're younger, you're like, okay.

• 2:37:10Mark Manson?

  What am I supposed to do with that?

• 2:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things you really can do though is start to focus more on, you know, your life satisfaction and meaning like we've talked about. Instead of just kind of chasing the, the dopamine and the, and the rush of emotional experiences that you're trying to go for.

• 2:37:28Mark Manson?

  I don't know if anybody ever said this to you when you were, say, high school, college age.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:33Mark Manson?

  But I always hated this because I was pretty miserable in high school.

• 2:37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, same.

• 2:37:37Mark Manson?

  I hated it when adults came up to me and they were like, these are the best years of your life.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  Oh God, yeah.

• 2:37:42Mark Manson?

  I, that would make me so depressed. And now that I'm 40, I'm like, who are these people?

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 2:37:49Mark Manson?

  That peaked in high school.

• 2:37:50Speaker 01

  That is not true at all. Okay.

• 2:37:53Mark Manson?

  No, no. Anybody who says that, if you're a young person, anybody who says that to you is like fucked up somewhere because it's, it's like, life, life should get better.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38:03Mark Manson?

  Because you, you figure out who you are, you figure out what matters to you and, and you find things that are more important to you than, you know, like the, the next cool concert or whether, you know. The cute person thinks like likes you, you know, like it's just right. Things become way more significant and that significance brings a lot of satisfaction with it. Sure, like there's a lot of stress and difficulty that happens as you get older, but um I would never trade or go back like.

• 2:38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think there is something to that saying, you know, youth is wasted on the young. And sure, like your, your energy and your optimism and all that is probably wasted. Yeah. A little bit when you're younger because you just, you don't know how to use it.

• 2:38:41Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:38:42Speaker 01

  Uh, you go through those experiences and you gain some more perspective for sure.

• 2:38:46Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 2:38:46Speaker 01

  Um, but that, I mean, I, it is true though, when you get into middle age, you start hitting your 40s and 50s. Um, generally speaking, there is a bit of a dip in happiness, uh, what they find. This is probably really, uh, comes down to a lot of the circumstantial stuff that we've talked about. You're, by the time you hit your 40s and 50s, a lot of people have kids at this point and the kids are teenagers and they're difficult to deal with. You have, you're at the peak, you're at your peak earning years usually, so you're earning more money. But this also means you have more responsibility at work, so there's a lot of stress on you. Your parents are getting older, so you're dealing with them at that point. So there's a lot of like life happening at this stage that tends to uh, kind of like

• 2:39:31Speaker 01

  lower happiness in a lot of people, on average, okay? You have your peak responsibilities. You also start, like the social comparison you just talked about. That becomes a little more stark in this period, right? Because you've been through the early stages of your career. And now if you, you know, your friends, your college buddies or whatever, they've made partner, they've, you know, made a whole bunch of money and you haven't, or the, the, the social comparisons are really stark at this age, I think.

• 2:40:00Mark Manson?

  So when you're young and you compare yourself to others, it's usually over very superficial things.

• 2:40:04Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:05Mark Manson?

  Because everybody's in the same boat, everybody's young and broke and has no idea what they're doing. So it's usually, usually compare yourself about dumb stuff.

• 2:40:11Speaker 01

  Really stupid shit.

• 2:40:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, oh, she has nicer hair than I do, or you know, oh, like, he's like such a good football player. I wish I could play football.

• 2:40:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:40:18Mark Manson?

  It's, once you get older, like you're, everybody's life decisions are worn on their sleeve.

• 2:40:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:40:24Mark Manson?

  Right, so it's like, once you get to 45. All the 45 year olds that you you knew in college, like you see what decisions they made and how that played out. And so there's like

• 2:40:34Speaker 01

  Over decades, yeah.

• 2:40:35Mark Manson?

  And and so there's way more weight to it. And it's, I think it's, I would add to this too. And I, this is kind of the midlife crisis thing, but like

• 2:40:45Speaker 01

  I was gonna bring this up, yeah.

• 2:40:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So like, when you're young, as you said, the whole project, when you're young, is kind of constructing this idea of like, who you are and what your life's gonna be. Once you hit 40 and 50, like, you, your life is played out, right? You're like, you're kind of at the halfway point.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:41:04Mark Manson?

  And as you said, you're you're kind of at the peak of your earning years, your professional years. And for most people, it did not play out how they hoped or they expected. And that's like a very hard thing to swallow.

• 2:41:17Speaker 01

  It is very much so.

• 2:41:18Mark Manson?

  I tried to do all the right things. It didn't really go the way I thought it was gonna go. I ended up in a very different place than I thought I was gonna end up in. And, and while, like, in a lot of cases, you know, people are very, still very happy with where they ended up. But it's just like, I don't know, there's almost this grieving of the life that you thought you were gonna live, but you didn't. And I think that that that's very hard on a lot of people.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And you see huge reactions to that sometimes, too, the midlife crisis you mentioned, you know, this is the, the middle edged guy who goes out and buys a sports car and divorces his wife and, you know, tries to start hooking up with 20 something year olds.

• 2:41:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  Stuff like that. That's, that's usually a reaction to that

• 2:41:59Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  realization.

• 2:42:00Mark Manson?

  It's like, I want to go back and do it again.

• 2:42:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:02Mark Manson?

  And those are usually the people who tell you, tell a college kid that it's the best years of their life, because it's like, they never, they, they went down the wrong path.

• 2:42:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:10Mark Manson?

  And they, they wish they could go back, because that's the last time that they, they felt like they were on the right path.

• 2:42:15Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So I know that I think there's more productive ways to channel it. You could start a podcast, let's say, at middle age and try to stay relevant.

• 2:42:23Mark Manson?

  Please don't start a podcast.

• 2:42:28Speaker 01

  But yeah, that it does though. So all of that happens, then you start getting into the later years where the you starts coming back up. Okay. And this is kind of counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of people. Like you hit your 60s and all of a sudden, on average, anyway, people start to kind of accept the their life situation a little bit more and stop fighting it. Again, you're not pursuing happiness so much. You're just kind of accepting as it is.

• 2:42:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:42:56Speaker 01

  I did these things. I didn't do these things and I'm okay with that. That starts to happen kind of in your 60s. Now, you know, there are, as you age, there are certain things that can definitely lower your happiness too. If you're experiencing a lot of health issues, financial issues.

• 2:43:12Mark Manson?

  Chronic pain, yeah.

• 2:43:12Speaker 01

  Chronic pain, anything like that. That's gonna obviously affect how happy you are. But there's, I mean, consistently, they find that the happiest people are usually in their 60s and 70s. If not their 80s even sometimes too. I remember you told me a story one time you had an uncle that lived to be 99.

• 2:43:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:28Speaker 01

  And what he said his two favorite decades, what did it was?

• 2:43:30Mark Manson?

  He said his two favorite decades were his 40s and his 80s in that order.

• 2:43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, in that order. 40s and his 80s, right?

• 2:43:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:35Speaker 01

  So, yeah, if you're younger and, you know, it gets better. It can get better. And then I think it does, it just goes up and down. I know for me personally, anyway, like my, like my mid 30s, or I loved my mid 30s. Like I was just, there was even times too, this kind of goes against what we've been talking about, but I would realize I'm like, oh, this is, I'm gonna think of these as some of the best years of my life. Cause it was just, it was great. I was, it was, I had just kind of, for whatever reason, I had done what I wanted to do to some extent. I accepted what I didn't. I kind of got more comfortable with who I was. But, you know, as you, I think as you get even older, more of that starts to happen as well. And I think that's what they find, or that is what they find with older people is that they have just accepted that, okay,

• 2:44:20Speaker 01

  life didn't turn out for me in certain ways and I'm okay with that. Now the ways it has. And then not only that, I mean, your mortality becomes more salient.

• 2:44:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:29Speaker 01

  Right? And you start to, that is a clarifying, clarifying event, right?

• 2:44:34Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  And you just stop giving a shit about. All this stupid shit that we talked about.

• 2:44:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:44:37Speaker 01

  Who cares if her hair is nicer? Who cares if he made more money? I don't care.

• 2:44:41Mark Manson?

  You're probably not trying to maximize everything anymore.

• 2:44:44Speaker 01

  You're not.

• 2:44:45Mark Manson?

  You're just like, that ship sailed, whatever. This is good enough.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  And that's okay.

• 2:44:48Mark Manson?

  And that actually makes you happier.

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  There's an acceptance to it again. Just accept that this is how it is and stop trying to be so happy. And then all of a sudden you do get happier.

• 2:44:56Mark Manson?

  I imagine like gratitude comes in quite a bit as well.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 2:45:00Mark Manson?

  Because it's.

• 2:45:01Speaker 01

  You've probably seen some people around you either pass away or not do as well. And you're like, okay, well, I'm.

• 2:45:06Mark Manson?

  Right. And you've also, you have lived long enough that you have perspective to really look back and be like, okay, well, that thing in my life, that was actually really special. And I'm so grateful for that.

• 2:45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it goes back to the remembering self.

• 2:45:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you can look back on those and yeah, again, so you look back on those times and the remembering self. It removes a lot of the emotions that happened at those periods, right?

• 2:45:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:31Speaker 01

  When you're looking back, but you remember them as significant and meaningful rather than what emotions they gave you.

• 2:45:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:38Speaker 01

  So that starts to happen more and more as you get older. And again, you just, you selectively start to prioritize the more important things in your life that are going to just naturally bring you more happiness anyway. And that just, it happens over the lifespan like that.

• 2:45:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  There's just, we talked about this before, and I think that it does kind of map onto this. The three components of happiness, your affect, your life satisfaction and the meaning. It seems like when you're younger, you're kind of really pursuing that affective happiness more than the other two. As you get into kind of more middle age, the life satisfaction becomes more of a factor. How satisfied are you with your life? The disappointments that are there, how much do you accept those? You can look back with perspective, like you said, and see the meaning and the purpose behind what you've done and make an assessment from there. So, yeah.

• 2:46:29Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 2:46:29Speaker 01

  One of the things though too is like, I'm not sure how much, this is something I want to ask you. How much should you kind of rail against those trends in your life? Again, not everybody, it's not, it's an average and it's just kind of, this is what people tend to do. And there's going to be lots of exceptions to it. But like when you're young, you know. I'm not sure you do have the perspective that you need. So maybe you should be optimizing more for affect and fun and everything like that. I know there's, I look back on some of that and I don't regret it, you know?

• 2:46:59Mark Manson?

  Right. First of all, yeah, I think if you're young, that is what you should be optimizing for because you don't know who you are, you don't know what you want, and you don't know what you want your life to turn out as. Or you, maybe you think you do, but you're probably wrong. And it's like you're gonna have to live through a few missteps or pivots to like really get clarity on where, who you want to be. I do think all that is normal. I think the risk for young people, and I speak as somebody who probably did this, is that when you over-optimize for exploration and affect and novelty, it's, you can, you can under-index on purpose and meaning.

• 2:47:41Mark Manson?

  And, and it's very easy to convince yourself that a lot of that exploration and novelty is gonna be meaningful. And, and most of it's not. And so I think it's just like, be wary, be careful not to bullshit yourself. Like really, really ask yourself honestly, like, is this gonna matter in 20 years? Like, is the 45-year-old me really gonna give a shit that, you know, I don't know, went to a full moon party in Thailand? Like, not to say don't go, but I'm just saying like, if that's what you're optimizing everything around, those sorts of experiences, like, you know, just, just be aware of what you're doing and be careful with it. Cause I definitely, I definitely think I went too hard on that.

• 2:48:23Mark Manson?

  There is an addictive quality to chasing novelty that you can get kinda caught up in.

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:48:29Mark Manson?

  And, and some people never get out of it, you know? It's like, those are the Peter Pans who like, who are 45 and they're still going to festivals and doing a bunch of drugs and trying to hook up with people half their age and it's like... Yeah, you don't want to end up there.

• 2:48:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:48:47Mark Manson?

  So, yeah, that would be my only disclaimer.

• 2:48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's definitely research that shows just being aware of this U-shaped curve actually helps you kind of navigate these. So again, it's more of an acceptance. So if you're in middle age and you're like, it's like, this is just part of it.

• 2:49:04Mark Manson?

  This is temporary. Yeah, shit is hard.

• 2:49:06Speaker 01

  This is a hard part of your life and you're gonna get through it and then you're gonna see the meaning at the end of it.

• 2:49:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:10Speaker 01

  So like, just being aware of it is, like, tends to help people quite a bit, actually, too. So, knowledge is power in that sense, anyway.

• 2:49:18Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 2:49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:23Mark Manson?

  All right, we're in the home stretch here, Drew. Why don't we, like, before we wrap up with the final takeaways, I do think it's worth, now that we've like, laid out all the research, laid out all the philosophy, we have a very strong understanding of just like, what happiness is, how it works, what causes it, what doesn't cause it. I do think it's probably worth revisiting a handful of like, common happiness myths that get passed around all the time, especially in the self-help space and on Instagram, and just like, assumptions that I think a lot of people have, or that seem intuitive, but like, are actually completely wrong. So, I will, I will kick it off.

• 2:50:01Speaker 01

  Which is that?

• 2:50:02Mark Manson?

  To be happy means that you feel good all the time. And I think by this point, listeners should understand that like, happiness is actually very, it's a multi-varied, complicated thing, that you can be extremely happy with yourself and your life, and not having fun. It is not the same thing as feeling good, or pleasure, or fun, or excitement. There's all sorts of nuances to it, and there's, there are even different versions of happiness that play out under different circumstances.

• 2:50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, not only that, but research has shown too, that emotional diversity, experiencing a wide range of both positive and negative emotions is actually better for your mental health than just experiencing all negative or all positive. You've actually written about this too, like, that there's, like, emotional diversity, it's kind of like building a portfolio, you know, of stocks and bonds and all of that, and you're actually more resilient. And you're better adjusted if you experience a wider range of emotions.

• 2:50:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:57Speaker 01

  And ultimately happier. So yeah.

• 2:50:59Mark Manson?

  Which makes sense because as we covered in the emotions episode, the ultimately emotions are are feedback mechanisms. They are, they are things that we evolved biologically to help us adapt to our environment and happiness is just another mental emotional state that is adaptive to our environment. Like, one way to look at it is that every other emotion is telling us to change something.

• 2:51:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:51:23Mark Manson?

  You know, anger is telling us to do something. Sadness is telling us to do something. I think happiness is probably the, the single state where it's like, is the lack of change.

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  Don't do anything.

• 2:51:33Mark Manson?

  Don't do anything. Like, like, everything's good. Let it be good. I think I'll also mention here that, um, like, there's something very beautiful and meaningful of like, holding a mixture of emotions in your head at the same time, you know, being able to be happy and sad simultaneously, or feel a little bit, a tinge of regret, but also a lot of nostalgia, you know, like, there's a lot, like, the human experience is just so complex and nuanced. I, I think I've always had an aversion to the happiness obsession, simply because it just seems so

• 2:52:15Mark Manson?

  reductionist. It's like, it just seems like it simplifies us into this like, very simple and bland box, which, um, I don't know, it just, it just feels insulting to, to like, the beautiful complexity of life.

• 2:52:28Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, embrace that complexity. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Okay, uh, next one. Next myth, happiness comes from control. Okay. We've talked about this too, but there's, there's really just an acceptance that needs to happen for you to be able to be happy. You don't control your happiness. You don't control your emotions necessarily. You control reaction to them, sure. But, um, being able to control your emotions and manage your emotions and master your emotions, that is not what happiness comes from. Um, it comes more from an acceptance and a reality, like we just talked about, experiencing all these different emotions and accepting them and just kind of being with them is really where kind of a sense of satisfaction comes from.

• 2:53:08Mark Manson?

  Feeling no obstruction to the experience, your present experience. And I think the desire to control your emotions or the desire to control your mental state backfires because the desire to control your emotions itself is an obstruction Right. to feeling happiness, right? Backwards law. It's the backwards law. And I think, you know, I alluded to this at the top of the show, you know, there's kind of a more popular meme recently that I think originated with Nobel Ravikant, which is this idea that you can be happy at any given moment, it's simply a choice. Is that true? I think, so first of all, I think what he's referring to is that in any given moment,

• 2:53:51Mark Manson?

  you can choose that acceptance and that equanimity and you can remove, like mentally remove all those obstructions to feeling happiness in the present moment. But I think the myth here is that should you remove those obstructions, should you feel happy in every moment? Like, I would actually say it's not very adaptive to feel happy in every moment, that you actually should go through periods of unhappiness in your life because that is how you grow, that's how you evolve, that's how you change, that's how you make decisions. And that's ultimately what gives your life a sense of meaning is that the remembering self is able to look back and say, wow, I like, I've handled adversity, I worked through incredible challenges, I've grown as a person.

• 2:54:34Mark Manson?

  Ultimately, that is where you want to end up. Whereas I think if you just are constantly deciding to be satisfied in every, any given moment, I mean, you kind of, it's kind of the monk in the cave problem, right? It's like, okay, you can go be a monk in a cave, meditating for the rest of your life, but like, is that really a life well-lived? Like, do you, is that who you want to become necessarily? I've always struggled with that, I've always been skeptical of that. Again, I'm more of the modern scientific view that like, emotions are adaptive, they shouldn't be our masters. And I think if you are choosing to optimize for happiness in every single moment,

• 2:55:14Mark Manson?

  Whether it's like in an unhealthy way of trying to control everything, or in a healthy way of just like simply accepting everything. Like, I don't know if that's the point. Like, I know we keep coming back to this, but it's like, I don't like happiness isn't the point.

• 2:55:28Speaker 01

  Right, I would argue the same thing.

• 2:55:29Mark Manson?

  Right, it's it is the byproduct of getting the other things right.

• 2:55:33Speaker 01

  Right, right, and when you're trying to control it, that's when you're you're you're over indexing and over emphasizing the happiness.

• 2:55:39Mark Manson?

  And I think the you can be happy in any moment. It's a choice is basically saying like, you can choose to be happy in any moment by simply not caring about anything else. So it's like the Buddhist, you know, non-attachment thing. And I just, I don't know, it seems impractical to me in the modern day and age. It was one thing in, you know, 3,000 years ago to go sit in a cave for your entire life. You weren't missing out on a whole lot.

• 2:56:02Speaker 01

  A whole lot going on, yeah.

• 2:56:04Mark Manson?

  Whereas today, I don't know, it just like, I feel like there's, there's got to be more to life than that. Next one, others have it easier, their lives must be happier than mine. This is the classic social comparison. This is like, well, you know, easy for you to say. You've got a, you know, you've got all these fancy degrees and, you know, traveled to Chile and like learn to speak a language and blah, blah, blah. I think if anything, people should have learned by now that like, first of all, the circumstantial stuff doesn't move the needle very much. Second of all, you have no idea what somebody's genetic disposition is. Like, this is the classic case of like, I don't know, some rich and famous celebrity, you know, kills himself or

• 2:56:45Mark Manson?

  turns out that they're like, you know, deeply depressed and addicted to painkillers or something. And like, people are shocked, they're like, oh, my God, but they're so, they're so rich and famous. How could they feel that way? And it's just like, it just goes to show like, you have no idea what other people are going through. You, all you see is their circumstances. You don't see, first of all, their, their. Genetic baseline happiness, which might be incredibly low. You don't see their intentional behavior and you have no idea what they've been through. You have no idea what sort of like trauma and pain and struggle and suffering that they've gone through. And it's like, it's just silly to compare yourself to like the most superficial external veneer

• 2:57:28Mark Manson?

  of like what an individual's lived experience is like.

• 2:57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, like when I was, I traveled for a couple of years, you know, and

• 2:57:37Speaker 01

  you know, did the whole nomad thing and all of that. And honestly, like going through that, I wasn't super happy during that time. I'll tell you, I'm glad I did it. I found a lot of meaning through that. There was, I made friends. I made lots of great experiences. I look back, my remembering self loves that, whatever. During that time though, I was, there was long stretches of loneliness. There was, you know, I like, not making friends sometimes in some places. That was pretty difficult. Also, just I needed more stability in my life. You didn't see that from the stuff I was posting online at the time. None of that. Okay. So that's just like one minor example, you know, of you just don't know what's going on. I have a lot too. I've been talking with some people lately too. And then, you know, you see, oh, I know this person that she posts online about her family and stuff like that all the time.

• 2:58:21Speaker 01

  And like their marriage is definitely on the rocks or anything like that. You just don't know what's going on.

• 2:58:25Mark Manson?

  My wife has a theory that like the amount, like the amount that couples post each other online is directly proportional to how many problems they have in the marriage.

• 2:58:36Speaker 01

  Probably not a bad bet.

• 2:58:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Anyway.

• 2:58:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:58:40Mark Manson?

  Moving on.

• 2:58:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. So next one. It's too late to be happy. Now, we talked a little bit about this with the U shaped curve.

• 2:58:49Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:58:50Speaker 01

  With happiness, but I think there's a lot of people who, you know, you hit your mid 30s or 40 or whatever. And you're like, well, it's over for me. It's like, you've got half your life left, right?

• 2:58:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah, at least.

• 2:58:59Speaker 01

  At least. And again, the research also shows too, that happiness kind of waxes and wanes with life. And there's sure there's circumstances that influence that, but also just your life, just development, human development is such that happiness will probably increase as you get older. So it's not, it's never too late.

• 2:59:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:15Speaker 01

  It's never too late.

• 2:59:16Mark Manson?

  I think there's a Perceptual bias or like kind of like a cognitive flaw in our brains where it's like when we're unhappy, we seem to envision that happiness must be this like monumental achievement or task. Like we start, we imagine that we need to accomplish far more than we actually do. And it's not only is like, like our actions available to you in every given moment to be slightly happier. You actually don't need that much. Like it's, it's really just, you know, it's the difference. I think the difference between somebody who is, is feeling miserable and somebody who's like feeling fine is like, actually it's not this like massive chasm.

• 2:59:57Mark Manson?

  It's probably like a 10 or 15% difference in, in terms of like their lived experience. And so making small, simple adjustments, you know, reaching out to people, making a friend, joining the, uh, you know, a group or finding a new hobby, exercising occasionally, like just a few of those things will probably actually, will be enough to move you from the unhappy to moderately happy camp.

• 3:00:23Speaker 01

  Well, and not only that, the point you keep harping on to is the removal of the unhappiness part. I, I think that's what other people think, well, again, I have to have these monumental changes and these big hurdles I have to overcome. No, you just need to get rid of a few things in your life.

• 3:00:35Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 3:00:36Speaker 01

  And accept a few things in your life and that, and.

• 3:00:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's like get rid of the toxic friend, pay off your credit card debt and like, I don't know. Eat a vegetable and like, you're probably doing pretty well.

• 3:00:48Speaker 01

  That's gonna, yeah, that's gonna get you a long, long ways.

• 3:00:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And then finally, I'll be happy when X happens.

• 3:00:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:00:56Mark Manson?

  The classic. This is the, the trick that our brain plays on us over and over and over and over again. And again, it is, it is an evolutionary feature, not a bug. It's like the carrot in front of the donkey. It's like, it's what keeps us moving consistently through life. And I think it's the sort of thing that like, you're never going to completely get rid of it. You're always going to want things and you're always going to imagine that those things are going to make you happier. And they, most of them probably will for. Some period of time, but just be aware of what your your brain is doing. Like be aware of the game that your brain plays and that it's going to like the the X in this situation. I'll be happy when X happens or I'll be happy when I get X.

• 3:01:38Mark Manson?

  Generally speaking, your brain is going to vastly overrate circumstantial things and material things. Like you are going to, your imagination is is like biased towards relatively superficial changes and biased against actually meaningful changes. Like, nobody sits around being like, well, I'll be happy when I finally volunteer at that soup kitchen.

• 3:01:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:02:00Mark Manson?

  It's like, nobody thinks that, right? It's always like, I'll be happy when I buy a boat, you know? And it's ironically, it's the person who goes and volunteers at the soup kitchen, who's going to be way happier than the person who bought bought a boat. So.

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're terrible at predicting what's going to make us happy. That's, yeah, that's borne out by tons of research.

• 3:02:19Mark Manson?

  That is all over the research. And and we're also terrible at remembering what made us happy, which is also super interesting.

• 3:02:29Mark Manson?

  Let's get into 80 20 because it's, it is pretty straightforward. The first thing, I mean, this is the theme of the entire show. Stop chasing happiness. It's a byproduct of chasing the right things. It's not the goal itself. I think it's at this point, if nothing is convinced you, I don't know what else to say that will. But it's, you know, ultimately, you want to focus on all these other things that that enrich your life and bring challenge and engagement and meaning and purpose. And then let the happiness happen as a side effect.

• 3:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw a thing from Alanda, Alanda Bhutan, is that his name? Alanda Bhutan of the School of Life. And was talking about happiness and he said, instead of chasing happiness, like chase an interesting life. I thought that was a really weird way to look at it too. And that's kind of what we've been talking about all throughout this episode is, you know, the meaning and the purpose and everything like that is more, you're looking at having an interesting life. That's travel, that's relationship and and relationships are hard and there's difficult things about them. And, you know, developing a really good career, that's hard. And there's interesting parts of of that as well. So instead of chasing happiness, like, yeah, try to have an interesting life. And then that's one way to look at it.

• 3:03:40Mark Manson?

  What's interesting is that this whole concept of. Pursuing happiness is like a very modern invention.

• 3:03:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:03:47Mark Manson?

  If you look throughout like all the ancient traditions, like they never talked about a happy life. They talked about a good life.

• 3:03:53Speaker 01

  Right, right. How do you live a good life? How do you live a moral life?

• 3:03:56Mark Manson?

  Right, like in a good life. And it was just kind of understood that if you live a good life, then the happiness will happen. But it's like you don't, don't, don't chase the happiness. Yeah, it really is kind of, I think with the, the rise of utilitarianism in the 19th century, that you start to get this obsession of like, how do we optimize for happiness? And ironically, the biggest proponent of it was, had a mental breakdown and became suicidal. So like that kind of tells you everything you need to know right there.

• 3:04:25Speaker 01

  Pretty big data point. Yes, to take into consideration. Absolutely.

• 3:04:29Mark Manson?

  Next one, start with the easy wins. Get some sleep.

• 3:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:33Mark Manson?

  Get some exercise, go for a walk, you know, get out in nature, call up an old friend.

• 3:04:37Speaker 01

  Eat some broccoli.

• 3:04:38Mark Manson?

  Eat some broccoli. It really is, I'm not going to belabor this too much, but it's like probably for 90% of the people struggling with unhappiness right now, like that is probably enough. That's probably enough. Like if you just do a handful of things like that, get the, get very basic fundamental stuff figured out, you're, that's probably going to be enough to get you there.

• 3:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Processed foods, man, I've noticed this since I've really cleaned up my diet the last couple of years. Processed foods.

• 3:05:07Mark Manson?

  Oh, you feel it.

• 3:05:08Speaker 01

  They'll, they'll send me into like an emotional just tailspin.

• 3:05:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:11Speaker 01

  For sure. So I, diet I think is a big one too. All the others, obviously, exercise and all of that. But yeah, I think, I think diet is a little bit underrated in this area as well.

• 3:05:20Mark Manson?

  You know what's interesting? When I quit drinking, a huge chunk of my anxiety went away.

• 3:05:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:05:26Mark Manson?

  Which was totally unexpected. I mean, obviously I, I expected the hangovers to go away and I expected, but like, I, one of the biggest benefits I got from not drinking was my, my moods became way more stable. And I became, I became less anxious in general.

• 3:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know that too.

• 3:05:43Mark Manson?

  Completely shocked me.

• 3:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:45Mark Manson?

  Was not expecting that.

• 3:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:46Mark Manson?

  Um, next one, invest in relationships above all else. They are the single strongest predictor of your happiness. Um, so. So it's if you really do need to focus on one thing, this is it. Focus on the relationships, not just quantity, but quality.

• 3:06:03Mark Manson?

  If you have a bunch of people around you, try to build intimacy with them. If you don't have a lot of people around you, try to get more people around you.

• 3:06:10Speaker 01

  Right. And I'd say start with the friendships too. Like everybody, like we talked about, people tend to dive into the romantic side and get on the apps and all that. Start with friendships and go slow and

• 3:06:19Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:06:19Speaker 01

  build it out. And again, quality over quantity.

• 3:06:22Mark Manson?

  I mean, here's the thing, without getting too much into the relationship stuff, like if you're unhappy in going into a romantic relationship, expecting it to make you happy.

• 3:06:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:06:32Mark Manson?

  You're just gonna fuck up that relationship.

• 3:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, way too much pressure on one person.

• 3:06:36Mark Manson?

  You're like, you are, it's over before it even starts. Whereas if you focus on the friendships and build a happy life by yourself, then you're going to approach the romantic relationship from a much healthier place. And that romantic relationship is going to have a much greater chance of success. So absolutely start with the friendships.

• 3:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:55Mark Manson?

  Find meaning through contribution. We talked about the acts of kindness, the importance of spending money on others, showing up for other people. This also contributes to meaning over effect. I don't know what else to say about this. I mean, it seems pretty cut and dry.

• 3:07:10Speaker 01

  That one's pretty straightforward and also just underrated. Yeah. People just don't, I just don't, you can't understate how effective that is.

• 3:07:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Buy experiences, not things. They appreciate and value rather than depreciate. Material things depreciate over time, memories appreciate over time. And then if you do want some quick fix exercise, practice gratitude daily. There are plenty of gratitude journals. You can, you can do it anywhere. It takes a few minutes. It's not rocket, rocket science. You just really take a few moments to think about things in your life that you're. Really appreciative of and that you don't want to take for granted.

• 3:07:50Speaker 01

  Right. It comes easier for some people than others, especially if you're not like a naturally grateful person. I would say this is definitely a practice that will help you quite a bit.

• 3:07:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:59Speaker 01

  I find myself to be pretty naturally grateful and I don't have to focus on it too much.

• 3:08:03Mark Manson?

  I've definitely met people who like regimented gratitude exercises over a long period of time have like completely changed their life.

• 3:08:11Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 3:08:12Mark Manson?

  Completely. Yeah. And then finally, when it comes to your circumstances or your environment, it's more about removing the unhappiness than it is about building the happiness. So don't try to be rich, don't try to be popular, just try not to be broke or lonely. There it is. There it is.

• 3:08:29Speaker 01

  That's the 80/20.

• 3:08:30Mark Manson?

  There it is. You know, it's interesting that there was a moment, I think it was really positive psychology kind of kicked off in the eighties. I think a lot of the good research started coming out in the nineties and 2000s. And then it really had its moment, I think in the early 2010s. Like there was kind of this five year period where there was just like happiness books everywhere, everywhere. It was like all anybody was buying. And all this research was pretty new at the time. So it was kind of exciting. I'm kind of glad we're past that. Like this definitely seems like a topic that was huge and resonated a lot 10 or 15 years ago. I've definitely noticed, you know, just through promoting through my channels online and everything, like people don't really think about this stuff anymore. And I think the younger generations are kind of understand that like

• 3:09:15Mark Manson?

  it's overrated. You shouldn't be worrying about this a whole lot. Like get the other stuff right. And like the happiness will follow. Like chasing happiness just makes you more miserable. So yeah, I don't really know what else to say. Like this definitely feels like the most cut and dry topic that we've done so far.

• 3:09:31Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Well, okay. So is happiness overrated, Mark?

• 3:09:36Mark Manson?

  As a pursuit, absolutely.

• 3:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:09:38Mark Manson?

  As an experience, obviously not. Like obviously like you want to have a happy life.

• 3:09:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:09:45Mark Manson?

  And you want to feel good about yourself and about. The world and about the things you've done. So like, that is important, but again, I think the ironically, the best way to achieve it is to not think about it.

• 3:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we didn't bring this up, but you've told this story before, or you've written about this in several places. You've told this story about how in your travels, when you traveled for, what was it, seven years?

• 3:10:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:11Speaker 01

  And you've been to very poor places, very rich places, and what you find is that people are happy everywhere.

• 3:10:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:17Speaker 01

  Right?

• 3:10:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:18Speaker 01

  And even in, you know, the slums of the worst parts of the earth that you've been to, people can still find happiness.

• 3:10:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:10:24Speaker 01

  And what's interesting, the point you've made, is that we almost always take the exact wrong lesson away from.

• 3:10:30Mark Manson?

  Yes, absolutely. So when I started traveling in my early twenties, I kind of, I think I had a similar idealistic worldview as most young people do, you know, and so sure enough, I went to really poor parts of Africa and rural India and, you know, slums in South America. And yeah, you see plenty of happy people. They're smiling, they're laughing, they're with their families. And I think the typical takeaway that people have when they see that, or when young people see that, is they're like, oh my God, they're so happy in the slum in India. Like, all the stuff I grew up with, like, all the stuff that my parents worry about and that I worried about in college,

• 3:11:13Mark Manson?

  like, it's so meaningless, like, happiness is here the whole time. And I think that's completely the wrong lesson, because if happiness is present in a slum where the life expectancy is like 30 and children are dying of typhoid and like, like rape and assault are rampant in the, in the environment, then we probably shouldn't take happiness very seriously.

• 3:11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:35Mark Manson?

  We should probably take other things more seriously. Like, to me, that is just evidence of like, okay, if you're optimizing for happiness, you're optimizing for the wrong thing. Because to Daniel Gilbert's point, you know, the psychological immune system, the hedonic adaptation.

• 3:11:51Mark Manson?

  It's like whatever environment you're in, your psychology will naturally adjust itself to justify it and to decide that it's okay. This is why like Stockholm syndrome happens, right? It's like, it's like people who are kidnapped and eventually come to start liking their captor. And it's, it's a psychological adaptation to their environment of like, it becomes the new normal. This is just what life is. And sure enough, the, the horror and the trauma of being kidnapped, you soon come back to a seven out of 10 on a happiness scale. So it's like if people who are kidnapped and held captive and kids growing up in slums with like missing limbs and, uh, you know, people who are living in war zones are scoring a seven out of 10 on happiness.

• 3:12:36Mark Manson?

  Like this is not the point. This is not the point. Like there's gotta be something better that we can optimize for. Because the irony, and I think this is where kind of like the, the idealistic young people like, oh my God, everybody's happy. This is where that view falls apart is when you go to a slum in India or, or in South America or rural Africa, and you offer any of those people a chance to trade places. Every single one of them would take it. Every, I don't care how happy they are. If you're like, hey, you want to come back to the US with me? Every single one of them will take it.

• 3:13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and it's not just, it's not just poverty and war and famine that you can find happiness in. You can actually be super successful and a terrible person.

• 3:13:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:13:23Speaker 01

  And be happy too. So it's the other, other end of the spectrum as well.

• 3:13:26Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:13:27Speaker 01

  It spans the whole spectrum. Happiness can be found anywhere.

• 3:13:29Mark Manson?

  That's true.

• 3:13:30Speaker 01

  It's cheap.

• 3:13:31Mark Manson?

  That is true.

• 3:13:31Speaker 01

  It's just not the point. It can't be the point.

• 3:13:33Mark Manson?

  It's not the point. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's like you can, you can probably visit a prison and find plenty of people who are very happy when they committed their crimes. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it really isn't the point. And, um, I'm glad this is the only episode we'll ever do on it.

• 3:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:52Mark Manson?

  Cause I just, I don't see, I don't see a whole lot of point in dwelling on it.

• 3:13:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:13:57Mark Manson?

  Last question, as we finish up every time, has prepping for this episode changed or taught you anything? Or anything you're gonna?

• 3:14:06Speaker 01

  Not really. This one, no, like I'm just saying, I mean, that's, I kinda came to this very skeptical anyway.

• 3:14:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:12Speaker 01

  And I always have been, I'm like, is this happiness? Like, come on. I, I think I've just kinda confirmed that, that yeah, happiness, it shouldn't be the point.

• 3:14:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:20Speaker 01

  It's not a noble pursuit by any means. I think we also, we defined it in so many different ways too, you know, like in the United States Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence, we have the pursuit of happiness, it's within the first line, right?

• 3:14:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:35Speaker 01

  Um, I think we probably misunderstood what they meant by happiness in that regard. It's more like the eudaimonic happiness.

• 3:14:43Speaker 01

  So, you know, emphasizing those things, I think that's valuable. Know that there's different types of happiness, or we mean different things when we say happiness. So that, that was a little more clarifying for me, but yeah, I still, it's just not a noble pursuit by any means, I don't think.

• 3:14:56Mark Manson?

  You know what's interesting is I've actually heard, I don't know if this is true, but I have heard this, that, that back in the 18th century, the word happy and happiness was like much, it was much more seldom used back then. And that Jefferson was very particular about choosing the word happiness. Because back then, the connotation was that it was like a eudaimonic.

• 3:15:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:15:18Mark Manson?

  Like meaning life satisfaction thing.

• 3:15:20Speaker 01

  I've seen this before too, yeah.

• 3:15:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And that it's really only in the last hundred years that happiness has come to mean like fun, excitement, pleasure, feeling good, you know, good vibes.

• 3:15:30Speaker 01

  Even in the psychological research, when they started studying happiness, when they were looking for a definition, it actually came out of a study in like the 50s where somebody was trying to figure out like a way to measure wellbeing for real estate purposes, like what areas, what, what, what influences happiness of a given geographic region or something like that. They found, uh, you know, Aristotle's definition of eudaimonia. And then they're like, well, how do we operationalize this? We're just gonna say good emotions minus bad emotions, that's how happy you are. And so we just completely screwed that up. Now that became what happiness was. So it's just the, yeah.

• 3:16:04Mark Manson?

  Yep. Classic definition error. I guess for myself, I don't know, like, first of all, you and I have. Done the rounds on this topic for well over a decade. Like, this was by far the easiest episode to prep for because you and I have just like are so familiar with this research. I wrote a book 10 years ago, shitting all over happiness. So it's like, I kind of came into this being like, yeah, I already know how this is gonna go and I know what we're gonna talk about. So I definitely, no takeaways for me, no ahas, no epiphanies or anything. I mean, again, just kind of refreshing a little bit of what I already knew.

• 3:16:46Mark Manson?

  And I mean, it's nice to have some of these reminders of like, oh yeah, it's the little things. Oh yeah, relationships matter, you know? The simplicity of it is that's a good reminder. It is, it really is. Because we do have a tendency to overcomplicate our own lives and our own circumstances. So I guess that's it. Also, the PDF guide, if you want to review any of this stuff, or if you want a full summary of it, if you want to look at the citations and references, that is at solve podcast.com/happiness. All the other guides are there as well. Yeah, if you've loved the show, please follow us and leave a review. It's the best thing you can do to help get the word out there. And we will be back next month with a brand new topic, and I think it's gonna be a little

• 3:17:31Mark Manson?

  bit spicier in this one. See you next time.