How to Build the Life You Want: Timeless Wisdom for More Happiness & Purpose

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.
And I also want to thank you for making the decision to listen to something that could help you improve your life. I think that's pretty cool.
Now, if you're new, I want to welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. And by the way, thank you for making this one of the most popular podcasts in the entire world.
My name is Mel Robbins.

I'm a New York Times bestselling author

and one of the most popular podcasts in the entire world. My name is Mel Robbins.
I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on confidence and motivation. And I'm on a mission to inspire and empower you with the tools that you need to create a better life.
And you want to know a very important component of creating a better life, that's happiness. And I know that this is a topic that you love hearing about.
In fact, every single time that you and I talk about it together, you want more. And today, I'm going to introduce you to somebody I deeply admire.
He is one of the world's leading experts on happiness. His name, Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar. And that name, I bet you're like, wait a minute.
I think I've heard that name before. Well, let me tell you where you may have heard it, because we did an episode just a little bit ago on the science of goals.
And at the very end of that episode, I shared some powerful research from none other than Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar.
Remember that? It was the research about the Olympic medalists and how they felt happier as they were training for the Olympics, when they were pursuing that dream, way happier when they were pursuing it than when they actually won the medal. And that part of the episode about goals and how goals are critical to happiness because your goals represent the pursuit of something that matters to you.
You love that. So you know what I did? I begged Tal to join us today and he is here.
He is here to unpack his research and share very specific takeaways with you. The last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options, which is why with USAA Auto Insurance, you'll get great service that is easy and reliable all at the touch of a button.
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card based on the February 2024 Nelson report. Now, Tao is very well known for being Harvard University's most popular teacher like ever.
He taught two of the most popular courses in Harvard's history, positive psychology and the psychology of leadership. And today you are getting key takeaways.
He's also the New York Times bestselling author of eight. Yup, you heard it, eight incredible books all about happiness, many of which are required reading in university courses around the world.
And you know what I love about Tal is that he has this amazing ability to bridge the academic aspect of happiness with the insights that you need to apply it to your life. And today, Tal is sharing the five elements of happiness.
So let's jump in. Tal, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
Thank you, Mel. So good to be here.
I am so excited to talk to you. I want to just start with the beginning of your story, because here you are, one of the world's leading experts on the topic of happiness, something we all want to know more about.
But when you got to college, you thought you were going to study computer science. So what happened in your life that created this big pivot? So I became interested in happiness because of my own unhappiness.
Oh. And, you know, it started off even before college, I was a squash player.
My dream as a young boy was to be a professional athlete. Initially, it was supposed to be basketball, but I stopped growing at about the age of five, six.
So that didn't happen. But squash was it for me.
And I wasn't happy as a child, but I would always tell myself when I become a professional, when I win the national championship, then I'll be happy. And for years, I was quite miserable.
And then I won the national championship and I was ecstatic for about four hours. And then again, going back to where I was before the same stress and unhappiness.
And I thought something was wrong here with my model. But then I said, oh, no, it's when I become a world champion, then I'll be happy.
And I continued towards that. And I played professionally for a few years.
And then I got injured and I went to college and I said, OK, so I didn't make it in athletics, but I'll do it academically. And I went to Harvard and I was a top student there and I was miserable.
And my sophomore year, very cold Boston morning, I went to my academic advisor and I told her that I'm switching majors. I was a computer science major.
And she said, what to? And I said, well, I'm leaving computer science and moving over to philosophy and psychology. And she said, why? And I said, because I have two questions.
First, why aren't I happy? Second, how can I become happier? And it's with these two questions that I then went on to get my undergraduate degree, then went to graduate school in education and organizational behavior, all the time asking, how can I help myself, individuals, couples, organizations, and ultimately nations increase their levels of happiness? And that was 30 years ago. Wow.
That's quite it. You sound like a really intense dude.
No, seriously. Like you sound like somebody that was incredibly tightly wound, but that's not my experience of you right now.
And so I only say that because to me, if somebody that is that driven and that competitive and that tightly wound can figure out, first of all, why you're not happy and also then figure out how to become a happier person and then translate that to everybody else, that's cool because that means the rest of us can probably do it too. There's no question on my mind, again, after 30 years of work, internal work, external work, research, that there is a lot that we can do to become happier.
So if you go back to that sophomore you at Harvard and you're sitting there with your academic advisor and your advisor says, wait, what? You're going to switch? Why would you switch? And you say, because I want to figure out why I'm so unhappy. What did you learn about why you were so unhappy that we might be able to apply to our own lives? Yes.
So the first thing that I learned or that was obvious to me at that time was that success doesn't lead to happiness. You know, we think there are certain boxes that we need to check.
So for me, it was winning that championship or later getting into Harvard or becoming a top student or getting a good job and making a lot of money. All of us know that the best that these achievements can do is lead to temporary happiness, a spike.
Right. But that height doesn't last.
So that's the first thing that I learned. Now, the thing that amazed me is that while we all know that achievement, attainment, reaching a goal will not lead to lasting happiness, we continue to live as if it will.
Not only that, that's also how we raise our children. That's also what we teach our students.
We tell them, you may not be happy

now. You may be miserable.
You may be stressed. But when you get to your top school, when you get your desired job, when you make that amount of money, then you'll be happy.
Those successes will lead to that temporary high and nothing more. Why wouldn't it make you happy to achieve something that you've worked really hard to get? Because our system is built for the pursuit, not for the outcome.
So once there is the outcome, there is sort of like, okay, check, been there, done that. Now I need something else.
And that's part of our nature. And you know, you may say, you know, it's terrible.
It's awful. Why is it that it just is? You know, why is the law of gravity the law of gravity? The question is, how do we accept nature? Just like we accept the law of gravity.
How do we accept our human nature and then build our life based on that? So if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is that one of the biggest things that somebody could take away from this conversation with you is that you are not hardwired to feel happy simply because you've achieved something. That happiness is tied to pursuing it, not the achieving of it? Yes.
And if you do live by the belief that achievement will lead to happiness, that will cause you a great deal of unhappiness. Oh, that's a big one.
In fact, that is one of the main causes for the levels of unhappiness that we see in our world, because people are focusing on the wrong thing. You know, they're climbing up the wrong mountain.
So can you break that down for us? Because I want to just stay on this point and highlight it. Because if thinking about happiness wrong creates unhappiness, explain to us how you want us to think about happiness.
So happiness is important. It matters.
Just like we are hardwired not to celebrate successes forever, we're also hardwired to pursue happiness. So it's not that I'm saying, okay, forget about happiness.
Happiness matters. However, there's also research, and this is research done quite recently by Professor Moss, M-A-U-S, showing that if I wake up in the morning and say to myself, I want to be happy, or happiness is important for me, or it's a value for me, I will actually become less happy.
What? Wait a minute. Really? That was exactly my reaction.
That's a problem. You know, and, you know, I read about this, you know, five years ago and I said, but, you know, that's what I'm dedicating my life to.
Of course, happiness is important for me. And yet what the research clearly shows is that this will make you less happy.
So does this mean we should say to ourselves, you know, I don't want to be happy. Wink, wink, I actually do.
You know, self-deception is certainly not the path to happiness. So what do we do about it? Let me use an analogy that was very helpful for me in thinking about happiness.
Imagine you go outside. It's a beautiful, sunny day.
And you want to enjoy the sun. So you look up at the sun directly.
What happens? You hurt yourself. It burns.
It hurts. You tear up.
So looking at the sun directly hurts. However, what if you take a prism and you break the sunlight and then you look at what has just been broken? In other words, the colors of the rainbow.
then you can look at the sunlight and enjoy it. But you're looking at it indirectly.
It's the same with happiness. Pursuing it directly and saying, I want to be happy.
Happiness is important for me. That will make us unhappy.
But if I break down happiness into its metaphorical colors of the rainbow and then pursue it indirectly. That is when I can actually become happier.
Okay, so I'm going to see if I can understand this, because you're saying, I totally get the part that if you focus at something maniacally, right, you're going to get the sunspots, you cannot hold that intent gaze at something, even if you want to. But when the sunlight hits a prism and it casts a rainbow, you're saying that the rainbow is the way that you indirectly enjoy the sun.
Yeah. I have so many questions.
What is the definition of happiness? Yes. So there are many definitions to happiness.
In fact, as many definitions as there are people around the world. The one that I work with that I find most helpful actually draws on the work of Helen Keller, who says that for her, happiness is wholeness, W-H, wholeness.
So I define happiness as whole person well-being. There are five elements to happiness.
There may be more but five main elements to happiness, which we call the spire. The spire.
S-P-I-R-E. S stands for spiritual well-being.
Spiritual well-being is about, of course, we can attain it through religion, but we can also find it through doing something that is meaningful to us, purposeful. By being mindful, by being present, we experience the spiritual.
That's one of the colors of the rainbow. So if I wake up in the morning and say, I want to be happy, I'll be less happy.
But if I wake up in the morning and say, I want to find something which is more meaningful to do. Or I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes now.

That is an indirect way of pursuing happiness.

That's one of the colors.

So that's the S of spire.

The P of spire.

That's physical well-being.

Physical well-being is about nutrition.

It's about rest and recovery, sleep.

It's about touch. It's about what we eat that of course matters.
So if I start to exercise regularly, that's an indirect way of pursuing happiness. If I eat more healthfully, the same.
Then we have the I of SPIRE. I stands for intellectual well-being.
That's about curiosity, about asking questions, about constantly learning, about deep diving, whether it's into a text or a work of art or nature. And these are, again, all indirect ways of pursuing happiness.
The fourth color of the rainbow, the R of Spire, relational well-being. Number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us.
So if I spend more time with my loved ones, indirectly pursuing happiness. And finally, the E of SPIRE, emotional well-being.
Emotional well-being is, first of all, about giving ourselves the permission to be human. In other words, allowing the embracing painful emotions that are natural parts of any life, even a happy life, sadness, anger, frustration, allowing these emotions to freely flow through us paradoxically actually leads to more happiness.
So these five elements of happiness, spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional well-being are the metaphorical colors of the rainbow. And when we pursue them, we're actually pursuing happiness indirectly and becoming happier.
As you were describing all five elements, you did keep saying the word well-being. And it makes a lot of sense, right? That all of these components go into a whole look at how to elevate or experience happiness in your life.
What do I got to achieve next to feel that thing that I want to feel? How would you begin to explain to somebody like that what this actually means and how you pursue it? If you don't even know what happiness kind of feels like, you got the wrong definition. Right.
You know, so the first thing that I would do is I would take a step back and explore models of happiness. Because if you think about it, in our culture today, we have two major models of happiness.
The one model of happiness, which is mostly associated with the West, is you become happier by achieving your goals. Right.
That's the most important thing. You get to the peak of the mountain, then you'll be happy.
That's a model that I tried and that many people tried. It doesn't really work.
The other model that people veer towards is, okay, so the future doesn't get us happiness. Let's focus on the now.
Let's just be in the present moment. Yes.
And that's an alternative model, which is mostly associated with the East, you know, meditation, mindfulness, being the here and now. There are problems with both models.
We know what the problem is with the future oriented model, but there's also a problem with the present oriented model, and that is human nature again, because we do want goals. We are

ambitious. We do want to achieve things.
And the question is, can these two models be reconciled? In other words, can you draw the best of both worlds? And the answer is yes. Goals matter.
They're important, whether it is to, you know, to win a championship in sports or whether it is to get into a college or whether it is to make X amount of money. Goals matter.
We care about them. Why do they matter in the context of happiness? Well, they matter because, again, it's part of our nature.
We want to improve. We want to get better.
And that's a beautiful and wonderful part of our nature, which we ought to celebrate. Not attack.
So that's a good thing. However, what we also know is that the achievement of these goals will not make us happy.
What will make us happy? Not the achievement of these goals, but the existence of these goals. Whether or not I achieve them is actually less important.
To have them matters. Think about it.
You go on a road trip and you've no idea where you're going. So, you know, you turn left or right.
You look over, am I falling over a cliff? What should I do today? Is this the right thing? You know, it's, it's, you're meandering. You're not certain.
You're not happy then. But if you know, I'm going to the top of that mountain over there, then you can go there with full energy, with motivation, especially if that mountaintop is meaningful to you, which is an important component of a goal, of course.
So you have a meaningful goal, you're going towards it. And what does having that goal do? What it does for you is it liberates you to enjoy the here and now.

That makes a lot of sense.

The two of them are reconciled.

because it gives your day-to-day life a sense of purpose and direction.

And I can see how if you wake up in the morning and you're either just going through the motions

or you wake up in the morning and you're not quite sure

what to do with your time because you're not quite sure what you want, how that lack of purpose then starts to probably make you think too much and probably make you start to dwell on questions like, am I happy?

Am I not happy?

What should I be doing?

I don't know.

Am I lost?

Am I stuck?

I mean, I've certainly been in those areas of my life.

And so you're absolutely right about that.

I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

And then what that means is that that future goal

is not an end, but rather a means.

It's a means towards liberating you to enjoy the here and now. Tal, thank you for explaining that.
And this is a great moment to remind you as you're listening that the episode that we did on the science of setting deeply personal goals, we're going to link to that in the resources. It also is the episode that features some of Tal's research on

goal setting that's there for you. I want to hear a quick word from our sponsors who are bringing us this amazing, amazing information about happiness at zero cost.
Do not go anywhere. You're going to be happy you stuck around because when we come back, I'm going to ask Tal to walk you and I step-by-step through all five elements of happiness

and give us a specific example of a simple action you could take in each area that will

make you feel happier today.

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It's your friend Mel and boy, are you in for a treat today? I'm so excited. We are here with Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar. He is the most popular professor in history at Harvard, teaches positive psychology, the psychology of leadership, and we are going through 30 years of his work on happiness and more importantly, how you can be a happier you.
Now, we've already covered two important things. Let me just recap to make sure that you got this, that happiness is about wholeness and there are five elements to you being happier, spiritual, physical, your intellectual wellness, relationships, and emotional.
And one of the things that I wanted to ask you, Tal, is you're talking a lot about the things we can do to improve those areas of our life, which impacts our happiness. For somebody listening that maybe has not grown up around happy people, doesn't really know if happiness as possible or even kind of what it feels like.
Where do you even begin if you don't know what happiness looks like or feels like or how to achieve it? Yeah. I always tell my students that the best self-help books are biographies.
Why? Because biographies give us, you know, the deep understanding of what a happy life, miserable or a successful life looks like. And one of my favorite biographies is Mahatma Gandhi's.
The subtitle of his autobiography is My Experiments with Truth. It's not my finding truth.
It's not the ultimate truth. It's my experiments with truth.
And that for me is a guiding mantra. And I think it ought to be for many of us because it is very much about experimentation.
It's about trying things out. It's about trying different ways of being, living and doing.

And through experimentation, if we're not afraid of experimenting, of trying, if we're

not afraid of falling down, then we'll get better.

Then we'll grow.

Then we will actually become happier with an emphasis on happier.

What do I mean by that?

See, many people ask me, OK, Tal, you've been in this business for 30 years.

30 years ago, you embarked on this business for 30 years. 30 years ago,

you embarked on this journey. Are you finally happy today? Are you? Good question.
My answer is, I don't know. What? That is not acceptable, Tal.
I'm sorry. You're supposed to be here and tell us to be happy.
How to be happy. You don't know if you're happy? I'm here to tell you how to be happier.
Okay. Because I don't know what being happy is or means in the sense that I don't think there is a binary zero one.
Okay. So yesterday I was unhappy.
Today I am. I'm happy.
Rather than a binary zero one, it is a continuum. So I can certainly tell you that I'm a lot happier today than I was 30 years ago.
But I hope that five years from now, I'll be happier than I am today. How will you know? How do I know that I will be happier? Or how do I know how to measure that I'm both? I know this is kind of a basic question, but happiness eludes so many people.
There are so many people that write in about feeling stuck or a lack of purpose or devastated with grief that I know when you look in the rear view mirror, you can say, oh, I'm happier than I was 10 years ago. I feel in your definition that you've presented to us that you really like a sense of wholeness, right? An access to it.
But for somebody that really feels like whether it's because of depression or they're just been miserable their whole life or their life has been really hard. Yeah.
So I would uh you know small changes okay the kaizen change that the japanese talk about which is how can i become one percent happier not how can i become happy not how can i you know find you know the uh the um the answer just how can i become one percent happier and then if you look at ask

this question and look at the five spire elements and you can look at all five and you could look at one of them how can i introduce a small change experiment with a small truth and then see how that works and then if it does great to do more of it if it doesn't try something else but the key key is to continue moving, because as we know, one of the major characteristics of depression is helplessness, which means doing nothing. So counter that with doing something.
And again, that something doesn't have to be major. You know, one of the things that I'm working on a lot now is how small changes can

make a big difference when consistently applied. And I know that you are, you know, doing work in that area as well.
When you talk about, you know, take that one minute to breathe. And those small changes make a big difference.
And, you know, I've coined a term. So I don't know if you're familiar with the term MVP, not from sports, from business.

MVP. It's not ready.
It's not ideal, but it's good enough. So based on this MVP, minimum viable product idea, I coined the term MVI, minimum viable intervention.
Minimum viable intervention. These are the small changes that you can introduce that actually make a difference over time.
And this is what I would urge, the MVIs is what I would urge that someone who's feeling stuck or down or someone who just lacks motivation introduces in their lives. Okay.
What are these MVIs? For example, you know what, actually, let me go over the spire elements and provide an MVI for each one. I love you.
Yes. All right.
So spiritual well-being. Spiritual well-being is about purpose and presence okay let's say we for one minute breathe deeply focusing on the air going in and out that's meditation you know it's not 30 minutes but it's one minute and we know and there's a lot of research showing that that one minute can make a huge difference.
Or, you know, one minute of the four, seven, eight breath that Andrew Weil talks about. You know, there are so many things we can do in one minute while being present.
And that will enhance. And we know that.
And there's a lot of data on this will enhance your spiritual well-being as well as your physical well-being. But let's move to the P of Spire for a second.
So going to the gym, working out for an hour, great. You know, doing high intensity interval training for 15 minutes, amazing.
Sounds horrible, honestly. But you will become happier as a result subsequently.
But what about taking 30 seconds or 45 seconds for a burst of energy, running on the spot or doing your push-ups or sit-ups? 45 seconds, that's all. Now, we know, again, there is research on it showing that if you do it three times during the day, you will actually have the equivalent of a workout.
So it doesn't have to be all at once, meaning you can do it three times during the day, you will actually have the equivalent of a workout.

So it doesn't have to be all at once, meaning you can do it, you know, now for 45 seconds,

and then in two hours, another 45 seconds climbing up and down the stairs, which you

can do in the office.

You know, you don't sweat, you don't need to, you know, shower after.

And then five hours later, you do it again when you get home.

45 seconds, minimum viable intervention.

It's cumulative.

And he actually has the effect of psychological well being impact. And it also impacts your, of course, physical well being.
Now, as you're talking, I just want to remind the person listening that you're considering this inside the context of happiness being wholeness and well-being, meaning you are intentional about caring for your well-being. That these are all components of wholeness and these five categories are the ones that matter the most.
So what's another M-V-I for I? Intellectual well-being. So intellectual well-being, which is after spiritual and physical, it's the third element.
This is about, for example, learning something new, you know, and going online and looking at these, you know, short excerpts. Okay, I'm going to learn a new technique or I'm going to learn a new idea or I'm going to come up with a new question to ask my partner or my friend.
So this is intellectual well-being and it's incredible how these small changes, just asking a question or just learning something new, then trigger your curiosity muscles. You know, by the way, Mel, I forgot to say this, but curiosity, you know, the saying curiosity kills the cat.
Yeah. It turns out that it's the opposite for human beings, meaning people who are curious, who ask many questions or are lifelong learners actually live longer.
Wow. So look at all the benefits of being curious.
So that's intellectual well-being. Then we have relational well-being, the R of Spire, you know, a hug, you know, and a nice text you send your, you know, your partner, relational well-being, you know, really listen, really listen to someone, be present for them, even if it's for two minutes.
The impact of it on the relationship, on them, on you is remarkable. And yes, of course, if you have two, three hours to spend together, even better, ideal, good enough to use those MVIs.

I'm hearing from so many people that listen to this podcast that are really struggling with loneliness. And if one aspect of the SPIRE model, one of the five elements of happiness is your relationships and well-being in that area.
for somebody that's just feeling isolated and lonely or that sense like, where are all my friends and feels disconnection? What does the research say in terms of happiness? Number one predictor of happiness is quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. Now, we also know that the number one predictor of unhappiness in our world today is loneliness.
And this was exacerbated as a result of COVID, of course. Because what loneliness does is it very often gets us into this downward spiral, where I feel lonely and I feel incompetent in the social realm.
And what we need to do in order to get out of it is get out of it. There has to be focused action and intention.
In other words, single tasking rather than multitasking. Because one of the main causes of loneliness is not the fact that we're not around people.
It's the fact that when we're around people, we're also doing 20 other things. You know, Daniel Goleman calls our age the age of distraction.

Yes.

So, you know, if I'm with friends, but at the same time I'm texting and doing something else and they're doing, we're not really together.

Right.

You know, it's the example that I like.

So imagine you're listening to your favorite piece of music.

And can I share with you what mine is? Absolutely. All right.
Don't tell anyone. Drake? No.
Whitney Houston, and I Will Always Love You. Oh, my God.
My favorite song of all time. So imagine you're listening to that or whatever your favorite is.
Okay. And then you listen to your second most favorite.
And, you know, my second most favorite is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. And then for the perfect experience, you take these two pieces of music and you play them together.
At the same time? At the same time. It's cacophony, it's noise.
And that's modern life for you. Because what we're doing is we're trying to pack because of you know FOMO because you know you know we're eager to experience things we pack in many things so while we're with friends we're also you know doing some work perhaps and while we're with the you know kids we're also watching a movie and you can't do it all well you can do a lot but you certainly We can't enjoy it all.
And much of our sense of loneliness comes because when we're with other people, we're not really with other people. And what we need to do is put time aside.
And it doesn't have to be seven hours. You know, even if it's an hour twice a week or that text that you commit yourself to mindfully.
These small, committed, focused activities can get us out of the sense of loneliness or unhappiness. Beautiful, beautiful.
What a beautiful metaphor. It makes so much sense.
And finally, emotional well-being. That's about, you know, the gratitude journal.
Take a minute to write three things that you're grateful for. You know, close your eyes and savor, savor what you have right now.
Or write a journal about what's hurting you for two minutes. There's research showing that even two-minute journaling, whether it's about difficult experiences or about ecstatic experiences, two minutes actually make us happier and healthier.
Better to write it in a journal or to talk about it than to just ruminate over it. Why is it better to write in a journal and talk about it? So here I'm drawing on research by Sonia Lubomirsky, who's a professor at UC Riverside.
And what she shows is that when we are dealing with painful emotions or difficult experiences, we can either talk about it, write about it, or think about it. People who think about it, it actually gets worse.
We ruminate, we go down the rabbit hole, downward spiral, and we can stay there for hours or sometimes weeks. Or decades in some people, right? Exactly.
Whereas if we write about it or talk about it, there's a much higher likelihood that we'll emerge stronger. Why? Because what we're doing when we're writing

and talking about it, we're actually making sense of it. You know, so often, and this is work on journaling, Jamie Pennybaker and others, showing that when we write about something, very often we reach an aha moment, or, oh, now I see what's happening, or now I see what I need to do.
And then it becomes more manageable.

It becomes more coherent, more clear. And then we're ready to move on and we know what we ought to do.
So writing and talking about it rather than ruminating about it is very important. And then after we have written about, talked about it, just do it.

What is it?

It could be an MVI, a minimum viable intervention.

It could be, you know, go to the gym.

Doing it could be, you know, go out with friends, even if you don't really feel like it.

But keep on experimenting with truths rather than sitting down and trying to figure out the meaning of life or the ultimate answer to the universe.

You know, I have something to share that um happened with my sister-in-law business partner and friend christine she had been uh somebody that really loved going to church and then like many of us life gets with your kids, especially if they're in these sports teams and everything else, and something happened at the church, and so they kind of stopped going. And for a number of years, she thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it.
And recently, let's talk MVI, a minimum viable intervention. She just got up off her rear end.
She didn't wait for her husband and sons to go with her. And she just one Sunday went back to one service.
And I will tell you that there is something, if we go back to the rainbow analogy, and you think about happiness being an indirect thing in your life that you feel in multiple ways, that one small action of no longer thinking about it, but going back, it has created more. It's almost like if you think about a rainbow, there is a hue there, There's a vibrancy there.
And I love this word wholeness because it is part of her wellbeing to have a spiritual practice. And it does create a vibrancy and a wholeness in that area of her life.
It is one simple change. It is an hour every week.
It is not dependent on anybody else in her family doing it. And to me, that is a very clear example of what you're talking about in terms of how it relates to these five elements of happiness and how you can just in very small ways experience what you're talking about.
Yeah. So, so I love that.
And I love it because of what you brought up saying that it's one small action. It's not all or nothing.
Experiment with these small truths. You know, I'm wondering as one of the world's most respected and leading experts on happiness, what do you do every day to be happier? You know, I do the basics.
I wake up in the morning and I do my meditation. Now, do you lay in bed? Do you get up? Do you like, do you, how do you do your meditation? I lay in bed.
And again, I'm in. Is that technically like just sort of snoozing? Like, what are you doing? Like you literally are like you wake up and then you meditate while you're lying there? And then I meditate.
And again, this'm a morning person so when i wake up i wake up it's okay i won't fall asleep again but for people who for whom it's difficult to wake up in the morning get out of bed you know wash your face do whatever you need to energize and then sit down if you need or walk do walking meditation right but meditation is uh is where i start and then um i read and i and I love reading in bed and I read quality stuff. I don't look at the news.
You're not looking at TMZ on your phone. No, yes, but not the other news.
So so I do quality stuff in the morning. Then, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm responsible for taking the kids to, uh, to, to school.
I love that. Yeah.
I bet they love that too. They do.
And I do. And, and, and always, and we have a sort of a, a ritual around, uh, around that, you know, where, where, where we, where we talk and then they ask me, okay, dad, one message for the day.
And it could be something like be generous, be kind or appreciate or whatever, whatever it is. And they go with it and they also share it with their friends.
That's pretty cool. Yeah.
So, so we have that and then, and then I go home and I, and I work mornings are my, my productive hours. And then I do yoga in the, in the afternoon um almost every day you know have uh have lunch with uh with my wife and um and then sometimes work in the afternoon you know do sports i do a lot of sports you know you still play squash i play squash i didn't play squash for 25 years and i always said if one of my kids plays then i'll take it up again and our little one our 14 year old play squash? I play squash.
I didn't play squash for 25 years. And I always said if one of my kids plays, then I'll take it up again.
And our little one, our 14 year old plays squash. So I play with him.
I bet you're a monster on the pickleball court. I've never played pickleball, but I want to.
Oh, I bet you would destroy it. I want to.
So you just, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah.
And then, you know, I love movies. I love, you know, reading, hanging out with friends, family.
I want to reflect on something because what you're describing sounds like a happy life. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, you can probably hear in Tal's voice that he's smiling as he's reflecting on this.
And it is true that so many of us make ourselves unhappy because we think that the answer to it is something out there, that national championship, the getting into the right school, the right grades, or write this, the right that. And what you just described is the little things you do every day that make you feel whole.
There's something very important, Mel, that I want to add. You know, it may sound, you know, fairy tale.
Oh, he's always happy and always smiling. Far from it.
I have my bad day. Well, I asked your They said, some days you're a real jerk.
Just kidding. They don't say jerk, but they say, daddy, chill.
Yeah, chill. Chill, yeah.
And it's important to understand, you know, not every morning when I get up, I want to write. You know, some mornings I get up and I want to stay in bed and do nothing.
What is most important is what we do rather than what we feel. You know, I do what I do, whether it's the yoga, whether it's the writing, whether it's spending time with family and friends.
I do it even if I don't feel like it. And over time, what we do affects us.
It also affects our feelings.

You know, Tal, when I was researching your work to get ready for this conversation today,

I came across a video that you did that has 7 million views where you say stop chasing

happiness and you want us to focus on something else instead.

I'm going to ask you to tell us what we're supposed to be focused on after a short word from our sponsors. So stay with us.
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Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back.
It's your friend Mel Robbins. I'm so happy you're here with me today because we are getting to spend time with Tal Ben-Shahari.
He's one of the most respected and prolific experts on happiness in the world. And he is the most popular professor to ever teach at Harvard.
He taught positive psychology. And we're digging into 30 years of research and what research says about how you can be happier.
We've already covered the definition of happiness as the sense of wholeness. We've talked about the five elements of happiness.
He's made it very clear that this is not about checking boxes. It's not about achieving goals.
It's about pursuing small 1% changes in these five areas of your life. And one of the most popular things you've ever put out online has 7 million views in less than a year.
Don't chase happiness. Become anti-fragile.
What does anti-fragile mean? Yeah, you know, that's one of those concepts that really made a difference in my life. It's an idea that I read about through the work of Nassim Taleb, who is a professor at New York University.
And what is anti-fragility? The opposite of fragility, or I've come to look at it as resilience 2.0. Okay.
So let's begin with 1.0. Please.
Resilience 1.0 is actually a term that comes from engineering. It simply means that...
Resilience 1.0 comes from engineering? Resilience as a term comes from engineering. See that computer science, the classes you took, they helped.
There you go. Absolutely.
Absolutely. So what it means is that if you have certain material and you put pressure on it, if it's resilient, it goes back to its original form.
You squish a piece of rubber, resilient, it returns to where it was before. A ball, you drop it.
If it's resilient, it bounces back up to where it was before. So that's 1.0.
What's resilience 2.0 or antifragility? You take material, you put pressure and stress on it. As a result of the pressure and stress, it actually grows stronger, bigger, healthier.
Or you drop a ball, resilience 1.0, it simply bounces back. 2.0, antifragility, it bounces back higher as a result.
So that's antifragility. And it turns out that there are antifragile systems all around us and within us.
I mean, think about it, for example, our muscular system. You go to the gym, you're putting stress on your muscles.
What happens as a result of it? If you persist, you actually grow stronger, bigger, healthier. As a result of that stress, we're anti-fragile systems, not just physiologically, also psychologically.
And that's important. You know, most of the students in my class, not all, but most of them were psychology majors.
And I would always ask them two questions. The first question was, put your hand up if you know what PTSD is.
Just about everyone in the class put their hand up. They've heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.
They've read about it, studied it in Psych One newspaper. People know what it is.
And I said, okay, put your hands down. And now put your hands up if you've heard of the term PTG.
Hardly anyone put their hand up. And again, these are psychology majors.
PTG stands for post-traumatic growth. So whereas PTSD is breaking down, being fragile, PTG, post-traumatic growth, is being anti-fragile, growing as a result of trauma or hardship or difficulty.
How do you do that? So here is the thing. This amazed me about the research, and there's a lot of research by Tedeschi, Calhoun and others.
Merely knowing about the existence of PTG, of post-traumatic growth, of anti-fragility, actually makes it more likely to happen. Wow.
Why? Because what does knowing about PTG do for us? What it does for us is it actually gives us hope because, okay, so I'm going through hardship, difficulties, I'm really struggling, but I can actually grow from this. So I become hopeful.
Now, if you think about it, what is the main difference between sadness and depression? The main difference between sadness and depression is that depression is sadness without hope. Depression is sadness without hope.
Because sadness, I mean... You feel it every day.
Yeah, 10 times a day sometimes. Big deal.
That too shall pass. But if that sadness is devoid of hope, you know, that too shall pass, then that's problematic.
That's when we become hopeless. Yes.
And that's when we experience being helpless. And that's depression.
So knowing about PTG gives us hope, makes it more likely to happen. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And remember, most people have never heard of these terms, don't know that it's even in the realm of the possible. So that's the first thing.
I love that because the other thing that's happened, and I know that you see this too, is just the proliferation of short form content on social media has so much about identifying trauma. And it would be wonderful, especially based on this research, if there were just as many reels and social media posts about post-traumatic growth.
That knowing that you are struggling with something is the first step to kind of knowing what you need to address, but being aware that you can grow through this and be stronger. And I think we all know this somewhere in the back of our mind.
And even if I look back on my own life, Tal, and I think about

like even a period of my marriage where my husband and I like wanted to kill each other. And we went to therapy.
Our marriage was in the pits. We were, we'd been together for over 20 years and we were just having a lot of problems and we were not feeling connected with one another.

And I can see that if you're in a situation that's very difficult, whether you're grieving or you're having a relationship problem or you've now just lost your third job or whatever it may be, and you add a sense of hopelessness to it, you've just driven a nail into the coffin and sealed it shut. It's the hope that it can get better that is what allows you to grow through it.
And you're here to say that no matter what the traumatic experience or the heaviness of the emotion or the very real life experience that you may be living through right now, that just like a sun can shine through a prism and cast a rainbow, so too hope can shine through this experience and you can grow stronger. And even just knowing that in your definition of being a whole human being who takes care of self, that hope is a critical ingredient to you getting better.
That's is that what you're saying? Absolutely. And it's a critical period for you as an individual getting better.
It's a critical element of a relationship, as you pointed out. It's also a critical element of national growth.
Yes, that's exactly what happened. I realized I didn't complete the whole thing is that in working through it and having the really hard conversations and really exploring ourselves and sticking through the very hard, painful times, I have a profound sense of in your definition that you are giving us, Tal, a sense

of wholeness in the relationship and also a sense of wholeness with self. And it's true.
If you

really are listening to what Tal's saying and you reflect on your own life and you think about

any moment in your life that was crazy painful, notice whether or not as you move through it and you really are honest with yourself that there was that bounce up effect that happens after it. As you move through the grief or the disappointment or the heartbreak, that all of a sudden you wake up one day and you weren't staring at the sun directly going, I'm gonna be happy.
You were just slowly working on your wellbeing and you felt different. And as I really listen closely to what you're teaching us, I think that's what I'm starting to take away.
And I will add to that. And, you know, you mentioned earlier about how knowing that you can grow from it contributes to your well-being.
Just knowing that a gridlock or hardships, these are all natural parts of our evolution of life. You know, no one is exempt from these.
No relationship. It could be the best, you know, fairy tale relationship.
They'll have their gridlocks. Just knowing that it's a natural part of a relationship, that is, you know, uplifting because it's liberating because you're saying, oh, okay, it's normal.
And that's exactly what I felt after reading Schnarch and going through a gridlock with my amazing wife saying, OK, so it's fine. That too shall pass.
And that's what gives hope. And that is what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because through that hope, you actually grow within the relationship or in another context.
It's so true. You know, with the 30 years that you have spent researching this topic, is there anything that bubbles up from the research that is top predictors of whether or not you're going to have that sense of wholeness and happiness in your life? The number one would be the belief that you can make a difference.
With your happiness. With your happiness.
You know, many people ask me, so what is the content of the course? You know, whether it's the MA or the certificate program. And they're always surprised that I say that at the beginning, we start learning about systems thinking.
Oh, really? Yeah. And systems thinking, you know.
For somebody who has no idea what that is, what the hell is systems thinking? No, seriously, like for somebody who's like, what's systems thinking? Yeah. So systems thinking is about looking at things as holes.
So looking at the system rather than the symptom. So looking at the system, whether it's an organization is a system.
The human body is a system. It's a system of, you know, cells and organs.
A system is all about interconnectedness. And the key in a system is to find leverage points.
Where do I press? Where do I touch to affect the entire system? You know, it's what Charles Duhigg talks about, you know, keystone habits. Yeah.
What is that place? One thing that if you do will impact another part of the system and another part. Is it exercising daily? Is it, you know, starting your day, you know, zone one of the day with deep breaths? Right.
A meditation. Is it starting your day, zone one of the day with deep breaths and meditation? Is it leaving home and hugging your loved one? What is that one thing? And when everything is interconnected, it actually doesn't matter that much where you enter the system because it will affect everyone else.
This is why the emphasis on that one small action is so critical, because you can literally sit down and think for years

about how I'm going to change my life, or you can just do it.

You know what is so cool about this is that visually speaking, between the rainbow example

and this idea of systems and wholeness and everything being interconnected, in this model, traumatic experiences are connected to happiness. Sadness and grief are connected to happiness.
Struggles and periods of feeling lost are profoundly connected to happiness. Why? Painful experiences, difficult experiences are inevitable.
Again, there is no life example,

but let's play a game. Let's imagine that sometime in the future, and by the way,

this right now, it's a theory, but it could become a reality. Sometime in the future,

we'll have the ability to drive away all pain because we'll have such great control over our neurons that we'll be able to control what we feel all the time. So, you know, in, in, why would you want to do that? Well, why would you want to do it? Many people would, especially when they're in the midst of hardship and difficulty.

You know, all you want is for it to go away.

Or what if you see your loved one, your child in pain?

Maybe you can make it go away.

I just got something from you.

Do tell.

The reason why I had that reaction, I realized, is because I have the belief that pain disappears with time. The hope.
Yes. Whoa.
And what if someone is, doesn't have that? And what if, and again, many people, many people will make it go away. I mean, if you think about it, why are we so, as a culture, so obsessed with, with those pills?, I'm not against psychiatric medication, and sometimes it has saved lives.
And I know some cases intimately where it has. However, we're too trigger happy when it comes to dispensing pills.
Why? Because we want to make it go away. So if we play this theoretical game that we do get to a world where no side effects, because we know exactly how to make these painful experiences disappear, would we do it? But then what would happen? I've often asked my students this.
Think about the experiences that you are most grateful for in terms of where you are today. Things where you have learned the most, that have helped you grow the most.
Think about them. Now, put your hand up if they were fun experiences, enjoyable ones.
Very few people put their hands up. It's almost always difficult experiences.
Now, do you want to do away with that? Do you want to get rid of growth and learning? And this is exactly what will happen if we don't have any of these painful experiences. So when you say they're a part and parcel of a happy life, they're essential to a full and fulfilling life.
And when we begin to look at these experiences as such, then our reaction can be similar to what you said. I don't want to get rid of them.
In fact, I don't enjoy them, but I embrace them.

Well, and what you're also offering

is a roadmap of hope and action

for anybody who's in the thick of that,

who's like, give me the pill

because I just lost my child

and there is, I don't want to feel what I'm feeling.

And what you're saying is that based on the human experience from the beginning of time, we are designed to move through these things. These emotional, painful, traumatic experiences are a moment in your life.
And that if you look at that rainbow and you look at spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, or emotional wellness for yourself, and you take this MVI model of minimum viable intervention, and you say to yourself, two things can be true. This can be the worst thing that's ever happened to me and the deepest pain I've ever felt.

And I can wake up in the morning

and I can pick one of those categories

and I can take one action in the spire model forward.

And that is a way to start to move through this

and experience that wholeness that you're talking about, even though it's so difficult. Yes.
And, you know, Mel, I want to share a story. Please.
When I was 27, I lost the most important person in my life to me at the time. It was dear dear friend who died in a plane crash this was when i was living in in asia it was a plane from indonesia to to singapore and it crashed was the 19th of uh december 1997 and um i thought my life had ended at that moment you know we were uh we're supposed to meet in singapore and and and it didn't happen and um i called up uh a mentor of mine his name uh is nathaniel brandon nathaniel brandon has uh written many books on self-esteem i'd learned with him and I called him up for two reasons.
A, because he was my teacher and mentor and B, because he himself had lost his wife in a freak drowning accident when he was around a bit older than I was at the time. And I called him up crying and he knew my friends.
So, you know, he was very much distressed as well. And he said, Tal, I'm going to tell you something now that you're not going to understand.
But keep it in mind anyway. He said, you're going to get over this.
It's going to be painful. It's going to hurt like hell hell but you're going to get over it we all do because if we hadn't then god help us all and again this was many many years ago i still remember it and i remember it each time even when i go through minor uh crises because we do get over it, because we're built to overcome hardship and difficulties.
And sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes, you know, it's a day.
But we do get over it. And having that hope and doing something with it, again, not staying and moping and ruminating, writing about it, talking about it,

doing small things. That is the way out of it.
Thank you for sharing that. Like I was trying to put myself in your shoes because I think in the depths of that moment, I'd probably be like, fuck you.
You know, I don't want to hear that. I'm not getting over that, you know what I'm saying, but it is true that we do get through the things that we never think that it's possible to get through.
And I'm also really curious, since you're constantly researching something and clearly writing a book and you've got an academy and you're teaching people around the world, Is there a particular piece of research or new kind of finding around happiness that really excites you? So what I think about a lot is how do you bring about lasting change? Because, you know, people are listening to us now and they're thinking, oh, yeah, you know, I want to do it. Or, you know, I would give a lecture and, you know, the audience would think, yeah, you know, I'm going to implement it.
But most times nothing happens. Right.
Most change efforts, you know, you talk about it, you know, coming into 2024. So you have a goal and, you know, a 30 day challenge, you know, in January, February.
What happens with that? Usually not much. So what I think about constantly and what I'm researching is how can you increase the

likelihood, not guarantee, but increase the likelihood that you will enjoy lasting change.

And, you know, I love acronyms, as you figured out, you know, the SPIRE, MVI.

So here is the third acronym.

Give it to us.

The three R's.

The three R's. Okay.
And we can use this with everything that you've taught us today in terms of making, being happier, a lasting change in your life. Exactly.
Okay. So that's why the three R's.
That's why it's so important for me to think about it, write about it, talk about it. The three R's of change are essentially the, you know, should be the intel inside, so to speak, of every change effort.
Okay. So what are they? It's not reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Other three R's. It's the first R is reminder.
I mean, think about it, Mel. So if I asked you this, tell me, is it important for you to appreciate the good people in your life, to appreciate whatever works in your life, or do you prefer to take it all for granted? Exactly.
Exactly. So, you know, no one would say, you know, I've had enough of appreciating my loved ones.
It's time to take them for granted for a while. No one would say that.
Except for my husband in therapy. That too shall pass.
So, and yet, and yet, even though everyone would say it's important for me to appreciate, most people, this is an empirical fact, most people, most of the time, take the good things in their lives for granted. True.
Do not appreciate their loved ones most of the time. True.
Most people most of the time. Now, it's not because they're bad people.
It's not because they are not smart. It's not because they have the desire to appreciate.
All these things are in place. The problem is that we forget, which is why the first antidote to forgetfulness or the first antidote to the absence of change is reminders.
And Mel, you talk about it. You talk about your post-its.
Yes. I love that.
Create reminders around you, whether it's post-its, whether it's, you know, walking around with a bracelet that reminds me of something specific.

Or a rainbow.

Like I keep thinking about how much you've poured into us and how actionable everything is and understandable. That even if you were to write on a post-it, Spire, and it's a reminder of the five elements every morning and you pop it on your mirror at your computer at work.
Like now it's in your face. And that's more likely with the reminder to help you go to the next star, which is what? Which is repetition, because one or two reminders, one day, second day, not enough.
Yep. We need repetition.
We need to do it over and over and over again. And for that, you need many reminders.
So for example, a recurring function on your, you know, on your calendar. Yep.
You know, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'm in the gym. Yep.
And after you have repetition and you have enough of it, that is when we get to the third R, which is rituals. What are rituals? Rituals are actually deeply embedded neural pathways.

That when we repeat an action over and over again, that action becomes automatic because neural pathways have been formed.

Our brain has quite literally been transformed through the repetitive action.

Simple example. Mom reminded me to brush my teeth over and over again, repetitivelyly i don't need mom anymore to remind me because it's a ritual right it's the same with cultivating a you know a tennis forehand initially the coach reminds me you get your your hand up you know meet the ball here right and you do it again and again right and then you wake up serena williams in the middle of the night.
She'll hit that forehand. That's true.
Perfectly because it's a ritual. Right.
It's a habit. There are neural pathways associated with that.
Whether it's for hugging your loved ones, whether it's for acts of kindness, we can actually ritualize them. Now, to many people, this sounds like, you know, the absence of spontaneity.
You know, if you ritualize things, I'm not against spontaneity. It's great.
But if you want to bring about lasting change, the only reliable way that we know about is by cultivating rituals. And you do that through reminders and repetition.
Well, and there's a fourth R, which is the fact that it's not about the fact that you're removing spontaneity, you're removing something else, your resistance to doing something new.

And if I bring this full circle to the topic of being a happier you and the fact that in your definition of wholeness and the five elements of happiness, which all tie to well-being, that you could apply the reminder, the repetition over and over and over in each of those five elements. going to church or to temple or to mosque, or if your church version is taking a walk in the woods,

making that... going to church or to temple or to mosque, or if your church version is taking a walk in the woods,

making that something that you repeat so that it becomes a ritual.

That these things, and I'm suspecting that this is why you are an unwavering optimist in people's ability, absolutely anyone's ability, to be happier. You know, Helen Keller, who's one of my teachers, has an essay on optimism, which I highly recommend that you read.
And in it, she says, my religion is optimism. And she says, I look around metaphorically, I look around the world.
And what I see is a lot of hardship and difficulty. What I also see is the overcoming of it.
And she was a consummate optimist. I mean, how could she have not been, you know, given the hand that she was dealt? And she still lived a happy life, a full and fulfilling life.
And I think there is a very important lesson that we can learn from her. And if I may, I just want to recommend something else by Helen keller please so the essay on optimism the second one is an essay that she wrote called three days to see in it she reflects on what she would do if you know having been blind and deaf for most of her life what would she do if she were to regain her hearing or vision? What would she do for three days? And she talks about it and she talks about how important it is to appreciate, not take for granted the things that we have.
And I have Helen Keller's essay next to me as a reminder, a reminder, A, to appreciate and as a reminder of the religion of optimism. Wow.
Wow. Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. You are really, really good at what you do.
I know you know, but I mean, it's like so fun to spend time with somebody who is so smart and who has a beautiful way of explaining topics that are kind of hard to wrap your brain around. And I just really appreciate the time.
And I appreciate the way that you think about things and explain things. You made a huge difference in my life.
And I know that you just made an enormous difference in helping people around the world be happier. Thank you, Mel.
And what I'm most grateful for in terms of your work is that you create a bridge between evidence-based academic ideas and you make them accessible. Oh, that's a massive compliment coming from you.
I accept that. Thank you.
Thank you. And for you listening, I just wanted to be sure in case nobody else tells you that I tell you that I love you and I believe in you.
And I know I speak for both of us when I say we believe in your ability to take action and do the little things every single day that will bring more happiness into your life. Now go do it.
I'll talk to you in a few days. Are you guys ready for us? Yeah.
I'm just on. Here we go.

Are cameras rolling?

I should probably wait in case I say something.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm on?

Great.

And as soon as the audio only.

You know what?

Do you guys have a cloth for these things?

I don't know about your glasses.

Always.

It's like, how the hell do they get so dirty?

Do you think we touch our glasses a lot?

We don't realize it?

We do. Around the world.
Do you hear we touch our glasses a lot? We don't realize it? We do.

Around the world.

Do you hear that again?

I think it was that one.

That one?

I think.

I know you know.

Do you hear that?

We're going to keep going.

The thing that I found.

His did not turn off.

That one did. That one did.
That one it did that one it did oh lord okay this is hilarious

so that was good sorry just did it just turn off? Awesome. Great job.
High five. Oh, and one more thing.
And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language.
You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist.
And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.
I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher.
Hey, friends. Ted Danson here.
And I want to let you know about my new podcast. It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson, sometimes.

Doing this podcast is a chance for me and my good bud Woody to reconnect after Cheers wrapped 30 years ago.

Plus, we're introducing each other to the friends we've met since,

like Jane Fonda, Conan O'Brien, Eric Andre, Mary Steenburgen, my wife,

and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

And trust me, it's always a great hang when Woody's there.

So why wait?

Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name

wherever you get your podcasts.

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