330. The psychology of happiness

Happiness often feels like a simple goal - something we’re told to chase or “find” if we’re lucky. But it’s not just about good moods or quick wins. True happiness is more subtle, shaped by how we show up in life, the people we surround ourselves with, and the  meaning we create along the way. In this episode, we dive into what happiness really means in your twenties and beyond - why it can be so hard to hold onto, and how it’s tied to more than just feeling good.

We’ll explore:

• Why happiness isn’t a permanent state, but a shifting experience
• How everyday habits and relationships quietly influence our sense of happiness
• The PERMA model of happiness
• Why chasing pleasure doesn’t always lead to fulfilment
• Busting the 3 biggest myths about happiness
• Simple, real ways to build happiness for now, and for the future 

If you’re tired of chasing constant happiness and want to explore a more genuine, meaningful way to experience joy – this one is for you.

 

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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.

 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, my friends,
let's let's talk about happiness. We're going to talk about

(00:45):
what it means to be happy. Seemingly very very simple, right,
Such a simple word, probably the first emotion that you
think of when you think of emotions, and yet if
you are a human you will understand that it is
incredibly elusive at times, and actually a lot more complex

(01:06):
than we have been taught to think of it. As
humans have been talking about happiness for as long as
humans could basically talk. From I don't know, ancient philosophers
like Aristotle who believed happiness was like the highest human good,
to modern day neuroscientists who are obsessively studying the brain's
reward system. Humanity has been on what feels like a

(01:29):
relentless quest to uncover the secrets of a happy life
since humanity was I don't know invented existed since its origins.
But I personally think finding happiness these days, and like
I'm talking real happiness, like real deep life satisfaction and
contentment and joy, is really really hard. We are bombarded

(01:54):
with images of the perfect lives we see on social media.
There is this, you know, increase wide gap between rich
and poor. We are often convinced that happiness is like
a destination that we can reach if we just work
hard enough, if we buy the right things, if we
achieve the right milestones. And it's probably no surprise that

(02:16):
this narrow view is a huge part of the problem.
It sets us up for disappointment. It makes us feel
like failures when we don't reach the same level as
the people we see online, or we aren't able to
have the same lifestyle as people making millions and millions
of dollars. And I think it also I think a
big issue with how we view happiness right now is

(02:37):
as a singular thing. Happiness is a state, a singular
state that we want to be in as much as possible.
And I don't think that we really have an appreciation
for how perhaps less positive emotions actually contribute to satisfaction
and contribute to emotional wellbeing. I think we just think
of happiness as the ultimate goal without realizing everything that

(02:59):
it takes to get there and everything that we don't
actually require to be happy. So today we are going
to break down the myths, misconceptions, and of course the
science and psychology of true, genuine, lasting happiness. And we're
also going to go beyond quick fixes quick fixes for

(03:21):
feeling more happy. You know, everyone knows that seeing your
friends and exercising and meditating and journaling is going to
make you feel good. But what about some deeper, psychologically
backed strategies that can actually make this make happiness more
deeply ingrained and more effective to actually find. That's what

(03:44):
I really want to talk about. Some of the things
that are perhaps hidden in the psychology research, some of
the strategies that are hidden in the academia that I
think should be more popularized, that I think we should
be talking about more when we talk about a happy life.
So there are so much that we're going to discuss.
We're going to discuss whether like money makes you happier,
We're going to discuss whether it's possible to be happy always,

(04:06):
the happiest country in the world, the happiest people in
the world, everything you can think of that has to
do with this topic. We will be there. We're going
to sink our teeth into it. So without further ado,
let's get into it. So first things first, And I
know this is going to sound so silly and so basic,

(04:27):
but what are we actually talking about when we talk
about happiness? What do we actually mean here? Again? I
know it sounds silly. I know we probably think we
have a good grasp on this by now, But just
like human me for a second. Okay, the field we
actually need to turn to is not just the field
of psychology, but the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology
is basically like a unique branch of this discipline that

(04:51):
is dedicated to studying what makes life most worth living
and also what makes people happy. And that honestly sounds
like the most amazing job ever. Like, imagine your only
job is just to figure out how to be a
happier person. But researchers in this space have spent decades
trying to find, trying to measure, trying to define happiness,

(05:15):
amongst other things, and they found that in reality, it's
a lot more than just a single emotion as we've
been taught to view it as. There's actually two types
of happiness, herdonic and new demonic happiness. Herdonic happiness is,
I think the kind of happiness most of us initially
think of. It's basically the pursuit of pleasure and the

(05:36):
avoidance of pain. Very like a very simple equation. This
is like a combination of the feel good stuff like
the rush you get from a compliment, the satisfaction of
a delicious meal, you know, going on a roller coaster,
and then the subtraction of negative stuff like not feeling pain,

(05:57):
not feeling sad, not feeling hot break. This is basically
a utilitarian notion of happiness. We can basically determine how
happy someone is by summing up the pleasures and subtracting
the pains the experience of positive effect just like the
moment to moment feeling of joy. That is hordonic happiness.

(06:21):
But the problem is is that those moments are often
very short lived and they're often tied to external stimuli.
Hedonic happiness is really focused on the pleasure or the
joy that we get from having things, seeing things, being
around certain people you demonic. Happiness, on the other hand,
is about living a life of meaning and purpose and

(06:44):
self realization, even if maybe day to day you aren't
experiencing as many external highs. This concept really at first
started with Aristotle. We've already said his name once. He's
definitely like a key person in this discussion, but the
essentially suggested way back in the day that true well
being doesn't come from pleasure alone, but it comes from

(07:08):
fulfilling your deeply seated potential and living a life aligned
with your values. Think of like the profound sense of
pride that a parent feels watching their child graduate, or
like the quiet contentment of like a volunteer who has
dedicated their life to a cause they believe in even

(07:29):
when it was hard. Think about people who train for
multi day hikes or triathlons, and it's hard work, and
it's painful, and to be honest, it probably really sucks,
but then they complete it and they just feel this
deep sense of accomplishment, even if they hurt all over.
These moments may not always be easy. They're definitely not

(07:52):
filled to the brim with pleasure, but they are incredibly
rewarding on a much deeper level, and they are a
more sustainable form of happiness. Now, both types hedonic and
eutermonic are incredibly important for overall wellbeing, but they contribute
to our lives just simply in different ways. A great
framework for understanding these different facets, which you've probably heard

(08:15):
of if you've ever spent any time in positive psychology
or psychology in general, is the Perma model, which was
developed by the psychologist doctor Martin Stiegmann. He is like
a key figure within the field of positive psychology, and
he basically proposed that again, well being is not a
single feeling. We know that by now, but it is
built on five measurable elements, and these five elements obviously

(08:40):
create the acronym perma. So let's start with p. P
is positive emotions. This covers like the hedonic side of happiness,
the good feelings of hope, being in love, feeling grateful, giggling, smiling,
all those like nice, soft, floaty feelings that we experience
hopefully today. He is engagement. This is the state of flow.

(09:04):
We talk about this all the time. It's the state
where you are so completely mesmerized, absorbed, challenged by an
activity but also equally enthralled by it, that you lose
all sense of time and self. Now we find this
in our hobbies, we find it in our creative pursuits,
We find it in challenging work. We also find it

(09:25):
when we are pursuing or living out our purpose. Actually,
one of the initial conceptions of flow, or how we
initially discovered flow, was through this Russian psychologist who wanted
to figure out what highly successful people or had in common.
Whether they were ballerinas, whether they were CEOs, whether they
were athletes, doctors, whatever it was, and all of them

(09:47):
had this flow relationship with their work. Ah, I feel
like this one's very easily explainable. It's just relationships. There
are probably very few, if not no, people in this
world world who could be seriously happy without having strong,
positive relationships with other people. That is a fundamental human
need and it's also one of the most powerful predictors

(10:10):
of well being. What I really like about this perma
model is the inclusion of this and the fact that
happiness is not a solo experience, It's a joint one,
which I love. M Similar to E is meaning having
a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging to something
bigger than you having it, maybe a cause that you're

(10:30):
working towards, a spiritual practice, something that tells you like, oh,
I'm here for a reason. Existence does have a point
and I'm living out that point. And finally, a A is accomplishment,
the feeling of striving for and achieving goals. This provides
us with a sense with a sense of mastery. It

(10:51):
provides us with a sense of competence, which is also
another essential human need. So, according to this theory, true
happiness again, it isn't one thing, It's a blend of
all these elements. Research has consistently shown that individuals who
score highly or even moderately on all measures of PERMA

(11:11):
tend to report greater life satisfaction, greater overwhelm wellbeing. They
are happier compared to people who score you know, low
on these things. Are also compared to people who score
really high on just a few of these things. So,
for example, someone might make a lot of money, and
they might have seemingly a lot of friends and get

(11:32):
invited to a lot of parties and events, But if
they don't have meaning or many day to day positive emotions,
they may actually be less happy than someone who makes
a lot less money, maybe only has a few close friends,
but has a strong reason for being, has a strong
sense of personal accomplishment and a strong sense of engagement
in their life. It has to be a blend, right.

(11:55):
It's like trying to make a cake only with two
of the ingredients you need. What this theory really says
is you need all of them. There's so much research
on happiness and wellbeing, and I think it really begs
the question like can happiness actually ever be measured? Like,
you know, I just talked about this comparison between these
two people. Is that comparison actually possible? Is there like

(12:18):
a statistically scientifically mathematically is there there's the happiest person
in the world actually exists and could we find them? Well,
here's the thing. Happiness can be studied because of its
components can be measured, but it's really crucial to understand
a key distinction. We can't actually directly measure the feeling
of happiness itself, like we haven't actually gotten to that point.

(12:41):
We can only really measure like the behavioral and psychological
signifiers that indicate a happy or flourishing life. So, for example,
you know You can't directly measure sickness in somebody, but
you can measure a person's body temperature or a person's
white blood cell count, which is an indicator and these

(13:02):
you know, things like purpose and relationships and engagement. They
are the body temperature of the white white blood cell
count of happiness. And this is where models like PERMA
become so powerful. The elements within this model, they're all observable,
they're all quantifiable. That's what makes it a really great
psychological tool to understand perhaps where someone may be lacking

(13:27):
or why someone may be flourishing more than another person.
So scientifically we can measure individual indicators of happiness, but
in terms of finding the happiest person in the world,
it's going to be very, very hard because happiness, it
remains completely subjective. It is experienced differently between people, which
is why discussions around like optimism versus pessimism sometimes come up.

(13:50):
It's a core question, and you know at the center
of happiness research, are some people just inherently more happy
than others? Are they just born that way? Well, it
turns out some part of that is true. Some people
do have a genetic predisposition to finding better engagement, having
more positive emotions. But it's a bit more complicated. Our

(14:11):
level of happiness and the way we experience perma basically
is influenced by a combination of genetics, life circumstances, and
intentional activities. So there's this thing called the happiness set
point theory. It was famously proposed by the researcher professor

(14:32):
Sonia Lubromiski. She basically suggests that a significant portion of
our happiness, around fifty percent, is kind of something we're
born with. It's determined by our genes. We are born
with a genetically determined baseline level of happiness that we
tend to return to even after major life events, and

(14:54):
we don't really know any differently. Think about you know,
there are certain people you know who just always seem
really cheerful, always seem really resilient, They always bounce back
really quickly from setbacks. And then there are other people
you know who tend to be more reserved, super cautious,
who tend to just find themselves lingering on setbacks even
when they don't want to. Some of this isn't a

(15:16):
matter of choice. A significant part of this is inherited.
We know that through twins studies. Studies comparing identical twins
and fraternal twins consistently show that identical twins have far
more similar levels of happiness, even when they've been raised
in different families. Considering that identical twins share one hundred

(15:38):
percent of their genes of DNA and fraternal twins only
share about fifty percent, this suggests that a substantial portion
of our happiness, I'm not going to say substantial, a
portion of our happiness is hardwired into our DNA, and
this genetic component explains why, even after major life events,

(15:59):
both negative and positive, we tend to return to our
baseline level of happiness over time. So this really brings
us to life circumstances. Now, life circumstances actually make up
the smallest part of this equation. They tend to contribute
to only about ten percent of our overall happiness and
well being. So life circumstances it includes all the external

(16:23):
factors that make up our lives, so income, marital status, health,
even our appearance. Logically, we often assume these factors have
the biggest impact on our happiness. You know, after all,
like a pay raise, a new home, a new relationship,
feeling good in your body. That feels like it would

(16:44):
make us significantly happier for the long haul. However, in
reality it's a different story. This is largely due to
a phenomena we know as hedonic adaptation. We quickly get
used to new circumstances, whether they're good or bad, so
like the excitement of a new car or a big salary,
feels amazing for a little while, and then the feeling

(17:06):
kind of fades and we return to our emotional baseline.
This doesn't mean that these things don't matter at all.
You know, financial security, for example, is crucial for reducing
stress and can seriously lift someone's well being if they are,
you know, in poverty. But the impact on our long
term happiness after we've had this benefit or had this
thing for a while, does tend to become limited and

(17:28):
does tend to drop off. The most empowering and actionable
part of this model, and let me just say it
is a model. It's not always going to be one
hundred percent. It's definitely like there is evidence for and
against it. But the most actionable part of this model
is made up of our intentional activities, what we choose

(17:48):
to do with our time. This forty represents the portion
of our happiness that is entirely within our control, and
it all rests on the conscious things we do and
we think out on a regular basis. So this category
includes things like behavioral activities, so slowing down, engaging in

(18:09):
acts of kindness, exercising regularly, spending time in nature, making art,
giving back to the community, cognitive activities practicing gratitude, reframing
negative thoughts, cultivating an optimistic mindset, and then volitional activities

(18:30):
committing to meaningful goals, increasing our education levels, building strong relationships,
savoring positive experiences. By consistently engaging in these intentional activities,
we can deliberately actively increase our levels of happiness, regardless
of our genetic set point and regardless to a degree

(18:52):
of our life circumstances. In short, you can't change your genes,
you can't predict your circumstances. But having the right mindset
and your daily habits and choices are still incredibly powerful
tools for cultivating lasting joy and wellbeing. And I think
that the thing is is that even though genetics might

(19:14):
seem like it makes up a bigger slice of the pie,
there's not a single person who is like completely determined
to be unhappy in every single moment of their life,
so that forty percent of intentional things can still for
every single person, shift the balance and shift the scales
for them. Okay, we're going to take a short break here,

(19:35):
but when we return, let's talk about some of the
myths you may have seen swirling around about happiness recently.
You know, are we becoming less happy? Will making a
lot of money make you more happy? Well, hopefully I
have some answers to those very questions, plus of course,
some tips, so stay with us. I've recently been having

(20:03):
a lot of discussions with my friends recently about like,
are we as sad a generation? Is this generation just
bound to suffer because of the fact that the world
literally feels like it's on fire, and in some cases
in the past couple of years, has literally been on fire.
It seems like every time we catch up, like I

(20:24):
was at the beach with my friends. I was at
Bunda Beach the other day, and it's like, the first
thing we discussed is like, did you see the horrible
thing that happened in the news? Did you see what
like that government is doing this time? Did I tell
you about like these awful protests and how awful my
job is and however worked I am, and oh that, like,

(20:44):
you know, my financial situation is bad and I've lost
my job and blah blah blah. It's like every single
time we hang out, the first thing we have to
just get out of the way is like, all right,
let's just address how shit the news is and how
terrible the current state of the world is, and you know,
pretend for as long as we can or like try

(21:05):
and like get a respite from it and try and
pretend that it's not making everyone more miserable day by day.
It's hard to kind of keep your head above water.
At the moment, I've really been like pondering it, probably
because of social media and how I think people are
being more open about the fact that they're struggling and
are like really acknowledging that the circumstances of the world

(21:27):
are pretty dire. Are we becoming less happy as a collective?
Is this? Has there been a noticeable change in happiness levels?
So there are a couple of groups, a couple of
organizations that attempt to answer this very question year after year.
They also do a bunch of work around how money
economics and happiness tied together, and they also assess happiness

(21:50):
levels in each country. Turns out the happiest country in
the world, by the way, is Finland eight years in
a row as of twenty twenty five. If you're from Finland,
tell me what's happening in your country? That is making
out the case, because you guys are some happy folks.
But one of these attempts is the World Happiness Report.

(22:12):
It's conducted year after year by the University of Oxford
in collaboration with I think it's either Oxfam or the
un and then also Gallop, the survey company surveys. Yeah,
they do like surveys and polls, and the results have
shown a pretty stable average level of happiness over the
past few decades. Everyone's kind of sitting around like this

(22:34):
seventy mark, like not fifty where things are getting terrible,
Definitely not one hundred. However, recent analysis has revealed a
really concerning trend, particularly in younger generations. There have been
and has been a noticeable decline in happiness and the

(22:54):
life satisfaction of young people since around twenty ten. For
the first since these studies have been conducted in countless countries,
young adults are less happy than their older counterparts, and
obviously we want to address happiness and unhappiness in every
single age group and every single population, But we've kind

(23:17):
of always assumed that our youth is like this nice
golden bubble, or should be this nice golden bubble for
as many people as possible. So the fact that golden
bubble has seemingly burst is obviously making a lot of
people super concerned. Researchers point to a lot of different factors,
but of course, like it's an ongoing discussion, the rise

(23:38):
of social media is a big one. Everyone kind of
wants to pin on that, and in some ways I
do think it's responsible, like the rapid emergence of technology
has made it really hard to experience happiness subjectively without
comparing it to someone else. But there have been recent
articles and books written which are saying blaming social media

(24:00):
is actually just like a complete red herring, Like it's
really when you look at it, the impact of it
is not as severe as other things like economic conditions
or a sense of optimism for the future. But people
do continue to say that is a main contender. In
the twenty twenty four World Happiness Report, they did manage

(24:21):
to explicitly link the decline and youth well being to
increased internet usage. I actually saw a recent article from
the National Bureau of Economic Research which noted a specific
collapse in the well being of young people, especially women,
around twenty thirteen. What did that coincide with? That coincided
with the widespread adoption of smartphones, but again, economic hardship,

(24:47):
a sense of political instability, increased loneliness. They are all
also to blame. I think technology is just the easiest
one to kind of pint it on because it is
the thing that is most rapidly I think changed about
society in the last couple of decades. But again, like
back to this is that what's really concerning is that

(25:07):
it's mainly young people. And we have again always adopted
this belief based on this very famous U shaped curve
of happiness, that you should be the happiest version of
yourself in your late teens and in your twenties, and
you know, it's midlife where you should be really starting
to perhaps feeling the pressures of career and family and

(25:28):
financial responsibilities. A lot of that is now moving up.
People are adopting this sense of like anxiety and stress
and fear a lot earlier, and there are so many
explanations for that, but I feel like our twenties are
no longer this time for experimentation. In this time to

(25:50):
be a little bit carefree, it feels like you have
to get serious a lot quicker. It's also why we're
starting to see people have caughter life crisis. That's like
a new term that's only been introduced in the last
maybe fifteen years. It used to always be about the
midlife crisis, this point where people really had this like

(26:10):
moment of clarity and confusion and just like existential dread
around what their life really meant and what they really
wanted out of their life. That's happening earlier. People are
feeling less positive. And the thing is is that we're
not seeing much of a change in like that midlife
low point. People like in the later years are still

(26:34):
kind of experiencing the same levels of happiness, which is
a good thing, but it is really going to show
that there is this remarkable shift. The early twenties high
point is no longer the is no longer the norm.
Happiness feels harder in our twenties for a lot of
reasons things that aren't you. You know, there's this massive

(26:56):
social displacement or social splintering where all ours structures of
friendship just kind of like explode the moment that we
graduate high school or UNI, and you know, we are
expected to do so many things at once. Build a life,
build a career, build new social circles, build a primary,
stable romantic relationship. Also, whilst we're in like a new
you know, environment, also meant to build like financial wealth.

(27:20):
And so I think that a lot of us are
really really struggling, and a lot of us are really
thinking like, oh my god, is this like the next
forty years of my life? Not necessarily the case. A
lot of people think about that U turn of happiness
or that U shape of happiness and think like, all right, cool,
once I turn thirty, it all goes downhill. But it

(27:41):
is important to remember that it's this is a model.
It's not an individual diagnostic tool. It's not saying that
every single person's life will follow this like peak in twenties,
drop down in your forties and fifties, and then come
back up in your like sixties and seventies. It's just
saying that in terms of a collective. If we were

(28:04):
to put one hundred thousand people in the room and
plot their happiness, there would be this general kind of
flow or general pattern. Doesn't mean that you can't be
the outlier. Doesn't mean that people don't shift up and
down that scale over the years, Like you may have
like a really great year at forty five, and then
you know, at forty six you get fired, and the

(28:25):
average of that is kind of in the middle. It
doesn't mean that there is a lack of positive emotions
in midlife. I really don't want that to spread. Like
people are still experiencing happiness despite the model saying that
there is a dip. The dip doesn't glo below fifty,
so it is like people are still on the up,
mostly happy. But the fact that that's shifting earlier is

(28:48):
really showing that the global rate of happiness is kind
of diminishing. I just want to make sure that we
put that in there so that no one's like sitting here,
maybe on the cusp of thirty, maybe on the custom
of their late twenties, thinking oh my god, wow, I've
got to strap in for this like part of the
roller coaster. No, absolutely not. There are still joy and

(29:08):
great stuff waiting for you. So, with that or being said,
I do want to break down some of the other
key myths that we might be being sold about happiness,
whether deliberately and explicitly or kind of implicitly. The first
myth being you can be happy all the time, or

(29:30):
you can only be happy if things are going really,
really great for you. Oh my goodness, if only I
had known how false this was, it would have saved
me a whole lot of confusion and therapy sessions, specifically
therapy sessions where I would like sit with my therapists
can basically be like, please give me the secret to

(29:51):
eliminating all non positive emotions, Like give me the secret
to not being sad, give me the secret to curing
my grief. Surprise, surprise, there was no secret. It's just
a part of life. The idea that we should be
in a constant state of bliss is not only unrealistic,
as I think we have all learned, it's also deeply unhealthy.

(30:12):
Life is a full spectrum of emotions and to be
truly human. I think you realize this, Like the older
you get is to experience them all. That's like the
whole point the modern obsession that we have with like
perpetual positivity, sets us up for failure. It also leads
to a lack of what psychologists call emo diversity. And
we've talked about this on the podcast before, but let's

(30:34):
just revisit it. So there was this groundbreaking study published
in the Journal of Experimental Psychology back in twenty fourteen,
so over a decade ago now that introduced this concept
of EMO diversity and drew an analogy from the environment
and from ecology. Just as biodiversity we know is totally

(30:55):
crucial for a healthy ecosystem, Like you need the bugs,
you need the dirt, you need the swamps to have
the pretty birds and the bees and the flowers, EMO
diversity points to the fact that we need a variety
and relative abundance of emotions for psychological health. Basically, you
need the disgust, you need the fear, you need the embarrassment,
the sadness to have the amusement, the or the hope,

(31:17):
the gratitude. The researchers, which were led by doctor Jordie Quodback,
found that people who experienced a wide range of both
positive and so called negative emotions, they were actually less
likely to suffer from depression and they were more i
would say, better equipped to handle life's challenges, which is

(31:38):
so counter to I guess what I once believed what
a lot of us believe. That is, to be happy,
you must experience as much happiness as possible. You have
to load it up, you have to make it like
burst at the scenes like this is an equation where
the more of one thing, the more happiness you have,
the more the output will be a happy one. That

(31:59):
doesn't see to be the case. What they found time
and time again. The takeaway is that you need to
be in touch with all different sides of yourself and
how you respond to certain hard and great things in
order to feel good. All of our emotions serve a purpose.
Suppressing them firstly just means that they're going to crop

(32:21):
up when you least expect them and don't want to
deal with them, and you won't have the skills to
deal with them. But also you will miss out on
the fact that you know, sadness and grief is a
sign that true love and deep love has been in
your life. You know, anger can motivate you to confront injustice.
Anxiety is like a great warning system for threats or

(32:43):
the sign that something in your life needs to change. Like,
these are all messengers, they are all crucial parts of
our emo diversity, of our emotional ecosystem. So when you
just chase constant happiness, it might actually lead you to
emotional suppression and it might actually make it hard for
you to be happy in the long term. Myth, too,

(33:04):
which is kind of similar, is when I get this,
or when I get there, or when I get that,
I will be happy. Viewing happiness as a destination. I
think we've all said it before, like, Okay, I just
need to get this promotion, and then I'll be super
happy when I get the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the partner,
Like everything's going to lock into gear for me. I

(33:25):
just need to get past this bad period at work.
I just need to fix this thing. I just need
to achieve that thing. I just need to master literally everything.
This belief, I'm going to just say it loud and clear,
is a trap, and it is a common one at
that once we get to that point that we have
put and we have fantasized about, we put so much

(33:45):
of our promise for the future in the goalpost just
moves further and moves further and further and further, and
we have this thing that we've so desired, and we've
realized that we've placed a lot of our bet on
this thing making life better. Meanwhile, the foundation around it

(34:05):
is not there for us to actually be happy. This concept,
it's known as hedonic adaptation. Basically, we get used to
both positive and negative circumstances. So even if a really
great thing happens to you, it still doesn't always feel
like it means a lot long term, and you basically
get used to the happiness that initially elicited. So this

(34:29):
concept was first proposed by the psychologist Donald Campbell Philip Brickman,
I think in like the nineteen seventies, and the basis
for this concept was a really famous study on lottery
winners and accident victims, two sides of the spectrum, and
they found that, you know, whilst the lottery winners experienced

(34:53):
this like initial surgeon happiness and accident victims experienced a
deep drop in their well being, over time, both groups
tended to return to their original happiness baseline, that same
happiness set point that we mentioned earlier. Our brains, they
have this remarkable ability to adapt to new circumstances. Both

(35:14):
good and bad, which is a great thing. You know.
It also means that when terrible things happen, hopefully a
lot of people can rebound. So, you know, whilst achieving
a goal might give you a great rush, would you
quickly get used to it and we start looking for
the next thing to make us happy, the new car,
the new fancy gadget, the new relationship. Yeah, it feels

(35:35):
amazing at first. The novelty then wears off. You know,
I always use the analogy of like getting a new
piece of clothing and being like, yes, finally my closet
is complete. Do you ever have this feeling where you're like, oh, yes,
finally I don't need to buy any more clothes. I
have everything I need, everything that I thought the best
wardrobe would have, and then, like you wear it a

(35:57):
few times, you get sick, give the next piece and
you're like, oh god, I don't have any clothes. Like.
I know, it's a silly analogy, but that's the same
thing that's happening here. Obviously, that doesn't mean like give
up on working towards things you want or achieving goals,
or you know, giving yourself a sweet treat or like
a fun little prize every now and again, not at all.

(36:19):
Like these are all important contributions, but they are not
the foundation, and they cannot be happiness as only sustenance.
It's like when you only focus on the external stuff.
It's like trying to build a house by starting with
the decorations or starting with the wallpaper or the furniture,
when you don't even have the walls yet. It is
a much more internal experience or a daily habit than

(36:42):
a one off and that's probably counted to what we've
been taught. But it's important that we know that. Now.
I mentioned lottery winners before. They actually come up quite
a bit when people research happiness. As it turns out,
especially when people want to answer this question, does money
make us happier? Well, I don't know if you already
know the answer. You may or may not, but you

(37:03):
may not know all the research behind the answer. So
stay with us. We're going to talk about that and
so much more in just a second. So we're breaking
down some of the myths of happiness, which brings us
to one of the most significant, which is myth three

(37:25):
money will make me happier. We've all heard that phrase
like money can't buy you happiness or money can buy
you happiness. I don't know which way you're hearing it,
but which one of those is true. So what you
need to know if you want to answer this question
is you need to know of a very famous twenty
ten study done by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Cayman and

(37:49):
Angus Steeton from Princeton Princeton University. I was gonna say Columbia,
but from Princeton University, which basically they wanted to answer
this question. They wanted to really just like for once
and for all, investigate this, give us a clear answer.
And what they found was that emotional wellbeing does tend
to rise with income up until a point, and that

(38:12):
point in the year twenty ten was seventy five thousand
dollars a year in the US, which is about one
hundred and ten thousand dollars now when we calculate for inflation.
Beyond that point, more money didn't seem to make a
significant difference to people's daily feelings of happiness. This is
because having enough money to meet our basic needs and

(38:34):
to live comfortably without the stress of bills and financial
insecurity that initially has a huge life changing impact on
our wellbeing. I was actually listening to the comedian Robbie
Hoffman talk about this the other day, freaking. I think
she is the funniest person alive. I find her absolutely hilarious.
But she grew up really, really poor. I think she

(38:54):
was like one of ten kids. And she spoke really
candidly about how well when she started making money as
a comedian and as a writer and as an actress,
like that changed her life. But she was like, you know,
I have a lot of now, I have a lot
of rich friends who have come into even more money,
and they're like, oh yeah, I didn't really experience that.
Like I was always kind of okay and kind of stable,

(39:19):
and they're like, this didn't really change anything to me,
you know, beyond the basic needs plus some fun money,
some non essentials, maybe some travel money cannot alleviate the
problems that were already there, especially for people who were
already struggling. A more recent twenty eighteen study actually adds
a fascinating nuance to this. They found that whilst people

(39:41):
with higher incomes tend to experience more positive emotions centered
on themselves, like pride or as sense of accomplishment, lower
income people are more likely to experience more positive emotions
related to others, like love and compassion. In this paper,
it was published in the journal Emotion. These researchers concluded,

(40:05):
and I quote, what seems to be the case is
that your wealth predisposes you to different kinds of happiness.
Whilst wealthy individuals may find greater positivity in their accomplishments, status,
and individual achievements, less wealthy individuals seem to find more
positivity and happiness in their relationships, their ability to care

(40:25):
for an ability to connect to others, which to me,
I don't know about you, that sounds like a much
more enriching and sustainable source of happiness. It's gonna I know,
I'm sorry it's gonna sound cliche, but what is the
point of an accomplishment if you don't have anyone to
share it with. I felt this like when I published
my book, right, Yeah, it was great publishing a book,

(40:47):
and I felt such a sense of pride. But then
I got to do this whole big party with like
my friends and my family and the people who had
helped me and done such amazing things to support me
whilst I was doing that. That was like the best
day of my life. Like that was amazing that I
got to you know, do that with them and got
to like have an open bar and like shout some

(41:09):
drinks and eat cake with them, and you know, that
was more meaningful than the individual accomplishment of it all.
I will say. The thing is is that money may
not buy happiness to play Devil's advocate. It does buy convenience,
which may actually give you more time to be around
the people you value and to do the things that
you love, which does contribute overall to happiness. For example,

(41:32):
you know, if you can afford to buy groceries online
at that extra cost, meaning you have more time to
spend with your kids, you probably will be happier. Or
if you can uber rather than public transport, meaning you
have more time in the morning to slow down or
to get to a function early, or to like spend
time on self care, you will be happier. But at
some stage it probably also isolates you, which is why

(41:55):
I think a lot of rich people are only friends
with other rich people, And like I kind of wonder,
you know, what happened to like the people they were
friends with when they had no money or when they
were really struggling, where did those people kind of go?
It's like when people always wonder I saw this on
Instagram the other day, like when do Aleipa goes on

(42:16):
vacation with her like childhood friends, like does she pay like?
Or do they pay like? At some point, I think
money can also become something that puts puts like a
brick wall between you and other people. So if happiness
isn't about chasing money, it isn't about chasing constant pleasure,
it isn't about chasing external achievements, what can we actually

(42:39):
do to cultivate it contra, you know, counter to what
everyone's been saying would be able to help us. So
I'm gonna give you four practical, of course psychology backed
strategies that go beyond like journaling and exercise, which we
know are important to hopefully, like enrich your life in
a seriously deep way, at least I hope. So I

(43:00):
want to give you two tools for now and two
tools for the long term. Starting with my first tool,
which is to make a happiness blueprint. So my therapist
actually taught me this as a way to savor positive experiences.
When something good happens, you receive a compliment. You know,

(43:21):
you watch a really beautiful sunset, you have like a
really amazing like apperol sprits like you, I don't know,
meet a really cute shelter dog, Like, don't just let
it pass. Pause for a moment, like consciously focus on
the sensory details and the feelings that this moment evokes.

(43:41):
You can, you know, share that experience with someone else.
You can write it down on your notes app if
you follow me on Instagram. You know, I do this
thing called a smile file where every month, like I
take photos of things that make me smile, and I
just put them into an app on my phone and
then sometimes I'll share them. You can even just like
simply read it in your mind. This act of savoring

(44:02):
helps your brain cement the positive memory and extract maximum
joy from that moment. Research has shown that people who
regularly savor positive experiences like the first bite of a
dessert kind of like that, Like, they report high levels
of happiness lower levels of depression. From this moment of savoring,

(44:24):
your mind and your body then know what it means
and what it actually feels like to be happy, rather
than happiness just being like this fleeting thing that you
don't concentrate on this is your happiness blueprint. And you
know in times of stress, when you're upset, when you're
fighting with someone, when you're uneasy, you can actually take
that moment and cast your mind back and just center

(44:47):
in that sensory experience. You can actually revisit those feelings.
They're more accessible to you. It's like when you smell
a perfume from like that holiday that you went on,
and like you're immediately brought back there. Listen to a
song and it brings you back, even if you can't
physically be in that position where that memory took place,
if you have saved it and if you have solidified

(45:07):
it in your memory, you can return to that feeling deliberately. Next,
let's focus more on how we can make happiness a
shared emotion rather than a solitary practice by really engaging
it active constructive responding. So when someone you really care about,
your friend, your mom, your boyfriend, I don't know, a

(45:29):
colleague you really like shares a piece of good news
with you, take a second to think about how you respond.
There is a psychologist. Her name is Shelly Gable, and
she has done all this research on close relationships, and
she's found four common responses that people will have to
good news active constructive, passive, constructive, active, destructive, and passive destructive.

(45:53):
Most of us, even with good intentions, we fall into
the passive constructive category. Your friends are oh, my god,
like I had this really great day at work, and
you're like, oh, that's so cool, that's great, and then
you that's it, and that friend like kind of feels
a little bit shut down. In contrast, active constructive is
responding like that thing happened to you. Instead of just

(46:17):
saying congrats, you'd be like, that's amazing, like tell me everything,
you know, what was it? Like, what happened? What did
your boss say? Then? How should we celebrate? You know,
when you enthusiastically engage with someone else's good news, it
creates a really powerful feedback loop of shared positive emotion.
The active celebration makes the other person feel validated and

(46:39):
seeing that's a that's a total win, and that in
turns amplifies like the joy for you as well. It's
like a process called capitalization actually, and the research confirms
enthusiastic responses make both people happier. The way that I
think about it is like a tennis ball that gets

(47:00):
like faster and faster and faster. It's like you hit
it back and forth between two people, like it's like,
oh my god, the speed it's like going up, and
like everyone's excited and it's magnifying this like experience rather
than just like one person hitting it and it like
goes really fast for a second and then it just
like kind of bounces away and you have to do
that thing where you chase the ball. If you've ever
watched Challenges, there is like one scene, well the scene

(47:23):
the scene of that movie that is exactly how I
imagine this process of emotional capitalization. So next are two
tips for the longer term. I'm kind of liking this,
Like this happiness is a shared emotion theme we have
going on, So we're gonna keep that going and talk
about the benefits of pro social spending. We have obviously

(47:48):
debunked the myth that money can buy true happiness, but
research does suggest that how you spend your money can
significantly impact your well being. There was a serious of
studies done a couple of years ago by Elizabeth Dunn.
They were published in the journal Science magazine, and basically
they said that it's not having money that makes you happier.

(48:12):
How you spend it is really like that's the kicker.
And they introduced this concept of pro social spending. Basically,
they found that individuals who were randomly assigned to spend
a small amount of money on others walked out of
that experiment feeling a lot happier than those who, you know,
just spent the money on themselves. This finding has also

(48:33):
been replicated across various cultures, across various income levels, across
various genders and ages. It's not about spending tons of
money on lavish gifts or giving away all your money
to charity. It's about buying a friend of coffee, you know,
shouting around a drinks on a Friday, donating to charity,
buying like a small trinket for your sister or your

(48:56):
for your mother because it made you think of them,
or you know, leaving just like a little bit of
an extra generous tip. Spending money on others consistently activates
the brain's reward centers, producing this like warm glow of giving.
And I think you know what I'm talking about. Pro
social spending also strengthens our social bonds. It gives us

(49:17):
a sense of identity as a kind and a generous person.
It makes our relationships stronger, all key ingredients for lasting happiness.
An important caveat here, though, as much as we love
pro social spending, if you're going to engage in this like,
please just make sure it's within your means. Like if
it's going to lead to financial struggle, it's obviously going

(49:39):
to have the opposite effect. And also crucially, don't do
it with the thought that you want something in return,
because that will actually create a lot of resentment. This
is something my mum has said to me since I
was a child. If you are going to do something nice,
the nicest part of that act is not expecting any

(50:00):
thing in return. You've got to just do it because
you want to. And they could never pay you back
and never do anything in response. That's fine, that's fine. Finally,
our final tip for happiness is to cultivate a coherent
narrative for your life. Make a story of your life.

(50:21):
Our brains love stories, and the story we tell ourselves
about our happiness and about our resilience and about you know,
the journey of it all is incredibly important. The practice
of like cultivating a narrative. Essentially, it means that we
look at our experiences and we intentionally reflect on perhaps
why this is not just a series of random events,

(50:43):
but all of this contains meaning and everything, even the
hard things had to happen. Now, it's not saying that
everything happens for a reason. It's saying that things happen,
and then I can apply a reason, and I can
apply a kind of journey map those experiences. A bunch
of researchers have looked into this. A bunch of them

(51:04):
have found that when you help or encourage people to
see their life as kind of a bit of a
story with different chapters, or to see their life containing
all the positive and negative things as going somewhere and
as having meaning, and all those moments as being important
even if they sucked, they do feel happier, and they're

(51:28):
able to reframe moments of adversity not as like random tragedies,
but as really pivotal turning points that help them return
to a sense of agency and make them feel like
they have control. You give your life a sense of meaning,
You give your life a sense of purpose. If we're
going to return all the way back to that initial

(51:48):
model of happiness the perma model. Those are two really
foundational things that I think a lot of us have
kind of lost as we've become less religious and less spiritual,
and we've noticed that impact. We've noticed that when you
don't have a sense of meaning or coherence to your life,
it all feels kind of random. It feels harder to
feel happy about your circumstances. So that is my final

(52:13):
final tip. Ultimately, like to wrap the episode up, I
think the biggest conclusion you can take away is that
science tells us that happiness is It's gonna sound so cheesy.
I'm sorry, bear with me, but it's not the destination.
It's the journey. I'm sorry, I know it's so cheesy.
And it's also not about having happiness all the time.
It's about savoring it when you do. And you know,

(52:35):
for my twenty something listeners, which is probably all of you,
it's okay if these are not your happiest years, Like
I've definitely had some freaking dark times in my twenties,
which are well documented on the podcast. So if you're
really struggling at the moment and thinking like this is it,
this is the happiness drop off. They all talk about

(52:56):
firmly and resoundingly that is not the case, not at all.
This is a hard period of life because you don't
have as many emotional and financial resources that you will
hopefully have the older you get, and a lot of
it will get easier. You will gain coping skills, and
a lot of it is again just part of the story.

(53:17):
It's part of the story of gaining resilience. It's part
of the story of reconnecting with real happiness. And you
know that's the thing about happiness. I can give you
all the psychological strategies and tips and research and whatever,
happiness is just sometimes so fricking random, and it just
like shows up on a Wednesday night and just shows

(53:39):
its face and it's like, oh hey, and you just
suddenly feel great, or like it just randomly shows up
on a Saturday evening or a Saturday morning and you
didn't do anything differently, you didn't plan for it, and
it's just there. So like, hold out for those moments,
like hold out for those glimmers, right, because they do
come around, and when they do, savor it. Like I
had this amazing day the other day and just super

(54:03):
random did not set out to have a great day
it just happened, and I was like, oh my god,
I've got to really make sure that I remember this.
And you know, it was helpful to like return to
it in the kind of weeks to have follow and
be like, yeah, my god, I'm excited for another day
like that, And isn't it such a nice surprise? Like
I'm not sure when it's gonna come, but I know
it is. So that's kind of my final message for
today's episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I

(54:25):
really hope that it's contributed something to your knowledge and
to your sense of meaning in life. If you have
made it this far, leave a TV show of recommendation
down below, like the happiest TV show that you know
that you always watch when you're in a bad note,
Like if we're talking about intentional tips for happiness. Anytime
I'm unhappy, I always watch Modern Family. I love that show.

(54:48):
What is your Modern Family? Maybe it is Modern Family?
What is your show that you think everyone should watch
that always brings your joy. I can't wait to read
some of your responses. I need a new TV show.
I can't rewatch Modern Family for the tenth time. It's
getting a little bit embarrassing. I'm not like I'm not
like a teenager anymore. Like I need to move on.
With that in mind, I want to thank our beautiful researcher,

(55:08):
Libby Colbert for her contributions to this episode. I want
to remind you all to follow us on Instagram at
that Psychology Podcast to make sure that you are following
along on Spotify, Apple Podcast, the iHeartRadio app wherever you
are listening, and give us a five star review only
if you feel cold to do so. I appreciate you
listening this far, and as always, be kind, be safe,

(55:29):
be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very
soon