July 8, 2025 • 17 mins
Carl Barney wrote his new book, "The Happiness Experiment: A Revolutionary Way to Increase Happiness." 💛📘 Inside, you’ll find heartfelt stories, practical steps for happiness planning, and even a workbook to help YOU design a more joyful life. 🧠✍️ We're beyond honored to share this gem with you! "The Happiness Experiment" is out NOW-- Start planning your happiest chapter yet! 💫 Get your copy HERE!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is cool people who do cool things. I'm your host,
Ellen Kay, joined today by someone who is guaranteed to
make you happy. He's the author of The Happiness Experience.
He's Carl B.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Barney.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
This is all about people who make us feel good. Carl,
and you are one of them.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome, Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm pleased to
be here.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, it's happy. It's a happy day for us.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I loving your book, The Happiness Experiment.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Carl B. Barney.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Tell us how you came up with this title this book.
Tell me about the Happiness Experiment.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, it was a It wasn't like one of these
studies that you do in a university and you know
you're exploring some sort of a scientific project. This happened
naturally with real people with real experiences. Came from three places. One.
I almost died in a plane crash. We were diving
to the grass. That's what I thought. This is going
(00:57):
to be fun. But you'll read the book and you
find out if I lived or died.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Okay, okay, so and he lived.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
The next thing that happened was that I heard that
my sister's husband was dying and they living in England.
So I got on plane went over there and I
sat down with her and I said, Janet, I'm really
sorry you know to know about this news. We know
he's going to live forever, but just in case, I said,
you're in my will and I want to bring it
(01:24):
forward and give it to you now so that you
can fulfill any last wishes with Corlin, her husband. And
she was free. She burst into tears. She was delighted.
It was really very positive. But my older brother was
sitting there and I said, well, I'm going to do
the same thing with you. I'm going to bring your
inheritance forward and give it to you now, and he said, oh,
that's great, thank you so much. A lot bit his
(01:45):
wife went ballistic. She said, this is too much money.
I don't want anything to do with it. It's wrong, and
she stormed out of the room. So that was a
big surprise, but it gave me a lesson. And then
the next thing that happened was I'm looking over my
financial statements, and I've been very fortunate. I've made a
lot of money, but there was money sitting on my
(02:06):
financial statement which wasn't doing anything. It was just making
more money. And I didn't really want to be making
a lot more money, and I thought, how can I
use this money? And these things came together, the people
in my will after the plane crash, my sister giving
her and the inheritance, and now this money is I said,
how can I use this money for myself and those
I really cared about. So that started the experiment and
(02:30):
that just grew and it grew. I sat down with
twenty people in my will and I said, look, I'm
really grateful for what you've done for me. You've helped me,
you gave me advice, you did these things for me,
and I'm really grateful to you. And i want to
express that gratitude. So I've got you in my will.
And I told them how much and they said, well,
there's a lot of money. Thanks very much, I said,
(02:52):
but it doesn't end there. I said, I'm going to
live to about one hundred and twenty, so that may
be a problem for you. I said. The other problem
is I'll be dead when you get this money. I
won't see what happens, right, And I have the money now,
So what I'm going to do is bring it forward
and you can have it now.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Oh nice, Yeah, that's I mean that's and I just
mean nice in the way that you you get more
happiness seeing them use your money for their happiness, and
like you said, instead of you being gone from this
planet and then and then what so.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, what happened? They said? They laughed, they cried, they
did all kinds of things, said this is great, and
I said this one thing. I want to be sure
that this money supports your success and your happiness. So
I want you to give me a plan. I don't
want this money to be a problem for you. I
want you to know what you're going to do with
it when it hits your bank account. And they said, well,
what kind of plan do you want? I said, I
(03:50):
want a happiness plan and they said, it happens. What's
what's that? What's a happiness plan? So I said, I'll
get you a happiness coach. And then they created up
at this plan. Send it to me. So I see
that you're going to use this money to make your
life better and more successful, and whatever happens, then I'll
send you all the money all at one time. And
(04:11):
you don't even have to remain friends with me. I'm dead,
I'm gone. Just enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's well, you know, on a smaller scale, we give
away money one thousand dollars at a time on my show,
and we always ask them what are you going to
do with the money, and they always come up with
these things, I'm going to pay this bill and then
I've got to go buy my daughter a prom dress.
And then it's always these like this list of debts.
And then we always say to them, Okay, you just
(04:38):
won this money. This is money you just found. Can't
you do something for yourself, you know, have fun with
this money. And so then maybe they'll carve off a
few hundred of that thousand. But but it is, It
is funny when you give someone money. They don't always
think of their happiness first.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
No, they don't, and they can get confused, specially if
it's a lot of money. You know, we all hear
about lottery winners and it destroys them.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yes, they do. Any problems.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, So I didn't want to do that. I said,
I want a thoughtful plan for you. Talk to your spouse,
talk to your friends, talk to a coach, and figure
out what really makes you happy, What do you love,
what do you want to do with your life? What
are your dreams that you've been putting off.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And I said, think about all those things, and let
me see what you're going to do with it. That's
going to really make a big difference in your life,
I said. And then I said, you cannot spend this
money on bills. I don't want you to pay off
your mortgage. I don't want to put it into a
retirement again. I want you to do it now. And
you've got three to five years to spend all this money.
And then go, oh my god, I got to spend
that much money in three to five years. I said, yeah,
(05:43):
make a big impact with it. Yeah, and they did.
And then this is you asked me why I wrote
the book. I had no intention of writing a book
about this, but I saw what was happening with these people.
They're becoming happier, more successful, and I was HEARDing their
stories and they sent me photographs of doing great things,
traveling and going on to adventures and buying stuff. And
I saw this and I said, you know, this is
(06:05):
really working.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's contagious, it truly is it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know, the just reading your book and reading the
stories makes a person feel good, and then they'll tell
the story to someone else or someone listening to this
podcast right now, and then they'll say, oh, you got
to check out Carl on the podcast because it made
me feel so good just to hear the stories and
then to read them in your book.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, and it does. It spreads them, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That's why we that's why I love having a radio
show on a podcast, because we just open up the
lines and people can call us with these stories of
things that they could be really small or they could
be like yours, really big, but it still makes you smile.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And you know, the thing is like you're making people
smile with your show. I think that's how you could say,
you know, we make people smile. Yeah from Ellen k
And this did make it made me smile. I mean,
I love this thing. You know. I'm surrounded with happy
friends who grateful and so we have a very nice
community of friends and family. But then they extend it
(07:07):
to their family and then to their friends and so
it ripples out. Yeah, and so it was bringing a
lot of smiles to a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You're planning a lot of seeds.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It struck me your idea of prequesting is unique, and
I hope it catches on to others, because when you
said that about how you want them to spend the
money while you're still alive to see it, and you
want the plan and to share in the happiness, but
really just to give the happiness and know that they
went through with it. That's a great way for people
(07:38):
to think. I imagine a lot of people run to
their will attorneys and say, can we can we give now?
Can we rewrite this thing? Is that what you hope for?
Had you ever heard of this before you did it?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Quest? In fact, when I thought I'm going I'm going
to do these prequests, and I thought, well, what is
a prequest? And I went to the Dictionary. It's not there.
Oh okay, So I thought, well Google knows everything. So
I went to Google. It's not there either. They said
it's a rock group, and I said, that's not what
I have in mind.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You invented a movement at a word.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
It's a word that doesn't exist, and now it does exist.
And I think it's a wonderful idea, and I want
this is what I want to do. And I don't
need to make a lot of money from the book.
I'd love to sell a million copies. But what I
want to do is what you suggested, which I want
to get this idea out to the world. Two ideas. One,
the people have something a possession or money, or love
(08:29):
or time or knowledge, whatever they have that they want
to share when they're still alive, right, And yeah, it's
because so the wealthy people the people have things, use
it now for their family, their friends, so they can
see it and everybody can get to be more happy.
The other people that the experiments showed how people, ordinary
(08:50):
people increased their happiness through the Happiness coaching and then
the Happiness Plan and then they did it. And so
others can read the book and their stores and say, well,
why can't I do that, And the answer is they can.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So instead of a bequesting is the prequest. And if
you google it you won't find it, but you'll find
it in Carl's book, The Happiness Experiment, Carl Barney, and
I love that it comes with the plan. You have
the Happiness Plan included where we can actually go and
make our map of happiness. And I think it's important
(09:26):
also to have something tangible because we're all on our
phones and our computers. But I think that there's something
about a book and pages that I don't know just
makes it more real.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
You know, you're right when you we've got something tangible
the pages in front of you, and you can write there.
There's in the workbook, there's there's pages that you can
write on. And one of the things you can write
on is is your dreams list. You know, we're talking
about earlier about the American dream, which is a wonderful thing,
but we can almost have individual dreams, whatever it is.
(10:02):
And you know, you think about life where maybe I've
had all the time, all the money and all the
support and the assets that I needed, what would I
really do with my life? And you dream and this
just dreams, and you write them down and say, one
of these days, I'm going to do this. It could
be travel, it could be adventure, it could be a career,
it could be family. Whatever it is that you dream of,
(10:23):
big home, beautiful home, being a radio star. You know,
whatever it is, your dream is write it down and
then some time in your life there's going to be
an opportunity to say this dream, I can do it
this year. Yeah, I had some crazy as you had
a dream like to do skydiving and white road a rafting,
which you almost killed me. But I did that too,
and winning a gold medal in skiing an Olympics. But
(10:47):
you know, NASCAR, so, which was a big challenge for me,
and I worked at that worked, and that I got
and you what a gold medal I did, yeah, finally
and then I quit.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And you've got a gold medal.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
But at the time it was an impossible thing. I
was never was going to Yeah, But then sometime later
I thought, you know, as I get better in skiing,
and I started reading about it, and I started taking lessons,
and then one day it happened. But dreams can come true,
not immediately. Hey, yeah, but they come at the right
time you can pursue them.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I have a great story for you about Katie Perry's
going to space with Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos soon to
be wife, Gail King, and three other women, so six
women in space, first female astronaut flight. So Katie was
talking to Gail, and Katie was saying, oh, I know
this is right. There's a feather drawn on the seat
(11:35):
where I'm sitting. My mom would call me feather as
a little girl. And Gail said, well, I never thought
of going to space. And then Katie said to Gail,
you need to dream more. You need to have more dreams.
If you've never even thought about it and now you're
going but you never dreamed about it, you need more dreams.
(11:55):
And Gail King learned something that day. She was like,
you know what I do. I need to have more dreams.
I need to I need to like think like Katie,
you know, think like Carl that anything that you dream
of doing, you write it down, it'll probably happen. We
always say that on the radio too, We say say it,
put it out in the universe, and you'll achieve it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Dreams can come true, yea, and they do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Now we all know that we have to learn certain
subjects in school, and some of them are so exciting,
but maybe a few courses in happiness planning will make
us a better human race.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
You know, that's one of the most important things for
any human being to learn. What a shame that it's
not being taught in schools. I would hope that this
book may do something to encourage people to do that.
I mean, teaching happiness and it's not just something that
(12:52):
maybe happened one day and it's just gonna, you know,
come out of the sky someplace if there's a thoughtful
way of doing yet, and it starts with things that
you really want, and a dream is something you really
want badly at some time in my life. Maybe I'm
going to do this, that I'll get this and so forth.
(13:13):
But there's other kinds of wants. It's the want that
you have for purposes. This is what I want to
do with my life. You know my career purpose. I
want to be a radio star. I want to be
a movie star. I want to be a writer, I
want I want to just be a producer of documentaries
on TV. Whatever it is you want to do. Those
(13:35):
purposes really matter, and it's not just one purpose. It's
got the central purposes what you're going to do with
your life. But there's other purposes such as I want
to create a loving family. I want my children to
grow and that's an ongoing purpose. I want to be
a lifelong learner. That's another purpose. But these purposes are once,
So you've got dreams as wants, you've got purposes once,
and then there's the next thing you go down is
(13:58):
the things that you love, the indigital values. I love this,
I love that, I love this, and I'm fascinated by
those things and identifying those things and then writing them
down and then wanting them. So wanting what you want
is really important.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, what about you, Carl?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I know you. You know you write the book, the
Happiness Experiment. You give us the guide, you know, you
tell us the stories. But what are some of your
dreams that you still have an achieved or that you
want to achieve? Are they too personal or can you
share them?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I love personal questions. Okay, good, but maybe off the air.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Okay, well, cable that one.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Then.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, when these mics go off, I expect something.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So yeah, I still have dreams, and I've got a
dreams list and the three biggest dreams of my life
right now, I want it. There's the book. I'm promoting
the book. I want it to be a major seller.
I want to get the idea into the world. And
which is a dream. This is not an easy thing
to do or to create a movement. I'd love to
get into the school. I love being on your show
(15:02):
to talk about this because the idea is getting into
the world. That's number one dream. I've got a dream
to sell a million copies of the book at least.
That's where I start. The next dream I have is
making a movie of the book. Oh yeah, somebody read
the book and said, I want to make a movie
of this book. This would be great and so on.
I said, well, I didn't really thought about that. Then
(15:22):
I started to think about it. So now I'm engaging
with a movie maker, Lawrence Gray, who wrote some done
some really nice movies, and so we're working on making
a movie, which is a dream. I never had that
idea before. Yeah, but it's a dream. And the other
dream is this is a this is my big dream.
I've been involved in education most of my life, in fact,
(15:43):
all of my life in one way or another. I
love education and I love management, and I'm bringing those
two together to create now a virtual university which will
be affordable. The tuition will be low, It will be
accessible online everywhere in the world to millions of people.
I'm planning to create professors, thousands of perfect professors that
(16:09):
are patient, infinitely patient, respectful, answer your questions one on one.
You can talk to anyone in history, whether it's Socrates
or Plato, or Aristotle or Newton, Einstein or anybody or Shakespeare.
You want to speak to somebody, you can talk to
(16:29):
them one on one because have created them the images,
the picture and their tone of voice, and they will
know everything that they ever wrote, everything they ever said,
and they can talk to you about their thing and
they'll be delighted to talk to you one on one,
which is so very effective. So thousands of professors, hundreds
of different programs, million, tens of millions of students all
(16:53):
over the world. And that's a dream. That's an impossible dream.
But I've been working on that for the last year
and a half. I've got I'd love to send you
some of the visuals.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, I'd love to see them.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes they look human, they sound human, they sound real,
but they're very knowledgeable too.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, that's that's a great dream. I mean, all your
dreams are great, and look they're coming true. You've you've
you've already written the book, you're working on the movie,
and you're working on your your worldwide campus, so to speak,
virtual university.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It's called incident, it's called ex Global University.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Okay, x GU nice x GU.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Carl Barney, it's so nice to meet you and have
you here. I already feel happier.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Well, that makes me happy too.
This is cool people who do cool things. I'm your host,
Ellen Kay, joined today by someone who is guaranteed to
make you happy. He's the author of The Happiness Experience.
He's Carl B.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Barney.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
This is all about people who make us feel good. Carl,
and you are one of them.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome, Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm pleased to
be here.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, it's happy. It's a happy day for us.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I loving your book, The Happiness Experiment.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Carl B. Barney.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Tell us how you came up with this title this book.
Tell me about the Happiness Experiment.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, it was a It wasn't like one of these
studies that you do in a university and you know
you're exploring some sort of a scientific project. This happened
naturally with real people with real experiences. Came from three places. One.
I almost died in a plane crash. We were diving
to the grass. That's what I thought. This is going
(00:57):
to be fun. But you'll read the book and you
find out if I lived or died.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Okay, okay, so and he lived.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
The next thing that happened was that I heard that
my sister's husband was dying and they living in England.
So I got on plane went over there and I
sat down with her and I said, Janet, I'm really
sorry you know to know about this news. We know
he's going to live forever, but just in case, I said,
you're in my will and I want to bring it
(01:24):
forward and give it to you now so that you
can fulfill any last wishes with Corlin, her husband. And
she was free. She burst into tears. She was delighted.
It was really very positive. But my older brother was
sitting there and I said, well, I'm going to do
the same thing with you. I'm going to bring your
inheritance forward and give it to you now, and he said, oh,
that's great, thank you so much. A lot bit his
(01:45):
wife went ballistic. She said, this is too much money.
I don't want anything to do with it. It's wrong, and
she stormed out of the room. So that was a
big surprise, but it gave me a lesson. And then
the next thing that happened was I'm looking over my
financial statements, and I've been very fortunate. I've made a
lot of money, but there was money sitting on my
(02:06):
financial statement which wasn't doing anything. It was just making
more money. And I didn't really want to be making
a lot more money, and I thought, how can I
use this money? And these things came together, the people
in my will after the plane crash, my sister giving
her and the inheritance, and now this money is I said,
how can I use this money for myself and those
I really cared about. So that started the experiment and
(02:30):
that just grew and it grew. I sat down with
twenty people in my will and I said, look, I'm
really grateful for what you've done for me. You've helped me,
you gave me advice, you did these things for me,
and I'm really grateful to you. And i want to
express that gratitude. So I've got you in my will.
And I told them how much and they said, well,
there's a lot of money. Thanks very much, I said,
(02:52):
but it doesn't end there. I said, I'm going to
live to about one hundred and twenty, so that may
be a problem for you. I said. The other problem
is I'll be dead when you get this money. I
won't see what happens, right, And I have the money now,
So what I'm going to do is bring it forward
and you can have it now.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Oh nice, Yeah, that's I mean that's and I just
mean nice in the way that you you get more
happiness seeing them use your money for their happiness, and
like you said, instead of you being gone from this
planet and then and then what so.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, what happened? They said? They laughed, they cried, they
did all kinds of things, said this is great, and
I said this one thing. I want to be sure
that this money supports your success and your happiness. So
I want you to give me a plan. I don't
want this money to be a problem for you. I
want you to know what you're going to do with
it when it hits your bank account. And they said, well,
what kind of plan do you want? I said, I
(03:50):
want a happiness plan and they said, it happens. What's
what's that? What's a happiness plan? So I said, I'll
get you a happiness coach. And then they created up
at this plan. Send it to me. So I see
that you're going to use this money to make your
life better and more successful, and whatever happens, then I'll
send you all the money all at one time. And
(04:11):
you don't even have to remain friends with me. I'm dead,
I'm gone. Just enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's well, you know, on a smaller scale, we give
away money one thousand dollars at a time on my show,
and we always ask them what are you going to
do with the money, and they always come up with
these things, I'm going to pay this bill and then
I've got to go buy my daughter a prom dress.
And then it's always these like this list of debts.
And then we always say to them, Okay, you just
(04:38):
won this money. This is money you just found. Can't
you do something for yourself, you know, have fun with
this money. And so then maybe they'll carve off a
few hundred of that thousand. But but it is, It
is funny when you give someone money. They don't always
think of their happiness first.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
No, they don't, and they can get confused, specially if
it's a lot of money. You know, we all hear
about lottery winners and it destroys them.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yes, they do. Any problems.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, So I didn't want to do that. I said,
I want a thoughtful plan for you. Talk to your spouse,
talk to your friends, talk to a coach, and figure
out what really makes you happy, What do you love,
what do you want to do with your life? What
are your dreams that you've been putting off.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And I said, think about all those things, and let
me see what you're going to do with it. That's
going to really make a big difference in your life,
I said. And then I said, you cannot spend this
money on bills. I don't want you to pay off
your mortgage. I don't want to put it into a
retirement again. I want you to do it now. And
you've got three to five years to spend all this money.
And then go, oh my god, I got to spend
that much money in three to five years. I said, yeah,
(05:43):
make a big impact with it. Yeah, and they did.
And then this is you asked me why I wrote
the book. I had no intention of writing a book
about this, but I saw what was happening with these people.
They're becoming happier, more successful, and I was HEARDing their
stories and they sent me photographs of doing great things,
traveling and going on to adventures and buying stuff. And
I saw this and I said, you know, this is
(06:05):
really working.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's contagious, it truly is it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know, the just reading your book and reading the
stories makes a person feel good, and then they'll tell
the story to someone else or someone listening to this
podcast right now, and then they'll say, oh, you got
to check out Carl on the podcast because it made
me feel so good just to hear the stories and
then to read them in your book.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, and it does. It spreads them, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That's why we that's why I love having a radio
show on a podcast, because we just open up the
lines and people can call us with these stories of
things that they could be really small or they could
be like yours, really big, but it still makes you smile.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And you know, the thing is like you're making people
smile with your show. I think that's how you could say,
you know, we make people smile. Yeah from Ellen k
And this did make it made me smile. I mean,
I love this thing. You know. I'm surrounded with happy
friends who grateful and so we have a very nice
community of friends and family. But then they extend it
(07:07):
to their family and then to their friends and so
it ripples out. Yeah, and so it was bringing a
lot of smiles to a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You're planning a lot of seeds.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It struck me your idea of prequesting is unique, and
I hope it catches on to others, because when you
said that about how you want them to spend the
money while you're still alive to see it, and you
want the plan and to share in the happiness, but
really just to give the happiness and know that they
went through with it. That's a great way for people
(07:38):
to think. I imagine a lot of people run to
their will attorneys and say, can we can we give now?
Can we rewrite this thing? Is that what you hope for?
Had you ever heard of this before you did it?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Quest? In fact, when I thought I'm going I'm going
to do these prequests, and I thought, well, what is
a prequest? And I went to the Dictionary. It's not there.
Oh okay, So I thought, well Google knows everything. So
I went to Google. It's not there either. They said
it's a rock group, and I said, that's not what
I have in mind.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You invented a movement at a word.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
It's a word that doesn't exist, and now it does exist.
And I think it's a wonderful idea, and I want
this is what I want to do. And I don't
need to make a lot of money from the book.
I'd love to sell a million copies. But what I
want to do is what you suggested, which I want
to get this idea out to the world. Two ideas. One,
the people have something a possession or money, or love
(08:29):
or time or knowledge, whatever they have that they want
to share when they're still alive, right, And yeah, it's
because so the wealthy people the people have things, use
it now for their family, their friends, so they can
see it and everybody can get to be more happy.
The other people that the experiments showed how people, ordinary
(08:50):
people increased their happiness through the Happiness coaching and then
the Happiness Plan and then they did it. And so
others can read the book and their stores and say, well,
why can't I do that, And the answer is they can.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So instead of a bequesting is the prequest. And if
you google it you won't find it, but you'll find
it in Carl's book, The Happiness Experiment, Carl Barney, and
I love that it comes with the plan. You have
the Happiness Plan included where we can actually go and
make our map of happiness. And I think it's important
(09:26):
also to have something tangible because we're all on our
phones and our computers. But I think that there's something
about a book and pages that I don't know just
makes it more real.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
You know, you're right when you we've got something tangible
the pages in front of you, and you can write there.
There's in the workbook, there's there's pages that you can
write on. And one of the things you can write
on is is your dreams list. You know, we're talking
about earlier about the American dream, which is a wonderful thing,
but we can almost have individual dreams, whatever it is.
(10:02):
And you know, you think about life where maybe I've
had all the time, all the money and all the
support and the assets that I needed, what would I
really do with my life? And you dream and this
just dreams, and you write them down and say, one
of these days, I'm going to do this. It could
be travel, it could be adventure, it could be a career,
it could be family. Whatever it is that you dream of,
(10:23):
big home, beautiful home, being a radio star. You know,
whatever it is, your dream is write it down and
then some time in your life there's going to be
an opportunity to say this dream, I can do it
this year. Yeah, I had some crazy as you had
a dream like to do skydiving and white road a rafting,
which you almost killed me. But I did that too,
and winning a gold medal in skiing an Olympics. But
(10:47):
you know, NASCAR, so, which was a big challenge for me,
and I worked at that worked, and that I got
and you what a gold medal I did, yeah, finally
and then I quit.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And you've got a gold medal.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
But at the time it was an impossible thing. I
was never was going to Yeah, But then sometime later
I thought, you know, as I get better in skiing,
and I started reading about it, and I started taking lessons,
and then one day it happened. But dreams can come true,
not immediately. Hey, yeah, but they come at the right
time you can pursue them.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I have a great story for you about Katie Perry's
going to space with Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos soon to
be wife, Gail King, and three other women, so six
women in space, first female astronaut flight. So Katie was
talking to Gail, and Katie was saying, oh, I know
this is right. There's a feather drawn on the seat
(11:35):
where I'm sitting. My mom would call me feather as
a little girl. And Gail said, well, I never thought
of going to space. And then Katie said to Gail,
you need to dream more. You need to have more dreams.
If you've never even thought about it and now you're
going but you never dreamed about it, you need more dreams.
(11:55):
And Gail King learned something that day. She was like,
you know what I do. I need to have more dreams.
I need to I need to like think like Katie,
you know, think like Carl that anything that you dream
of doing, you write it down, it'll probably happen. We
always say that on the radio too, We say say it,
put it out in the universe, and you'll achieve it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Dreams can come true, yea, and they do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Now we all know that we have to learn certain
subjects in school, and some of them are so exciting,
but maybe a few courses in happiness planning will make
us a better human race.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
You know, that's one of the most important things for
any human being to learn. What a shame that it's
not being taught in schools. I would hope that this
book may do something to encourage people to do that.
I mean, teaching happiness and it's not just something that
(12:52):
maybe happened one day and it's just gonna, you know,
come out of the sky someplace if there's a thoughtful
way of doing yet, and it starts with things that
you really want, and a dream is something you really
want badly at some time in my life. Maybe I'm
going to do this, that I'll get this and so forth.
(13:13):
But there's other kinds of wants. It's the want that
you have for purposes. This is what I want to
do with my life. You know my career purpose. I
want to be a radio star. I want to be
a movie star. I want to be a writer, I
want I want to just be a producer of documentaries
on TV. Whatever it is you want to do. Those
(13:35):
purposes really matter, and it's not just one purpose. It's
got the central purposes what you're going to do with
your life. But there's other purposes such as I want
to create a loving family. I want my children to
grow and that's an ongoing purpose. I want to be
a lifelong learner. That's another purpose. But these purposes are once,
So you've got dreams as wants, you've got purposes once,
and then there's the next thing you go down is
(13:58):
the things that you love, the indigital values. I love this,
I love that, I love this, and I'm fascinated by
those things and identifying those things and then writing them
down and then wanting them. So wanting what you want
is really important.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, what about you, Carl?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I know you. You know you write the book, the
Happiness Experiment. You give us the guide, you know, you
tell us the stories. But what are some of your
dreams that you still have an achieved or that you
want to achieve? Are they too personal or can you
share them?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I love personal questions. Okay, good, but maybe off the air.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Okay, well, cable that one.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Then.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, when these mics go off, I expect something.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So yeah, I still have dreams, and I've got a
dreams list and the three biggest dreams of my life
right now, I want it. There's the book. I'm promoting
the book. I want it to be a major seller.
I want to get the idea into the world. And
which is a dream. This is not an easy thing
to do or to create a movement. I'd love to
get into the school. I love being on your show
(15:02):
to talk about this because the idea is getting into
the world. That's number one dream. I've got a dream
to sell a million copies of the book at least.
That's where I start. The next dream I have is
making a movie of the book. Oh yeah, somebody read
the book and said, I want to make a movie
of this book. This would be great and so on.
I said, well, I didn't really thought about that. Then
(15:22):
I started to think about it. So now I'm engaging
with a movie maker, Lawrence Gray, who wrote some done
some really nice movies, and so we're working on making
a movie, which is a dream. I never had that
idea before. Yeah, but it's a dream. And the other
dream is this is a this is my big dream.
I've been involved in education most of my life, in fact,
(15:43):
all of my life in one way or another. I
love education and I love management, and I'm bringing those
two together to create now a virtual university which will
be affordable. The tuition will be low, It will be
accessible online everywhere in the world to millions of people.
I'm planning to create professors, thousands of perfect professors that
(16:09):
are patient, infinitely patient, respectful, answer your questions one on one.
You can talk to anyone in history, whether it's Socrates
or Plato, or Aristotle or Newton, Einstein or anybody or Shakespeare.
You want to speak to somebody, you can talk to
(16:29):
them one on one because have created them the images,
the picture and their tone of voice, and they will
know everything that they ever wrote, everything they ever said,
and they can talk to you about their thing and
they'll be delighted to talk to you one on one,
which is so very effective. So thousands of professors, hundreds
of different programs, million, tens of millions of students all
(16:53):
over the world. And that's a dream. That's an impossible dream.
But I've been working on that for the last year
and a half. I've got I'd love to send you
some of the visuals.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, I'd love to see them.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes they look human, they sound human, they sound real,
but they're very knowledgeable too.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, that's that's a great dream. I mean, all your
dreams are great, and look they're coming true. You've you've
you've already written the book, you're working on the movie,
and you're working on your your worldwide campus, so to speak,
virtual university.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It's called incident, it's called ex Global University.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Okay, x GU nice x GU.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Carl Barney, it's so nice to meet you and have
you here. I already feel happier.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Well, that makes me happy too.
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