The Skills of Being Happier, with Happiness Researcher and Expert Declan Edwards

Could it be that happiness isn't the product of success, but the other way around? According to happiness researcher and happiness coach Declan Edwards, that's exactly the case - and there are many simple and powerful things we can do today to approach a happier life directly.

In this chat, Declan reveals:

• The truest definitions of happiness
• The most important skills we can practice to be happier every day
• How the benefits of being happier are even greater than you realise

Find more from Declan in his podcast 'How to be Happy' and through B U Happiness College.

For more from Osher, including links to both his books, tickets to Story Club and more, head here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In life.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
We're going to a moment where we film minus ten
all the way through to plus ten as a well
being spectrum. There's a hell of a lot more to
life than just feeling okay. The goal is how do
we feel like we're fulfilled? How do we feel like
we are happy? How do we feel like we're contributing
to others? How do we look back on our life
and go, yeah, that was a life worth living?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Good?

Speaker 4 (00:24):
Thanks for listening to the show. This is Better than Yesterday.
Useful tools and useful conversations to help make your day
to day better than yesterday every single weeks in twenty thirteen.
Min name is washing Ginsburg. I'm glad you're here today.
Got a question for you. How do you define happiness?
What are you doing in your life to try.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
To get more of it? To pursue it? Even? How's
that going?

Speaker 4 (00:45):
On this show we talk about a lot of ways
to empower ourselves to improve things in our lives. But
you know, whatever we're trying to work on, ultimately, we're
doing it to trying to be happier. Right, So what
if there was a way to approach being happier directly?
According to my guest today and the huge amount of
research that he's encountered.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
There absolutely is.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
Declan Edwards is a happiness researcher, a happiness coach, and
host of the podcast How to Be Happy. He's also
a founder of the BEU Happiness College. In case you
couldn't tell, his life's work is as being as clear
as he possibly can be about what makes us happy
and helping people realize that in their own lives. In
this conversation, we dive into a few very practical things

(01:28):
you can use today, including expanding what your definition of
happiness is, more productive ways to handle negative feelings that
might pop up. How the art of being happier is
made up of a certain set of skills which can
be practiced and developed and grown, the profound health impacts
of being happier, some tools to help you connect better

(01:50):
with other people, and as well as that, some of
the most important things you need to ensure your present
in your life right now, if you're to be happier
today and in the future.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
All that, and we're.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Coming up on this episode today with Declan Edwards. We're
back with Declenn at the moment. All right, let's get
on with the show. Enjoy this conversation with Declan Edwards. Well,
it's a beautiful day that you join us here. How

(02:23):
do you do today, Declon, I'm doing well.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
How do you end up as someone who researches happiness?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, I mean it's a career path that definitely wasn't
offered to me in high school, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
No, it was you're going to be in doctors or lawyers. Well,
the rest of you's going to build their houses. That's
pretty much it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Or for me it was, hey, you seem to write
somewhat relatively better than we were expecting.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Go to university and do journalism.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
So that was my start, was going to study journalism
and then being explicitly told that I was writing too
much good news and if I ever wanted to have
a serious career as a journalist, I needed to memorize
the saying, if it bleeds, it leads, otherwise I'd never
be respected in the field. So found myself questioning, do
I really want to do that for the rest of

(03:07):
my life? Is sort of exacerbating all the challenges of
humanity and shining a light on all the negatives of
the world. But I want to do something else and
decide I want to do something else, So off I
went to study a Bachelor of health and then had
no idea what to do with that because I wasn't
actually qualified at the end as either a physio or
a doctor or a dietitian. It was just this underlying
you know stuff about health. Now, I went, cool, what

(03:28):
do I do for a job? They went, that's for
you to figure out.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
But here's a hex's dip exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, here's by that point, thirty or forty thousand dollars
a debt can have fun and very thankfully for me,
I'd come across a few people during that time that
really formative part of my early twenties that seems to
be living a life that was quite genuine and authentic.
They seem to be quite happy, and I hadn't met
that many genuinely happy people at that point.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
So you're working in journalism, of course.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
They stood out to me.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I was like, what do you know that I don't,
And the amount of them that said, well, we've learning
about happiness science. Hold up, double take here, there is
a science of happiness. Why I'm I only hearing about
this now? And I found out that there was this
field called positive psychology, dedicated to the scientific understanding of
happiness and well being and what makes life worth living
and lo and behold, I could do it as a

(04:17):
postgraduate degree if I had an undergrad in either education,
business or health.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
What do you know?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So the stars aligned, it was meant to be, and
I went, I think I'm going to go study that.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Now I'm going to be in a campus for a
little while. Long.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Where were you studying, Central Queensland University? So rocky, Well,
thankfully via correspondence, didn't have to move, which was good.
So at postgrad diploma in that, then the masters, and
then I have just next week I'll be submitting my
research proposal for eight more years of PhD work, So
I will be at a campus for a while. It's
going to be right, But I think I figured out

(04:49):
in total it's going to be twelve or thirteen years
of formalized study.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
But at the end you'll be a doctor.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
But not the kind that it's to get out of
the seat when they make the call on the plane.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, I know, the kind that if I said yes
on the plane, I would be putting a lot of
people in really bad positions.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Have you tried being happier.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Have you learned about.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Happiness correlate?

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Why don't we just focus on how bringthing and just
sort of like calm down our nervous system at the
moment everyone.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Do you remember as a younger person noticing that you
were happier than other people or.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Almost the opposite.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think I was known as a happy person, but
it was a very false and forced happiness.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
It was a I could play the role.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
I look back now and think of my early years
as being what I call now as a human chameleon.
I could be really good at being what I thought
other people wanted me to be. I was kind of
the class clown. I could fit into any group in school.
But the trade off to that was I had no
bloody clue who I was anymore. I didn't know what
mattered to me, what my values were. And one of
my first mentors and now a really close friend of mine,

(05:47):
Sebastian Terry. He said to me in passing one time, like, hey,
you've told me you want more self confidence, self esteem,
self worth, self trust. I'm like, yeah, those all sound
really good. It's cool, So who's yourself? Because they all
start with the same way for a reason.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
What does he know he's got two first names?

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And I went, I don't know how to answer this.
This is a big question to ask.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
I think at the time I was like nineteen or twenty,
I was like, that's a big question to ask.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
When you started learning about the science of happiness, what
for you was the most like, oh, O, course kind
of thing that you kind of discovered.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
The biggest one early on was the recognition that happiness
is not necessarily the automatic outcome of success or accomplishment.
I think for myself, I was very much raised and
I see a lot of people now in the belief
of we call it in the research the hedonic treadmill
or the I'll be happy when trap, but anything you
want after it. I'll be happy when I get to

(06:39):
pay your rise, change jobs, lose weights, move house, anything.
So we're always chasing happiness around next accomplishment, and we
get there and we enjoy it for a moment or two,
if at all, and then we sat the next benchmark
and I had realized that I'd spent many years chasing
happiness in the pursuit of happiness, but I'm actually experiencing
it now. And that was a big realization away up call,

(07:00):
and so to dive into some of the research on
that and go, well, hang on, it actually seems to
be the opposite that when people learn how to manage
their mind and emotions a bit more effectively, when people
learn how to form stronger relationships with others, when people
learn all these other things that are associated with happiness,
they tend to be more successful long term as well,
Like success is perhaps actually better pursued as an outcome
of happiness rather than the other like around.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
I did a whole podcast about the hedonic treadmill, called
it When I then I just identifying it to myself. Ah,
you know, like, oh, I've got better when I then
I hear how do I deal with that? So if
people recognize that, we should probably you know, get a
bit of definition here. I understand what sadness feels like,
and I understand what happiness feels like, and I am
wired to want one more than the other.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
What are we actually talking about when we're talking about happiness?

Speaker 2 (07:47):
So when I talk about happiness, and when a lot
of researchers and happiness scientists talk about it, we talk
about it more as an emotional umbrella term. So rather
than thinking of happiness just as pleasure or like dopamine
driven joy, which is when you talk in Western context
in Australia, UK US and you say what is happiness,
people tend to think of this really fleeting feeling goes
up really quickly, drops down really quickly. That's true, there

(08:09):
are a bunch of feelings that would sit under that category.
But there's also a bunch of feelings like contentment, like meaning,
like purpose, like calm, like serenity. These are also feelings
that would sit under that emotional umbrella of happiness. So
there's a great resource called the feelings will. Like Gloria
Wilcox in the seventies was the first put it forward.
It kind of has seven primary emotions in the middle,
and you work your way outwards, and so a great

(08:30):
tool to learn emotional complexity and learn emotional nuance and
be able to describe our emotions more effectively. There's one
part of that WHILL that's just dedicated to here are
the ones that feel nice, and therefore our brain wants
them more often, but it doesn't want them as much
as it wants to avoid the ones that feel painful.
And I think that was another big realization for me
was the pursuit of happiness is actually not as strong

(08:52):
or determinant in our decisions and behaviors as the avoidance
of pain or loss. At the end of the day,
your brain doesn't give a shit if you're happy. That's
not its focus, that's not its goal. It cares that
you're alive, and so it will do some pretty creative
And I've done this before plenty of times my life.
I still do it even as a happiness researcher. It
would do some pretty creative things to avoid the potential

(09:13):
of pain or loss that might end up actually robbing
you of happiness as well.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
And possibly cause you more pain or loss.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
That you don't down the line exactly, I understand it's happening.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Avoidance is.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
It's a survival mechanism, and we if we're not aware
that we're doing, we may not realize that we're making
such a short term decision which is going to trap
us in a cul de sack, and then now we're cracky.
We're here again. I didn't realize. I don't know why.
I don't know what to do. I'll go out here
to turn right, turn right, turn right to right. Oh,
I'm here again.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
We might not realize it was stuck in that.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
If we do find ourselves in that space, is happiness
the antidote to that.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
I think cultivating happiness in a broader perspective is the
inswert to that. So again, if we over rely on
joy or pleasure as our approach to happiness, it's unrealistic
to say that those feelings are going to exist in
every experience in life. I would never go to someone
who is going through a moment of deep grief and say, hey,
the goal right now is to cultivate joy. Like ah,

(10:14):
what a deeply dehumanizing thing to do, and like invalidating
thing about someone's experience.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Leave me a learn Marie condover.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Right exactly like get out of here. But if we
expand our definition of happiness to go, well, hang on,
there's all these other feelings like connection, for example, Well,
I know that in chapters of grief and loss, when
I've lost a loved one in my life, I've also
felt intense and beautifully deep connection to other people around
me and connection to the person that I've lost. So
when we expand our definition of happiness, we start to

(10:42):
go hang on, I can experience little bits of happiness,
almost like a you know, the silver lining on a
storm cloud example. I can find and cultivate little bits
of happiness even in parts of life that I wouldn't
have expected it. Even if I'm feeling really stressed, really overwhelmed,
really exhausted, if I'm having a moment where I'm feeling anxious,
there's are we some form of happiness still there and present.

(11:02):
It's human beings. We get to be emotionally complex. We
don't have to just feel one emotion at a time.
We get to have a I don't I don't drink,
so I call it an emotional mocktail, or rather an
emotional cocktail.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
But again, experience a blend. That's my beautiful.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
You mentioned that our brains are kind of wired to
they're basically word for our survival, to keep us safe.
That involves avoiding things that we think might cause us pain.
Happiness is only one part of what it is to
be human. That discomfort is also a part of being human,
because that you know, not necessarily all avoidance is bad.

(11:34):
We should learn from it. You know, touching the hot
plate not fun. I need to learn from this, and
you know I've made a poor decision and I broke
someone's heart. Now they're looking at me and crying, Oh well,
what was happening?

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Now?

Speaker 4 (11:47):
What's this feeling inside me? You know, you know it
helps us, informs our choices. What's the idea about, you know,
how happiness balances out with the rest of these feelings
that make us human.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, so I don't believe in the concept of good
and bad emotions. I think we've entered a bit of
an error on Instagram and TikTok almost of like toxic
positivity of you know, just find gratitude everywhere. I'm like, look, yes,
gratitude is a good practice, But to your point, all
these other emotions are also valuable. They're trying to tell
us something. I'm much more of a fan and maybe
an oversimplification of how complex our emotions are. But I

(12:21):
like the approach of we have the emotions that would
fit under the happiness umbrella term, and we have the
emotions that would sit maybe more under the challenging the term,
Like they're challenging to sit with, they're challenging to wade
through and to unpack and explore. And this brings me
back to I don't know if you've come across a
Victor Frankel's work, The Man's Search for Meaning. Yes, so
great great man, great research, great contributor to our understanding

(12:44):
of the psyche and the human experience. But he's got
these great quote that says, challenge without meaning is suffering,
but challenge with meaning is growth. And so for me,
if I go, well, at the moment I'm meeting a
challenging feeling, be it regret, sadness, sorrow, anxiety, whatever it
may be, overwhelm if I can find meaning in that

(13:05):
challenging feeling, either by being curious about it and going, well,
what might I be trying to tell me? What's the
lesson here? What do I need to hear from this right?
Or by just allowing myself to feel and experience it.
Sometimes I don't even need to make sense of it.
I don't need to hyper rationalize my feelings. I can
just experience them and go, oh, turns out I just
had to feel it. It would pass. I need to stop
wrestling with it so much. If I can just meet

(13:25):
it with that sort of curiosity rather than judgment, rather
than labeling it as bad, If I can find that
the meaning in the challenge allows me to live a
much richer life. Even when those happy feelings under the
happiness un brother term aren't the primary feeling at the time,
they're still there. There's a silver lining they might be
the primary ones. The primary ones still have meaning and purpose.

Speaker 4 (13:45):
Too, because when we're not doing well, and I certainly
know this from my own experience, that those happiness feelings,
those little quadrant of feelings you mentioned before, they may
as well be locked away in a safe that you
don't know the combination for. You know that there's some,
but you just can't access them, and it takes In
my experience, it took a fair amount of work to

(14:07):
start to even just notice that they were there again
and then reaching out to touch and we.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Took a couple of months in some cases longer.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
So when you know, as we're going through our life,
we want to keep we want to eat right, we
want to keep relatively physically flexible and physically fit, we
want to make sure you get good sleep, what do
you think that what does a science show us about
things that we can do which will keep these happiness
emotions accessible and these kind of other feelings around so

(14:37):
that they can be there at the same time as
when the darkest stuff's.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Here, perhaps before I share, because there's five or six
key things that are the most important, so you can
sort of unpack and talk about and discuss. But before
I do, I want to highlight for anyone listening to
our conversation, and maybe as a reminder for myself as well.
You're going to stuff it up, guaranteed. It's like learning
any skills of parenting. Yeah, you're not going to get
I think that was something I had to wrestle with.

(15:01):
You know, I've been studying happiness now for over ten years.
I've been running a happiness college for seven and there
are plenty of times where I love oftimes where I go, geez,
I'm really struggling to tap into happiness at the moment. Geez,
I'm not feeling good.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
Geez.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
All these things I would advise others to practice, I'm
not practicing, And to me a long time to meet
myself with the understanding and compassion of I am a
human being first and a happiness research a second. And
I hope now that i'm a father, I get to
raise you know, by son with the perspective that I'm
a human being first and a father.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Second, we're going to stuff it up. We're going to
we're going to get it wrong.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
And having some empathy for ourselves can be difficult if
dumb has ever really considered that, because we can be
we're harder.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
On ourselves than anybody else's on us.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
Definitely, where do you access that empathy for yourself where
you know you've just found this place of like, oh,
I'm a human being first, and you know then a
happiness research a second.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
That might seem people listening going, oh, that's.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
All good, well and good for you know, how would
you recommend people kind of access that?

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, Yeah, I'm a big fan of There's a researcher
who specializes in compassion and so I'll refer to her work.
Dr Kristin Neff has spent her life studying compassionate career
studying compassion and I was fortunate to connect with Christen
a few years ago and she shared this perspective and
compassion of just allowing ourselves to start by saying, this

(16:18):
is a moment of suffering, or this is a moment
of chance, just naming it first, right, This is a
moment of anxiety, This is a moment of frustration, whatever
it may be, just to say this is here. Second one,
it is normal to have this moment of this. We
are going to experience it in life. We're probably going
to experience it again. It's not the first time, it's
not the last time. And then it familiarizes ourself with it,

(16:39):
and from there we can practice what's called the mindful
compassionate mind or the compassionate voice, which is had a
friend or loved one come to you with the same thing,
what would I be sharing with them right now? I
think so often we meet others with compassion. I hope
we meet people with compassion. Depending on what you see
in the world these days, we might be losing that skill.
But we meet others with compassionate more easily than we

(17:01):
meet ourselves with compassion. So for me to just be
able to go, what would I say to my wife
or my friend or a family member who was coming
through with this challenge after I've had that moment to go,
this moment suffering, it's completely normal to have that. What
advice want to give someone else? It's just enough to
give a little bit of breathing room so I'm not
stuck in the world, or sometimes I think of these
big emotions and these big moments where I really frustrate

(17:21):
ourself in our minds, saying all these terrible things about ourself.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
As this might age me a little bit.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
But the face hugger from the movie Alien, it kind
of like latches onto and you can't see what's around
You don't have any perspective, and so just being able
to go, okay, this is a moment of suffering. It's
normal to have a moment suffering. I will have more
of these in the future. I've had them in the past.
Doesn't get rid of the feeling that's important. We're not
trying to fight. It doesn't throw those thoughts out of
our brain. It just gives us enough breathing room to

(17:48):
get perspective.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
Mind followers can get a bad rap. People might think
that there's linen involved when you talk about talking about mindfulness.
I've got to walk slowly through a field meadow of
long grass, and here are gong otherwise has not? Mindfulness
is just noticing. It's just as you mentioned, it's just noticing,
just going what's this?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Let me curious about here? What's happening here? Oh? I
feel a bit weird my tummy? Oh why is that.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
Okay, that's what that is. Okay, And once you've done that,
you've you've pulled the observing mind away from the thinking
mine and just getting practice doing that. I found has
as you mentioned it, at least fifty per of the
gets taken out of the pain.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
And it's so much easier to deal with a five
out of ten if we're taking fifty percent, I can
deal with a five out of ten anxiety ten out
of that anxiety.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Oh that's tough. Yeah, that's tough.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
When you're in ten out of ten, Your your decisions
and your choices are being run by that ye, and
you have no kind of white angle lens.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
On the thinking out. Conversely, I have.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Experienced moments of well that really moments let's call them
what they really were, the episodes of incredible elation, inhumanly
high levels of elation beyond happiness, which is as equally
dangerous to be in that space, because that could be

(19:12):
the thing that we think we're chasing. Yeah, we can
think where you think we're chasing this moment where everything
is perfect and nothing matters and you can do no wrong.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
But that's happiness. Isn't really a permanent state? Is it.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
No, No, it's I think of it more as I'm
driving a bus. All the emotions that are available to
me as a human being are somewhere on the bus.
My job is not to kick emotions off the bus.
Will fight them. I can try, and if anyone has
fought their mind or their emotions before, you'd know that
you normally lose and it's pretty exhausting, and they just
come back louder. My job's to your point to be mindful,

(19:45):
which is again just presence and curious, to be present,
be curious, and go which emotions are sitting at the
front of the bus today? And I can hear them
a bit more loudly because they're right behind me, and
you know, I'm in the driver's seat. I can hear,
you know, confidence or pride right behind me say that
feels really nice? Who's up the back of the bus.
And then is there anything that I can practice the
support I can get to their tools I can do

(20:06):
or exercises I can do that can help shift that
balance and be like, okay, well do I want to
move certain emotions for the back on the bus? Do
I want one pull one further forward? And you know,
half of the battle.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
There.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Half of the game is, yes, learn how to manage
the challenging and difficult emotions. Other half has learned how
to savor and extend and marinate in the good moments
so they're not so fleeting.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
Speaking of marination, the idea that stress and difficult to
deal with emotions are bad for our health is fairly obvious.
What are the health impacts of we are when we're
happy or when we deliberately choose to try to increase
the levels of contentment and happiness that we feel at
least have them more balanced with the difficult emotions.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I forget who first on this film. I feel
like it was Daniel Gilbert. He's got a great book
called Stumbling upon Happiness, which I think it was from.
I may have got that wrong, but there was research
to show that optimism, so having enough actually more hopeful.
I'm not gonna say natural, i' gonna say cultivating a
more hopeful positive viewpoint of life. Again, not to the

(21:07):
point where we're trying to bullshit ourselves and like everything's
always sunshine and rainbowts it's not. But just being able
to have that sense of okay, things will work out.
This isn't gonna last forever. We can move through this.
If I'm doing something new and scary, chances are it's
going to go good.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Not bad. It's more likely that'll go well.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
That perspective on life, that mindset, which is so much
more correlated with happiness, was associated with people living like
eight to nine years longer. Wow, the trade off, and
I do think it was done.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
You're good with that said.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
This was at the time a lot of the research
around smoking was that giving up smoking would save you
about five or six years. And so the joke you
used to say was if you take away smoking from
someone but they end up remarkably pessimistic and they lose
all their hope because of it, you've actually made a
bad trade. You've lost three years net in it. So,
and we see this again in like the longest study

(21:59):
ever it done. It's still going to this day, the
Harvard Longitudinal Study. It's up to its fourth or fifth director.
I remember the name of doctor Robert Woldinger. It's studied
what makes people happy and healthy later in life. The
number one contributor, time and time and time again. They've
tested this for over eighty years. The number one contributor
to how healthy and happy we feel later in life
has nothing to with our diet, nothing to do with exercise,

(22:21):
nothing to with our genetics, nothing to do with our
financial success, nothing through our career. It's our quality of
connection to other people. It's our relationships. Our happiness is
so intertwined with other people's happiness, and I think we're
losing sight of that in a world where self help
is such a big industry of this is what you
need to do different as an individual to make your

(22:43):
life better and to focus on your happiness when so
much of the research says, actually the best thing you
could possibly do to live a happier life is have
really good connections with other people and contribute to the
other people's happiness.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
And we'll be back with more self help with doctor Decklein.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
I during out time, your time, well, if you eight years,
I'll just need to get a little bit happier.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
So I make it.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
A quick break from decline to say, if you're enjoying
this podcast, please share it with somebody, or rate it
or follow it. If you want to support the work
that I do, please buy my new book. Actually both
books are on sale right now. Once again you'll find
a link in the show notes. So what now, what
is out now? And Back after the Break is back
in print. If you want to grab a copy of
my first book, both those are on audiobooks as well
the links in the show notes. If you want to
come say hi. Every month we do a live storytelling

(23:32):
show called story Club in Sydney the Factory Theater. October
the twelfth is the next one. You'll find a link
in the show notes for that as well. Back with
declin in just a moment, our quality of our connection
with other people, which seems to be a struggle when

(23:52):
we live in a world where I can if I
want not have to leave my house for anything.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Connection and community the price of access to that. So
the price of having connection and community in your life
is inconvenience. If I want to have genuinely meaningful connections
to other people, it means I need to deal with
some inconveniences. Sometimes it means I'm going to have to
be compassionate and patient towards them when they don't necessarily act.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
In a way that I like.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
It means I might have my perfect plans for the week,
but if a friend has asked me to step in
and help out with something. My perfect plans are going
to need to shift, and part of me worries that
in the pursuit of a very convenient society, where things
are instantly accessible, where we can just get them, we've
lost the importance of going through the inconvenience of building

(24:40):
really meaningful relationships.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
So many interesting things you just said that have parallels
to the shall we say, the Super Secret Sober Club
that I'm a part of. Being of service is a
big part of that. And there's an instant community. You know,
if you first try to stop drinking, they just say, look,
get to you know this many meetings and this many

(25:03):
days might be more than.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Eighty and less than one hundred somewhere in the middle there.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
And what happens is you've kind of instantly got other
people you're seeing all the time, people who understand where
you are, where you want to go, where you want
to get to, people who are where you want to be,
people who will listen, and you know, a good cup
of tea. And there's also inside of that, there is
the element that you've shown from the very first day

(25:27):
you show up, is like, be of service, mate, be
of service, and the first thing I said to was like,
if it's convenient, it doesn't count YEP. If you're going
to be of servers, like say you're pulling out chairs
before a meeting or packing them chairs away, or you know,
someone calls you see the phone and you've got their
numberage phone and it's like, oh, that's a name. I

(25:48):
put a little code in there to know that's where
I met them. Like I'll stop everything, even though I'm
in the middle of something, and I'll talk to them.
It's inconvenient for me to take ten minutes out of
my day, but I know this is what I need
to do.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
And what do you know? It works?

Speaker 4 (26:03):
The connection thing and the inconvenient service part. How do
we access that in our lives outside of these kind
of whether they be a community like the one I'm
a part of, or a religious practice.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
I think.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
To the point we made before about learning to meet
our emotions more effectively, we said, be curious with them,
not judgmental towards them. We can do the same thing
with other people, be remarkably curious about other people. There's
a beautiful term called sonder and sonda means the deep
and profound realization that everybody else is living a life

(26:41):
equally as complex and valid as yours. So everybody else
out there is the main character of their own life.
They're not just side characters in your life. I know
we like to cast ourselves as the center character and
go my problems are bigger than everyone else is, and
no one's going to understand. My goals are more important
than everyone else is, and no one can help me.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
I'm an NPC, right, yeah, we all are in other
people PC as far as anyone else is doing on
an MPH.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
So for a fact that I have like a fleeting
side character and shited thousands of people, so there are
going to be people listening to this conversation who I
am but a passing, fleeting side character moment. I hope
I can contribute something about side character moment. But this
practice of sonder of going ah, everyone else has this
really complex in a world as well that I have,

(27:25):
And they have goals and frustrations and challenges. What would
happen if we got curious about those? And connection is
simply built through what we have in common, that's it.
So whether it be we have values in common, we
have shared goals, we have shared backgrounds, shared challenges, shared language,
shared culture, shared programs and processes, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
When we have this in common with each other, that's
where connection is sparked. So get really curious about finding
what you have in common with people, you know, spark
up a conversation with someone when you're standing on the
train and just get curious about their life, right, find
way to go.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
What is it that we have in common?

Speaker 2 (28:01):
And if you're strugging to fin we have in common
shared sense of humanity, Like, we have so much more
in common. I think we're becoming Unfortunately, we're seeing this
play out on the global stage now and increasing division
and people going, well, you have different beliefs to me.
Therefore we can't sit down and have conversation. Will be
friends because you're morally wrong, because the difference is in
our beliefs. That doesn't bridge the challenge that we're having

(28:26):
with loneliness, the challenge that we're having with disconnection, the
challenge that we're having with isolation. There's a beautiful quote
that says it's hard to hate up close. Yeah, when
we get really close to people, when we sit down
with them, we go, oh, we actually have a hell
of a lot more in common that I thought.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, like, we've got so much more in common than
we don't. But it can be hard because we are, unfortunately,
we have been conditioned to be more and more in
the last twenty years or so, reacting so in such
volatility to anything that doesn't absolutely align with not even

(29:02):
how we feel, but the ideal version of how we
think we should be. As you know you mentioned before,
get us in a whole bunch of shit. You're a
coach of happiness, Like, what's the difference between our happiness
coach and a psychologists. I can go to psychologist as
say I'm not very happy and they can go all right,
let's talk to cognitive behavior.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
What's the first thing you do when you sit down
with someone?

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, if I was to absolute simplify it and say,
you know, in life, we're going to a moment where
we feel minus ten all the way through to plus
ten as a well being spectrum, So much of our
approach to mental health care in Australia. I'm glad it's
come so far over the last twenty thirty years, but
so much of it is still focused on how do
we help people who are minus ten get back to
neutral and functioning and surviving and feeling okay. Yeah, we

(29:42):
have a whole national campaign for it every year are
You Okay Day, which just happened.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
The goal is okay, and I'm glad we've focused on
that and we've gone to there. But I also think
there's a hell of a lot more to life than
just feeling okay. The goal is how do we feel
like we're fulfilled? How do we feel like we are happy?
How do we feel like we're contributing to others? How
do we look back on our life and go, so, yeah,
that was a life worth living, and that doesn't happen
from just getting too okay.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
So we've got this.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Approach, you know, in clinical psychology and therapy and counseling,
which is so fantastic for that. And then a lot
of people get to that point and then go okay,
but now what what comes next? And so for me,
I got really curio about the idea of opening a
college that was focused on the skills that made people
happier humans, not the skills that made people better employees,
not reactively, not just when chit's hit the fan, but proactively,

(30:30):
because I genuinely want to try to live as good
of a life as I can. So that's the dream,
that's the goals. So what happens when people come there
is we go, okay, well, what skills you need to learn.
It's a skills focused approach, a strengths focused approach, and
a future focused approach. So you know, people on my
team who work at the college, when we're interested necessarily
in going back and do all that stuff in the past,
will refer out for that and go, hey, go see
a clinical side, go work with a counselor or therapist.

(30:50):
That's still important work. We're much more interested in what
are we doing with the years that you have ahead
of you, and what are the skills that you need
to learn internally to help you, more often than not
show up as a happier, more fulfilled version of yourself
in those years you have left. It might be you
need to learn a bit of self compassion. It might
be you need to learn emotional literacy and just being
able to name your emotions to start with. It might

(31:10):
be you need to learn resilience and grant and you know,
learn how to find meaning in tough times. We teach
seventy different skills of happiness the college zero seventy.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeahka, so there's there's.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
An abundance of them. Yeah, right, And I don't say
to anyone that you need to master all them. It's
kind of like learning a language, you know, I don't
need to learn every single word in Spanish to have
a conversation with someone, but the exactly that's enough to
find the bathroom, ask for helm right start there. Yeah,
so that might be all we need. And so when
people come to the college, I'm like, well, what are

(31:41):
your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Okay, you
might just need to learn five of those seventy skills
and then if you go go on your way, you
don't need to go to the happiest college forever.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
And these kind of and these kind of skills that
we get up in the morning and do, like you know,
you would do I don't know, like a solute to
the sun or you get up and do I'm going
to do this money squoats and this money push ups
every day.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, so a lot of them are I often say
the best way to move knowledge from your head to
your heart is through your hand. What I mean by
that is this theoretical knowledge, which is knowledge of the head,
which everyone gets from like listening to a podcasts.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
For example, that was really interesting. I learned this.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I was fascinating, and then three weeks ago by and
you've forgotten it. You haven't done anything with it. It doesn't stick,
whereas knowledge of the heart is more like embodied wisdom.
It's like, oh, oh, I understand this now, Like I
get it. And that was a big gap for me
my first two years of studying the Skills and Science
of Happiness. I was like I was dangerous to be honest,
Like I was a kid with a bunch of new

(32:35):
toys and I just wanted to use it on everyone else.
And then one of our lecturers turned around said, you
know that you should self apply this first, right, Like
you need to practice this before you go out telling
everyone else that's good for them, right, And I went, yeah,
that's a good wake up call. I needed to hear
that the only way we move knowledge from the head
to the heart and turn it from theoretical knowledge into
embodied wisdom is through the hand, and that means either
write about it. So I'm a huge fan of journaling.

(32:57):
When we get our thoughts and for things out of
our head and onto paper. It means when no longer
meeting them at a home ground disadvantage. If we're trying
to wrestle with our thoughts in our head or with
our feelings in our body, we're meeting them on their
home turf. Not a great way to play. So I
love journaling for getting it out or the other thing
that getting it through the hand means is get your
hands dirty. So if it's hey, we know that exercise

(33:18):
is incredibly good for you, and building good routines around exercise, cool,
go exercise. I don't care how you do it, but
do some form of movement. Or if it's meditation, so
much research and I saying meditation is incredibly good for us.
You can listen to every podcast about meditation, you can
read every book about meditation. It's not going to bloody
make a difference if you don't sit down and do
the messy work of trying to meditate, and you'll suck

(33:38):
at it first.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
Yeah, that you'll suck at it for a long time forever,
because that's it.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
That's the point.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
That's the point. It's not that doing it perfectly because
I've got no thoughts in my brain. Ah, No, there's
like two monks in the world that can do that. Yeah,
everybody else sits there the whole time, watching the monkey
jump around.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yes, smashing the simple way again.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
It's that presence and curios that we keep talking about.
If we can try to be a little bit more
present in life rather than always running too the future
of the past, and if we can try to be
a little bit more curious about ourselves and others rather
than judgmental towards ourself and others.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
If I could stay up.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
My fingers and just do two things, and what it'll
be those two, I feel more present and more curious.
I think we'd have a much better world.

Speaker 4 (34:24):
The idea of being present. If no one's ever heard
the idea of being present before?

Speaker 3 (34:28):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (34:30):
If no, if you haven't ever heard of the idea
of being present, I want you to go immediately after
this and listen to lose yourself by eminem.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
It is the best example I know.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Of of what we call flow theory in positive psychology research,
really being in the moment, being fully present with it.
Flow theory is what occurs when you lose sense of
self and sense of time.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
Well, I hear that opening roofman. All I'm seeing is
like highlight's real leading.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Into the NRL finals. You know, you know it's just pain, harsh,
going to run in slow motion.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, it's being They keep playing it at sporting events,
they keep playing it like. Flow theory was studied originally
in athletes, but they just found it in parents, in
CEOs and executive So flow theory is being so immersed
in whatever you're doing that you're not thinking of yourself.
So there's no self consciousness, you're not aware of yourself anymore,
and there's no sense of time right now.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
The key is you then need.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
To feel good after it, So doom scrolling on social
media for you know, you're gonna jump on TikTok fifteen
minutes and you blink and you're like, whoa we did
three hours ago. I wasn't thinking about myself at all
or thinking about time. I was in flow theory. That
happiness guy said, that's really good for me.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Not the same thing. Not the same thing, right.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
It needs to have some form of challenge to it
and normally needs to have some form of purpose to it.
So for me, for example, I get it when I'm
in nature, I experience flow theory. When I'm in deep conversations,
like I have no idea how long we've been talking
for right now, I couldn't tell you. I when I
play basketball, I lose myself in that. When I play
guitar and music or listening to a new album. I
think you were in flow a little bit. When I
bumped into downstairs. I was like, hey, hello, Hello, You're

(36:05):
like just gone. You were somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
I was listening to a Fishbone record, and I was
just like still in motorbike mo full.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
In it right fully in the moment. That is flow.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
That is I think the healthiest and best form of
presence that we can tap into. And it's so shown
time and time again in the research. It's shown that
people who experience that more often in lifetime say I'm
pretty happy, Like my life is pretty good.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
That's all well and good for us sitting here in
this room.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
But let's say, for example, at quarter plast six this
morning today, my son had an excursion where the kids
were going to walk.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
To a park nearby.

Speaker 4 (36:39):
And we've only ever ridden our bicycle to this park,
so as far as he's concerned, it's fucking far away,
and he's like just like I don't want to go there,
and want is like he was melting.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
When we're in those moments when we're kind of dealing
with the tantrum, how do we get present and how
do we get curious when we're in those moments when
my emotions are going for it as well.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
In those moments, whenever we can tap back into our body,
it's a good way to come back into the present
because our mind is the one that can run off
into the future and past.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Our body can't. But it doesn't go there. Our body
is in the present.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
There's a great technique you may have heard it before,
the five four three two one technique for grounding. So
if you've never tried this pill for yourself, you can
literally do it now while we talk about it. First
thing you do is you just look around and you
name five things that you can see. So I look
around in for me, I can, okay and see a
pop plant. I can see your motorbike helmet, I can
see out the window. That's some monitors over there. And
we're just naming what's around us. So we're tapping into

(37:31):
the first sen switch to our vision and then we go, well,
what are four things I can feel, and that could
be tact I was like with our hands, So I go, okay,
well I can feel the desk, or we can go up.
Until this exact moment when I said that, I wasn't
consciously aware of how my clothes felt against my skin.
But now that I've said that, I kind of am
and I'm like, oh yeah, my shirt's kind of sitting
there and it's kind of scratchy here. If you're listening
to this, you probably weren't aware of how you clothes

(37:52):
felt until that moment. Now you're tuning into it. Or
you might go, how am I feeling emotionally? I go, okay,
I can feel in myself. You know, I'm feeling quiet,
energized and enthused. But there's a little bit sitting further
back on the bus that's a little bit imposter syndrome,
a little bit of self doubt coming through. Okay, I
can recognize those. We're not doing anything with them, we're
just naming it all things we can feel. Three is

(38:13):
then what are three things we can hear? We're tapping
into our senses again. I can hear a bit of
buzzing from the monitor over there, and hear myself as
I speak, there's a bit of a tapping outside that
I can just hear. And then by the time we
get to two and one, often we don't need to.
We're already very present. We're back in the zone. We're
not thinking about all our future worries, like, oh God,
what's gonna happen? If I can get this kid out
the door and get him to this excursion of the park,

(38:34):
like we're dealing with future concerns.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
What's two and one?

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Right?

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Two and one is then the smell and taste, so
you can go, what are two things I can smell,
one thing I can taste. The reason I say you
often don't need to get to that point is contextually
the first thing you can do without people really noticing.
But if you're in a meeting with someone you try
to ground yourself back down and you start like sniffing
the air like a rabid dog, right, or like start licking.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Things, people are going to be like, whow.

Speaker 5 (38:57):
You're really present, but you're also really strange cleaning what screen?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
So I mean, if you.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Want to, it's good for mindful eating if you've got
food in front of your great way to be present
with your meal. I personally don't use the two and
one a lot.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
Okay, so that's getting present and I understand what you're doing,
and where does the curiosity come? How do we actualss
that curiosity when you know kids in a heightened state.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
As an adult, I'm.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
The one that's going to I've got to do all
the emotional regulation in this situation. How do I access
that curiosity when I'm in this space?

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Again, it's that sonder thing of everyone is living the
main character in the main character in their own life.
He means the main character is in your life. This
is the main challenge for him that day. This is
the big thing taking out.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Of his mind. So we get extra curious about that.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Will we try to go hey, and by the way,
hard to do when his emotions are sort of hijacking.
This is making is also that's why we need to
practice for ourselves that five four thre each one also
a great technique to do with kids. I've seen a
lot of parents and teachers do this really well. But
I'll literally get their hand down and go, Okay, first finger,
we're just going to look around and we're going to
name five things we can see. Next finger, we're going
to do four things we can feel and like you
kind of guide them through it. There's some other breathing

(39:58):
techniques you can do, Like you get them to trace
your hand and you go up, you breathe in.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
As you go down, you breathe there. That one so
same thing.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
We're just again, we're being present when we're present together
and we're present with each other, even if that's for
a split second before the next meltdown. Now we've got
an opportunity be curious. Better to be curious, ask questions, right,
that's questions.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
You mentioned.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
The connection that we have in the quality of our
connection with other people. What are some ways that we
might be able to connect with us or start to
seek the kind of connections that will give us access
to more of these not catastrophic emotions.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
I don't want to call.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
Them happiness emotions, but access the challenging, access the less
challenging emotional feelings. And what are the first things we
might be able to start exploring.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, I'm watching this exact challenge right now. I have
too much younger siblings. So I have a younger sister
who is sixteen and or turning seventeen very soon. I
have a younger brother who's fourteen, and a lot of
their formative years were during the COVID pandemic. Yeah and so,
and also the first generation that was raised basically from

(41:08):
birth on technology, Like for me, I was, I had
a lot of my childhood pre technology. This emerging generation
hasn't had that, and so our wave of communicating, our
way of connecting has radically changed. Some ways good because
we can tap into communities that we otherwise wouldn't have
been able to. Some ways bad because we're losing some
of the depth of the connection. I mean having conversations
with them about what we mentioned before, which is connection

(41:30):
is fundamentally built on what we have in common. So
find a starting common point from my younger sister, she's
really into netball at the moment, and so she's been
not only playing netball and connecting with her team, but
she's been finding ways to have conversations with some of
the girls on the other teams, because again, what we
have in common is bigger than what we have different.
You're on different teams, you both love the same sport,

(41:52):
are you're both growing up in the same area, you
both speak the same language, and so you starting to
have those conversations there, which is really nice. See, and
then that kind of blossoms and turns into friendships and
oh you know that person. I know that person too,
and then before you know it, it can expand out
from there. My little brother is you know, starting to
show like interests and passions and hobbies and stuff like that.
And again I'm saying, lean into that, find other people

(42:13):
who share that with you. That is your starting point,
and then from there we build out, built out, built out.
So whatever it is, whether the starting point is you know,
we go to the same in you know, in this case,
we go to the same meeting and we have that structure,
or we're part of the same religion or faith, or
we're part of the same family, network or community. Find
a starting point, right, and then see what else you
can expand it into.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
The other morning, she works as a polities distractor. She's
sent a photo of like there's this run club somewhere
in North BONDI at I don't know, stupid o'clock in
the morning. It's like three hundred people yeah, standing there, yep,
And this is it was cold, right, and there's three
hundred people standing there at not even five o'clock in

(42:56):
the morning. Yep, I don't think they're there for the run.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Was saying before, the price of community connection is inconvenience.
They could run it a nicer time that's not as cold,
that they don't have to commute two to start, You
could run from your front door, right, But paying the
dues of inconvenience to then tap into that community connection. Yeah,
it's probably a lot more powerful and profound for them
than just the act of running.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
The idea of trying to find a community that is
already into the thing that you're into. Just by doing that,
are you saying that that starts to unlock those more
kind of pleasant emotions.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yes, yeah, it's a big part of it.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Again, Like one of the largest contributors to how happy
with her life is going to be our connection to others.
So we have to be willing to do the inconvenient things,
to do, the difficult things to do the awkward first
part of introducing yourself to someone and then expanding that connection.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
You know, it is an awkward first part.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
This week, for example, I mean my thirties, and I
still feel that nerves and awkwardness about asking I've been
playing in a Social Basketball League for the last couple
of months.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
New team.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Most of the people I don't really know other than
we show up to basketball on a Wednesday and we
play together and we all go home.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
I couldn't tell you what they do for it living.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I couldn't tell anything about them, but we have this
shared you know, we play basketball together. Anyway, after this
week's game, I said, hey, guys, there's a new ice
cream roy that just opened around the corner. They want
to go get ice cream after the game. And part
of me was like, Ah, that's a bit of a
weird thing to ask you their thirties, Like, what are
we a bunch of kids. People are going to judge this.
People are not going to come. And half the team

(44:26):
was like, yeah, I loves come to get ice cream.
And on the walk there, we started chatting about what
we did outside of basketball, like in these very informalized settings.
And so now I feel more connected to these people
because it's expanded. But it only expanded because I did something.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
That was different.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
You'll also play better, Yeah, that's the thing.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
As a team. You also, you know, cultivating more happiness
in your life. Can you give you many benefits in
a health health front. But I've found when having conversations
about climate stuff with other people, it's the economic argument
that gets most people over the line.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
What's the economic argument? Yeah, on making.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Time in your day to cultivate more happiness in your life.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Have you noticed that you spend more on Amazon when
you're unhappy?

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Here's the first argument.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
But from a personal level, oh my god, feeling insecure
in ourselves, feeling dissatisfied with our life, not feeling grateful.
What we already have is a dream to sell your product. Look,
we're going to a deep dog conversation around whether or
not money buys happiness. Starting to show that does up
to a certain point is a very privileged thing to
say that money has no impact on happiness. It does

(45:31):
to tell you to a certain point, to a certain point, basically,
your survival needs aremit there. You can find a place
to live in, you can put food on the table,
and then from there it's more how you spend the
money that makes a difference.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
The all we find in the.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Research is that people who feel good in themselves cultivate
those feelings of happiness tend to also make better financial decisions.
They manage money better. From in a business standpoint, A
lot of my master's research was on the impact of
happiness in a workplace. Abound that happier employees made better
customer experiences than the customers tended to spend more and
of return more and refer more so than the shareholders

(46:04):
were really happy. And so there's this real it's called
the happiness advantage. There's this advantage of people learning these skills.
My PhD work that I've just been submitting my proposal
for it's the next d eight years. I'm going to
study what would happen if we change the way we
define successes entire countries because, for you know this part
of human history, the sole marker of successful country is

(46:25):
GDP gross domestic product, which is how's the economy going,
economy going well? Big thumbs up, everyone in charge, hats
off to you, well done. But as we've seen we're
living through, the economy can go up and we can
have variety, seeing wealth inequality. The economy can go up.
In the climate can get fucked, the economy can go up.
In people's health care can get worse, the economy can
go up, and education get worse.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Just arising economy does not make a good society.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
And so there's now these pioneering countries like Bhutan and
Denmark and a lot of the scandy countries that are
always at the top of the Happiest Countries in the
World list. New Zealand is now committed to it. Who
are saying, hey, yes, the economy matters, Yes, let's talk
about GDP. Yes, let's talk about money, but let's also
talk about gross national happiness. Let's also talk about the
well being of our citizens. And if that's not going

(47:10):
up with it, we're not a successful country. We need
to do better.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
But I can't control what my country does or how
it chooses to measure its success. But you're saying that
the research shows that if I try to cultivate happiness
within myself, it makes me a kind of more valuable
person as somebody who is employed or does work.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, a greater contributor.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
And this is the other benefit in the argument of
it is if we support it's proactive rather than reactive.
If we help people, and this is if we help
create a society. If we help on an individual level
people learn how to manage their minded emotions a bit better,
that's going to be less cost on the healthcare system. Later,
one of the biggest costs on the economy at the
moment is depression, and that's only rising.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
So I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Like I was invited a few years ago to speak
at a conference full of accountants and about the skills
and signs of happiness, the happiness in the workplace, and
I went in shedding myself. I was like, these people
are not going to like my message about happiness, and
by the end they were like, no, this makes economic sense,
Like it's actually crazy for us to not do this.
So sure, if we need to talk about money to
get you know, either ourselves as individuals or leaders of

(48:17):
our organizations and our workplaces they all work within, or
our elected officials to make better decisions, let's talk about money.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
The idea that there are seventy of these things that
we might be able to unlock is fascinating to me.
But I don't think you've had to invent anything. You've
just gone and found these things from me, the cultural
practices or stuff that was researching and discovered. Of those
seventy what would you say, were you know, what is
one or the two of the more surprising things that

(48:45):
you've discovered in there m.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
I'm consistently surprised by the value of just looking inwards,
of introspection. And to your point, nothing that we teach
at the college that I run is new. Science is
playing catch uply. We were talking about what makes a
happy life three thousand years ago in ancient Greece. You know,
as a species, we've been debating happiness forever. Science is

(49:11):
finally catching up and going, well, what works and what doesn't?
You know, what's fluff and you know, well wishes and
hopes first? What is Oh, no, this is actually makes
a difference to people's mental health, they're well being, their happiness,
and let's focused more on those. I'm continuously astounded by
the benefit of just getting people to spend time with themselves. Again,
I think we're in a society at the moment where

(49:31):
our attention is a big economy. You know, the wealthiest
companies in the world are the ones that have managed
to monetize our attention. If we spend more time, you know,
tuning into social media, or if we spend more time
you know, reading this book over that book, then entire
economies is a building. Entire companies are built. And I
worry that we've lost a bit of the art of
just spending time in solitude with ourselves, just going, how

(49:53):
am I actually bloody feeling?

Speaker 1 (49:55):
What do I actually want?

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Spoken to come to the college that are you know,
their forties and fifties, and they're like, yeah, I'm just
realizing the other that I've spent my life climbing this
career ladder and it was leaning against the wrong bloody
wall the whole time. Like I've put in all this
effort to get to the top of the ladder and
I've looked around it.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
God, well, this.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Sucks because I never looked inwards and what does happen.
I'll say this very clear to everyone listening. I'm so
grateful that after ten years doing this work and I
hope to this the rest of my life. I'm so
grateful that I'm considered an expert on happiness. But I'm
never going to be an expert on your happiness. No
one is right. It is up to you to kind
of look within and go, what is a happy life

(50:30):
by my definition? What is a successful life by my definition?
What are my values? What matters to me? And the
more people do that and they get clarity, I call
it their happiness.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Blueprint.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
The more you can define your own happiness blueprint, your
blueprint for a good life, the better life becomes.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
I just want to get how many of them were they?
Were there four things? Five things you just mentioned? What
is it like? Want? What can you mention?

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah, there's a couple of big questions.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
I like if I encourage people to ponder on these,
the big life and constages. What is a happy life
by your definition? What is a successful life?

Speaker 1 (51:01):
By the definition? What is a meaningful life? And then from.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Those three, because there'll be overlaps between them, they'll losso
be challenges and tentions fulthough, so your last one is
so knowing all this, what is a fulfilling life by
my standard?

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I'm going to have to go and think about that
out Deklin.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Good, You're welcome, I hope.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
So thanks to making the time to coming in manner.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
I appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
And that was Declan Edwards.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
If you want to know more or hear more from Decline,
he has a podcast it's called how to Be Happy?

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Does what it says on the box? I like things
that do that.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
He's also got an entire college based around this be
You Happiness college dot Com.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I'll put the link in the show notes.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
If this podcast was useful to you, please do send
it to someone, share it with someone like it, follow it,
rate it, subscribe it, do what you need to do.
Buy the book, comes see the show, Cuddle someone you love,
Pada cat unless you're allergic than don't marvel at a
rainbowlawer keeps flying past you.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
Enjoy the sound of a bagpie in the morning. And
I'll see you on Monday.

Speaker 4 (52:07):
Hm.