PNTV: Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar (#5)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to profile one of my favorite teachers, a guy named Tal Ben Shahar and his great book, Happier. We're going to be using the Note, of course, as our guide. And I read this on my Kindle in Bali, so I don't have the book, but I do have a screensaver of John Steinbeck on my Kindle to show you. Happier. Awesome book. Extraordinary book, actually. And Talban Shahar is probably my favorite author right now. He wrote another book called the Pursuit of Perfect that we're going to be doing later this week. And he's just awesome. He's integrating the rigor of science, as he says, with the fun of self development. So he's really cool in how he can balance the fun aspects of self development with the scientific grounding of positive psychology, with which, as you know, I'm on a positive psychology kick right now. We're going to do 14 total books, some of the best books in positive psychology that we've already done. The how of Happiness, Happy for no Reason, Authentic Happiness. What else? Motivation and Personality by Maslow. We're going to do Viktor Frankl's Man Search for Meaning. Check them all out. Episodes 2 through 15 will be positive Psychology. I forget what number this is, but Anyway, we've got 10 minutes. Let's get to work. So we'll start with the idea that there are four archetypes, as Tal Ben Shahar likes to describe. Four. Four of them. Number one is the archetype of the rat racer. The rat racer is always pursuing goals, is always delaying satisfaction and gratification. They're always going for the next big thing. Right? We might have all been there at some point. I know I certainly have been and certainly can still get into that mode. And then we have the hedonist. The hedonist says, you know what? It's not about the future. Goals. I'm all about now. This person can be someone who kind of misreads Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, and they're just all about this. Can't ever set a goal. That's not what Tolle says. And we're going to talk about that in the Power of Now and in New Earth. But this is the idea. We have the rat racer always in the future, the hedonist, only in the now, can't set goals. Right? And then we have the nihilist, the third archetype. The nihilist says the rat racing archetype didn't work. For me, the hedonist archetype didn't work. I give up. That's the nihilist, screw it all kind of thing. Then the fourth archetype is the one we want to play and that's the happiness archetype. The happiness archetype says yes and yes says no to the nihilism. It says yes to the idea of pursuing goals, having a goal worthy of ourselves, that we're moving toward and loving this moment. So tall Ben Char is a great way of describing it. He says happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain. Happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak. We have a clear destination in mind and we're climbing toward it to blissfully. We're in flow. We're going to do that book later this week. That's the idea of the happiness archetype. We want to play there, hold both beautiful future goals and loving this moment. Awesome stuff. There you go. We talk about it a little bit more in the note. We also in the note talk about the ultimate currency. Tal Ben Shahar says the ultimate currency is happiness. You look at a business, they have profits. A human being's life is happiness. He says, look at what you do, anything. And ask yourself the question, why? Why do you do it? Why do you listen to this? Why do you read great books? Why do you invest the energy you do in different aspects of your life? Why? Why, why, why? Why? If we boil it down, it's happiness. We want to be more happy. Recognizing that, the question becomes what can we do that we actually know will increase our levels of happiness? And that's what this book is all about. Again, all kinds of big ideas. The next one I'm going to cover, happiness rituals. This one's great. I love rituals. As you know, if you've read many of these notes. So he has a great way of describing it and he talks about the power of Full engagement. A book that we're going to do sometime soon. Awesome book, which is all about athletes and the rituals they have that they use in their sport. And then they liken that to our lives. We've got to have rituals. The greatest athletes in the world have the deepest set of rituals. And they say the more complex the challenge, the greater the need for deep rituals. So these are things that we do consistently in our lives, kind of the non negotiable things. For me, meditation is my number one ritual. I haven't missed a day in something like 480 days now. An hour of meditation every morning. That might be changing as I get into transcendental meditation, which I'm studying this week, actually really excited about. So anyway, whole other conversation we'll get into. But what rituals can you create in your life around meditation, around exercise, around journaling, around gratitude? What things really feed your soul that you love to do, yoga, whatever. That you can make a ritual and you make 100% commitment to doing it and it's non negotiable. Think about that. Happiness rituals are very, very important. And then he talks about the idea of negative rituals. We have positive rituals. What about negative rituals? Stuff we need to stop doing. That just brings us down, I like to say, and I often do in these notes, and I will in these TV episodes. What's the number one thing that you could start doing now that if you did it consistently, would have the greatest positive impact in your life? What's the number one thing you could start doing now that would most benefit your life if you did it consistently? And is now a good time to start doing that? But think about that one thing. Not 3, not 5, not 10, not 101. And what's one thing you could stop doing that if you stop doing it now that would have the most positive benefit in your life? So what thing can you start doing? A happiness ritual. And then a negative ritual. What thing could you stop doing? And he mentions different ones from having an Internet free zone, right? It might be no longer drinking that beer or turning on the TV or surfing the Internet after a certain period of time. Whatever it is. Positive rituals, negative rituals, they're awesome. Highly recommend them. And the science shows. This is important for us to increase our levels of happiness. The next big idea here is an echo from all the other ones. Expressing gratitude. If I haven't sold you on gratitude yet, please, please, please start keeping track of your gratitude. I forget how long he's been doing it now, but it's been like years. Maybe like five, 10 years. That tall Ben Shahar has been keeping track of his gratitude, which I just think is extraordinarily cool. And I've been doing it for a few weeks now. A couple few weeks on gratitudelog.com I've mentioned that in a couple other episodes. Check it out. Imatratitudelog.com BrianJohnson It's a habit of mine every night. Five things I'm most grateful for Science shows. It's awesome. The science also shows that following your bliss is scientifically established. Joseph Campbell's wisdom. We're going to talk about him following your bliss is huge. They call it self concordant goals. Self concordant goals. Things that fire you up, you want to do, makes you feel better. Pay attention to that. What do you want to do? What's important to you? Get in the habit of following that path. He's got a great idea around lifelines versus deadlines. So why do we say we have deadlines? That's a terrible phrase, a terrible word. And he tells a story about how his wife, one day he was talking about having a deadline and she's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're inspired. You know, you're taking action. That is really feeding your soul. You have a self concordant goal. You're following your bliss. That's a lifeline that you're moving toward. Not a deadline, a lifeline. And you're not killing time, you're enlivening time. Isn't that awesome? Lifeline versus deadline. Enlivening time versus killing time. I love that big idea and I say we rock it. He's got a great one. You got to get the note or the book, obviously, to read the quote. He talks about throwing our knapsack over a wall. And it takes extraordinary levels of commitment to do something extraordinary. When JFK said we're going to land on the moon before materials were even invented that were required to get us there, he said we're going to do it. He threw his knapsack over the wall. There's something huge about making a commitment and then going forward. So he's got a bunch of ideas in here about that. And then I've got WH Murray's awesome quote about commitment and how once we commit, divine providence moves for us. Here's a cool idea. Comfort zones versus stretch zones versus panic zones. We want to find stretch zones. Comfort zone. You're not growing, you're not going to be happy. Panic zone. You're out of control. Too big of a goal. You need to settle down into a stretch zone. Comfort zone, stretch zone, panic zone. Really cool. Where are you? Comfort, stretch or panic? We want to hang out in stretch, find our edge, but not too far where we're being silly about it. How about the fact that affluence, money isn't very well correlated to happiness, but time, affluence, having time for things you value is. So simplify your life. Create time affluence. I'm big on that. That's a great one. The final idea, imagine this. You're 110 years old and you have a time machine that brings you back to today, right? What do you tell yourself? What does your 110 year old version of yourself tell yourself right now? What's the big wisdom that you've learned? He tells this story in the context of cancer patients who all of a sudden transform their lives and they start living according to deep values. The wisdom was always there. They just had to tap into it. Same thing here. You have the wisdom, it's just a matter of identifying it and living it. So the 110 year old exercise is pretty cool. We're out of time. Have fun. Can't wait to share more. I love positive psychology. Hope you enjoy.