Brian Johnson summarizes and reflects on Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth (by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener), highlighting practical, research-backed ways to increase “psychological wealth” — a person’s true net worth made up of attitudes, social support, spirituality, health, activities, and material resources. Major takeaways: giving support predicts longevity, maintain a positive affect balance rather than eliminating negative emotions, apply the happiness equation (happiness = what we have / what we want), be mindful of money’s subtle effects on social behavior, avoid choice overload (satisficer vs maximizer), and take aim at happiness via attention, interpretation, and memory.
Questions this video answers
Individuals who gave little emotional or practical support were more than twice as likely to die during the five years of follow-up.
Happiness = what we have / what we want.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian with another Philosopher's Notes TV episode. This one's on another great book called Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. It's by two of the leading thinkers in the positive psychology movement. A father and son combination which I think is really cool. Ed Diener, who's one of the world's leading researchers in the science of well being and his son Robert Biswas Diener, who's known as the Indiana Jones of positive psychology for all of his work in remote places in the world. Very cool stuff. The book is packed with the science of happiness and well being and I'm excited to explore a handful of my favorite big ideas. In this quick video, we'll look at psychological wealth and how to become a true billionaire. It's pretty exciting, the fact that giving support is more powerful than receiving support. We'll look at our affect balance, the state of our emotional bank account, if you will. The relative balance of positive to negative emotions. We experience the importance of relationships, money and its subtle effects. We'll look at a happiness equation. We want to do the math on that one. We will look at making happy choices and the paradox of choice, being a satisficer versus a maximizer. And then we will take aim at happiness. Attention plus interpretation plus memory. Aim. Aim. Let us jump in with psychological wealth. So Ed and Robert tell us. Psychological wealth is your true total net worth. It includes your attitudes toward life, social support, spiritual development, material resources, health and the activities in which you engage. Very similar to what we talked about yesterday with Martin Seligman's Flourish and his perma. Positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. So we want to remember again that it's not about chasing all the external signs of well being or what we think will bring happiness. The fame, the wealth, the hotness, et cetera. It's about taking care of the simple stuff. Our true total net worth comes from our attitudes towards life, our social life, our. Our spiritual development, material resources, health and the activities in which we engage that are exciting and inspiring for us. Really powerful stuff. The book is basically all about unpacking ideas on how to rock that, as are all these videos. They also talk about two important facets of happiness. One, it's more of a process than a destination. And two, happiness isn't just a state that you experience. It actually is very functional. It has huge benefits. And we know from the research out there that happiness actually precedes success. We think that we're going to succeed and then we'll be happy. But it's actually the other way around. You're happy, then you succeed. It's a very, very powerful idea. Sean Acor, another great researcher in positive psychology, talks about this in his book the Happiness Advantage. And there we go. We got a lot of shadow in this one. It's early in the morning. I've got a new light coming soon. So we'll get rid of those shadows, but for now we'll move on. So, psychological wealth. Let's look at some ways we can build that. Here's a huge idea. Giving support versus receiving support. He quotes a research study at the University of Michigan where they found that giving support to others is more important to longevity than receiving support. The researcher found that individuals who gave little emotional or practical support to others were more than twice as likely to die during the five years she followed them compared to people who gave to others. Isn't that amazing? And she accounted for other variables. Those who gave more to those around them lived longer. That's extraordinary. So think about that. How can you give more support to your family, your friends, your community, your colleagues today, tomorrow, and the day after that Huge, huge boost to our psychological wealth and as it turns out, our longevity as well. So the next big idea here is affect balance. So they tell us, don't be concerned if you experience sporadic anger, sadness, or worry. Happiness is not the total absence of negative emotions. It's a really important thing to note that sometimes we get into the illusion that when we figure it all out, we're suddenly going to get rid of all negative emot. Well, that's not the case. We're going to oscillate. You're going to have positive and negative experiences. But what I found is if I used to go like that, now I kind of go like this. It's just this stability. I don't drop down as far anymore. And my highs are actually a more authentic high. It's really, really cool. And it's often now that my bad days when I'm hanging out here are almost as good as some of my best days before. And in fact, in many ways they're actually better because I know what I'm doing that's working and what's not working. It's extraordinary. So we want to keep that in mind. It's all about the affect balance. Not getting rid of all negative emotions, but wanting to have a balance of more positive emotion to negative. And they've again cite more research here. The book is packed with all kinds of research. They tell us that the affect balance tending toward the Negative. So if someone had more negative experiences and emotions in their life than positive, that was the best predictor of whether they would return to the hospital. These were cardiovascular patients who had heart surgery. And the greatest predictor of whether they were readmitted to the hospital was their affect balance. Negative to positive ratio or positive to ratio? Positive to negative, I should say. And those who had a negative balance were the most likely to be readmitted to the hospital. Very, very powerful stuff. So check in. How's your affect balance? What can you do to create more positive moments in your life? So you have more positive than negative. But also don't think that you need to get rid of all the negative. It's not what we are looking to do. So loving and caring angels is a great big idea on the importance of relationships. Then he talks about a happiness equation here. And he said this. What they found was surprising. The amount of money a person made only modestly predicted whether or not she was satisfied with her income. Some people with a lot of money could not meet their desires and others with little money were able to do so. And what they came up with is a little formula. Happiness equals what we have over what we want. Now, if you do the math on that equation, you will quickly see why some people who have a lot of money but have way stronger desires and they never feel like they have enough. And this ratio is really low. They can have all kinds of resources, but they always want more. And if you have that ratio in an unhealthy way, you're going to be unhappy. It's that simple. Your happiness will be a small number in that ratio. Now, if what you have what you want, you actually have more than what you feel like you want or need, you're going to be happy. Now, you want to balance that obviously with continuing to grow as a human being. But pay attention to whether you're putting your emphasis on the material stuff and constantly obsessing for more material goods, never being happy with what you have, or if you're content with what you have and looking to grow as a human being and all that good stuff. So happiness equation, check in and see where you're showing up on that equation. And, and then as you think about that, think about this, the subtle effects of money. They did an experiment, they brought people into a lab. Some of them saw a flying dollar as a screensaver, some of them didn't. The people who saw the flying dollar as a screensaver, super subtle cue were more self confident and they were able to persevere. More in a task, but they were also less sociable, less generous afterwards, and just generally more distant from others and less helpful. So it's very, very interesting what happens when we bring money into our consciousness and they tell us that materialists who focus on money a lot are generally less satisfied with their lives than folks who highly value love, friendships, and other worthwhile pursuits. Again, this is the intrinsic versus extrinsic stuff we talk about quite often. And they tell us finally that it is generally good for your happiness. Have money. We need a certain baseline of money, but it's toxic to your happiness to want money too much. Pay attention to that big idea. And then they have this great idea on making happy choices. I'm going to do a whole other episode on the paradox of choice, and I'll do one on being a satisficer versus a maximizer. The short story here is there's actually a paradox to choice. Too many choices can stress us out. You want to have a standard you want to hit, then be satisfied with it. Don't always try to get the very best out of every single decision. It will stress you out, lead to less happiness, optimism, self esteem. More on that in a bit. We talk about the principles of taking aim at your happiness quite often. So we'll feel good about that for now. But know you want to focus your attention on positive things. You want to interpret events positively, and you want to build your memory of positive events through gratitude, journaling, what went well to the exercises, stuff like that. So there you go. A few big ideas on the science of happiness. Hope you dug it. And take whatever big idea you got out of this and apply it to your life today. All right, have another great day. More soon. See ya.
