PNTV: The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky (#001)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes TV. Episode number two. We've only got 10 minutes to get through the big ideas of one of my favorite books. So we're going to jump right into it after I let you know why I have a wine glass filled with coconut water on my desk here. So two reasons for that. One, it's a tribute to Gary Vee over at Wine Library tv. He's a rock star revolutionizing the whole wine world. And he wrote a great book called Crush it, which is all about crushing it and getting paid to do what you love to do. And he mentions the importance of using new media like tv. So there we go. Here I am doing this. I've been thinking about it, but he kind of gave me the final catalyst to go out and do it. So thank you so much, Gary. And we've got coconut water in there because I just got back from Bali a few months ago. I spent a year in Bali creating Philosopher's Notes, and I was blessed to have a coconut cut from a tree every morning and poured into a glass. And I kind of miss that at times. So here we go. We have a wine glass with coconut water, and we're now officially one minute in. We've got nine minutes left to go over a handful of my favorite big ideas from one of my favorite books, a book called the how of Happiness. You probably won't be able to see that, but that is the Philosopher's Note on the how of happiness 6 page PDF that I'm going to use as a guide for this discussion and for all of our Philosopher's Notes TV episodes. So in my Philosopher's Notes, what I do is I pull out about 10 of the really big ideas from my favorite books. Now, these books are often one long underline and they've got dozens of big ideas, but I pull out 10 of them that I think can actually transform our lives now. And in this 10 minutes, I'm going to share with you a few of them. So, first of all, why did I pick the how of Happiness as my first book I review? I did so because people used to ask me all the time. They still do. What's one book that you would recommend that I read? And I didn't have an answer for them until I got to the 87th note that I did because I had learned different things from different teachers and. And different books. But this book I love because it's the scientific look and A pretty cool comprehensive look at what we know scientifically increases our levels of happiness. So I love philosophy, I love mysticism, I love modern self help, and I really love positive psychology because it's the scientific approach to things that we know work and we know we can invest our energy in these things and we'll get a return. We've tested it in a lab. It's awesome. I'm also probably biased because I studied psychology as an undergraduate at ucla, so I particularly love science and positive psychology. But this book, the how of Happiness, rocks what she does. And this is Sonya Lieborsky, who is a rock star in the positive psychology movement. I think she went to Harvard undergrad, Stanford, PhD, and she now teaches at the University of California, Riverside. And this book is extraordinary. As I mentioned, we've got about a dozen big ideas here in the Philosopher's Note. We've only got seven minutes left, so I'm going to go through a couple of them in detail and then check out the note if this has resonated with you and get the book if it's resonating with you. But in the book, she goes through why we want to be happy really quickly. You want to be happy not just because it makes you feel better, which is enough, frankly, but because it also is going to lead to healthier bodies, healthier minds, and more wealth, all the things we want to see. So if we really want to give ourselves the world, it's important that we take our happiness seriously. She also was going to call this book the 40% solution. This is a really cool big idea. So she was going to call the book the 40% solution, because 40% of our happiness is within our control. They've discovered, psychologists have discovered scientifically, through studies with genetically identical twins separated at birth, right, they've discovered that 50% of our happiness comes from our genetics and we have a happiness set point. So it's kind of like when you have a thermostat set in a room. Let's say it's set at 70 and it gets up to 74. Well, it's going to bring it back to 70, and if it gets down to 66, it's going to bring it BACK up to 70. That's what thermostats do. Well, our happiness set point is kind of like that. And they have amazing research where, let's just say lottery winners, a lottery winner will get really geeked up when they win the lottery and within about a year, they'll go back to the set point they were at before they won. And paraplegics can lose their ability to use their limbs, will go down into a depression, then they'll come back up within about a year to their set point. Fascinating stuff. So that's 50% of our happiness is our set point, which comes from genetics. And then we have about 10%, which is influenced by things like wealth and marital status and stuff like that. That's kind of within our control, but not directly within our control. So then we look at the other 40%, 50% genetics, 10%, marital status, wealth, etc. And then 40% is within our control. That's the 40% we want to pay attention to. And it's essentially our behaviors. And in the book, she talks about 12 different happiness activities we can engage in that will again, scientifically increase our levels of happiness. And I want to make the point, too. Another big idea I talk about in the note is that it takes work to achieve a level of happiness that we want to have in our lives. It's not something you don't snap your fingers. You don't read one book, you don't go to one weekend workshop. We, we've got to work. Which is a big aspect of what I talk about in these notes is it takes practice to get good at anything, including happiness. So that's what I'm going to encourage us to do throughout these TV episodes and throughout the notes is what's one thing you could start doing today? What's the number one thing you get out of this note? What's the number one thing that most inspires you? And if you will leave that in the comments below, I'd love to get this dialogue going and kind of create a cool community around it. But anyway, what's one thing you learned you're going to start doing now to most positively benefit your lives? So There you go, 40% solution. It takes work. We've got four minutes left. So I'm going to quickly go through the 12 happiness activities. And she dedicates a lot of the book to articulating the science behind these. But again, remember, each of these is scientifically proven to raise your levels of happiness really quickly. Number one, expressing gratitude. These are all happiness activities. Number two, cultivating optimism. Number three, avoiding overthinking and social comparisons. Number four, practicing acts of kindness. Number five, nurturing social relationships. Number six, developing strategies for coping. Number seven, learning to forgive. Number eight, increasing flow experiences. Number nine, savoring life's joys. Number ten, committing to your goals. Number eleven, practicing religion and spirituality. And number twelve, taking Care of your body through meditation, physical activity and acting like a happy person. Those are a dozen happiness activities. She makes the important point that you want to pick the one or two or three that really fire you up. Don't do the ones that you think you should do. Do the ones that inspire you. Why? Because those are the ones you're likely to stick to. And remember, it takes practice. You got to do the things you're willing to do consistently.

So there you go.

We've got two and a half minutes left in this. More wisdom in less time. Philosopher's Notes TV episode so Happiness activity number one. The number one happiness activity is expressing gratitude. I do it daily on a great website called Gratitude Log. Check it out. It was built by my business partners, mindvalley. Gratitudelog.com BrianJohnson if you want to connect with me every night for the last two weeks or so, I've created a log of my top five things I'm most grateful for. And they've proven scientifically that people who take the time to do this, even just once a week, versus those who don't. The ones who do are scientifically happier than those who do not. Keep track of the gratitude. Huge idea. So simple, so powerful. Highly recommend it. What are you grateful for? Think about that. Reflect on it. How about this? When you're in a bad mood, do not ruminate on whatever's going on. Don't spin in your head. That's toxic. She literally talks about that scientifically. In a bad mood, don't ruminate on it. Do anything else. Go out and go for a walk. Tickle your baby. Tickle yourself if you need to. Whatever you need to do, don't ruminate when you're in a bad mood. That creates toxicity. Not a good thing. Here's a really big idea. One of my favorite big ideas out of the thousand big ideas in these hundred notes, this one's one of my favorite. Exercise versus Zoloft. Imagine this. You're depressed. You come into a scientific study and they separate groups. They separate depressed people into three groups. One group gets Zoloft only one group exercises only. One group gets Zoloft plus exercise. Guess who's happiest within a certain period of time? Well, they're all pretty much equal. Exercise will get you undepressed pretty much as much as Zoloft. Incredibly powerful stuff. And what they found was that exercise actually had a longer lasting effect on your happiness levels. So really powerful idea. Again, we talk about it more in the Note. We've got 20 seconds more how about this? Happy people have projects, they have goals in their lives. Create goals, create projects. Really big idea. And finally, the best possible selves Diary. If you want to build your optimism muscles, which was happiness practice number two, then think about your ideal self in the future. It's scientifically proven to increase your levels of happiness. Imagine five years out. You've worked hard, you've achieved great things. What's your life like? Celebrate that. That will increase your levels of happiness. We're at 10 minutes. Have fun. Talk to you soon.

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