The 5 Keys to Happiness According to Science | Tal Ben-Shahar

Do you feel overwhelmed by the sea of advice on how to be happy?

Pursuing happiness directly hurts us. But if we break down happiness to its elements, to its metaphorical colors of the rainbow, then we actually can enjoy an increase in our levels of well-being.

And are you looking for a practical, science-based approach to finding joy no matter what life throws your way?

If we prevent children from going through hardship, we're doing them a real disservice. We're actually harming them.

That struggle led to a certain level of strength.

Following trauma, we're actually potentially twice as likely to experience growth as we are to experience deterioration. Potentially.

We could have a choice of, does this make you bitter or does it make you better?

If we say to ourselves, I want to be happier, or happiness is important to me, or it's a value to me, I will actually become less happy.

If you're in fight or flight, you're in your survival brain, and it kind of holds you hostage from your problem solving, your imagination, your executive function, and your Creativity.

And the reason why we see such a decline in mental health levels in our youth and adult population is primarily because of the addiction to technology and forgoing real, tangible, face-to-face interactions with other people.

How does creativity fit into your worldview?

Failure is critical for creativity and ultimately for success.

Join us as we explore the SPIRE method, a 5-step staircase that will help you climb out of despair And cultivate resilience and creativity, innovation.

Happiness is a combination of 5 elements, which are—

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Our guest today is Tal Ben-Shahar, a pioneering positive psychologist. He's going to be debunking the myth that success alone brings happiness. And going to offer a refreshingly realistic path to becoming whole again. He is the co-founder and chief learning officer of the Happiness Studies Academy and Potential Life. And he also designed and launched the world's first master's degree in happiness studies. Whether you're navigating a challenging phase or simply seeking a deeper sense of fulfillment, this episode promises to equip you with actionable strategies. for finding meaning, nurturing your mind, fostering supportive relationships, and embracing all your emotions. The keys to inviting authentic happiness into your life. Tal, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Great to be here.

You know, you and I were speaking at a conference recently in Mexico City, and I love, absolutely love your presentation. I was familiar with your work. prior to this. And I want to talk about everything from happiness to becoming antifragile to innovation and creativity. And I know you and I could speak for hours, but I just wanted to bring you to our audience because I think these are very important topics now more than ever. So let's start with happiness. There's so much literature about happiness. Online. It's obviously one of the desired states. Everybody wants to be happy. How do you define happiness? Why don't we start there?

Yes. So, you know, there are probably 8 billion different definitions of happiness. Yes. The way I define it is that happiness is a combination of 5 elements, which are spiritual well-being, physical well-being, intellectual well-being, relational well-being, and finally emotional well-being.

And this is the acronym you have called SPIRE.

SPIRE. Because I know it It helps memory to have acronyms, right?

It does. I love the mnemonics, absolutely.

And, you know, spiritual well-being is about, of course, can be derived through religion, but it's mostly about finding a sense of meaning and purpose in life. It's about being mindful and present. Physical well-being is about exercise and nutrition and recovery. Intellectual well-being is about curiosity, asking questions. It's about deep learning. Relational well-being, number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. And finally, emotional well-being is about learning to deal with painful emotions, accepting, embracing them, and then of course cultivating pleasurable emotions like joy, like gratitude, like love.

Wow. And then how did you make this your focus or one of the, you know, you're on a mission to help people in this area? How did that come about?

So I became interested in happiness because of my own unhappiness.

Yes.

So this was when I was a student, an undergraduate, I actually started studying computer science. You know, my dad's an engineer, my mom is a microbiologist. So, you know, it was pretty much set that I would become a scientist of some sort. And I found myself, you know, liking computer science, but I found myself sophomore year of college doing well academically, doing very well in athletics. I played squash, doing quite well socially and yet being very unhappy. And it didn't make sense to me because, you know, I looked at my life from the outside and, you know, I checked the boxes. But from the inside, it really didn't feel that way. And just one very cold Boston morning, I went to my academic advisor and told her that I'm switching majors from computer science to philosophy and psychology. And that was 30-some years ago.

As our listeners, obviously most people, happiness is like the goal. It's the desire What are some of the myths in your research that you found that maybe people don't realize that this is maybe a lie or something that's a non-truth in this field?

Yes. So there are actually a few of them. And unfortunately, these myths, because they're not based on reality, are barriers to happiness. So one of them, you know, we just indirectly discussed, which is that happiness is about an unbroken chain of positive emotions. That to really be happy, you have to be happy all the time. And that's a misnomer. You know, there are—

I don't know anybody who's happy all the time.

Well, yeah, I often tell my students, you know, there are 2 kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions such as sadness or anger or frustration or anxiety. 2 kinds of people, psychopaths And the dead. So if you experience any one of these emotions, it's actually a good sign.

Yes.

You're not a psychopath and you're alive. And yet most people do not give themselves the permission to experience the full range of human emotions. And the paradox is that when we reject or try to reject a painful emotion, it intensifies. So if I tell myself, you know, Tal, you shouldn't be sad, you're the happiness professor. Immediately, the sadness skyrockets.

Interesting.

Or if I say to myself, you shouldn't experience envy towards a friend, you should be better than that. Immediately, the envy goes up. And paradoxically, when I allow these emotions to simply flow naturally through me, they leave just as they came. They don't overstay their welcome.

That's interesting. We had Susan Cain on the podcast who wrote Quiet, amongst other things. And we were talking about how sorrow and sadness and certain music that puts you in that state is valuable also as well to have that spectrum of emotions. In terms of the myths we talked about for happiness, a lot of your work, and I really enjoyed Happier, talks about becoming more antifragile, right? Antifragility. How does that relate to the research you've done around happiness?

I encountered the concept of antifragility through the work of Nassim Taleb, who teaches at NYU. And essentially antifragility is what I've come to call more recently resilience 2.0.

Okay.

So let's begin with 1.0. Resilience 1.0, the traditional idea is that it comes from engineering. So you take certain material and you put pressure or stress on it. If it's resilient, it goes back to its original form. Or a ball, you drop it, it bounces back up to where it was before. That's why we talk about resilient individuals as bouncing back.

Bouncing back.

Antifragility, Resilience 2.0, takes this a step further. You put pressure on certain material. If it's resilient, it goes back. If it's antifragile, Resilience 2.0, it actually grows bigger and stronger. Or a ball, you drop it, If it's resilient, it bounces back up. Resilience 2.0, antifragility, bounces back higher.

Interesting.

Now, it turns out that there are antifragile systems all around us as well as within us. I mean, think, for example, our muscular system. You know, you go to the gym, you stress your muscles. Subsequently, you actually grow stronger, bigger, healthier. We're antifragile also psychologically, not just physiologically. You know, we do a lot of work with, you know, with parents and teachers. And we know that if we prevent children from going through hardship, we're doing them a real disservice. We're actually harming them. So that psychological stress they're put under because of a disagreement they have with a friend or a bad grade in school, these are actually potentially Growth experiences.

Why?

Because psychologically, as physiologically, we're an antifragile system. We need to trigger that antifragility through some stress, hardship, challenge.

And with that challenge comes change. For me, with my brain injury, I had learning difficulties, but that struggle led to a certain level of strength. And during the presentation that we were speaking at on stage for this room full of CEOs and entrepreneurs, you talked about post-traumatic stress, but there's this other side, post-traumatic growth, which is for me, I experienced it in that it's this situation where you have this adversity and you wouldn't wish it upon anybody, but you've come to reconcile it where you wouldn't change what happened to you. For me, I wouldn't change what happened to me with my accident because I found a mission. I found a strength. I found traits. I got clarity, purpose. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, because we always hear about post-traumatic stress. And I've talked a lot about post-traumatic growth over the past 10 years. We don't hear a lot about this phenomenon. Maybe you could define it for people listening.

The idea of post-traumatic growth was introduced into the psychological literature through the work of Tedeschi and Calhoun. And what they demonstrate through the research is that following trauma, we're actually potentially twice as likely to experience growth as we are to experience deterioration, potentially.

Wow.

Now, for most people, this potential is not realized.

Why?

First of all, because most people are not even aware of the possibility of growth. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if following a traumatic experience, I think, well, my only option, the only road open to me now is deterioration, that is likely to happen. But if the notion of the possibilities present, I'm much more likely to grow. And second, there are also certain conditions that we can put in place to significantly increase the likelihood, not guarantee, but increase the likelihood that we will actually grow from the hardship, from the challenge, even from the trauma.

Wow. What are some of those conditions?

So many of these conditions actually align with the spire elements. So if we find a sense of meaning and purpose, that spiritual well-being, We're more likely to grow from hardship. Nietzsche wrote 150 years ago, when you have a what for, every how becomes possible. So when you have a sense of meaning and purpose, mission, then you're much more likely to overcome hardships that are in your way. Meditation, being present is an accelerator of growth. Physical exercise You know, in the West, we find it very difficult to see. So how is physical exercise connected to psychological growth or to creativity? Well, it very much is because physical toughness is connected to mental toughness. 2 sides of the same system. Then you—

Doing hard things or even when you exercise, you think about the neurotransmitters of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. could increase your mood.

Exactly. You become neuroplasticity increases as a result. And neurogenesis, we're more likely to generate new neurons as a result of exercise. That's an accelerator of growth, of psychological growth. Expressing gratitude, you know, so changing the mindset from, you know, blame to appreciation. That is also an important antecedent of psychological growth.

Yeah, from gratitude, the ripple effect, you know, what you appreciate tends to appreciate in our life also. This is fascinating because this is almost a formula. What I'm thinking about is not just bouncing back, but bouncing forward in your life and having that growth.

Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, The difference between sadness and depression is that depression is sadness without hope.

Interesting.

And what simply understanding the concept of post-traumatic growth or antifragility does is it provides us with hope because we all experience these challenges and hardships and sometimes traumatic experiences. And if we know that there is the potential of growth, that in and of itself gives us hope.

And so I think just even the awareness of people listening or watching this opens up the potentiality for them to even know it's possible. Because a lot of people feel like the adversity they went through, it's kind of fixed. And this is the meaning that they have around it. And it doesn't mean anything else. But then this is giving people more freedom or more options and more agency also as well.

Exactly. That is, they become— active agents rather than passive victims. Because you see it, what is a challenge or what is a hardship or even a trauma? It's a point. And from that point, a fork emerges. And we have much more choice than we think we do. Yes, sometimes, you know, events are very hard, difficult, and life-changing and not in a positive way. But in most cases—

Yeah, and we're not mitigating the suffering that people are having. But it's just showing them that there are all these other choice points that these difficult times, they could distract us. These difficult times can diminish us or these difficult times, they could develop us. We could have a choice of does this make you bitter or does it make you better impact? Yeah.

You know, Jim, growing up, I very often heard the phrase that things happen for the best. And I must say, I never connected to it as a child. I still don't. What do you mean things happen for the best? You know, the war happening right now for the best? Innocent people dying, COVID for the best? So, but while I don't think that things necessarily happen for the best, I know that we can choose to make the best of things that happen.

I like that.

And, you know, things happen for the best is, you know, passive and I would argue detached optimism. Making the best of things that happened, that's grounded optimism.

Grounded optimism. And what I love about your book, Happier, is it's very practical, you know, in terms of not only is it insightful and inspiring with the examples that you have, maybe we could give, besides everyone listening, getting a copy of the book and gifting their friends and family with the gift of the potentiality for more happiness, What's for our listeners maybe one thing that they could put into play to have more happiness in their lives?

So with your permission, I'll talk about a few. But before I give these tips or techniques, remember that even if you take one of them and you apply them consistently, you apply that one tip consistently, it will make a big Difference in your life.

So little by little, a little becomes a lot.

Exactly. Small changes make a big difference when consistently applied. So physical exercise movement is, you know, I often tell my students, if I don't exercise at least 3 times a week and I exercise 5 times a week, but if I don't do it at least 3 times a week, I feel a significant drop in my well-being. It doesn't matter what goes on, you know, inside and the, you know, the The, you know, the thoughts that I create and develop and the gratitude, I still need my fix of exercise. So regular physical exercise at least 3 times a week, 30 minutes each time.

Yeah, it's interesting. Veronica, my executive assistant, we were just talking about on Friday, she has this time, this window where she dedicates to dance, right? And so many people, they don't schedule this time. And then they wonder at the end of the day, well, how am I how they lost. They didn't make time for the things that mattered. Yeah.

And unless we schedule it, it's unlikely to happen, not in our modern, crazy busy world. So it has to become a ritual. We have to introduce it at specific times, ideally, whether it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, this hour, or when I wake up in the morning, first thing, we need to schedule these things.

And not just like doing CrossFit or Pilates, certain activities. You and I were talking before we started recording. Squash, right? We talk about racket sports being good for the brain. Dance.

Dance is terrific. You know, dance because you're moving. Often you're doing it with someone else. So there's the social element, you know, whether it's in a group or in a duo. And also it's movement in different directions. So there is variety and diversity in our brains, as you know, loves that.

And music. Right. The music affects our mood also as well.

Of course. And speaking of music or focus in general, meditation, that's huge for happiness, for antifragility. And again, it doesn't have to be, you know, if I can't do 1 hour a day, then I may as well not do it. 5 minutes a day, you know, just deep breathing, slow, gentle breathing can go a long way in resetting.

And it helps to reduce the stress because chronic stress, we know from research, actually shrinks your brain. But just getting that little break, that reprieve of quiet time for yourself. And some people say, well, I don't have 5, 10 minutes. If you don't have 5 or 10 minutes, then you probably should take 30 minutes if you're so— if you're that busy and stressed.

That's exactly right. Another thing that's very helpful for happiness is taking time aside for other people. So You know, I see so often now in restaurants or, you know, kids hanging out and they have their phone with them. And that's really unfortunate. Again, the number one predictor of happiness and the reason why we see such a decline in mental health levels in our youth and adult population is primarily because of the addiction to technology and foregoing real tangible face-to-face interactions, focused interactions with, with other people.

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And, you know, another element of happiness which you're very familiar with and promote is curiosity.

And learning.

So there was research that came out recently. So we've known for a long time that curiosity and asking questions is good for your success, business, school. But research came out showing that people who are curious, who ask questions, actually live longer.

I love this.

So it's not, you know, curiosity kills the cat. It does the opposite to humans. It prolongs our life. So learning, Whether it's reading, whether it's, you know, watching a lecture, whether it's asking an expert questions about, you know, their topic. That's key for happiness, for antifragility, and it turns out for longevity as well.

And it's just joyful too to wake up and just feel like there's a certain level of humility when you feel like you don't, your cup, you could still fill your cup, right? Your mind's like a parachute, only works when it's opened. And, you know, if I feel, And I'm an avid reader and I study a lot that the more I learn, the more I feel like I have to, I can learn or I have to learn also as well. You and I, before we started recording, we're having to also have a conversation about innovation and creativity. Maybe we could have a little conversation about that. How does creativity fit into your worldview?

Yeah. So, you know, when I started studying psychology, actually creativity was the first topic that Really? That I encountered through the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow and Teresa Amabile on creativity. And, you know, this again, over 30 years ago, I've been intrigued by the connection. So very simply, what the research shows is that if you increase levels of well-being, even by a little bit, again, no radical transformation, 3, 4% increase in well-being, you actually become more creative. You're more likely to think outside the box.

Why is that?

Why is that? So I don't know if I can answer the why, but here is the how. You know, when I'm experiencing a painful emotion, let's say stress, my mind narrows and constricts, meaning I'm thinking about something very specific and particular. And that makes perfect evolutionary sense. You know, a lion is in front of me. I'm not going to think about, you know, my mortgage or what amazing relationships I have. You know, I'm going to think about this lion and see whether I should fight or flight.

Mm-hmm.

But when I experience pleasurable emotions, then rather than narrow and constrict, in the words of Barbara Fredrickson, I broaden and build.

I love that.

That is what our mind does. And then I'm—

Expands.

Expands. And that, what's thinking outside, outside the box, that's broadening. And that's what happens. And we see it in research. So this is research by Alice Eisen on kids and creativity and medical doctors and creativity. You boost their mood by a little bit. And they come up with better medical solutions or more creative ideas in school.

That makes sense to me because if you don't feel safe, if you're in fight or flight, you're in your survival brain and it kind of holds you hostage from your problem solving, your imagination, your executive function, and your creativity.

And you hit the nail on the head, safe. So both on the individual level and organizational level, this idea of safety is critical for creativity. There is work done years ago by Donald Winnicott. He went to the beach and he was a child psychologist from the UK. He went to the beach and he observed children playing, you know, building sandcastles. And he noticed that children who were in closer proximity to their mother were more creative. And he coined the phrase circle of creativity.

Circle of creativity.

So if the children were close within a certain radius of their mothers, they felt safe and they were creative. They were further away and, you know, less creative, less safety. Think about it for us as adults. Yeah, I don't need my mother, you know, right here. But this sense of safety, whether it's, you know, safety in the world, in my relationships, you know, life in general, That provides me with the freedom to create. And we see it also through the work of Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School on psychological safety, that employees in organizations who feel like it's okay to make a mistake, like they can stand up and say, I don't know, ask questions, which is essentially saying, I don't know, or fail.

Right.

In, in the context of a group, these individuals who experience psychological safety are much more innovative. The groups where there is psychological safety are much more creative.

Yeah, I would imagine that if somebody's in a situation where they don't feel safe, they're not going to take risks or have new ideas, propose a creative solution to something.

And therefore, they're less likely to fail. But as we know, failure is critical. for creativity and ultimately for success. You know, one of the soundbites that I repeat over and over again to my kids, to my clients, and to myself is learn to fail or fail to learn, which is of course important, the foundation of creativity, innovation, and very much related to happiness.

And then children, and just seeing the dynamic of children, they're willing to do that. Like you think about My son has just learned how to walk, right? And fails many times, fell many, many times, hundreds of times, but is not really concerned about what people are thinking around him and always tries again. And, but as adults, sometimes we try to learn that musical instrument, we take that language course or learn how to code or whatever, and we don't do quite as good. So we just like, okay, because of— we mitigate like our aspirations because of the fear of other people's opinions and their expectations.

Right.

And it's interesting in school where potentially we set an environment where, you know, everything is graded and tests and, you know, get these kind of things wrong. Maybe we squelch their curiosity or creativity over time. And I just really wish in addition to what we teach, learning how to learn and brain health, that curiosity and creativity, happiness would be taught in school. You know, that would be like one of the most important subjects I would imagine.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I often ask participants in my lectures, so hands up those who took a class in mathematics. Everyone puts their hand up. History, everyone puts their hand up. How about happiness? Nobody. How about relationships? Hardly anyone. How about creativity? Hardly anyone. And these are no less important. In fact, they will improve your performance in mathematics and in history if you do cultivate better relationships and happiness. And there are, you know, there are gifts for life.

Absolutely.

So I hope, I hope schools introduce them sooner than later.

And since they, they haven't yet in traditional education, wherever, and we, we've, you know, people watching this and listening to this all around the world, uh, you, you have a course, right? And you have a textbook, if you will, um, that would Be wonderful. Who did you write Happier for and what are they going to get out of that?

You know, my mission, if you will, is to create a bridge between the ivory tower and Main Street. So it's to bring evidence-based scientific research and make it accessible.

And practical.

And practical. You know, I would not be teaching in academia or anywhere for that matter if I didn't think that these things could actually make a difference in people's people's lives. So we have, you know, students taking our courses who are, you know, coaches and therapists. We have parents.

Okay.

We have medical doctors and managers in organizations because creativity is important for everyone because happiness is important for everyone. And this is important because, you know, We all want to be happier. You know, that's, it's in our constitution. But happiness is not just an end in itself. Happiness also is a means towards other ends. So as I mentioned earlier, happiness leads to more creativity. It also leads to more productivity, to more success. It leads to better relationships and to longevity. So there are all these— benefits, indirect benefits to becoming happier.

And so maybe it's not a destination where people are working towards being happy. Maybe they could be happy while bringing the joy and the love and the happiness to what they're doing.

Yeah. And, you know, there's an important element here in what you said because many people have the notion, the understanding that to be happy, they need to decide to be happy. Meaning if I wake up in the morning and say to myself, I'm going to be happier, or, you know, happiness is important to me, it's a choice and I'm going to pursue it. These statements actually will lead to less happiness, which is a real problem because on the one hand, of course, we want to be happier. But on the other hand, we know, and this is research by Iris Moss and others, we know that if we say to ourselves, I want to be happier or happiness is important to me or it's a value to me, I will actually become less happy. So what do we do? What do we do about it? How do we resolve this barrier to happiness? And the answer is that we can and should pursue happiness only indirectly. So let me make this a little bit more concrete through an analogy. You go outside and the sun is shining. And, you know, you look at the sun, what happens? It hurts. You know, you burn, you tear up.

Sure.

But what if you go outside and you take a prism and you break that ray of light coming from the sun? And then you look at the outcome, meaning the colors of the rainbow that you can appreciate, that you can enjoy. So looking at the sun directly hurts. Looking at it indirectly actually contributes to your well-being. It's the same with happiness. Pursuing happiness directly hurts us. But if we break down happiness to its elements, to its metaphorical colors of the rainbow, then we actually can enjoy an increase in our levels of well-being. Now, what are these metaphorical colors of the rainbow? These are the Spire elements.

Yeah.

So if I wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to become happier, I'm actually going to be less happy. But if I say, I'm going to spend 5 minutes a day meditating, that's an indirect way of pursuing happiness or exercising or expressing gratitude or learning or—

Dancing or meditating.

Or spending more time with my loved ones. These are all indirect ways of pursuing happiness. That's enjoying the colors of the rainbow rather than subjecting ourselves to direct sunlight.

I love that. So many people are listening right now and they want to go deeper with you. Where can they connect with you? What resources do you have? And we'll put everything in the show notes again at jimkwik.com/notes. But what are some of the things that people could find you at and learn more? Yes.

So the Happiness Studies Academy, we have a year-long certificate program that Where we introduce our participants to our students to practical skills that they can introduce, whether it's at home, whether it's in the workplace, in school, to increase their own and others' levels of happiness. We also have a master's degree, the world's first master's degree in happiness studies, soon to be expanded to a PhD. And we have a lovely course. PhD in happiness studies. I love this. And we have a lovely course through Mindvalley. So, you know, depends how long do you want to spend. You know, I decided to spend my life in this field because there is always so much to learn here.

Okay. Yeah, if your team sends us links, we'll put it in the show notes for everyone to find. And your books, wherever books are sold.

Yeah.

I assume also as well. Social media?

Yeah, so we have, we are on Happiness Studies Academy is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

Amazing. Well, I'm really happy that we had this opportunity to connect. We talked about it, you know, a while back. And I hope everybody who's listening or watching, they, I know they got practical value from this conversation and just even be more aware that this is even possible. You know, sometimes we're so busy in life that we lose touch sometimes with the things that light us up or we're dimming our happiness because You know, shining into somebody else's eyes or something like that. So I appreciate your time and talent. Thank you for the amazing work that you do and the research and sharing it with our community. And yeah, I look forward to maybe having you back and maybe adding one of your books to our book club. It'd be phenomenal.

Thank you, Jim, for everything that you do.

Thank you, Tal. Everyone, I want to thank you so much for enjoying this episode. If we put the— and this is a long conversation on the audio, it's always 20 minutes. Because it's quick. But for the full expanded version, if you're not watching this on YouTube, please go to our YouTube channel. We have over 1.5 million subscribers there where we put the extended version of our content and so much more. So I wish everybody lots of health, lots of happiness. Until our next episode, be limitless.