What Causes Happiness, and What Happiness Causes [Robert Mack]

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum, and welcome to the enlightened executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we help strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to Maritage leadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on the art of Happiness. With me today, I am excited to introduce Robert Mack. Rob is a positive psychology expert, executive coach, and bestselling author of Happiness from the Inside Out. In addition, he's a TV host and producer for OWN and E Networks. His work has been endorsed by the likes of Oprah and Vanessa Williams, and he's been a guest expert for Access Hollywood, the Today Show, Good Morning America, and many others. Rob has a master's from the University of Pennsylvania in Applied Positive psychology, which is a degree held by only a few dozen people in the world. So I'm excited to have you here. Welcome, Rob.

Thanks so much for having me here. I got to came here more often just for the intro. Great ego stroke.

Well, it's very impressive, all the things that you've done. And I love the fact that you also do TV hosting. That's fantastic.

Yeah, I sort of stumbled into that. That wasn't something I had set out doing, but I had spent some time in between a consulting career and the work that I do now as I'm working as a model and as an actor. And it later has come in handy, particularly with the positive psychology work that I do now.

Yes. Yeah. So tell us a bit about that. What is your approach to the art of happiness and maybe how it's different than some. You know, there's a lot of books written on happiness. Right. And positive psychology. So I really want to get a sense for what your take is and how it's different.

Yeah, I think it's different at least three ways. One, it's rooted in my personal challenges and experiences, sort of living a very unhappy, depressed, and suicidal life to life that I have now, which is so happy and I feel so deeply grateful and just really overwhelmed with joy. So there's that. So it's rooted in my personal experience. Second, it's rooted in my professional experience. So I've been working as a positive psychology expert for about 20 years now, and I've learned a lot through my clients and I've been able to share a lot with my clients. And then third, I'd say, you know, it's also Rooted and grounded in science. So this field of applied positive psychology is about 20 years old. It's the science, the empirical study of what makes life worth living. So we have thousands and thousands of time tested, face valid research studies that have been conducted on happiness. So we know a lot about what causes happiness and what happiness causes. So the effects of happiness. And so I'd say for those three reasons, the work that I do is a little bit different than the work other people do.

Awesome. Well, let's get into the science of happiness. So for people who don't know about it, what it, what causes happiness and what impact does happiness have on your life?

Yeah. So I'm going to give you the answer that comes from science. And then the work that I do kind of goes beyond that. But I would say based on the research the positive psychologists have done over the last couple decades, there's a happiness formula. So the happiness formula is pretty simple. It's H equals S plus C plus V. So H equals happiness. And that S is genetic set point. So we're all born wired a little higher, a little lower for happiness. And that genetic set point makes up for about 50% of how happy or unhappy we are. Now, unlike height, for instance, or eye color, we can't, we can change our genetic sub point and wiring for happiness. And so in other words, it's plastic, it's malleable, we can make ourselves a lot happier and we can make ourselves a lot less happy depending on the people we spend time with, the thoughts that we think, the stories we tell ourselves, the foods we eat, all of that plays a role. So s genetic sound point is the first variable. C is the things, those are the things that we think about as successful conditions and circumstances. So it stands for conditions and circumstances. And so when you think about a perfect life where you have just the right number of kids, even if it's zero, you have just the right number of partners. Even if it's zero or even if it's 10, you have infinite money. You are infinitely beautiful, eternally youthful and young. When you're just, you know, healthy, just imagine your perfect life. If you were to create this perfect life, all of that together only accounts for, believe it or not, 10% of how happy or unhappy you are. So all the things that we spend most of our lives chasing and trying to achieve, accomplish or acquire only accounts for 10% of the of our happiness rating. And I would still say that's a pretty liberal number, but it's 10% at best, right?

Yeah, I would agree with that particularly given, you know, I coach some extremely successful leaders, billionaires that, you know, you look at, you think, oh, they have everything, they've achieved the, this financial success that they've always wanted. And you know, they say money doesn't buy happiness. And sometimes people don't believe it. They're like, yes, it would for me. But if you do the research and, and you look at people that come into money very winning the lottery, they call it actually sudden wealth syndrome, that they're actually not happier and they in sometimes can feel more depressed. So the things that we think are going to make us happy may not now they can be wonderful if we have the right mindset for it, but most people don't.

You nailed it. I mean, money can make your unhappiness a lot more comfortable, that's for sure. And it can improve your life satisfaction, but it doesn't generally improve your happiness, which is, which is, you know, quite a bit different, your subjective well being.

So what was the last one? There's one more, right?

Yes. So it's H goes S plus C plus V. V is voluntary or volitional activities. So that's really where the rubber REITs sort of hits the road or meets the road. Those are the things we think about when we talk about optimism, you know, gratitude, savoring, when we talk about our social support system. These are the things that you can control. And that accounts for 40% of your overall happiness score rating, which means that in the end, 90%, so 50% is genetic wiring. That 50% is perfectly malleable, changeable. 40% volitional activities, that 50% that's genetic is actually changeable by the volitional activities that you either do or do not participate in. So that's 90% and only 10% is quote, unquote, outside your control. I'd argue that even that isn't true because the happier you become based on how many volitional activities you're participating in, the more likely you are to be successful and then change these other external conditions and circumstances in your life.

So I'm hearing, bottom line, happiness is within your control and you can build it.

Absolutely.

You can change it and change the set point, change the volitional activities. So let's talk about how you do that. What is, you know, which, which one of the part of the equation do you recommend to focus on and how.

Do you do it? Yeah, it sort of depends on where you're at in your journey. If you're just starting your journey, I would say you want to think about the activities that you consistently engage in. So I would say identify at least two different buckets. Happiness islands and happiness deserts or valleys. Happiness islands are activities that you love for their own sake. They bring you lots of joy, you feel inspired, you feel energized for having done. Identify those, then identify your happiness deserts. Those are activities that you don't love for their own sake. You probably only do because you think you should, or you get some other extrinsic reward or result from it. You want to try to outsource, delegate, reduce, eliminate, automate or regulate all of your deserts. Now you're not gonna be able to do that with all of them, but you can do that with a lot of them. And so the idea is to spend as much time, energy and effort on your happiness islands and off of your happiness deserts or valleys as possible. So that's step one, which is really all about happiness being a kind of activity or action. It's about taking action. It's the low hanging fruit. But there are steps you want to go sort of beyond that. The second step is really all about people. So we know from the field of positive psychology that other people matter and they matter a great deal, especially social support matters. And so you want to do essentially the same thing with the people in your life. You want to identify those people who are essentially, you know, helping to support you in feeling happy. You might call those sort of happiness or happiness sort of nourishing people and also like sort of happiness vampires. And so you want to spend as much time as you can with the people that love you and generally want to be happy and want you to be happy and off and away from the people that are generally negative. The third step, and there's only, I promise, four steps, but the third step is really about telling better feeling stories based in truth about everything and everybody in your life, starting with yourself. So it's not about lying to yourself. It's not about pasting smiley stickers on empty gas tanks. It's not a, it's not a snow job. It's literally thinking in the most constructive way humanly possible so that you can facilitate or pre pave the happiest, most successful experience of life for yourself as you can. Right.

It is so fascinating too, the stories we tell ourselves will determine the level of happiness. And there's this powerful exercise sometimes I'll take groups of leaders through where they tell a story where they got screwed over in work at some point, right? Where, you know, they got passed over for that promotion or somebody stole their idea, whatever it may be, be. And they tell that story to their partner. And the emotions it brings up is like anger and you feel duped and you're unhappy, you know, and then I have them tell the same story from the perspective that they were actually responsible for what happened, but not in a blamey way. And at first that's challenging, but once they do, I said just give it a shot, right? You can have your old story back. But once they do that, they are transformed from the standpoint of actually I feel more empowered from it. And so you wonder why do we tell ourselves these stories, whatever it is, that make us feel bad?

It's interesting, isn't it? I love, so poignant what you shared there. It's so easy to join sort of this chain of pain, storytelling and meaning making experience that makes our lives worse off and not better off. And part of that, of course, is nature and part of his nurture. Right? So the brain comes wired with dozens of cognitive biases, like negativity bias, and you know, we've got, you know, dozens, the halo effect, the horn effect. But the idea essentially is that the brain is really designed to keep us alive, not necessarily designed to make us happy. Although if we, you know, stay alive, it's a lot easier to be happy in these bodies. Right, right, right. So that's the first piece, you know, Second piece is, you know, we are surrounded by very well intentioned people who don't necessarily understand that and have made a habit of practicing thoughts and beliefs and stories that don't support them feeling better, you know, or doing well in their lives. And so we've kind of picked that up and we begin practicing it. And so we've taken something that sort of was built into the brain and we practice it over and over again until we become extraordinarily good at it. And then it almost operates in an unconscious level. We don't even know we're doing it. So in the beginning, it can be a little bit effortful to turn that trainer around. But if you don't turn that trainer around to your point, it's easy to blame everybody and everything else for how unhappy and therefore unsuccessful you are. And when you do that, although it's justified and it's legitimate, it's like you did get sick or you did get laid off, or the person was mean. You really only disempower yourself to do anything about it. Because if the other person or condition is responsible for, for the problem, they must also be responsible for the solution. So we disempower ourselves when we do that. And you make a great point that that's really a valuable technique and tool to learn.

Yeah. And just being conscious more of, you know, why we're telling us, even if it was a bad experience. With time now, initially, you got to get those emotions out, Right. You got to experience them. But with time, can you reframe the story? But I almost think we get locked into telling the same story over and over.

Absolutely right.

It's like that was the story we told when it first happened, and we just keep telling it, but with bigger reflection. Isn't there a different version you could tell?

And there's always a different version, Right? There's always a better version. There's always an improved version, a better feeling version, a more successful version. I mean, the truth is this thing happened, and the truth is this thing is over too. Right? Yeah. So, you know, it's like. And also, it's good to remember, I think, that it's the bitter that makes the sweet that much sweeter. Right. So life is often full of contrast. We call it duality, but it's full of contrast. And the contrast is what makes life so beautiful often for so many of us. So you're right. There's always an honest, truthful, but better feeling way to talk about everything. And if you can lean into that more consistently, you'll get better at it. In about 22 to 66 days, your brain rewires itself to do it automatically or to do it more effortlessly. And then you find that not only you feel better, but you start to do better and life starts to go better.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. And then there was. Wait, a fourth one.

Right? Okay.

What is that?

Yeah. So the first one is sort of happy thought. It's all happy actions. Second one is sort of happy people. The third one is sort of happy thoughts. And the fourth one is happy no thoughts. So happy no thoughts is all about letting all of this go and spending more time in that still silent, sort of placeless place or stateless state of presence. But you're just swiffering and not thinking. You're walking and not thinking. You're showering and not thinking. You're in your body maybe in the beginning more than you're in your brain. So you're in the experience of your body more than the explanations in your brain. And you're doing it simply to enjoy yourself. Right. Simply to enjoy this precious present moment. And the more you can do that, we can sort of just stop thinking or let thinking go or notice thinking, but not obsess about it, not identify with it, just let it pass the way you let a cloud in the sky pass. You'll find that you become, quote, unquote, better and better at it. You enjoy it more and more deeply. And then life begins to seemingly cooperate with you in ways that you couldn't have scripted or planned, right? And so things just. And people just show up and opportunities show up. And that answer you seem to never or couldn't come up with suddenly surfaces on its own. Or that lost object suddenly appears out of nowhere. And the same thing happens when you often reframe things. The point is that when you feel better again, life goes better. But the fourth piece is really, I'd say, the lazy, intelligent shortcut, the most direct path to accessing that infinite well or pool of happiness and peace and love that exist inside you all the time. And you do it by not thinking.

Now, what about the person that says, oh, how do I not think? Because I used to be this person to some degree, and it's still challenging for me. Like, the brain is always going, going, going. And I used to think I could never meditate. And what helped me get through over the hump and start doing it regularly was the belief that you're never going to not be thinking. Just recognize that it's a cycle of either mantra or breath, focus, and then thought and then mantra, mantra, mant, not. So how do you. All the people that say what you're trying to talk about is. Is really difficult. How. How do you approach it?

Tequila. Just get blackout drunk. Notice how it works. So easy. That's great. Because I, for sure, like, was a poster boy for that, for feeling deeply that I would never be able to experience moments of silence or stillness. And the truth is, if you're paying attention, you'll notice there are moments during the day, generally when you're either in great pain or great pleasure. Your mind is already quiet, cool, calm, collected, composed, Right? Still in silent already. There are moments. They're tiny. They're these little tiny mini satoris, we call them little bundles of joy that are tucked into your day already. And that's also the value of, like, Cohen's right. When someone says to you, here's a just. What's the sound of one hand clapping your mind for a moment? A micro moment just goes quiet. Or somebody says, what's 317 multiplied by 578? It's like most of us get jammed up even trying to think through that. It's like our mind goes quiet first. So in that moment, in that quiet space, in that little gap, doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of peace and joy and happiness. But I promise, as you first of all notice the gaps that already exist throughout your day, you'll find that they start to deepen and widen. Second, I would take advantage of both that moment right before you go to bed and the moment right when you're waking up in the morning when your mind is already pretty quiet. It's in an alpha theta wave state when you're so tired you can barely move your body. And you don't really want to think about the world or anybody else in the world anymore. Just try to savor and enjoy those moments more. And you'll find that they also deepen and sort of widen and become more frequent. The third piece is what I call micromeditation. Micromeditation is just one breath. We've all taken meditation classes. It can be hard to meditate for 30 minutes or even five minutes. But we can all do one breath. The idea is to practice or pretend sincerely that you only have this breath left, that you only have one breath left. Hopefully, that's not true. Hopefully. We've got 100 years left, but we might only have one moment. We don't know. We treat this one breath like it's the only breath that we're guaranteed. And we try to enjoy this one breath as deeply as humanly possible. We can do that best by letting all our thoughts go. Breathing in through the nose and out of the nose. For joy's sake alone. We're just trying to milk that one breath for as much joy as we can get out of it. You don't have to stop what you're doing if you're vacuuming or folding the laundry. If you're on the phone, you're listening. You could just practice that one breath. So if you can do it as frequently as you can remember throughout the day, you'd be surprised that Again, in about 22 to 66 days, your brain starts to rewire itself to be a lot more present. And you'll find how easy and effortless it is to not think. And you have to not think forever. It's just in this moment right here. Now, can I just enjoy the shower? Can I just enjoy the food? Can I just enjoy looking and talking at Susan, you know, to Susan, without having to get lost in discursive, ruminative thought again?

Yes, yes, absolutely. What has been your journey in this happiness? You alluded to it when we started and, and I'm curious to know what had you get on this path and what difference it's made for you.

Oh, that's a question there. I. Suicide. I was severely depressed as a kid. I mean, I remember at six or seven years of age being so deeply depressed and so stressed out and anxious and self loathing. I mean, I hated myself. And I just always hoped and thought I would grow out of it. It's like I'll grow out of that one day. You know. That did not happen right away. You know, I just always assumed that I want to be a professional basketball player. It's like, well, I'm going to work hard at the professional basketball thing. I'll get good grades, I'll make money eventually, maybe I'll even have some friends, who knows, maybe even a girlfriend, you know, all these. So I worked hard at all those things and a lot of those things came to fruition with the basketball, of course. And despite achieving those things, I just continued to feel worse and worse. And I got to a place where I was so depressed and experiencing suicidal ideation so often, all day, every day that I decided I was going to do something about it. So I did a little research. I decided I was going to slash my wrist. So I went kitchen. I got a kitchen knife, steak knife, and I dug it into my wrist and I just wanted to end the pain, you know, I just wanted to be done.

Yeah.

And I had the most unexpected and inexplicable. It was really ineffable experience that I'd ever had, which is that. And I had a good life at the time. I had a good life. So I dug this knife into my wrist. I just felt the kind of peace and joy and love that you imagine you'll never experience. I experienced it in that moment that was actively digging this knife into my wrist. And I couldn't explain it. I was like, wait, what? Like why am I feeling all this? And what I would deemed the most depressed and lowest moment of my life. So at the time I just postponed the suicide for I think it was like 10 minutes. I don't even know. I wasn't committed to full 10 minutes. It's laughable now. It's like, like 10 minutes raw. But it's like that's where I was at. It felt very ambitious for me to post on it for 10 minutes. But I said I can always do it later. And in that 10 minutes I started doing a different kind of research. I looked up what depression is, what happiness is. And I found first and Foremost, I wasn't alone. There are a lot of other people in the world. In fact, the vast majority of the world experienced stress, anxiety, self loathing, depression. And I also discovered there were some folks out there in the world that were a lot smarter than me and a lot happier than me that I could learn from. So that became my journey really with happiness. And only later, after I became a lot more happy myself, did people start to ask me about it. Like I was obsessed with talking about it, like not my journey necessarily, but the happiness. And so I basically decided I was like, well, I'd like to offer it to people. And at first I just thought, I'll do it for free. And then I realized that I couldn't possibly keep up with the demand that much. I started to charge for it. And yeah, that became my life. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's an amazing story and certainly proof that the brain is plastic and that you can transform your set point of level of happiness and what that would be. Share some new tips for people. Besides this microbath, which I think is a great one, what other things can people start doing tomorrow to increase their level of happiness? This is so important. Just there's people in a lot of pain right now. There's a lot of divisiveness and I think having some solid, easy techniques will really help.

Great question number one. Prioritize happiness above everything and everybody else. I know that sounds harsh, but I actually mean it the way I said it, precisely the way I said it. If anything or anybody is more important to you than your own happiness, first of all, you have nothing to offer those people. Second of all, you're going to make it a lot more difficult to achieve or accomplish whatever else you want to achieve or accomplish. So if you can be single minded in your pursuit of happiness, which does in the beginning require you to be extraordinarily and authentically selfish, I promise that in the end you'll be become extraordinarily and authentically unselfish in a real way. You'll be able to give without an expectation of reciprocity and you'll do it for joy's sake, not because you're trying to be a good person. So I'd say number one is to prioritize happiness above all else. We have a lot of folks out there who are very well intentioned and I love them that are do gooders and unfortunately coming from a deficit based place. And so the help they offer often comes with strings attached and the expectation of reciprocity that pollutes the entire effort. That's number one. Okay, so if you prioritize.

Could not agree more with that. Yes.

Yeah, it's. So that's number one. If you prioritize happiness above all else, I promise you that practically any and every path will take you there. Number two, I would do everything I could to put myself in places, spaces, and with people that helped to encourage that, that supported that, and there were models of that or for that. Three, I would really work on my mind. Right. I would really work to see and focus on and talk about to myself and other people, only the best parts and aspects of everything and everybody. And I would do it for selfish reasons because I like to feel good. And I'm not willing to postpone or procrastinate or hesitate on this thing called happiness anymore. I think Buddha is absolutely right when Buddha said, your only problem is you think there is time. There is no time. Do not postpone or wait or hesitate or procrastinate on your happiness, hoping that one day in the future somebody or something will bring it to you. It will not, I promise you. And if it does, it will not last for very long. So work on that now. One of the best ways to work on that is by listening to or reading the thoughts of other brilliant, positive, encouraging, happy people. Like, I was addicted to Abraham Hicks. I was addicted to.

Oh, yes. Love. Love, yeah.

Just ground yourself in that kind of information and do it all day, every day, even if you're not listening, even when you're sleeping. I used to play it when I was sleeping because I was like, I can't be trusted with my own mind. My mind is. Hell, yeah. I use it.

If ever I have, like a down moment or I'm feeling anxious about something, I'll turn it on and it will instantly raise my vibration.

So, absolutely, you nailed it. You nailed it. And then the final thing I'll say is. And for me, exercise is huge, too. But the final thing I'll say is, it's extraordinarily difficult to be happy if you don't trust that happiness will also help you be successful and will also help you be healthy and will also help you find love. There's a faith and a confidence in happiness itself that is almost required in order to totally relax and rest in happiness in the present moment. You have to really trust that. And if you need help with that, look into the science. There's lots of science. Look into spirituality. If you go deep enough into any religion, it's there. It's hidden everywhere. Yeah, but you have to go deep enough into any of these disciplines to find it. But they all say essentially the same thing, like seek the kingdom of heaven within and the rest will be added. You know, it's like the same idea just repeated over and over again.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I'm wondering, the last question I had was, I'm sure some people say, well, you know, surround yourself with happy people. What about the people that you don't have any choice, they're in your life, they're, you're related. What do you do? Let's say it's your mother in law. Let's say, you know, it's someone that is a thorn in your side. How do you approach that and maintain a happiness mindset?

Yeah, those folks are personal trainers for your soul. They're personal trainers for what you most want to learn or remember, which is how to be unconditionally happy, unconditionally self loving and unconditionally peaceful. And so those folks in lots of ways are giving you what you most want and most need, but don't realize. You know, often we think it's the people who please us, the people that you know, are super loving and kind, that are doing us the greatest service. But the truth is, sometimes those people do us the greatest disservice because they literally train us and lead us away from the source of peace and love and happiness and contentment that exists within us. And so these people, first and foremost, remember and reframe it as personal trainers for unconditional peace, love and happiness. Second of all, make your interactions as short and sweet as humanly possible. Even if you have to do it more frequently. It's fine, you know. And third, you don't need to hear everything they're saying. You know, part of the thing, the value and the opportunity that coaching has presented for me is that I learned to just spend and place part of my attention always inside myself in that and rested in that place that I might call God, might call it the divine, you might call it just life itself. But there's a place inside of all of us, and I would say it is all of us, that is perfectly peaceful all the time. And if you can practice communing with that as often as humanly possible, you'll be surprised at not only how much better you hear everyone, but how much better you respond. And also how much less affected you are by everyone's bad behavior or negativity or toxicity.

Yes, yes. Sometimes when I feel myself getting frustrated in those circumstances, I say, okay, what's one thing I can appreciate about this person right now like internally to myself whether it's, you know, that's a great sweater they're wearing or have actually a beautiful smile or just find something it'll help me from going down the dark path or eight lane highway to hell.

Oh you know I love it. I love that so good. I love that so much. I couldn't agree more. More. And yes it's great practice for focusing on the best within everybody and everything and if you can do it with them it's like if I can make it in New York, you make it anywhere. Same idea.

Yeah, exactly.

The in law you can make it anywhere.

Awesome. Well how can people find out more about your work?

Yeah, so you can find me at my website@coachrobmac.com you can find me on most all social media platforms, probably most consistently Instagram @robmacmack official.