Dr. Srikumar Rao argues that happiness is innate, not something you earn by acquiring wealth, the right partner, or leisure. The problem is the "if-then" trap: believing "if X happens, then I'll be happy" keeps you chasing targets that never satisfy, because the model itself is broken.
Chapters
Foreign. Let's talk about happiness. Now, I have a. What happens in our culture is they tend to talk about happiness in very trivial terms. We talk about, gee, you know, I had a. My favorite ice cream and I'm happy. Or you know, I went out and had a good conversation, so I'm happy and I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about a very, very, very deep feeling of well being. The knowledge that you are okay, you have always been okay, you will always be okay. In fact, you cannot but be okay. You know, as long as you're in the human condition, stuff will happen. And when stuff happens, you're going to deal with this stuff as needed. But underneath that, that notion that you're okay is always there and you're kind of anchored in that. That's what I'm talking about. And bearing that in mind, what I would like you to do is I'd like you to take a minute thinking about what do I have to do, what do I have to get in order to be happy? Okay, you can write it down if you want, but it's not necessary. Just think about it. Answer it in your own mind. What do I have to get to be happy? When I actually conduct the program, I put it up on a flip chart and we spend about an hour on that and lots of stuff comes up. I put down two things on the whiteboard immediately. The two things I put down are west wealth and trophy spouse. And the reason I put down west wealth and trophy spouse, by the way, is because These are the 800 pound gorillas in the room. But for some reason people feel bashful about acknowledging them. And I save myself a lot of time by putting it up there. In the old days, if you were a millionaire, that was pretty good. These days, if you're a millionaire, you feel positively middle class. So we'll talk about where you have the kind of money that you can have a mansion where you need a golf cart to get to the dining room and stuff like. So that takes care of vast wealth and trophy spas. Of course, I don't know what your definition of male or female pulchritude is, but we'll put that down and throw in brains on top of that and say, okay, so I've acknowledged the 800 pound gorillas, but there are lots of 400 pound chimps around. So what comes up is stuff like relaxing, leisure time, interesting frank friends, children. And when children comes up, you gotta establish whether, talking presence of or absence of and stuff like that. But what I want you to think about is. And by the way we live our lives on that principle. What I would like you to think about though is that the question I asked you is a trick question because I asked you what do you have to to get in order to be happy? And in. Yeah, absolutely right. By the way, in general, whatever you can get, you can also un get. Is that correct? And if you can get something that makes you happy and you can also unget it, then what does it do for your happiness? Well, I going to suggest to you that there is an nothing that you have to do or get or be in order to be happy. Happiness is hardwired into you. It's part of your, part of your DNA. It's inbuilt into you. Your nature. Your nature is happiness. Now you're listening very politely and some of the audiences I go to, they're not quite so polite. And I frequently get asked Professor Rao, let me get this paid. You're saying that there's nothing I have to do get obey to be happy? Yeah. Then how come I'm not experiencing my innate self? How am I experiencing my life sucks. And the reason for that is actually very simple. What we have done is we have spent our entire lives learning to be unhappy. And we did that right from kindergarten or even earlier. We have spent our lives learning to be unhappy and how do we spend our lives learning to be unhappy? Remember we talked about mental models earlier and that's the notion we have, that this is the way the world works. There is one particular mental model we buy into and we buy into it with every fiber of our being. And that is the model that we have to get something so we can do something, so we can be something. And I have to get a lot of money so I can travel to exotic places like here so I can be happy. I have to be in a relationship so I can have great sex so I can be happy. These are all variations of the if then model. And the if then model states if this happens, then I will be happy. And the primary thing that's different between all of us in this room, except of course for our physical characteristics, is what is the particular if that we are focusing on? And we're all focusing on that. If my business takes off, if my in laws moved to Australia, if my boss had a heart attack, if I had a million dollars, you might want to add a few more zeros to that in my bank account, if my kid got into Harvard, take your pick, we're all living. If this happens, then I will be happy. Here's what I'd like you to do. Go back to your life 10 years ago and try to recreate who you were 10 years ago. Okay? Those of you who are in their 20s, go back five years. Now when you do that, think of who you were at that time and make a list of what are the things you wanted at that time. Because at that time you were a bundle of wants too. And you had a if this happens, or if I get this, I will be happy. Make a list of that. Odds are pretty good that many of the items you had in your list of 10 years ago or five years ago, you now actually have. And it has not made any appreciable difference to your well being. We've seen that all the time. So how do we react to this? Well, the way we react to it by saying, you know, I thought if I had X I would be happy. And now I have X and I see that my well being hasn't changed. I made a mistake. It's not X I need, it's Y. You know, I thought if I got married I would be happy. I now recognize that I kind of got married to the wrong person. So the thing to do is start all over again. Elizabeth Taylor is kind of an expert on this one and that didn't work, so we'll do it again. That's what we do all the time. What we do is we change what we put on the if side of the equation. If this happens, then I will be happy. I realized I made a mistake here, so let me change the if and I will put something else on that. And that didn't work, so I'll go back and put something else. What we do is we spend all our time rearranging what we put on the if side of the equation. What we do not recognize is the if, then model is fundamentally flawed. Let me repeat that. The model is fundamentally flawed. The model is broken. But instead of recognizing the model is broken, what we do is we change what we put on one side of the equation. That's the reason it doesn't work very well and that is the reason that is the way by which we learn to be unhappy.
