Happiness

Hello, listeners, members, and subscribers! The fourteenth Moonshots Master episode is here and we are leaping into Personal Transformation and Happiness!

We start with Tal Ben-Shahar who states that a happy life does not need to be happy all the time; instead, we should learn to embrace painful emotions and accept pain. Continuing on the path and getting us truly inspired are Shawn Achor and Oprah, who both teach us that the most successful people - in work and in life - believe that their actions have a direct effect on their outcomes.

With a foundation of inspiration, we now lean into the details by hearing from the awe-inspiring Dalai Lama, who discusses the idea of hope and gives us a lesson on the meaning of life. We then hear from a Moonshots-first thinker, Russell Brand, who introduces us to a study comparing happiness levels between lottery winners and quadriplegics, and how your inner state is more connected to your purpose than pleasure.

Helping us adopt new habits and practices to be happier today, we learn out loud with Neil Pasricha and his top 3 tips to start with a happy mindset, and how to want nothing. Closing the Master episode on Happiness is Naval Ravikant and Joe Rogan, who both talk about why we all need to make happiness our priority and understand that Happiness is a Choice.

Our recommended reading list will help you go even deeper into the topic and our shows on Happiness:

What key lesson are you taking from the Master Series shows? Get in touch and let us know! Thanks for listening. That’s a wrap.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the moonshots master series. It's episode 14. It's a very big number. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark. Hey, good

morning, Mike masters Parsons. We've got a pretty action packed episode for the brand new master series today.

Don't we? We certainly do. And this has been a topic close near and dear to our

hearts. Isn't it? Yeah, that's right today. Within episode 14 of the master series for moonshot, we are diving into personal transformation and the idea of happiness, which Mike, for our weekly listeners, we've just completed a series of six or seven pretty, I would say.

Heavy hitters when it comes to happiness. We learned a lot from Dan Harris, Ben T Shahar, the Dalai Lama, Neil Pasricha, Eric Jorgenson, and Naval Ravikant, as well as Shawn Achor all about happiness. So it's a great opportunity for you and I, as well as our master series members and subscribers to delve a little bit deeper into this topic, theme, behavior mindset about happiness, isn't it?

Yes. And dare say, mark. If our listeners are thinking and our members are thinking I listened to the entire series. Wait for this number one, we have brought in a new guru who is going to surprise you with the depth of their wisdom on the topic of happiness. But what we have endeavored to do in this show is to pull together.

Just, this is like a mega mix. This is like the best way of thinking of happiness, how to think about it, how to approach it, how to do it, how to bring it into your day. We have attempted to bring the six best thinkers together so that this show can launch you into a whole new way of thinking and doing, because we've discovered so much about happiness, mark, that we are ready to give you the definitive six ideas that will transform.

You from being someone who is chasing happiness to someone that is experiencing happiness in the here and now. And I think that was the big breakthrough that we had preparing this show, right? This is really the playbook. Yeah.

That's exactly it. After delving into the work, the books, the thoughts of those individuals, I've already mentioned you and I, as well as our listeners are able to now spend some more time and dig into the ideas.

So being able to step back from just the limitations of a book, the cover, the pages, and actually being able to step back and think about six big ideas, how they are interconnected and what we can learn from them. And then. Right here. And now today, as you and I, we are recording as our members and subscribers are listening, things that we can do straight away.

That's a pretty good proposition,

isn't it? Yeah. I would even go further in that. I will admit that sometimes I'm looking out into the world and looking at what others are doing and thinking, oh, they've all got happiness right now and I'm still chasing it. And I think the reality is we all attempted to think like that, but we don't have to.

In fact, what we've got are six clips that will help you bring practices into the here and now. And this. So much what we are here to do. This is the job to be done for the moonshots team, which is to learn out loud, together and focus on building the habits that we can do every single day. And we are just gonna enjoy the simple pleasure of being happy in the moment.

And we will practice and practice to get 1% better every day. We've got it all in front of us here on the happiness episode of the master series. Mark, I am ready to launch into this one. Where do we begin? I

would love us to kick off with a very intelligent eloquent scientist, author and speaker TA Ben Shaha.

Who's going to give us a little bit of the truth about happiness? He's going to inspire us as we begin our journey on the master series episode into the realm of happiness. By first of all, understanding and accepting pain. There are only

two kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions. The first kind are the psychopaths.

The second kind are dead.

There is a false understanding or expectation that a happy life means being happy all the time. No learning to accept and even embrace painful emotions is an important part of a happy life. And the study of painful emotions is an important part of the field of happiness studies. My name is Tal Ben Shahar.

I'm a student and teacher in the field of happiness studies. There is a very important concept that was introduced by Nasim TAed. And that is anti fragility. Anti fragility is essentially resilience. 2.0 resilience. 1.0 is when we put pressure on a system.

After the pressure is lifted, that system goes back to its original form.

Anti fragility takes this idea a step further, you put pressure on a system. It actually grows bigger, stronger. We see antifragile systems all around us and within us, for example, our muscular system, we go to the gym and we lift weights. We're putting pressure on our muscles. What happens as a result, we actually grow stronger.

We're an antifragile system. On the psychological level, you know what that's called

PTG post traumatic growth. So where post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD is about breaking down. Post-traumatic growth is about growing stronger as a result of pressure stress and its anti fragility. The role of the science of happiness is to teach us what conditions we can put in place to increase their likelihood of growing from hardship.

Growing through hardship. Is this not one of the biggest lessons for us to take on board personally? Mark, I have fallen victim to resenting hardship, discomfort, pain, and suffering, and it's caused me. Untold stress and just bad vibes. And one of the great things that we have learned together on this show is that you have to accept that if you are gonna shoot for the moon, if you're gonna be the best version of yourself, that there will be hardships along the way.

And I think one of my biggest life learnings mark is to accept that hard work is part of the process. Maybe there's a little bit of suffering to get to satisfaction, fulfillment, happiness. There is no world that exists where. Every single moment from Dawn to du that everything is just perfect. It is a false expectation.

It just doesn't happen. But you know what? My, it took me ages to get that into my thick head. that it's not like there is not a perfect path. And in every study we have done amazing people. There is always untold requirements of resilience, determination to keep going when it hurts, whether you are Goggins, whether you are Oprah, whether you are a writer, whether you are a thinker, academic, this pattern is universal that we have to be prepared to change what we perceive as our expectation around happiness.

And we have to be prepared to put in the work to search out meaning. Satisfaction and fulfillment, not just this unbridled ecstasy and joy of pleasure that we think is what we are meant to be chasing. Mark. How about you? I think this idea is so big. What Tal Ben Shaha is presenting is one of the biggest things we have to change in our mindset.

If we wanna actually be content with things, otherwise we will be dreaming of perfection all the time. That is simply impossible,

where this inspires me and where Tal Ben Shahar quote, is really helping kick us off in this episode of the master series is remembering or maybe not remembering even, but realizing having the insight into revealing, maybe that happiness.

Isn't something that you need to delay and you need to make it come later. It's something that instead of. Turning around and thinking, oh this is too all. Life is too hard right now. And therefore I'm not happy. I'll be happier once I feel better. Or once I've accomplished something, when I've moved house, maybe I've got a new job or maybe I've retired.

We're delaying that happiness until we. Think that we will be in a happier place and what I think we've been able and fortunate enough to learn throughout all this study, Mike, you and I, we've been recording the show and digging into these incredible individuals for many years now. And it still surprises me exactly.

Like you were just saying that there is that consistent thread around resilience, around ownership, around awareness that translates from. Themes of productivity, starting businesses, but also this opinion of happiness and where I'm getting inspired with Tel Ben Shaha in that clip is that you can see the happiness, even when things are really hard.

It's just an interpretation moment. If I'm struggling as I've done with poor emails clients, maybe they're not too happy with me for some reason. Maybe it's a life thing where a partner or a colleague or a friend has some feedback and I'll be thinking, ah, this is a bit rough.

Why me? The truth is now that we have gone into antifragility. With Nicholas tar. Now we've heard from T Ben Shaha about post traumatic growth. The idea of seeing all these difficult moments in life as something to almost celebrate and say this is a good challenge. How am I gonna react? How do I respond?

It's an opportunity to learn. Yeah. And I think what we are really finding from all of the individuals that we dig into on the master series, as well as the Moonshot's weekly show is that there's this resilience and focus that we need to give all of these opportunities around us in life because every single moment is a chance to

learn.

Yeah. And what I try to do in math is when things are tough and when things hurt. I try this. It's so Yucca, willing, problem. Good suffering. Good. Cause. Cause I, I know that I'm fighting to be the best version of yourself. Like I know that's my intention. So when I experience challenges, frustrations, stress, I try to remind myself, you know what, it's a bit like a workout.

I must be working out pretty hard because my muscles are hurting or my lungs are really pumping. So this is a run that's gonna make me fitter in exactly the same way. If something is challenging me at work or in my personal life, I am actually in that moment. Try to embrace that I am earning, I am fighting for the right thing and that I almost do this trick on myself.

I must be doing the right thing cuz it's hard. cause if it was all so easy, then I'm not really challenging myself. And this frame of reference is really important for me because particularly when I was at high school and in my younger years I would actually oh, this is all too hard. And I would abandon things.

I have a laundry list, a list of things where everyone's oh Mike, if you just apply yourself, you could do a thing or two on this and oh my gosh, the people that I disappointed and mostly myself in not pursuing things. Cuz when the going got tough, I got the hell outta Dodge mark. I was like I don't wanna fail in front of everyone.

I don't wanna embarrass myself or frankly, I just wasn't prepared to put in the hard work. I will try. And when I'm feeling like, Ugh that, those moments, Mike, where you're like, ah, this is really tough or that didn't go as expected or geez, I've gotta put a lot of hours of work in today. Those feelings.

Yeah, for me the fight or flight response always comes to my mind whenever I'm in that type of mood or that type of mindset, instead of thinking that my action or responds to a certain situation is a chance to learn, to grow, to maybe get a little bit tougher or maybe a little bit more resilient, or maybe just a little bit happier.

Instead, invariably for me, at least in my kind of early adult life, as well as childhood, I think I probably just did run away from these things because it felt more safe.

Yes. But here's the thing, like what from someone like Goggins is you, what you perceive to be your limit is a self-imposed response.

And often you can go far beyond that. Like how many times mark, have you attempted to do something and say, oh, that's impossible. And then a month later you're doing it. Yes,

exactly.

The thing is if you accept that, it will be hard at the start that you require. This sort of adaptation. Okay. I'm pretty uncomfortable, but I'm gonna stick with it.

That's the shift. And then you can even find satisfaction in knowing that you are being resilient cuz when you identify that behavior yourself yes, I know this is the secret to success. Look at all the people that we've seen that have been resilient. I mean imagine if Elon Musk said, oh, you know what, this is all too hard.

And gave up. What about if he's oh, I've gotta write a check. And basically he had to reinvest all his personal wealth to get SpaceX and Solar city to keep them alive or Teza I can't remember which company. So he had all the wealthier acquired. He had to re-write two checks to keep both companies alive when everyone's these things are dying.

Thi just being prepared to stay the course and to know, Hey, I'm doing the right thing. I know I'm feeling uncomfortable, but I have to adjust. I have to make myself train myself, remind myself that's okay.

Another person Mike, who really in the early part of their career received a lot of criticism, which I think has always surprised us and even was told that they weren't right for television was none other than Oprah Winfrey.

And this next clip, we've got to continue inspiring us around the theme and the concept and the mindset or behaviors of happiness is Oprah interviewing Sean Aker, who wrote the happiness advantage. So this next clip we're gonna hear from Sean as well as Oprah is actually around the successful people in life being inspired and.

Aware that the actions that they take have a pure effect on the outcome. How do we become

happier

today?

I think that to be, to recognize the fact that this moment, the fact that you got to watch this conversation on happiness is a privilege, right? It's an opportunity that many people in the world don't get.

We've gotta not only be grateful for that moment, but take it to the next moment. Yeah. Then

the question, why did that show up in your life right now? Yes, because people needed a little happiness

lift and to recognize that people around us need to hear what they didn't just get to hear. If there's somebody in your life who didn't get to hear about that happiness could be a choice, we need to actually be living models for that for other

people.

Yeah. One of the other things I liked that we did mention before is you talk about random acts of kindness. Yes. Which for years on the Oprah show, we would, we actually created shows around random acts of kindness and oh my God, you wanna feel good about it day, right? Do's just something randomly good for somebody that they wouldn't expect.

And it doesn't have to be like a big gift or something, just a random

gesture. It's a happiness multiplier, right? Because not only does it make you happy and make those people happy, but as soon as you start talking about it, even thinking back to some of those random kind, we immediately start to smile.

Yes. And what I love about it is, yeah.

I remember going through the door, knocking on the door with a woman, remembering that years ago, knocking on the door and saying you have the day off, I've checked with your boss. Oh, that was such a fun moment. First she went, ah,

slammed the door, right? yeah.

Yeah. I, but the other thing it shows us is how much power we have. We have the power to actually change the reality we see around us. Yeah. And one thing, so we've talked about is that oftentimes we just feel like this world makes my happiness or not if thanks are not going well, it's because of what the world is giving me.

It's always about. Powerlessness compared to our genes or to our chemicals or to our environment. And what we're finding is that when you do a random act of kindness, it shatters that because what it says is, whoa, I could actually not only change my own levels of happiness, but I could change 'em for other people.

I'm gonna start writing the social script and I'm gonna write a script that causes people to be, to choose happiness,

better choosing for happiness. The example that they were giving there of just random acts of kindness. These are choices that we have to make, and this is where we become actively involved at resetting our mindset to embracing happiness.

Crazy thing I always do. Mark is I'm always when I'm in a moment and I'm amongst. Other people. And let's say, I sit down and I'm like, wow, it's beautiful out here. Like I share that thought. Or yesterday we had that first spring, whether where the air is a bit warmer and you're like, oh, and I said to someone, how good does that feel?

It's really like grabbing onto those little moments. It's a choice to celebrate that and to actually feel contentment or happiness, just like it is a choice to give to others. I came home from a run two days ago and my neighbor's bin was still out the front of his house. And I knew that they weren't in their house that week.

So I put the bin by the side of his house, just so it wasn't left out. And I felt really good and I haven't mentioned it to him. I don't intend to mention it to him. I don't need to, I just did a random act, a very small act of kindness, but even that man gave me a little to do, and I could walk along.

I think the point here is if you are, if you listen to T Ben Shaha and accept that, not everything's gonna be perfect, that there's gonna be bumps along the way. And if you're really fighting for something it's gonna get uncomfortable, but you still have the choice to experience the light. Peace, happiness.

These are choices that you can make. And what we heard mark was Sean and Oprah giving us really clear insight in that it is cause and effect

your choice. I think the big takeaway from me with that clip is it's quite practical. And the example that they call out giving and doing some round of active kindness is a great demonstration of how an action that you choose to do.

So in your case, Mike, helping your neighbor out, putting that bin in seems pretty small, but what you did was you demonstrated to yourself that a small act can make you feel happy. And I love this idea. And as we're thinking about happiness, we're getting inspired. We're starting to really lean into a little bit more around happiness and how we can.

Let's say own it a lot more because we are learning that it is something that you can control. You don't have to feel powerless. Similarly, for me, when I was younger, it felt happiness. Always felt like this idea of as Sean was calling out there, genes, DNA, I've inherited it from family. it just doesn't go my way.

But actually, what we're really hearing from the two of them is you don't have to feel powerless anymore. Just do something little and you can demonstrate to yourself. That it is achievable. Yeah. Hold it. Open the door for a neighbor. Yeah. That's all it can

take. Yeah. And talking about cause and effect, if you wanna unlock that happiness moment you just become a member of moon shots and oh my gosh, good things

happen, yeah, that's right. And we've gotta give a special call out to all of our members and subscribers who are listening to today's master series, episode Mike on happiness, because all of these individuals, they certainly make you and I, and the moonshot. Happy. So without Arthur, the OU please welcome. And high fives to Bob Niles.

John Terry Nile Marline and Ken Dimar Marja Connor and Rodrigo Yasmin Lisa Sid, Maria, Paul Berg and cowman David and Joe crystal and Evo Christian hurricane brain, Sam Kelly, Barbara and Bob Andre, Matthew, Eric, Abby, and ho Joshua, Chris Kobe, Damian, Deborah Gavin Lasse and Steve Craig Lauren, Javier Daniel, Andrew, Ravi Avett LGV and Susan.

Thank you so much for supporting us as we go down the journey of the master series, as well as frankly, just keeping the lights on Mike. Yeah,

and I wanna do a special little segment here because we are celebrating our first year anniversary with some of our members, Bob Neils, John. Terry Nile and Mario alone, you have been members with us for a year and we are so incredibly grateful for your support because it helps us pay all those hosting bills, software bills, you name it.

And the crazy thing is that as the show. Gets more and more listeners. It gets more and more expensive for us to do all the serving of the podcast files and all of that sort of stuff. So I want every single member to know that you are part of making this possible. And I really wanna give a shout out to Bob Neals, John Terry Nile and Mary line for being with us for a year.

We are really delighted to share with you the process of learning out loud together and being the best version of yourself. And we just wanna say a very. Thank you. How cool is that mark? One year they've been a member with

us. That is very cool. Isn't it? You'd certainly be part of the moonshots family, whether you joined today or a year ago, but a huge thank you for those original OG six within the moonshot family.

Now talking about the OG, there is none other than the Dai Lama, and he's got some big thoughts for us and just really open yourself up now, as we go deeper and deeper into the thinking, the science, the ways of working of achieving happiness with none other than the Dai Lama,

very purpose of our life. I usually describe happiness, reason, the future, even this afternoon, what will happen?

Do not know. And the future has no guarantee. But our life, based on hope, presents some difficulties still with hope. If someone completely lost to hope, then that very mental attitude shorten their life and worst case even suicide may take place. So therefore hope means something good.

Therefore, the purpose of our life, I usually tell people happiness is our generosity and the meaning of our life. Now happiness, theistic, way happiness, only sensory level, seeing something nice, hearing some beautiful music and tests. And smell and touch including sex. These are materialistic sort of say happiness, istic level happiness.

These short, not long lasting happiness must develop on a mental level. Now in this country one part of Saudi philosophy and then general philosophy, but it is philosophy, no creator, rather self creation. So therefore the concept of karma also comes, everything depends on your own action.

Positive action. Virtuous action. Bring good harmful sinful action, bring suffering that depends on motivation. So in this country, over 3000 years ago our city already examined the ultimate source of happiness, not external, but here, not sensory level, but mental level. So Shama practice for Vivana came.

So therefore and you see these things originally come from religious text. Now we should take these things as an academic subject, not a religious subject.

It is not a subject to delay or deprioritize Mike, what we're hearing from the OG, the Dai Lama is that happiness is based on our actions.

There's no guarantee of what will happen in the future. How today will go, how tomorrow will go, but I can control. And I can guarantee my reactions if I choose to take ownership of them. I think this is a huge pivot in the way that I think about happiness. And I interpret things around me, whether it's something that physically happens, you get cut off when you are driving your car or you step in, something unpleasant on the pavement, whatever it is, that's something you can choose to control and react to.

But also even if it's something more. Mentally stimulating something that, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's a worry that you have, again, you can control how you interpret that anxiety or that concern, or that worry, the mental attitude that do LA is talking about there, I think shows us that everything depends on how we think about things and ultimately how we respond to things.

And that really starts with a good understanding of your mental preparation and approach to happiness. Wouldn't you say

yeah. This makes me go to many different places. I think what the dilemma started with is, the future is very uncertain, and he's bringing us into the here and now, which totally makes me think about the show we did on Eck echo.

And just go to moonshots if you're interested in listening to that show in full, but here's the thing. What I think that Dalai Lama is moving towards, is that he's basically saying here, I think Mark, tell me what you think, but I be, I think he's basically saying you have a choice to make your thoughts and actions positive or negative.

And if you develop the habit of negative thoughts, you will find yourself in negative outcomes. I think of people who are always playing the victim well, invariably they end up inducing bad situations because they're almost self inducing. yes. They're bringing them upon themselves. The poor me syndrome.

Whereas what's quite interesting building on the earlier thoughts. You've accepted things that are a bit hard. You've accepted. Happiness is a choice. Likewise, you can start to maximize your day in positive thinking. And I think he's encouraging us to do that. And for example, one of the things I've been working on since we've done this huge study of happiness is whenever I find myself judging someone else in my mind, I'm like, stop.

Who am I to judge them? Just don't judge them. Don't create this energy where you are casting a vote on someone else's situation or behaviors when you don't know the full situation. That for example is me trying to prevent going on the negative side and then maximize going on the positive side. And, we talk about getting Luna powered, good karma for becoming a member of this show.

All justin aside, I do think that we need to become very present live for the now, because, if you don't do that, mark, what is the value created in going back into your past and getting stuck in past things and past negative situations? Sure. You can go back and learn and say, how can I do it better?

But, we all do find ourselves going back to some. Injustice that we experienced and ruminating on it. And getting frustrated about it. It may have been last week or last year, or even further before, like we all laugh about all the baggage we have from being kids under our parents. Yeah, exactly. At a certain stage. If you keep going back to that and re-experiencing those negative things in the past, or alternatively boggling your mind, letting your monkey mind run wild on possible negative outcomes in the future, you are also attracting that negativity. If you move to, I think the Dai LA is encouraging us to move into the present and to be content, happy and positive with this moment.

as opposed to dwelling in the past or the future. I don't think that this is my kind of breakdown of it. What's your tear down mark?

I think I just wanna build on what you were just saying with this idea of ruminating in a particular head space on how it can affect you. , for me, if I've ever got, let's say stuck in the mud and I'm feeling a little bit, maybe it's negative, or maybe it's a little bit like there's an injustice against me, we've all been guilty.

I think I certainly have been playing the victim in my own head. And what happens is that then breeds more negative. Thoughts, which exactly like you were just saying that it's a self self-fulfilling prophecy. If I am negative, then I'm more likely to feel negative. Whereas, and this is really what we learned.

Also from Sean Aker with his book is if you can reverse that formula. And if you can think about the happy stuff, if you can reflect on the lessons of the dial Lama and the idea of hope, the idea of spending your time on the things that are important to you and taking physical action.

Then you're gonna start feeling better because you are surrounding yourself with more positive thoughts. And I think particularly the Eckhart connection is so prevalent throughout all of this happiness theme, the episode, as well as the lessons and the teachings that we're hearing, which is staying in that lane that belongs to me as well as being present, not worrying too much about the future, not ruminating the past, like you were just saying, but really just thinking, okay where am I now?

I can control how I'm responding at every second. This second. Now this second. Now this second and in doing so that then encouraged me to remember, oh that's great. That means I can control what I'm gonna do next and how I'm going to interpret something. And that ownership, that awareness, that the right here right now is what matters is something that I don't think is particularly.

Aware, I wasn't really aware of that. I wasn't really conscious of making that decision for a long time. Yeah. Until we really started delving into this concept of happiness, which fundamentally Mike, nobody really likes to talk about too much. Is it? happiness. It's unfortunate. Isn't something that people wanna confess to.

Yeah. Isn't it funny? How, like so many of these things like resilience, happiness, They are so fundamental to why we like to exist yet. There's so little out there helping us do it better. And I think now I'm ready to unleash the most surprising clip that we've played on the show in many episodes.

And this is a really interesting study of how to be happy. And in fact, this is Russell brand who is bringing us some amazing wisdom who surprised me with this clip. It really is a fantastic summary of how you can be happy, but he also bases it off a recent study, which is compare. Happiness amongst different people.

So get ready for some surprising wisdom from none other than Russell brand. A recent

study on happiness has shown that in general, quadriplegics are more happy than lottery winners. How can this be? And what does that tell us about the relationship between the external world and inner state notably contentment and.

This same study shows that only 5% of your total happiness comes from what you're actually doing at any given moment. I E doing this video or watching this phone can only contribute 5% of your overall total happiness. That kind of makes sense. But what really interests me is that such extreme variation in external circumstances,

it does not correlate to happiness IA.

You would imagine if you'd lost the use of all of your limbs, that would be a dreadful thing and you'd, but we find happiness inaccessible. Whereas if you had access to limitless funds that you'd

suddenly won in

a lottery, you'd be limitlessly happy. And I suppose that what these findings demonstrate are principles that are ex exemplified, examined and espoused in various spiritual disciplines, that you are an internal state in your external state.

Need and correlate that you can't make yourself happy through. External means. We know now don't we, cause we hear it all the time. That once you earn up to about $75,000 a year, which I recognize, is it a lot, any excess above that makes no meaningful impact on your general happiness? The same study suggested a few things that interest me because they're part of my daily routine.

One is volunteering. If you volunteer two hours of your time per week, it's shown that this increases your happiness. Another thing is writing down free things a day that you are grateful for living in a state of gratitude, being of service to other people and living a life where you're connected to a community.

All increase your sense of purpose and meaning, which I've said before and believe more and more as I get older and research these ideas more thoroughly, that we should be pursuing meaning and purpose of which happiness is a byproduct. The pursuit of happiness is an end goal tends to send a spiraling off in the pursuit of pleasure.

And I'm only talking from personal experience. When I think of the things that I've made, the focus of my life, the things that I've asked to the things that I've expected to make me happy, pursue of money and fame and drugs and sex pleasure, in a sense like pleasure's more of a distraction than any kind of lasting fulfillment it's strips you away in the end.

Whereas now that I've been. Beaten into submission into a kind of ethical and moral awakened submission. I've now that I've been willing to let go of the person that I thought I was, and have become open to becoming a new man. My sense of fulfillment and connection comes from being of service to others, being grateful for the life I have and trying to be useful.

I drift back continually of course, to the magnetized state of our time, individualism and selfishness. I still quite often think, oh, I wish I had more of this or that should never happen to me. I'm pretty lazy. Like sometimes I just don't wanna do anything except watch TV show after TV show stare at my phone sort of apathetic

states.

For me, I'm trying to focus my life on usefulness. The study also focused a little on the phenomena of phobia. That's the belief that if you are happy, something bad will soon happen. I get that really bad. Whenever I'm looking at my daughters and thinking how beautiful and perfect they are, how much I love them.

I'm suddenly aware of their fragility and their transients. I suppose this too is an incitement to follow meaning and purpose instead of personal pleasure. Cause I can't spend time ruminating on that because the simple fact of the matter is that change is inevitable. Expiration is inevitable, certainly in material form.

So if I'm focused instead on how I can be useful to other people? What am I grateful for? How am I being of service? What is the meaning and purpose of my life right now, instead of how am I gonna be happy? Let's be honest. Most of us still think, oh, I'd be really happy if I could just win the lottery. I still think sometimes if I had more money or more access to pleasurable activity,

I'd be happy, but I know it's not true.

And this study demonstrates that you can be extreme. Position of discomfort or disability, if that's the correct term to use and still be happy than someone that's recently had a massive lottery windfall demonstrates what spiritual people have always known the connection between external resources and inner states is not total.

And it's not reliable. You can't make yourself happy through getting stuff. You can only make yourself happy through

purpose. It isn't reliable. I love that. Mike, the idea that getting or becoming happy once you've unlocked, let's say something that traditionally we would assume would make us happy, like an infinite source of money.

I can buy that car or that house. I'll be secure. I can quit my job, all these things that are I think I would say drilled into us throughout. Media I would say television as well as just a kind of inherent romanticism in our minds, the fact that it's not reliable and that we're hearing from Russell brand who's referencing that study into quadriplegics versus Bary winners.

It just proves, again, that what's something that Jim Carey was saying to us, which is, and I think his quote was, I wish everybody in the world would get exactly what they want, because then they would realize it. Wasn't what they wanted after all it's

yeah. Yeah. That is a great one. Isn't it? That just, cuz we spend so much time saying, oh, if I just won the lottery or oh, if I got a million dollar bonus, like life would all be good, but no, in fact, let me do a build mark.

What Russell brand was pulling together. It's on't pursue pleasure. As your number one goal, put purpose as your number one goal. That, to me, that's the big inside of what he was saying. What do you think? Yeah,

I think you're right. Russell Brand is an individual who, as he calls out within that clip, he's gone through the post traumatic growth, I would say.

He has become quite successful. He was pretty notorious for misbehaving drugs and so on, but now he. Learn from all of that experience and that process and the insights that he has, I think are much more akin to even what we heard from the Dalai Lama, as well as Kar, the idea of being present.

But also like you were saying, having service, providing a service for others, whether it's random acts of kindness, like bringing in the bins for your neighbors or whether it's volunteering in an organized fashion. I really like this idea of dedicating yourself your time to helping others in even some small little way.

Because again, it talks back to that insight that we heard from the D Lama, which is that you feel content. If you can create a positive mental attitude, because you are controlling it. You're. You are responding to a pleasurable moment such as, Hey, I'm taking care of somebody else. My neighbor. My family, my colleague, and in doing so it's proving that your action is having a positive effect on himself.

I think that's really speaking to me quite a lot.

Yeah. It's powerful stuff. And it's just so wonderful to hear Russell brand being so open about his Foy balls and all of us are listening to yeah. Yeah. I made those mistakes too. We've all done it. It's really, and it's so moonshots just to be really Frank and just admit where we are and that it's tough and that it's not perfect and we wanna be better.

That's okay because everyone's everyone subconsciously knows they could do better. And if you can really embrace the pursuit of better if you can be more present, if you can be more mindful, if you can bring happiness into your practice, amongst many other things, you're gonna feel a whole lot more satisfied, fulfilled, and you'll be definitely on the path on the straightened narrow for realizing your full potential being the very best version of yourself.

But before we like to load up these last two clips and load up with habits that we can take away. Mark, if there was one call to action for our listeners of a master series, I think we have to invite each and every one of you to, Hey, open up your app right now. Go on, open up Patreon, open up Spotify, open up apple podcast.

Doesn't matter how you're listening to us, give us a rating or a review. And mark if that feels a little crazy, reach out to us. If people want to share with us, their thoughts are their struggles in unlocking their happiness habits. How might they send an email to the Al moonshots gang?

Oh, it's very easy.

In fact there's technically two ways, Mike, and both of which receivers you can either pop along. To www do moonshots.io and fill in our submission form online or more conveniently since we're all friends, we're all part of the family together. Send us an email to hello@moonshots.io. We receive every single one that everybody sends to us.

We thoroughly appreciate and respect everything that we hear. It's incredibly humbling when we do hear from our listeners, Mike, isn't it. And like you say, those ratings, those reviews get us around the world into the ears of listeners from all four corners. And that's only possible through the likes of our listeners and our subscribers and members reaching out as well as sharing and rating and reviewing the show with.

Sounds great.

Lots of options. They're gonna bring you a lunar powered dose of karma, and I'll tell you what else will bring you some good karma is listening to some three simple habits and tips that you can start now, according to Neil plus

recheck. What are the simplest things I can do to be happy?

Here's my first question. Do you have an hour? Can you gimme an hour? No. This YouTube video is not gonna be an hour long. I'm just gonna give you three things that each take 20 minutes. If you can do them for an hour, I guarantee that an hour from now, you are gonna feel in a better mood. All three things are simple.

They are easy and they will get this done. Number one, get outside and go on a brisk 20 minute nature walk. Okay. A research report from Michael BA and team published in the journal of psychosomatic medicine showed that brisk nature walks actually perform antidepressants and more interestingly, the combination of antidepressants and nature walks, I'm saying just the walking alone outperformed the other two.

So first thing you gotta do is put on your running shoes, go outside, find a forest, find some trees and just walk around. Okay. Preferably with no lawnmower in the background for yourself. Number two, when you get home, that's 20 minutes, you got 20 more minutes. I want you to do the 20 minute re. This means you get a pen or a pencil.

You get us on paper and you journal for 20 minutes about one highlight of your day earlier this day, or from yesterday, you say, Hey, it was so great. I was out in the park, the lawnmower drove far away. The sound went down, whatever you want, just write it down because you know what happens your mind has something called the visual cortex in it.

There's an area in it called area 17. When the lawnmower drives away, that area lights up. When I write about the lawnmower driving away, that area lights up again. When I read my own journal about the lawnmower, driving away, that area lights up a third time. That's why I call it the 20 minute replay, because you are replying to yourself.

The highlights of your day, by the way, research on journaling was done by slasher and Pennebaker down at the university of Texas. And they found that couples in a relationship were 50% more likely to stay together in their relationship if they simply journaled for two weeks. Okay. Number three, now you're 40 minutes deeper than me now.

You got 20 minutes left. Here's my final piece of homework for you: read 20 pages of fiction, read 20 pages of fiction, according to a 2011 report in the annual review of psychology reading fiction fires your mirror neurons. Yeah. I'm using neuroscience to answer all this stuff for you guys today, because you gotta use the latest research order to prove this to your left brain self.

Okay. You don't think that reading 20 pages out of 50, you think I don't have time for that? I don't got time to read. Are you there? God, it's me Margaret. By Judy bloom. Yes, you do. You need time. You need to make the time. Cause it'll make you feel better when you're lying in bed with Margaret talking to God, you feel like you're there.

Those mirror neurons fire. If you're reading the boys in the boat, you're a boy in the boat. If you're reading Hamilton, you feel like Hamilton. So we know from the research that empathy, compassion, sympathy, and understanding in yourself all increases. Our reader lives a thousand lies before he dies a man.

Read lives. Only one 20 pages of fiction takes you into another life and it absolves you a little bit and it makes you worry less about your own problems to summarize. Go on a brisk 20 minute nature walk, do a 20 minute replay of journaling about something awesome in your day. And finally read 20 pages of fiction.

If you can do those three things in one hour, come talk to me, leave me a comment at the end. Tell me how you feel. I guarantee you, you will feel better and you will feel happier.

20 20 20. Mike, that's pretty darn easy and fast. I think an invitation to you and I, as well as our members, we don't even necessarily need to do 20 minutes at a time. You can condense it. I think the biggest call out for me within that clip is the mind creates emotions by getting outside and appreciating it by replaying it later, as well as reading or imagining a happy situation.

That is your mind creating emotions within yourself. And I think that's the big takeaway from, for me, when I think about adopting happiness today. What about.

I think we love a good 20, 20 20 action plan. It reminds me a lot of 5:00 AM club, right? Robin

Sharma. That's right.

Exactly. And I think what we are seeing here are things that we often defer or forget to do, right?

So I journal and go for a walk to read fiction. I just wanna grab the fiction one for the last three or four years, I've really developed this habit of when I'm in bed. I read only fiction on my Kindle. That's all I read. I will not touch anything related to my work or my craft, because it does propel my mind into thinking about this, writing down this, noting this, oh, I should do this.

I love escapism. And Until listening to that clip. I didn't realize why I liked it. It's because I get a bit of distance from myself. And my reality, I go into someone else's reality. That is super powerful. Isn't it, man. Yeah.

That is that the idea of entering somebody else's world is really proving to us that happiness is a choice and you can sit there when you are.

Slowing down for the day, Mike, or maybe it's the first thing you do in your morning, regardless. It's something that you're choosing to do. And we have one final clip, Mike, that we're gonna squeeze into today's episode on happiness, as we think about the idea of adopting new habits and that's from Joe Rogan and Mr.

Naval, Revant, we're gonna talk to you and I, and all of our members and listeners, why happiness is a choice. Did you make

a gradual shift to happiness or was it a radical change? It's ongoing. It's gradual every day so you're happier today than you were a month ago. Yeah, allegedly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very happy these days.

So it's actually hard for me to hang out with normal people. really?

Yeah. So you've made a significant shift over the period of what, how many years? Probably about eight years. Eight years? Yeah.

Wow. And is this something that you've pursued through certain books or is it just like you've made an understanding or gained an understanding in your own mind and then started pursuing it based on that understanding?

Yeah, it's very personal. It's basically you have to decide it's a priority and then I tried every hack I possibly could. I used to, I tried all the, I tried meditation. I tried witnessing and I even tried Siri just to see what it would feel like. How did it feel? It turned me from a pessimist to an optimist, but I didn't like the physical side effects nor did I wanna be on a drug for a sustained basis.

So I dropped it and I felt, but it did turn you into an optimist. Yes. At the time I used to be a pessimist. Yeah. I started doing things like I would start looking at the, in every moment in everything that happens, you can look on the bright side of something and so I used to do that forcibly and then I trained it until it became second nature.

So for example, like a friend of my wife's was over and she. When we were dating and she took all these photos, she took like hundreds of photos and then she sends them all to us. And my immediate reaction was like, why are you dumping hundreds of photos of my phone? I don't need hundreds of photos. I have some judgment.

That was my immediate reaction. And then I could actually say, how nice of her? She sent me hundreds of photos. I could pick the one that I like, there are two ways of seeing almost everything. There are a few things that are like high suffering. So you can't do that other than just saying this is a teacher, right?

But I slowly worked through every negative judgment that I had until I saw the positive and not second nature to me. I also realized that what you want is you want clear minds. You wanna let go of thoughts. Happy thoughts disappear ahead automatically. Very easy to let negative thoughts linger.

So if you interpret the neg the positive in everything very quickly, you let it go, right? You let it go much faster. Simple hacks, get more sunlight, right? Learn to smile, more, learn to hug more. These things actually release serotonin in reverse. They aren't just outward signals of being happy. They're actually feedback loops to being happy.

Spend more time in nature. These are obvious. Watch your mind all day long. Watch what it does not judge it, not try to control it, but you can meditate. 24 7 meditation is not a sit down close your eyes activity. Meditation is just basically watching your own thoughts. Like you would watch anything else in the outside world and say, why am I having that thought?

Does that serve me anymore? Is that conditioning from when I was 10 years old? Like for example, getting ready for this podcast. You got ready? I didn't. Oh, but good. I did but I did, but you did. I didn't help it. And what happened was the few days leading up to this, my mind was just running and normally my mind is pretty calm and it was just running and running.

And every thought I would have, I would imagine me saying it to you, my brain couldn't help, but rehearse what it's doing. It's just rehearsing all the time to talk to you. And then I was even rehearsing, rehearsal telling you about the rehearsal. So it was all playing all these meta games and I was just like, shut up, stop it.

What is going on? And it took me a while to figure out, oh yeah. You know what it is. when I was a kid in Queens and I had no money and I had nothing and I needed to save myself. The way I got out was by sounding smart, not being smart, sounding smart. That was the skill I perfected. So I am hardwired to always rehearse things.

So I will sound smart. It's a disease. It keeps me from being happy. But when you see that, when you realize that when you understand something, then it naturally calms you down. So after that, I stopped rehearsing as much. Wow. But it's still a train habit.

That is a really interesting point that you want to sound smart, that many people do that.

And especially young people. When you see someone who is smart or someone who appears smart, they say smart things. You go, God, I wanna sound smart. I want people to think about me the same way. I think about that person.

That is my disease. That is my feeling. It is what clutters my mind. I the thing I have to ask myself now is.

If I can, would I still be interested in learning this thing if I couldn't ever tell anybody about it?

So there you go. It's a choice mark. And again, really great to hear someone as successful as Naval. Racan talks about his own weaknesses with Joe, but once again, we continue to learn. It's a choice.

And did you notice he's literally like I'm gonna test and experiment every single habit. So I can shift from consciously trying to be more positive and more happy to subconsciously. It's just how I am. This is that shift that James CLE talks about anatomic habits where he's oh no.

This is not just like habits. It's a lifestyle. In fact, if you look at it on the most meta level, It's how you want your life to be. And I think the big thing here is you've gotta work on happiness, like going to the gym. This is not something that serendipitously occurs. It's deliberate. It's daily, it's habitual and you have to be consciously working it.

If you wanna subconsciously feel it. What do you think? For me, that is just something that I did not appreciate. I

know, I know it's like, they're telling us now, where can they call me at high

school? Why was it I learned this when I was younger, because you are right. It is something that is almost ownable.

It is something that we can put into practice every single day. We can talk about it with others and in doing so we'll get that little bit happier. And one thing that I remember and it was the dial Lama episode, I believe was that exactly, as you was saying, happiness is a muscle. The more you work it out, the bigger, the compound interest of happiness that you will experience.

Correct. So if you are noticing as you and I do the blue sky in Sydney, as we reach. Spring the next time we notice the blue sky, it will. And I think this is calling back to the studies that Neil pest richer did. You'll start to recognize those patterns and appreciate just how beautiful it really is.

What a way to bring our happiness master series to an end. It sounds like the Dai Lama has got the one idea for you to do some more work on, right?

Yeah I think so. I think it just pulls together a lot of the ideas of dedicating your life to helping others and being in control of.

Whatever you respond to, whether it's a good experience or a bad experience, you can control how you respond to it. I think that ownership is something that really speaks to me. What about you, Mike? What's your big takeaway and lesson that you're gonna be teaching from now on,

AUC? I think it's the Naval Revant thought like you just gotta keep working until it shifts from conscious to subconscious, plug away experiment and work the happiness muscle.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. There you go, mark. Thank you so much for getting on the happiness train today. I think we did a lot of good work to unlock sustainable repeatable habits to make us smile just a little bit more so there you have it, everyone. Thank you to you as well. Both our listeners and members, that is the master series episode 14 on happiness.

And it started with Tal Ben Shaha and he was telling us all about pain is just part of the process. Get used to it. And then we had Sean and Oprah talking about cause and effect and the Dai Lama bringing us into the moment to achieve happiness. We took an unexpected turn of all good things with Russell bland and he said, pursue purpose over pleasure.

That's how he stays happy. And then we brought it home with three powerful tips, walking, journaling, and reading to unlock your happiness. And we closed it out with Joe and Naval who reminded us that happiness is indeed a choice. So there you have it. Everyone you have got the happiness equation, the happiness formula, the happiness advantage to take into your day to day tomorrow, make it a habit, make it a lifestyle and become the very best version of your life.

Cuz that's what we are all about here on the Moonshot's master series. That's a wrap.