Harvard’s Happiness Expert: The Secret to Calm in the Chaos w/ Tal Ben-Shahar - E169

Summary

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Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick

Episode 169: Harvard’s Happiness Expert – The Secret to Calm in the Chaos w/ Tal Ben-Shahar

Date: May 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this enlightening episode, Dr. JC Doornick ("The Dragon") sits down with renowned positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, whose Harvard class on happiness was one of the university's most popular offerings. The conversation dives deeply into the paradoxes of happiness, the illusion of "arrival," and practical frameworks for cultivating well-being amidst chaos and distraction. Together, they discuss why direct pursuit of happiness can backfire, the origins and solutions to toxic positivity, the significance of being "antifragile," and actionable steps through the SPIRE model to nourish a full life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Paradox of Pursuing Happiness

• Arrival Fallacy:
  Tal Ben-Shahar recounts his personal journey, from seeking fulfillment through athletic and academic achievement to realizing moments of happiness were fleeting.

  "I ended up writing about it. I called this the Arrival Fallacy... the false belief that when you arrive at a certain point, then you will be happy… It's an illusion."
  (05:22 - 05:47)

• The Paradox Analogy:
  Chasing happiness directly often leads to disappointment, much like staring at the sun — Instead, create the conditions for happiness, like witnessing a rainbow.

  "The more directly we choose happiness... the more elusive it tends to become. Tao compares it to staring at the sun... You create the conditions for the rainbow."
  (00:59 - 01:35)

2. Cultural Conditioning and Where the Illusions Come From

• Systemic Roots:
  The pursuit of happiness as a goal is a learned, cultural pattern, predominantly Western but increasingly global.

  "It's a systemic error... a cultural error... It's pervasive, especially in the West. If you ask parents, what would you want for your kids? Of course they would say, 'I want them to be happy,' but so much pressure is put on them..."
  (06:40 - 08:07)

3. Balancing Present and Future: The Eclectic Model

• East vs. West:
  True happiness involves integrating both present-focused and future-oriented approaches.

  "If you think about it, there are essentially two distinct approaches to happiness. The western approach... it's all about goals... The eastern approach... it's all about the present... What does work is to be in the here and now... But it’s not enough..." (09:31 - 14:25)

  • Use goals as means, not ends: Enjoying the journey towards a meaningful goal is the key, not just its achievement.

  "Long-term goals... allow me to make the most of the moment right now." (14:36 - 15:14)

4. The SPIRE Model: The “Colors of the Happiness Rainbow”

(22:53 - 27:59)

• S – Spiritual Well-Being:
  Meaning, purpose, presence (not just religion).
• P – Physical Well-Being:
  Exercise, nutrition, sleep; the body-mind connection.
• I – Intellectual Well-Being:
  Curiosity, learning, deep engagement (“Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat; it makes humans live longer.”)
• R – Relational Well-Being:
  Quality, undistracted time with loved ones; kindness, generosity.
• E – Emotional Well-Being:
  Accepting painful emotions, cultivating gratefulness and joy.

“Pursuing each one of these is an indirect pursuit of happiness... Meditating, exercising, spending more time with loved ones, learning new things — these are all indirect paths.” (27:30 - 27:59)

5. Toxic Positivity and Permission to Be Human

• Suppressing Negativity Backfires:
  Rejecting painful emotions makes them stronger.

  "There are no negative or positive emotions—there are painful and pleasurable ones. If we reject part of our nature, there’s a coup, and these emotions take even more space. What you resist persists." (34:07 - 37:35)

• Embrace All Feelings:
  Allow emotions to "flow through," as Rumi wrote in “The Guest House,” and observe them with friendly curiosity.

  "[Mark Williams] talks about looking at these painful emotions... with friendly curiosity. I love that phrase." (36:32 - 37:35)

6. Antifragility & Post-Traumatic Growth

(40:00 - 44:22)

• After Trauma, Growth Is Likely:
  We are twice as likely to grow after trauma than to develop stress disorders.

  "We're twice as likely to experience post traumatic growth than post traumatic stress disorder... just knowing about the possibility significantly increases the likelihood." (40:18 - 41:22)

• SPIRE as Resilience Foundation:
  Every aspect of the SPIRE model also builds resilience for adversity.

  “All these elements... make us more resilient... Positive psychology is not just for good times. It makes us more resilient.” (42:00 - 43:29)

• Grounded, not Toxic, Positivity:
  Not everything happens “for the best,” but you can make the best of what happens.

7. Attention and Distraction: The Enemy of Happiness

(49:03 - 51:35)

• The Cost of Multitasking:
  Constant distraction (or “multitasking”) erodes happiness.

  "Multitasking is one of the major enemies of happiness, of whole being. The quality of our experience is very often determined by the quantity of experiences. We need to simplify, to do less rather than more." (49:17 - 51:35)

• Beautiful Song Analogy:

  "If I play my two favorite songs at once — Whitney Houston and Beethoven — do I get a nineteen and a half? No. Not a ten, not even a five. It's cacophony. It's noise. That's modern life for you." (50:51 - 51:19)

• Single-Tasking over Multi-tasking:
  Focus on one thing at a time more often.

8. The Role (and Value) of Boredom

(51:35 - 53:25)

• Embracing Boredom:
  Allowing periods without stimulation fosters creativity and resilience.

  "My friend’s children say, 'Mom, I’m bored.' She says, 'That's OK, sweetheart, just be bored with dignity.'" (52:58 - 53:25)

9. What To Do When You’re Not Motivated

(53:47 - 56:49)

• Pre-commit and Take Action:
  Use tools like Mel Robbins' “5-4-3-2-1 action.”

  "The night before, I know what I’m going to do... So that's most important." (54:28 - 54:37)

• Movement as the Wonder Drug:
  If struggling, exercise first to change your mental state.

  "I call physical exercise the wonder drug of psychological interventions... I just took that wonder drug earlier during the day." (55:12 - 56:30)

• Expressing Emotions:
  Don't bottle up; write, cry, or let out feelings to process them.

  "Write in your journal, shed tears... all ways of giving ourselves the permission to be human." (56:49 - 57:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Arrival Fallacy:

  “I was happy, ecstatic for a few hours… and then back to the same grind.” (05:45)

• On The Western & Eastern Divide:

  “We need to draw not on one culture but on at least a couple of cultures… have goals, but perceive them as means, not ends.” (09:30 - 14:25)

• On Emotional Health:

  “There are no negative or positive emotions—there are painful and pleasurable emotions.” (34:44)

• On Post-Traumatic Growth:

  “Just knowing that post traumatic growth is possible makes it more likely to happen.” (41:22)

• Advice for Distraction:

  “You cannot enjoy two beautiful pieces of music simultaneously. It’s an important lesson for life in general. Single tasking over multitasking.” (51:19)

• On Action vs. Feeling:

  “The most important thing in life is not how you feel, it’s what you do.” (46:12)

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Key Timestamps

• Arrival Fallacy & Paradox of Happiness — (05:22 – 05:47)
• Cultural Conditioning & Where it Comes From — (06:40 – 08:07)
• Western and Eastern Approaches — (09:31 – 14:25)
• SPIRE Breakdown — (22:53 – 27:59)
• Toxic Positivity & Permission to be Human — (34:07 – 37:35)
• Post-Traumatic Growth & Antifragility — (40:00 – 44:22)
• Distraction, Single-tasking, Song Analogy — (49:03 – 51:35)
• Value of Boredom — (51:35 – 53:25)
• Handling Unmotivated Days — (54:28 – 56:49)
• Closing Thoughts & Programs — (57:38 – 59:13)

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Actionable Takeaways

• Stop chasing happiness directly. Focus on creating conditions for happiness via meaning, presence, and relationships.
• Integrate SPIRE practices: Build well-being in spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional areas.
• Recognize and express challenging emotions: Suppressing them worsens well-being; accept and investigate them with friendly curiosity.
• Embrace boredom occasionally: Disconnect, let your mind wander, and allow creative and emotional processing.
• Guard your attention: Prioritize single-tasking over multitasking to enhance focus and satisfaction.
• Understand growth can follow hardship: Being "antifragile" means developing resilience and skills to bounce forward from difficulties.
• On rough days, move first: Physical activity can kickstart motivation and improve mood.

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Final Words

“My name is Tal Ben Shahar and this podcast made me happier.” (59:13)

For further exploration of Tal Ben-Shahar’s work, check out his certificate, master’s, and PhD programs in Happiness Studies; follow Dr. JC Doornick on Substack for daily quotes and live streams.

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Transcript

[Dr. J.C.]

What if the reason so many people

[Host / Interviewer]

feel unhappy today is because they're trying

[Dr. J.C.]

too hard to be happy? In a culture obsessed with optimization, personal growth, and constant positivity, millions of people are doing everything they've been told that should work. They're reading the books, following the routines and tracking their progress, trying to stay grateful and optimistic. All of that. And yet, anxiety, burnout, loneliness continue to rise. My guest today believes that the problem may actually be the direct pursuit for happiness itself. Tal Ben Shahar is one of the world's leading voices in positive psychology and

[Host / Interviewer]

the author of Happier no Matter What.

[Dr. J.C.]

His course on happiness at Harvard became one of the most popular classes, and I think he was known as one of the most popular teachers in the university's whole history. And his work has helped millions of people rethink what it really means to

[Host / Interviewer]

flourish and be happy. One of the most fascinating ideas in

[Dr. J.C.]

his book is what he calls the paradox of happiness. And what it says is the more directly we choose happiness and chase happiness, the more elusive it tends to become. Tao compares it to staring at the sun. If you look directly at the sun, it blinds you. But when the sunlight meets the rain at the right angle, something beautiful appears. A rainbow. You don't chase the rainbow. You create the conditions for the rainbow. So today we're going to explore what those conditions are. We'll talk about psychological flexibility, toxic positivity, and antifragility, and why the ability to grow stronger through adversity may be the most important mental skill for the modern world. And we're also going to discuss how to explore frameworks like the interface response system.

[Host / Interviewer]

Sound familiar?

[Dr. J.C.]

Perceive, pause, process, proceed.

[Host / Interviewer]

And we're going to talk about how that can help people navigate stress in an uncertain world.

[Dr. J.C.]

So I want to welcome to the Dragon's Lair and the make sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. Mr. Tal Ben Shahar. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality? Yeah. That ends here.

[Host / Interviewer]

Welcome to the make sense with Dr. JC podcast.

[Dr. J.C.]

This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things

[Host / Interviewer]

that you look at begin to change.

[Dr. J.C.]

So let's wake up, let's rise up and let's make sense of why and how shift happens

[Tal Ben Shahar]

makes sense. For me, the first such point, you know, when I realized that something was. Was off in the. In the cultural model of success and happiness is when I was working towards the Israeli National Squash Championship. So just, just this happened when I was 16, almost 17, and I'd started playing at 11, and I remember distinctly thinking, when I was 16 years old, so before I'd won the championship, what am I going to do with my life when I no longer have squash? Because it was all consuming, it's the only thing I wanted to do and was interested in. Yes, I went to school and I worked relatively hard at school, but because of my parents, not because I was interested in school. It was all about squash for me. And for years I had struggled with anxiety and with stress, and I knew, I didn't think, I knew, that when I won the Israeli National Championship, this anxiety and this stress and this unhappiness would be over. It was, for me, as clear as day follows night. And then I won the National Championships and I was ecstatic, happier than I'd ever been before for four hours. And after four hours, the exact same stress and anxiety and unhappiness returned. Now, then I had an excuse. I said, well, it's because it's only the Israeli National Championships. I need to win the World Championships. And I continued with the same process. All I need to do is win the World Championship and then I'll be happy. Now I never got to win the World Championship. I, however, I tend other goals, whether later it was academic goals or financial goals. And I believed. And again, it was more than a belief. It was. It was so clear to me that this, this is what I needed to do. Just succeed and then you'll be happy. And I succeeded. And I was happy, ecstatic for a few hours, maybe a couple of weeks, and then back to the same grind. I ended up writing about it. I called this the Arrival Fallacy. The arrival fallacy is the false belief that when you arrive at a certain point, then you will be happy, then you will be all set. Then you can finally achieve that serenity or calm or whatever it is that you're looking for. It's an illusion. As you pointed out, we always struggle. It becomes easier, not easy. We become happier, not attain this constant bliss, certainly not as a result of an outcome, of an achievement, of an arrival.

[Host / Interviewer]

I'm not one to blame, but whose fault is this? One of the things that I like to point out, I teach people something called the Interface Response System, which is just about first acknowledging that most of what we think and feel and perceive is not necessarily what we think, feel, and perceive. It's something that's been taught to us. And I find that whenever something's wrong with my car, I always blame the manufacturer. I find that we do that as humans as well. Right. I don't know if I can trace it to its origin of my parents. I mean, they played a role in paying it forward.

[Dr. J.C.]

But where does this illusion come from?

[Host / Interviewer]

Whose idea was this? I would assume that you have some sort of knowledge in the origins of this idea of setting happiness as a goal.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

So I don't think there is any one person to blame. In fact, I know that there isn't just one person to blame. It's. It's a systemic error.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Meaning a cultural error. Meaning it's something that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents were born into. I don't know. Does it come from Adam and Eve? Maybe. But what I certainly do know is that it's all around us, that it's pervasive, especially in the West. But not only, you know, I see more and more students who are, you know, coming from countries that historically, I think, had a better understanding of what happiness is, but they have bought into this, I guess, you know, Western orientation of success equals happiness. That's the mental picture, the schema that most of us have. And it's not just for us. It's also for our kids. You know, if you ask parents, what would you most want for your kids? Of course they would say, I want them to be happy. I mean, who wouldn't say that? And yet they put so much pressure on them to get into that university and to get that job and to. And to reach that destination, because they truly believe that for their children to be happy, they have to, you know, check those boxes.

[Host / Interviewer]

This is the most fascinating part of all of this, because my. The body of my work is just acknowledging how we're kind of going around exhibiting habits and. And behaviors that to some degree been conditioned and we've been persuaded to think certain ways. So I love that. Just off the cuff, have you ever identified a culture that is not like that? I would assume that you've come across a culture or not perfect, but a culture that lives in the sense that, as if they've read your book, you know, they. They don't seek happiness as a goal, but they just. Yeah, I would assume a big part of it is acknowledging one of the biggest struggles I see in humanity is unwrapping the present moment. You know, I mean, everybody's living in the future, in the past, and I'm sure we'll get into that. Have you come across cultures that are pretty close?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

So I'm gonna answer this indirectly. One area of my research revolves around leadership, whether it's in organizations, in schools, political leadership. And when you look at the literature on leadership, when you study great leaders, what you find is, is that they are eclectic, meaning they all have role models. And role models are very important, but it's in the plural. Role models, meaning they don't just say, okay, I want to be like Winston Churchill when I grow up. Rather, what they say is, I'm going to take, you know, the, the ability to communicate from Winston Churchill, and I'm going to then learn from the toughness of Margaret Thatcher. And then I'm going to study Joan of Arc as well as Aristotle and Lao Tzu. And you take the best of all worlds, so to speak. So the great leaders are essentially collectors, collectors of traits and characteristics and strengths. And then they put it together, and if they're successful, it's a beautiful mosaic that they create their own leadership and then they become part of another's mosaic who creates her own, his own leadership picture. Now, it's the same with happiness. And specifically, in answering your question, I think we need to draw not on one culture, but on at least a couple of cultures. Because if you think about it, there are essentially two distinct approaches to happiness. The first approach to happiness is what I described as the western approach. It's all about goals. It's all about the attainment of objectives. Get there and you'll be happy. Now, we know, we just discussed this is not the answer to happiness. So then there is the opposite, the alternative. Let's call it the eastern approach, which is it's all about the present. It doesn't work. The arrival fallacy, to continuously chase that elusive goal, happiness. What does work is to be in the here and now, because the only thing that really exists is the present moment. And that sounds great, and it is great, but it's not enough. Why? Because as human beings, we're also future oriented. As human beings, part of our nature is to care about goals and achievements. And that's not a bad part of our nature. I don't think it's something we need to fight against and dissolve. Rather it's something that we need to celebrate in the right way. And the question then is, how do we bring these two worldviews together? In other words, how do we bring the future orientation together with the present moment orientation? And the way to do this, and this is again the eclectic happiness model that I'm putting forward, is to have goals and then to perceive goals not as ends, but rather as means, as means towards the attainment of the ultimate end, which is the enjoyment of the moment, deriving the most from the moment. And I'll give you an example. So let's say I have a goal, an objective, publishing a book by July 1, 2028. As soon as I have that goal, I know what I want to write about, I begin to write, I begin to put in, say for me, three hours a day into writing. Now when I'm writing, I have that goal in mind, but I can let go of it and I can just focus on what I'm doing right now, which is sitting in front of my computer and writing. Given that I have that goal, I'm liberated to enjoy the present moment, to experience what Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, the psychologist, calls flow, or in scientific terms, an autotelic experience. To be present, to be in the here and now. And when I'm present, when I'm in the here and now, I derive a great deal of both, joy, enjoyment, as well as I am performing at my best. So it's peak performance and peak experience. But I'm only able to do it. I'm only able to derive the most from this moment when I'm writing, thanks to the fact that I have a goal, a goal that liberates me, to enjoy the here and now. Because if I wake up in the morning and I don't have a goal, I'll meander. Well, should I write? Or well, maybe I should stay in bed, or should I watch a movie, or how about procrastinating, doing this? So it's having that goal that directs me, that focuses me on whatever it is that I need to do. And then I can fully enjoy, make the most of this moment. So the long term goal, July 1, 2028, publish that book, allows me to enjoy right now, right here, as I'm sitting and writing. And that's how these two worldviews come together. Goals are important, we are future oriented beings as well. But they're important not as an end in itself. I'll be happy when I reach that goal, but rather as means, I can be happy when I'm striving towards that goal, when I'm focusing on doing what I care about so much, what's meaningful to me, what matters to me.

[Host / Interviewer]

Well, I'm just so tempted to ask you right now what your long term

[Dr. J.C.]

goal is, if there is one.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Oh, of course. I almost always have a long term goal because I know that they liberate me and help me enjoy the here and now. So what I'm doing right now is we launched a PhD in happiness studies. I noticed that this is a lot of work to put together the courses. And this is what I do when I wake up in the morning. So we four. I got on this call. This is what I was doing, working on a course, which is a survey course of the field of happiness studies. And I was so into it that I almost missed the time to get on this on this call, which is always a good sign and which is also why I have an alarm to remind me.

[Host / Interviewer]

First of all, a couple things. I've never heard anybody pronounce Mahali's name as perfect as you. That's the first thing I want to say. I mean, like, I don't know if anybody can do it like that.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yeah. So jc it's. It took a lot of work.

[Dr. J.C.]

That's right.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

And, and just so you know, extra credit on some of my exams tests in, in college was to spell Mihaly. Cigs and Mihaly.

[Host / Interviewer]

Oh, my God. Well, I guess that's why I never got into Harvard. You know, you know what's interesting, and this is what's most fascinating to me because we're in a Jacuzzi experience right now. People could read your book and listen to you talk and, and kind of think that they've got it. But then once they go back out into the world, it's the integration of these concepts and putting them into play because of the robotic nature of our subconscious. But it almost seems like because you were talking about different cultures and I was thinking, like, what? How would the Dalai Lama answer this question? You know, I'm sure it would be a pretty profound answer. I actually met him one time, but it's almost like happiness is a process. And I would assume that the Dalai Lama would just say, I am happiness. But what he would be saying is, is that he's in the process of being happier all the time. He's, he's. It's the process. One of the things that I teach that is happening in my podcast studio, my office right now in real time is I have what I call my board of director. And on the wall, I mean, we've got Gandhi, we've got Nelson Mandela, we've got Martin Luther King, we've got Jean Claude Keeley, who's one of my, my idols. And what I love to do is always look to them and run things by them. Obviously, you know, they're not alive, but I know quite a bit about them. And it made me realize that right now in this moment, you know, Tal Ben Shahar is one of my board of directors, and that's. I'm in the process of maybe getting happier by, by speaking to you. And I've never. And one, one last thing, I've never met in Israeli national squash player. So, you know, today is a very special day. So I love paradoxes, and I know you speak about this often, but one of the ideas that immediately stood out to me and kind of stopped me, and I'm a speed reader, so that's a lot when I, when I stop is this paradox of happiness. And that's this idea that the more directly we chase happiness, the more likely we are to undermine it. I love that idea. And I, and I, and I resonate. So my question is, why does the direct pursuit of happiness so often lead people to frustration instead of something like fulfillment?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

So this paradox is, is very important. And again, just like there is the misconception, the wrong idea around what will bring us happiness in the form of success, so do people. So often, so many of us make the mistake of pursuing happiness directly. We know from research, and this is research by Iris Moss and others, that if we wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, okay, I'm going to be happy, or as so many teachers even advocate, just make a decision to be happy. You know, make happiness a value and then pursue it. This in and of itself will actually make us less happy. And the question is, so what do we do about it?

[Host / Interviewer]

Right?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

So we need to understand how it is that we can become happier if not by directly pursuing it, by valuing it. Think of the following analogy. You go out and it's a beautiful sunny day and you want to enjoy the sun. So what do you do? You look up at the sun. What happens when we look at the sun directly? We hurt ourselves. What happens is that we begin to tear up. It makes us unhappy. So how can we enjoy the sun? What if we take a prism and we break that sunlight into its colors, and then we look at those colors and we can savor them and enjoy them, so we can enjoy the sun indirectly, but not directly. It's the same with happiness. If I wake up in the morning and say to myself, I'm going to be happy, or I choose to be happy, Or I value happiness, I will actually become less happy. That's about directly pursuing happiness. It's like looking at the sun directly. But if I break down happiness into its elements, for example, happiness is about a sense of meaning and purpose. Happiness is about being present in the here and now. So if I pursue something that is meaningful to me, I will increase my happiness levels. That's an indirect way of pursuing happiness. Or if I practice meditation, I will become happier. Or if I exercise regularly, that's another indirect way of increasing happiness. Or if I spend quality time with my loved ones, I will become happier. So the goal when I wake up can be to spend more time with my loved ones, to Maybe meditate for 10 minutes to go to the gym. And doing those things will make me happier. They're an indirect way of pursuing happiness. They are like looking at the colors of the rainbow, indirectly looking at sunlight.

[Host / Interviewer]

That was one of my favorite things. I've heard you talk about this on many, many shows and obviously the book and that would be the colors of the rainbow of happiness. And I want to speak on this a little bit for the listeners just to make sure that they don't just like carry a card around in their pocket that says spire. Just grasping that idea of looking at the sun is just such a perfect analogy. And then looking at the rainbow, I would love you to just now jump in and, you know, break down those

[Dr. J.C.]

elements because it's chunkable.

[Host / Interviewer]

You know, a lot of people after these, you know, they become very inspired and they're knowledgeable and, and they've learned. I always say that learning is nothing more than a distraction in the absence of, of action. So I'm very, very action oriented. A lot of people are going to say, but what can I do? What can I do now? So if we could, I'd love you to break down the, the elements of the spire. But also I interpreted them as the colors of the rainbow of happiness. Am I correct in that?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yes, absolutely. So the, the big question after learning about this metaphor of the, the rainbow. So what are the metaphorical colors of the rainbow when it comes to happiness? And this is where I put together the acronym spire. You know, I always tell my students, you know, everything that I teach comes from, you know, the wisdom of, you know, the great philosophers or the great, great psychologists. My only contribution is that I synthesize them. I put them together as an acronym. So here is the acronym. The acronym is spire. S P I R E. That stands for the five elements of happiness. S stands for spiritual well being. Now, what is spiritual well being about? Well, of course, many people get their spiritual quota through religion, but spirituality at a more fundamental level is about finding a sense of meaning and purpose in life and it's about being present. The P of spire is physical well being. That's about nutrition, it's about exercise, it's about sleep or recovery in general, it's about touch and given the mind, body connection. All these elements, whether it's eating healthfully or exercising regularly, significantly contribute to our happiness levels. The I of spire is intellectual well being. So, you know, jc, for example, there is research showing that people who are curious are not just happier, they're not just more successful, which they are, they also live longer. So, you know the saying curiosity kills the cat apparently does the exact opposite to humans. So curiosity, intellectual well being contributes a great deal to our happiness. Asking questions, learning new things, exploring. But it's not just exploring broadly, it's also going deep, so deep. Learning, engaging with a text or with a work of art, or going out to nature and immersing oneself in nature. These contribute to our intellectual well being and our overall happiness. Then we get to the R of spire. Relational well being. Number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. And that could be our romantic partner, it could be our families, it could be our friends, it could be colleagues, but people who spend quality time, and by quality I mean without distractions, you know, putting those phones away, just being present with another. These quality times contribute significantly to our overall happiness. Being kind, being generous, a very important part of relational well being and overall happiness. And finally, emotional well being and emotional well being. That's when we come to how do we deal with painful emotions. So do I reject them and say, well, I'm the happiness expert, I shouldn't be happy. Which would immediately lead to a spike, a rise in painful emotions. Or do I give myself the permission to be human, fully accept the painful emotions? Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, once said, what you resist persists. So if I resist painful emotions, they only grow stronger. If I embrace them, allow them to freely flow through me, they do not overstay their welcome. Emotional well being is also about learning to cultivate pleasurable emotions, expressing gratitude. You know, Oprah was right. Keep a gratitude journal, it will make you happier. It's about experiencing joy in our life, having fun, humor. These are all, of course, important elements of a happy life. So we have these five spire elements. Spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional. And the question is, how do we Pursue each one of these because pursuing each one of them is an indirect pursuit of happiness. So meditating a little bit more or exercising regularly or spending more quality time with loved ones or learning new things, these are all indirect paths, ways to attain higher levels of well being or to put the spire elements together of whole being.

[Host / Interviewer]

Right. And the idea of achieving happiness, you know, as, as if it was a goal would be some form of self actualization that perhaps never has been achieved, you know, but, you know, humans were always going to aspire. You were talking about Carl Jung and what he said. I, I have something like that because I'm very big on helping people as an action step. Just take an inventory of what they're consuming, not just food, you know, consuming within their days. And God, you know, right now, if you're caught up in the consumption of what's going on in the world right now, I wouldn't assume on the other side you're feeling happier. But I always say what we consume, we assume. So that's one of the training tools you were talking about, the R for relationships. And I just want to also acknowledge that even though you and I don't know each other that well outside of this conversation, that that R is taking place right now because it's a good conversation and it's enriching. And you know, my goal that I set for this podcast, selfishly to be happier. By the end, I, I can say that I'm, I'm feeling better, you know, less tension and increased happiness there. And you were the first person I had heard about this before, but I just didn't really take. But this idea of how people, if they're open and curious, which is something that I teach people how to do all the time. You know, it was more of a communication tool and a way of not getting distracted in life. But, but I think it was an MIT study, that idea of people that are open and curious living longer. So I started after that saying, and by the way, you know, there's research that's, that shows that you'll actually live longer if you're into that sort of thing, you know.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yeah. So first of all, the, what we consume, we assume that's your line.

[Host / Interviewer]

Oh, I mean, as far as I know. But you know, you know how the brain works. I, but it's, it's in my book as if it's mine. But I'm just waiting for someone to say, you indirectly got that from me.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote you on that.

[Host / Interviewer]

Thank you.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

It's yours with your permission. It's a, it's a, it's, it's a very, very powerful idea and it reminds me of the work of Eknath Eswaran. And Eknath Iswaran is a fascinating individual. He, he was a student of Gandhi and I believe it was in the 50s, 1950s that he left for, for the United States on a Fulbright scholarship. Later became a professor of English at Berkeley and he was as far as I know, the first professor to teach in the West a full class on meditation. One of his most important contributions is in his book which I highly, highly recommend, called Passage Meditation. He talks there about how one form of meditation has to do with reading or repeating. If you can memorize it, a passage and it could be a religious passage or a spiritual passage or your favorite passage from Harry Potter. It doesn't matter. Something that is very meaningful to you. And what he says is that when you repeat it deliberately, slowly, mindfully, over and over again, it has long term impact again because of the neural pathways that are created. And his line is we become what we meditate on.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Which is a very similar idea to what we consume. We, we assume.

[Host / Interviewer]

It's funny that you bring that up. What we become. So I've been meditating for years and years and years every day. It's one of those things that no matter what, I don't not do I, I never skip that. And you just made me realize what I love so much about meditation is because when I'm meditating I'm really after all thinking about nothing, which is what I love about it. So that's a very Buddhist thing to become nothing. I love it. So yeah. Emptiness, the middle way. Thank you so much for that.

[Dr. J.C.]

And recently I don't know if you

[Host / Interviewer]

know Dr. Wendy Suzuki, she's the dean at NYU. Just a spectacularly intelligent woman and she speaks a lot about the benefits of exercise in brain health. And you know, she has done all the research on the fact that you know, even just a 10 minute walk but, or increasing exercise gives what she, she calls a neurochemical bubble bath to your brain. And well, what's cool about that is you can ask anybody no matter how much they complain about exercise, how they feel after and they'll probably validate that they feel happier. And she breaks that down to a science. So you'll love that. And I'm going to send you a copy of my book where you'll learn more about the consume and assume thing. We've touched on it a little bit but I think it's one thing that everybody holds in common in the entire world, which is why I like to take a stance for the human race, which is what I wish everybody would do rather than just our culture. But we're all human. So I want to talk about this idea of this permission to be human. And my observation is that there's this enormous cultural pressure, you know, out there to stay positive and optimistic at all times. So much pressure associated with being happy, which is probably like looking in the sun. And a lot of people call that toxic positivity. You know, like if you're an optimist, God, the last thing that you want to do is run into a group of pessimists. They're going to hate you. So my question is, why is suppressing difficult emotions actually harmful to our well being? Because there's a lot of books that teach you how to do that and let go of the past and all of that stuff. And you're giving people permission to being human. And I love that.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yeah. So if I had to summarize the, my work in, in one sentence, it would be learn about and then follow nature. Right, Learn about and then follow nature. Or as Francis Bacon, the, the father of Modern Science said 400 or more years ago, he said, nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. We need to understand our nature. So for instance, our nature requires that we, you know, drink water, right? If we don't drink water, we die. Our nature demands that, that we breathe. If we don't, we die. Now our nature also demands certain things on a psychological level. And if we do not consume them, then we don't necessarily die, but we don't live fully. And one of the things that our nature dictates is that we experience painful emotions literally from the second, you know, a baby cries, you know, they're not crying of joy. Oh, I've been, I was born into this amazing world. They cry because they're hurt. And it's natural to express these emotions. No baby would say, okay, to make my mother happy, now I'm going to stop crying. No, they cry. It's part of our nature to express painful emotions when these arise. And yet we get to the age of three or four and we're told by again, whether it's a parent or a teacher or the ether, we're told, be strong, don't cry, or you know, what's wrong? Why are you sad? And through that, painful emotions gain a negative reputation to the point where they're called negative emotions, which is a problem in and of itself, there are no negative or positive emotions. There are painful and pleasurable emotions. And when we reject part of our nature, we pay a price for it. There is a coup. And these painful emotions rise up. And they say, you don't give us space, we'll take even more space. What you resist persists instead of observing them. You know, I love this phrase from the book by Mark Williams, Oxford, called Mindful Way Through Depression. And he talks about looking at these painful emotions or painful part of the body that's associated with the painful emotion, whether it's, you know, the. The constricted throat or the pain in the belly or the tight shoulders. He said we need to look, observe these painful experiences with friendly curiosity. I love that phrase, friendly curiosity. And when we learn to do that, we realize. And again, this is very much, you know, a Buddhist teaching, and it's a modern positive psychology teaching. When we learn to observe these emotions with friendly curiosity, they just leave as they came.

[Dr. J.C.]

Yeah, there's.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

There's a beautiful poem by Rumi again, 800 years ago or so called the Guest House, which talks about how we need to embrace all these, you know, painful emotions, all these seeming intruders. We need to invite them in as guests as if they're envoys, messengers from the beyond. It's a lovely image.

[Host / Interviewer]

I love that. And that's why grandparents love children so much, because they. It's temporary, just like a guest, you know, it's. It's. It's temporary. Alan Watts, I'm just a big fan of Alan Watts stuff, and he always talks about, you know, these thoughts, feelings and emotions, not as things that we would be worried that show up. You know, the Buddhist would always just say, thinking, you know, say, yeah, my heart beats. I don't question that. And my brain thinks. But Alan Watts likes to refer to our thoughts as clouds that just pass on by, you know, if you even give them a chance. I have this fun concept that I share with people. I love to look at how we're similar rather than different. And I think that's a big part of this, because just the idea of not having a good time, you're somehow assimilate that you're different than everybody else's. I say that we're all the same in the sense that we all want the same three things in life. I say we all want to be happier. There's your thing, healthier and wealthier. And I always challenge the audience. Big audience. I say, please stand up, raise your hand if you would like to be unhappy today. Did you set a goal? Does anybody here want to get unhealthy or make less money? And everybody laughs. So I refer to all of humanity as being seekers of the er. Isn't that fun?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Lovely.

[Host / Interviewer]

So I want to just ask you. I love this stuff on anti fragility and I know that this is something that somebody else came up with, but it's so perfect for what you talk about, as well as its close relation to this concept of, rather than ptsd, post Traumatic Growth. Oh, God. I just. I mean, there's so much stoic stuff involved in that, but I just. I've never heard it that way. I just love ptg. Could you just talk a little bit about this idea of becoming antifragile and also embracing Post Traumatic growth?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yeah. You know, jc, when I ask students whether they are psychology majors or whether they are C suite managers in an organization, I ask them, so how many of you have heard of the term ptsd?

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

And just about everyone puts their hand up. Yeah, they've heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. You know, they've read about it. If they're psych students, they've studied research on it. And. And then I asked them a second question and I say, now, who of you has heard, Put your hand up if you've heard of ptg. And hardly anyone puts their hand up. PTG stands for, as you mentioned, Post Traumatic Growth. Now, here is the thing, and this is based on research by Tedeschi, Calhoun and many others. Subsequently, we are twice as likely to experience post Traumatic growth than Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In other words, we're twice as likely to grow following a trauma than to break down following a trauma. The problem is that most people have never heard of Post Traumatic growth. And it turns out that just knowing about the possibility of growth following a trauma significantly increases the likelihood thereof. In other words, just knowing that post Traumatic growth is possible makes it more likely to happen. Not to mention the fact that there are certain things that we can do that will increase the likelihood of growing following a trauma, or any difficult experience for that matter. What are these things? Identical? Not similar. Identical to the SPIRE elements. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I did not invent spire. All I did was put it together in an acronym. And the SPIRE elements, whether it's meditating will make us more resilient and better able to grow from hardship. Whether it's physical exercise. It turns out that physical exercise doesn't just make us physically tougher, it makes us psychologically tougher. It turns out that relationships are not just the Number one predictor of happiness. They're also the number one generator of growth following hardship, even trauma. So all these elements that we cultivate, hopefully on a day to day basis, don't just increase our levels of well being, they also better prepare us to deal with, with difficulties, with challenges, with hardships. And again, this is, to my mind, perhaps the most important message of the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology, the science of happiness, is not just for good times. It's as relevant, if not more relevant, for difficult times. Why? Because it makes us more resilient. Because it helps us grow from hardship. Now, just one more thing, lest I'd be misunderstood. I'm not glorifying trauma. I'm not glorifying hardship or difficulties. Traumas are traumatic. Difficult and challenging experiences are difficult and challenging, but they happen. We don't invite them into our lives when they happen. The question is, what do we do about it? I don't know if you did as a child, but I constantly heard the phrase things happen for the best.

[Dr. J.C.]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

And whether it's as a child or as an adult, I never fully connected to that. What do you mean? Things happen for the best? Covid for the best. Thousands of people dying, wars for the best. Someone gets, you know, sick. For the best? I don't think so. But while things do not necessarily happen for the best, we can choose to make the best of things that happen. While things don't necessarily happen for the best, we can choose to make the best of things that happen. You know, you talked earlier about toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is, oh, it's for the best. Embrace it, love it. Amore, fate, you know, whatever happens, it's great. No, it's not. But making the best of things that happen, rather than toxic positivity, that's grounded positivity.

[Host / Interviewer]

I love that I get challenged quite a bit about my philosophies, especially when I say something that's true that nobody wants to believe. And, you know, my, my, my hat. You know, I don't know if you, you tried to figure it out, but it's a sound I teach people to say. It's a practice in cognitive distancing where whenever somebody says something, I think a very healthy answer is to just say huh? And. But what it stands for is haven't made up my mind. So I always like to tell people that I haven't, I haven't made up my mind about anything yet. And I don't plan to. And that's because I, I seek growth and expansion and I'm in this process of happiness, and I want to get happier. If you really want to play with that, then you'd have to acknowledge that the. One of the old sayings that everybody frowns upon is extremely true. You know, I don't think that I'm complaining when I say that life sucks and then you die. What I'm saying is, is that for the most part, I mean, I don't know about anybody else, but I mean, I would say that if I looked at my lifeline, you know, I'm 54. I would say most of it was sucky and hard and difficult. But we typically just look at the shining moments. You know, if you were to take a line from left to right, birth to death, and phase place yourself and put a little piece of tape over the shining moments in your life, you know, you'd probably look at breakthroughs or anything. But if you can't learn how to dance in the rain, well, how could you have a. An extraordinary life? So I love this idea of being human because if you don't acknowledge that and embrace it, as sucky as it is, I think the downside of that is you don't really get to live

[Dr. J.C.]

a great life, which is my end goal.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Goal.

[Host / Interviewer]

If today is my last day, I want to have a. I want to enjoy it around the things that matter most.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

I absolutely agree with that. And I would say that the most important thing in life, and I'm saying this as a psychologist, the most important thing in life is not how you feel, it's what you do.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, sure.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

And many of my students asked me, so, so, so what should I study? And I said, you know, pursue your passions, follow your bliss. You know, the. The usual cliches that are true.

[Host / Interviewer]

Sure.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

However, if I was going back now, you know, to my 20s and I'm. I'm. Turns out I'm a year older than you are. Thank God I was going back to my 20s. Now I would study acceptance and commitment therapy. Why? Because acceptance and commitment therapy captures just what you were talking about. You know, there are difficulties, hardships. Very often life sucks and we experience painful emotions. So what? It doesn't mean that I cannot act based on my values, on the things that are important to me, and then evaluate, assess my life as worthy. And yes, sometimes I'll feel great about it. And, you know, when I arrive at certain points, I'll rejoice. And then when I'll be immersed in certain activities, I'll enjoy peak performance and peak experience. And that's wonderful. And I will Struggle. And I will have days when, when I'm exhausted and don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning. So what? That doesn't mean I can't get out of bed in the morning and do what I believe is important and worthy and significant. What we do matters more than how we feel. And when we understand that, we'll actually feel better. And when we understand that, more importantly, we'll actually do better.

[Host / Interviewer]

I think you might have just come up with a great next step book for Mel Robbins. You know, she did let them, and now she could write a book called so what? So what? It sounds perfect for her. We're kind of coming to the, the end of this, which I'm not happy about. So, you know, there's, there's a whole discussion about that, that, you know, all good things end. But I want to talk a little bit about the. Something that a lot of people face with, and that's the distraction problem. So we live in this world where I always tell people that you need to acknowledge how valuable the asset of attention is because everybody's vying for it. But we live in a world where attention is constantly fragmented more than ever, and it looks like it's happened. I mean, everybody's worried about AI, like it's going to take over. You know, I. I'm worried about something else. It's like it's doing the thinking for us, and we're just involved in this endless content. You know, you once used an analogy of two beautiful songs. I just. I loved this. And I want my, my listeners to hear this. I just got the chills thinking about it.

[Dr. J.C.]

Sometimes stuff in your book gives people the chills.

[Host / Interviewer]

It was an analogy of two beautiful songs playing at the same time. And I, I don't want to give up the rest. But is distraction quietly eroding our ability to experience happiness?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Very much so. So Daniel Goleman calls our age the age of distraction. And that exacts a very high price. And what we need to do is move away from multitasking and towards single tasking, because multitasking is one of the. The major enemies of happiness, of whole being. And the example that you refer to, my favorite song is Whitney Houston's and I Will Always Love youe. And if I were to listen to it and, you know, rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, my experience would be, of course, you know, a 10. My second most favorite music piece is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, you know, and, you know, when I listen to it, I, you know, I, I Feel like, you know, everything is possible and everything is. Is. Is beautiful. And my experience of it is, if I had to rate on a scale of one to ten, you know, maybe not quite a ten, it's not Whitney Houston, but a nine and a half. And then imagine this. I want more. It's not enough the Whitney Houston. It's not enough Beethoven. I want it all. And I play these two pieces together, what do I get? A nineteen and a half? No, not a ten, not even a five. It's cacophony. It's noise. And that's modern life for you.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Trying to fit more and more into less and less is counterproductive. In other words, the quality of our experience is very often determined by the quantity of experiences. And we need to simplify to do less rather than more. Yes, of course we can enjoy a beautiful piece of music. We cannot enjoy two beautiful pieces of music simultaneously. And it's an important lesson for life in general. Single tasking over multitasking. Maybe not all the time, not possible, not realistic, but more of the time.

[Host / Interviewer]

So everybody understands the idea of training. You know, you go to the gym to train and you, you know, train in school and all of that stuff. But in our house, we promote doing what we call boredom reps. And. Well, I mean, if in the. In this distractive world, and that's not mine, I can't tell you where I got it. I heard it from somebody. We're just increasingly moving further and further away from the. The ability to just be bored. And there's a lot of value in being bored. And I had a. A guy on my show, or actually I was on his show and we were. This is a guy that reads like as much as Jim Quick. You know, I mean, he. His whole nature, actually, I want to introduce you to him at some point. This is a guy that promotes people's books. So he reads back, book, book, books. And he was telling me from a place of, you know, being pretty proud of himself that even when he goes in the shower, he has a speaker and he listens to audiobooks. And I just kind of challenged him. And his name is Nick Hutchinson. And he. What he did in response was spectacular. I just challenged him. I said, do you ever allow yourself to just be bored? And that was the first time that he acknowledged that he didn't. So he goes and he films a video and posts it. And he's got a very big following of him going in his shower and throwing his speaker out in my name. But I love that. Yeah. So Boredom is a big one.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Is a big one. Jesse. I want to say something about that. So I have a, one of my closest friends, her name is Shirley Yuval Yair and she's a child psychologist. She doesn't let her children and go, you know, online all the time whenever they're bored. And they would say to her, sometimes, mommy, I'm bored. And her response is always the same, that's okay, sweetheart, just be bored with dignity.

[Host / Interviewer]

That's great. So a lot of value and boredom. And also there's a great book called Intentional by Chris Bailey. That's why I'm so blessed to be able to have people like you and all these people on my show. And he just talks about the value of allowing your, your mind to wander. And there's another thing that we were told not to do. So I want to ask you, you know, kind of a closing question and

[Dr. J.C.]

I guess it would be a little

[Host / Interviewer]

bit of a personal question just because. Not personal personal, but something that is going to ask you what you do in these situations when you wake up on a day. This is what I think most people are gonna be like. Yeah. But everybody likes to bring their butt into the equation. But when you wake up on a day when you don't feel particularly motivated, maybe it's a little bit more difficult to remember the spire and the rainbow. What is it that you personally do?

[Dr. J.C.]

And I'm not insinuating that you would

[Host / Interviewer]

do something different on a day like that. Maybe that's how you would justify it. But what do you do on the mornings when you wake up and, you know, your computer boots up and things are not looking good?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Yeah. So first of all, you brought up Mel Robbins. I'm a big believer in the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, action.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Approach. So the night before when I go to bed, I know what I'm going to do the next day. Remember I spoke about how long term goals liberate us. So I know that I'm going to be sitting down by my computer or, or I'm going to be teaching or whatever it is and, and I do it. So that's most important. However, when things are really in dire straits. And again, I had this experience just over the, you know, a few days ago, you know, there's war going on in the world. It's affecting me just like it's affecting so many people. Even if we are not in the world war zone and cannot compare our experiences to those who are. And it was very difficult for me to motivate myself to get Myself moving. So what I did is I reversed my day. Specifically, my best times to write are the mornings. So, you know, I do my morning meditation and you know, I move for a few minutes to get the blood flowing and then I sit down on this chair in front of this computer and write. I felt like I couldn't do that. I was not in the mood and I was distracted. So I exercised and I went into the gym and lifted my weights and did my high intensity interval training. And then it was easier. Not easy, but easier for me to sit down, down and, and actually write. So, you know, I call physical exercise the wonder drug. I didn't make this name up, but the wonder drug of psychological interventions. So I simply took that wonder drug earlier during the day.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And I think the message there is we're so trained to be in these situations where we can say, well, that's great, but. And then everybody will justify their situation and say, people love to justify why they can't be happy. It's a, that's a, an interesting phenomenon.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

And again, J.C. one of the ways to deal with unhappiness is, you know, to write in your journal or shed tears.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

You know, these are all ways of giving ourselves the permission to be human, to literally welcome these painful emotions, internalize them, and then they do not overstay their welcoming if they do so. They do. So we accept that as well.

[Host / Interviewer]

Beautiful. Well, God, you know, I would say that this is one for the vault. You did great in the dragon's lair. I have so many more questions. I'm hoping maybe we can do a part two to this one day. But I guess I would say what are, what are you excited about sharing with people right now? How would people best follow you? But also what is it that you'd really love them to know about?

[Tal Ben Shahar]

So I've over the years created a number of programs that, that I love. And when I created them, I thought I'd be teaching for the next three, four years and then move on. But I've been teaching them for the past, you know, 10 years and, and I get excited by every, every new program. And it's a certificate in Happiness Studies and we have a Master's of degree in Happiness Studies and as I mentioned earlier, also a PhD. So these are things that again, this is what takes up my everyday. This is what excites me and what I hope to share, continue to share with the world. One thing that I emphasize to my students, the key is if you can, to do good and to do well, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I would just close and say, you know, you know, there's certain people that have more capability of seeing the colors of the rainbow versus others, and that would just be probably those possibility thinkers and people who that maybe haven't made their mind up about anything yet. So I think there's a lot of, a lot of wonderful takeaways and I'm just very, very honored that you spent some time here. I'm more fascinated with you as a person now that I've actually met you. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. And I'm definitely going to try to cycle you back into this flow because I didn't get to 50% of my questions.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Thank you, J.C. i very much enjoyed it and thank you for the work that you're doing. My name is Tal Ben Shahar and this podcast made me happier.

[Dr. J.C.]

That's it for today to support the make sense with Dr. JC podcast. Be sure to subscribe, like and share, as well as follow the Make Sense substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just

[Host / Interviewer]

another form of distraction.

[Dr. J.C.]

If something hit home and you learned something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay.

[Host / Interviewer]

See you next time.

[Tal Ben Shahar]

Makes sense.