What do we get wrong about happiness?

Well, we get wrong all the things that the culture tells us will make us happy. So the culture says, if you buy this make of car, you're going to be happy, you're going to be cooler. If you serve this brand of pasta to your family, your family dinners are going to be blissful. That's the message of the pasta ad we see on TV. If you use this face cream, you're never going to get old. You're certainly never going to look old. We're sold all these messages about what will make us happy. If you achieve a lot at work, people come to me saying, I feel terrible because I'm not a billionaire yet. When I ask the question, Well, what's the billion dollars going to be for? Many of them are wide-eyed. They're like deer in the headlights. Well, I don't know. I just feel like I need to become a billionaire. We're given these messages that this is what's important. When it turns out that those things don't actually make us happy, but they are measurable. They're like badges of achievement. And so we want those badges. It's like our watches can tell us, Okay, you've done 10,000 steps today.

Is that really what matters, what my watch says, or is what really matters, how my body feels when I move? And so what we want is to get beyond the badges of achievement to the substance of our life.

Why do we go after all of this wealth and all of the stuff when I think deep down, we all know it's not the answer, but we can't help ourselves from chasing it? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Well, because it looks like something we could get and then be done. That if I get there, then I'm going to be happy. When I reach that billion dollar mark, then I'm going to be happy. What turns out is that life isn't That's not what we're doing. We're not doing that. When we say life is a journey, it can sound like a cliché, but it's not. Life is an ongoing process of change. What that means is we're never done. Our relationships are never done. Our happiness is never constant. We're going to move from being more happy to less happy, back to more happy. That's the truth of life, even though what we wish for is a final resting place where it's never difficult again. That doesn't exist.

If you're constantly chasing things and you said getting to that final place, like I get that house on the beach, I get the money in the bank, I find the love of my life, all these things that we're chasing, chasing, chasing. Because we think that we get there and we will have that exhale and we'll feel what we want to feel. How do you counsel people, especially based on what you've seen in this study, to wrestle with that, though?

Well, the first is to recognize it, to believe it. Most of us say, No, wait, there has to be a way. In fact, I'm a Zen master. I'm a Roshi. People have said to me, Well, you're finally at a place where you're always calm, you're always clear about life. And I say, No. Some mornings I wake up confused or sad, or I feel like I'm doing it all wrong. And they say, wait, no, not you. You You can't have those ups and downs. And I say, yes, me, everybody on the planet. So the first thing is to recognize it and then to say, okay, but there are ways that we can work with the challenges that are always coming our way. We can work with the ups and downs. There's a saying from Jon Kabat Zinn that I love. He said, You can't stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf. You can't Stop the waves of challenge and unhappiness and anxiety and anger that come our way at times. But you can learn how to surf. You can learn how to work with them better.

Can you give us more advice on exactly how we can implement this wisdom?

Well, by doing a lot of the things that science tells us makes us stronger. So for example, not being reactive when we can help it, when we can take a moment to stop and take a breath when we're feeling challenged. So when we're feeling anxious or angry or scared, to just stop and be with it for a moment and say to ourselves, Okay, what's happening now? What's causing it? What is my wisest way to deal with this challenge right now? Just stopping, taking a little mini time out, taking a breath is the first step. Then using what What I call our wise mind to say, Okay, what has worked well in the past? What hasn't worked well? You get the email that makes you angry and you want to fire off an angry email in response, and you stop, you take a breath, and you say, Okay, what would be the wisest way to deal with this email that I want to get so mad about? Sometimes I'm going to sleep on this. I'm going to wait till tomorrow morning and see how it looks to me tomorrow morning. Now, sometimes we don't have that time to step back, but most of the time we do.

Even if our partner says something that makes us furious, can we not rise to the bait, but can we stop and take a breath and say, I'm just going to take a moment here to hear what you said and think about how I can respond to you?

I wish we would have had this conversation two days ago. No, I'm not kidding, because there's a text The box that I sent that I sent in the heat of an anxiety wave. And now I am sitting here two days later, it's not been responded to by the other person. I, of course, am managing the wave of, Oh, my God, I wish I hadn't had sent that. How do I deal with this moment right now when I feel this regret that I didn't put myself in pause?

Okay. The first thing is you don't beat Beat yourself up about it. Too late. You say, Okay, what am I going to learn from this? When we feel like we've made a mistake, failure is fine. The question is, how do we learn from it? I've done this, believe me, where I've fired off an angry response, and then I go, Oh, no. But then, Okay, how am I going to learn from it? The point is, don't beat yourself up. Step away from that when you can and say, Okay, what am I going to learn here? I have to learn it over and over again. It's not like it's one undone.

Well, I'll tell you, the fact that you're a Zen master and you are still struggling with this. I literally am like, why on Earth would you become a Zen master if you still have to struggle with the same stuff that we all do?

Because part of what I teach is we all struggle with this. And part of the wisdom of Zen is to say there is no final place. There's actually a saying in Zen, there is nothing to attain. And what we mean by that is there's no final place where we've got it all figured out, and that that's so important to know. Otherwise, we tend to follow people who tell us they have got it all figured out. Nobody's like that. There's nobody on the planet who alone can fix it.

Well, I want to talk a little bit about money. What did this 86-year-long study at Harvard tell about the role that money plays when it comes to happiness in your life?

It's complicated. So money matters. What we find when we do research on this is that having our basic needs met is vital. So food security. Think of the billions of people who are food insecure, people who don't know where they're going to sleep tonight, people who don't know if they can educate their children, if they can pay for their medication. Having those basic financial needs met is essential. There have been estimates in the research of, you need to make at least $75,000 a year in the US. But whatever the amount is, and it's arbitrary, it's really, can I get my basic needs met? Until that happens, we are significantly less happy. But then, if I make 75 of million dollars a year, that's not going to make me a whole lot happier than having my basic financial needs met. That's important because if I set out to make myself happy by trying to make a lot of money, it's a fool's errand. It's not going to happen.

It's hard, though, to really accept that that's true. I've been in situations in my life, both when I was at the beginning my career as a public defender, not making money, not able to make the ends meet. I've been in a situation in my marriage where we couldn't pay our bills. We were just absurdly in debt, and there were liens on the house. When there is a level of acute and chronic stress and anxiety that you feel when you cannot buy groceries or pay your rent. Absolutely. When you're in that situation, motivation, I hear what you're saying, which is until you can get your basic needs met, accessing a deeper level of happiness is going to be really difficult because you're not thriving. You have legitimate stress and problems that are overtaking your body and your mind. And that's a very, very real thing. So money becomes a really important tool to be able to relieve stress and solve some of your problems. But if I'm listening closely, you're saying it's not the point of your life. And too many of us fall into this trap where we believe because of what we see on social media or what is celebrated in our culture, the new cars, the mansions, the jets, all of it, that you start to think that it's the point of your life.

Yes. And so we should think about money as a tool, not the Exactly.

To think, well, what's the money for? And when I answer that, is that likely to actually make me happy? So we can each do a little internal check. What are the times when I've been the happiest? Was it actually when I had that new car? Maybe for a few minutes. But was it actually when I I had that wonderful time with my niece and we just spent an afternoon knocking around the city of Boston together. That was magical for me. What I know when I check in with myself is that the times that I'm happiest are having experiences with people I care about, doing things I care about, that they don't happen to be the things that money can buy. But if I were making $19,000 a year in New York City, darn right. Money matters hugely. And you're absolutely right that it's a level of stress that prevents us from being happy until we have those needs met.

That was a great question that you asked us to contemplate. And so I want to ask you as you're listening to just stop and think back on your life right now. And if you think about times where you are the happiest, what's interesting as I reflect on that question, it is one thousand 1,000% when I am out doing something with other people. It is being, for me anyway, outside. We're hiking, we're sitting and watching the sunset, we are out working in the yard, We're exploring some new area, and it's with other people and these experiences. And so I suppose if you can even just switch your perspective and think about money as a tool to help create more of those connections and experiences with other people, you have a completely different lens on it.

Exactly. They've actually studied this. They actually studied what makes us happier paying for material things with our extra money or paying for experiences. And what they find is that paying for experiences, whether it's going to a national park, tickets to a basketball game, going to a museum, whatever it might be, that makes us happier, and makes us happier for longer than buying a physical object.

I don't even know if I can get through the opening of this. I literally am so excited for today because... Over and over and over again, living a good life is about the things that are right in front of you that you're not seeing. Yeah.

What's the strongest predictor of who's going to be healthy and happy at age 80 when we look at age 50? When we looked.