How to Build the Life You Want: Timeless Wisdom for More Happiness & Purpose
- Guest
- Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 18 Apr 2024
- Duration
- 1:14:59
- Views
- 329.5K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
Achievement gives a spike of happiness, not lasting happiness
Ben-Shahar, who taught positive psychology and the psychology of leadership at Harvard, learned this firsthand. He told himself he'd be happy once he won Israel's national squash championship. When he won, he was ecstatic "for about four hours" and then returned to the same stress. Even after becoming a top student at Harvard he was still miserable, which led him to switch from computer science to philosophy and psychology to ask why.
- 02
We are built for the pursuit, not the outcome
Once we reach a goal, our minds check it off and look for the next one. He says to accept this the way we accept gravity and build our lives around it. Believing that achievement will make you happy is, in his view, a major cause of unhappiness, because people end up "climbing up the wrong mountain."
- 03
Valuing happiness directly can make you less happy
He cites research by Professor Iris Mauss showing that people who wake up telling themselves happiness is very important to them become less happy. The answer isn't to fool yourself. His analogy: staring at the sun hurts, but light broken through a prism into a rainbow can be enjoyed. Pursue happiness indirectly, through its parts.
- 04
The SPIRE model: five elements of wholeness
Spiritual (meaning, purpose, presence, with or without religion), Physical (exercise, sleep, rest, touch, nutrition), Intellectual (curiosity and deep learning), Relational (quality time with people who care about us, the number one predictor of happiness) and Emotional (giving yourself permission to feel sadness, anger and frustration). He defines happiness as wholeness across these five areas.
- 05
Goals matter for having them, not for reaching them
He reconciles the future-focused Western model with the present-focused Eastern one. A meaningful goal is like knowing which mountain you're driving toward on a road trip: without one, you meander and worry about cliffs. The goal isn't the end; it frees you to enjoy the present.
- 06
Happiness is a continuum, so aim for happier
Asked whether he is finally happy after 30 years, he says he doesn't know what "happy" would mean as a yes-or-no state. He is a lot happier than he was 30 years ago and hopes to be happier five years from now. For people who are stuck, he recommends kaizen-style 1% improvements and treating life as "experiments with truth," taken from the subtitle of Gandhi's autobiography.
- 07
Minimum viable interventions (MVIs) count
Borrowing from the business idea of a minimum viable product, an MVI is a small change, good enough to make a difference over time when applied consistently. Because helplessness and doing nothing are core features of depression, doing something small works against it.
- 08
Loneliness often comes from divided attention
He calls loneliness the number one predictor of unhappiness, made worse by Covid. Often the problem isn't a lack of people but doing 20 other things while you're with them. Play your two favourite songs at once, his are Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Beethoven's Fifth, and you don't get 19.5 out of 10. You get noise. Single-task with the people you love.
- 09
Antifragility: resilience 2.0
Drawing on Nassim Taleb, he explains that a resilient ball bounces back to where it was, while an antifragile one bounces back higher. Muscles grow under stress, and minds can too. Most of his psychology students knew PTSD, but hardly any had heard of post-traumatic growth. Research by Tedeschi, Calhoun and others suggests that simply knowing growth is possible makes it more likely, because it gives hope. "Depression is sadness without hope."
- 10
Painful experiences are part of a full life
When he asks students which experiences they are most grateful for, very few name fun ones; most name hard ones. He is not against psychiatric medication, which he says has saved lives, but believes our culture is too quick to reach for pills to make pain go away. Removing all pain would also remove growth.
EXAMPLES
- 01
A one-minute MVI for each SPIRE element
Spiritual: one minute of deep breathing. Physical: 45-second bursts, like stair climbing or push-ups, three times a day, which he says research shows adds up to the equivalent of a workout. Intellectual: learn one new idea or ask a new question, since curious lifelong learners live longer. Relational: a hug, a thoughtful text, two minutes of real listening. Emotional: write three gratitudes or journal for two minutes.
- 02
Write or talk instead of ruminating
Citing Sonja Lyubomirsky at UC Riverside, he says that thinking over painful experiences tends to make them worse, while writing or talking about them helps people make sense of them and come out stronger. Journaling research by James Pennebaker and others shows that writing often produces an "aha" moment that makes the problem manageable.
- 03
Christine goes back to church alone
Mel's sister-in-law and business partner Christine had stopped going to church when life got busy. After years of thinking about it, she simply went to a service one Sunday without waiting for her husband and sons. That hour a week has restored a sense of wholeness in her spiritual life.
- 04
A friend's death and Nathaniel Branden's words
At 27, living in Asia, Ben-Shahar lost his closest friend in a plane crash between Indonesia and Singapore on 19 December 1997. His mentor Nathaniel Branden, who had lost his own wife in a drowning accident, told him: you won't understand this now, but you will get over it; it will hurt like hell, but we all do. He still recalls those words in every crisis.
- 05
His ordinary happy day
He meditates in bed, reads quality material instead of news, and drives his kids to school, where they ask him for a "message for the day" such as "be generous." He works in the morning, does yoga, has lunch with his wife, and has started playing squash again with his 14-year-old after 25 years away. He admits his kids sometimes tell him, "Daddy, chill."
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Use the three Rs of lasting change
Reminders (Post-its, a bracelet, a note on your mirror reading SPIRE), Repetition (recurring calendar entries, such as the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and Rituals, where repetition makes the behaviour automatic, like brushing your teeth or Serena Williams's forehand.
- 02
Act before you feel like it
Some mornings he wants to stay in bed. What matters is what you do, not what you feel, and over time your actions shape your feelings.
- 03
Find leverage points in your system
In systems thinking, everything is connected, so where you start matters less than starting. Look for a keystone habit, as Charles Duhigg describes, such as daily exercise or a morning breathing practice, that spreads to other areas.
- 04
Read biographies and Helen Keller
He tells students the best self-help books are biographies. He recommends Helen Keller's essay on optimism and "Three Days to See," which he keeps beside him as a reminder to appreciate what he has.