--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. All right, let's do this thing. Okay, are you ready to put your happiness hat on? I know I am. I have a really cool show for you. We have the OG of happiness research. His name, Shawn Achor. Harvard educated, works with all the major brands teaching one of the largest and most successful positive psychology training programs in the world. Not only that, but he has written three New York Times bestselling books.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shawn says you and I have happiness all wrong. The definition is wrong. That's part of the problem. So today, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get Shawn on the line. And I, of course, I'm going to hold his feet to the fire. And I'm going to listen to that scientific stuff. And then we are going to break it down into normal people speak because research is wonderful, but if I can't apply this shit to my life, I am going to be a miserable bitch.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And we are going to make sure that we leave here with happiness tools in our pockets and motivation in our backseat so that we not only learn and listen and laugh today, but that we also put it into action. Alrighty, Shawn Achor, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
--:-- Shawn Achor: Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Me too. I wanted to just ask you so that we are all starting on the same playing field. What is the definition of happiness?
--:-- Shawn Achor: The original way the psychology looked at happiness was just a pleasure or pain model. That all we're doing as human beings is responding to things that feel good in that moment or things that hurt and we run away from those. And then they decided pleasure must be what happiness is because we're running towards that all the time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So, Shawn, if I'm tracking with what you're saying, you're saying that happiness is not the things in life that make us feel good. If it's not the things in life that make us feel good, then what the heck is happiness, Shawn?
--:-- Shawn Achor: To me, I don't think that there should be a difference between happiness and joy. Joy is something we can experience even when life is not good, like in the midst of childbirth. It's not high levels of pleasure all the time, but moments of joy can correspond even with the highest amounts of fear and pain we can experience as human beings.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I honestly am a little confused about the difference between happiness and joy because as you're talking about childbirth, I'm like, Shawn, I don't know what kind of epidural they had in your wife, but I did not experience a whole lot of joy until the kid was out and they handed me the ice pack to put in my underwear. So when you talk about joy, what do you mean? I'm confused.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I want there to be confusion because I want the two to be conflated. I think we need to help redefine happiness for the world. That happiness is the joy you feel moving towards your potential. The joy that we're experiencing is that feeling like we're not stagnant. Even in those moments, once we've had the baby, it's not suddenly that everything's perfect again. Now they're waking us up, and now we're taking care of this little thing that we have no idea how to take care of, at least we didn't. And we're already exhausted at that point. And then the doctors leave the room like, what do we do at this moment?
--:-- Shawn Achor: I think if we're constantly looking for that moment where everything is great, that there's no stress, the race is finished, what we find is it never actually happens for people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Thank you for that because I'm less confused and I think I'm starting to get it. So the word that you used was conflate. And that I realized is a fancy way to say you want us to take the concept of happiness in the moment and mush it together with the experience of joy and make it all one giant ball. And now I understand why we get the word happiness wrong. Because they aren't separate things. Happiness and joy work together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me see if I can give you an example, Shawn, and make sure I'm tracking so that everybody listening is getting this research from you. In the moment, for example, you can be happy while you're eating an ice cream cone because you love ice cream. And it's a very pleasurable thing on a hot day to have an awesome scoop of ice cream, right? But as soon as you're done with it, you're not happy anymore because that's over. You're saying that that is happiness, but you also want us to expand this idea of happiness to include moments of struggle.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like let's say you're in the middle of training for a 5K or you're studying for an exam or you've just been broken up with. And even though the experience sucks, you know deep down that you're going to be the better for it. And so those are the kind of moments where you don't, quote, feel happy in the moment, but as you're moving through it and you're growing, you can access joy because you realize that you're going to make progress through this pain and you can feel good about that.
--:-- Shawn Achor: Yeah. And one more thing that I love was when you said there is never a moment where everything is great. Can you tell us more about that and how it impacts happiness? It's not where you are that determines happiness for people, because as soon as they finish the race, they're thinking about what they need to do when they get home. Or as soon as they get that promotion, they're immediately thinking about what am I going to do now that I have this promotion? And how do I get this person on my team to become more positive? It's whether or not there's growth. You're doing something meaningful in this world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That makes a lot of sense. Now, we have a lot of questions from listeners who wanted your insights and advice and tools about being happier, Shawn. But before we jump into those questions, I want to turn to you listening. And I want to ask you to be selfish right now. I want you in listening to the conversation and in particular, listening to Shawn answer people's questions. I want you to think about an area in your life where happiness has eluded you. Maybe it's at work. Maybe it's with your health. Maybe you've struggled in friendships. Maybe you're not feeling a lot of happiness or joy in having a sense of purpose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I want you to identify that because I want you to use that area of your life as a way to make Shawn's advice, research, and tools deeply personal, deeply relevant, and applicable to what you're dealing with right now. And that way, as we start teeing up questions from other listeners, you can listen to Shawn's answer and to the struggles that other people are having through the lens of the issue that you want to improve. And that's a way that you can personalize this so it becomes a masterclass coaching session directed right at you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, good. So now that you have that area of your life where you wish you were just a little bit happier, let's go to our first question from a listener named Tina.
--:-- Tina: Hi, Mel. Here's my question. How to change your thinking that you can only achieve happiness depending on external things, like if I had enough money, if I had a job, if I had a partner, to find it within you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shawn.
--:-- Shawn Achor: That was a great question because we assume that the external world is a good predictor of happiness. That's why when parents say they want the best for their kids, they want their kids to be happy. They assume that means in a good school or like the top of their team or they mean something in their head that determines success. And that's going to guarantee happiness because they've checked off some externals. But when you look at the research, as you know, the external world is a terrible predictor of happiness. We find happiness in all these surprising places and we find unhappiness in places where people have everything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think I understand what you're saying, but Shawn, can you give us an example from your own life? I mean, what does this look like in the real world that you find happiness in surprising places, but you find unhappiness in places where you thought you had everything.
--:-- Shawn Achor: When I was at Harvard, when I got in, I applied on a dare. I was a volunteer firefighter. I wasn't like a valedictorian or anything. And I was so happy that I got in. And I assumed that everyone who got into a place and environment with opulence and opportunity would be guaranteed happiness.
--:-- Shawn Achor: What we found is that 80% of them go through debilitating depression once they get there. And another 10 percent, the last time this was public, contemplated taking their lives.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hold on a second, Shawn. I just need to make sure that I understand what you just said, because those are some really scary numbers. Eighty percent of people who step foot on campus as a student will become depressed and another 10 percent contemplate taking their lives. Are you just talking about the students at Harvard?
--:-- Shawn Achor: Just Harvard in that moment. I was one of them. I went through depression myself after I graduated, when my job was to make sure that the first-year students who went from being top 1% of their school now realize that half of the students are now below average in this incredible place. They had a success. It showed guaranteed levels of happiness, and it didn't.
--:-- Shawn Achor: When I traveled to 50 countries doing this research, I learned very quickly that the story that I just described had nothing to do with Harvard. It's how the brain processes the world. That if we think our happiness is based upon the externals, the problem is that every time your brain has a success, it changes the goalpost of what success looks like. And as soon as that occurs, then what should have created great levels of happiness didn't. So you get a degree, don't get excited yet. You don't have a job. You get a job, don't get excited yet. You have to get through inflation or you got to get that promotion.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think at some point you wake up and recognize I've been living this. I'll be happy when I get the house. I'll be happy when I finally have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner. I'll be happy when I lose the pounds. I'll be happy when this. And that model doesn't work. And what Tina's asking is, how the hell do I change my mindset? How do I stop trying to find it outside of me? I don't even know how to begin to find it inside of me. In fact, you mentioned that you were depressed. And I was reading an article where you were interviewed and you said that you were writing in a journal during this period. And the first entry you wrote was, I don't remember being happy and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And now you're like the world's guru of happiness. In that moment, though, Shawn, you had an experience that I think everybody has at some point. I'm not happy and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. What's the first thing that you would want somebody to know if that's where you are right now?
--:-- Shawn Achor: I think the very first thing I'd want is actually the recognition, because I kind of wish I had known that earlier, that whole thing we're talking about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You mean the thing about how we move the goalposts once we achieve something and therefore we set up this trap where we're never actually happy?
--:-- Shawn Achor: I think you're right. I think we all have that moment where we realize I thought I'd be happy when and it didn't work. But then if you ask somebody why they're not happy, they'll tell you about one of their externals. I'm not happy right now because I don't have a boyfriend. I'm not happy right now because I don't have enough money. So I think the very first step might be acknowledging it. The human brain is designed to foil any attempt that success will guarantee happiness. Because every time you hit one of those targets, we change what we think would create happiness.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's fascinating that your brain is working against you. And I want to make sure that you listening really hear this and absorb it. Because if you can understand what you're up against when it comes to you being able to access the research that Shawn's going to teach us all today, understanding that your brain is working against you, I think is a really important step in this because it's constantly switching up the goalposts and that's why you never feel happy. That's a terrific realization. It's sort of like when you train for a marathon and you think that when you cross the finish line, you're gonna be as happy as you could possibly be. The truth is you're a little relieved, you're proud of yourself, but what I found is that it was training for the marathon that made me happy and that brought me joy. It wasn't achieving that goal, it was actually working toward it. So when you understand that it's about making progress towards something, where do you start, Shawn? Can you talk to the person listening, particularly if the person listening is unhappy right now in any aspect of their life? What do you want them to do first?
--:-- Shawn Achor: So I think the first is a recognition that this isn't working. From there, I think that it requires a mindset shift and a behavioral shift. And the work that I do, I research what we can do to create happiness when the world doesn't look like it should. And I think one important caveat to that is that while I'm talking about what we can do internally, that doesn't negate the need for external changes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's start with the mindset. What is one simple step that somebody who is sitting alone like unhappy Shawn back in the mid 2010s writing "I don't remember being happy and I don't think I'll ever be happy again"? How the hell do you change your mindset? Because if you keep saying that to yourself, you're not going to be able to access happiness within.
--:-- Shawn Achor: What I've learned in this research is the depression was not the end of the story at all. And that even in the midst of a broken world, in fact, only in the midst of a broken world, have we ever been able to create happiness? So the question is, how do we do so? I think the starting point is realizing there are multiple realities in this moment. And one of them is, you know, I don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, or I don't have this money, or I don't have this job that I want, or I'm frustrated about whatever it is. I think when you acknowledge that that's true, you could say that's one reality, but there's also some other realities as well.
--:-- Shawn Achor: Last week, I went to the hospital because I was having chest pains. I'm young. I was in ER. And I realized in that moment when they strip you of everything and the doctor is going to knock on the door. When the doctor knocked on the door, I was like, this could change my life. It didn't. I was completely fine. But there is so much negative in this world that I could spend the entire rest of my life focusing upon that and upon my fear. But that doesn't serve me at all. In depression, I just needed a step forward. I felt like I just stopped moving. So I started doing these habits. And these are the habits that we know work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So before we jump into these habits, Shawn, I just want to do some table setting so that everybody listening understands what you're talking about when you say the habits that we know work. I'm very familiar with your work. I'm familiar with all the research that you do. And so I just want to make sure that you listening understand that Shawn has spent his entire career researching happiness, and he has distilled it down to four key habits that he coaches people in professional and personal settings to practice for 21 days. And when he says, these are the habits that we know work, that's what he's talking about. So Shawn, why don't you walk through the four habits that everybody should try for 21 days.
--:-- Shawn Achor: We get people to write down each day for two minutes, three new things that they're grateful for that have occurred over the past 24 hours. So it's not what you're grateful for that matters, it's the scanning. We also got people to go on a 15-minute brisk walk four to five times a week, which we found is the equivalent of taking an antidepressant for the first six months and for the next two years as a 30% lower relapse rate back to that depressed state.
--:-- Shawn Achor: We find that if you take your hands off your keyboard for two minutes a day and just watch your breath go in and out, you're training your brain to do one thing at a time. And 21 days later, not only are your accuracy rates improving by 10%, but levels of happiness rise, stress levels drop, and the cortisol levels of the people that are around you change. So their stress levels are dropping as well. So you're literally changing other people's biochemical patterns based upon your habits.
--:-- Shawn Achor: And finally, we've got people to write a two-minute positive email each day, praising or thanking one new person, a different person each day for 21 days in a row. So just thanking them for something or praising them for something. But 21 days later, we find that it dramatically improves the greatest predictor of your long-term levels of happiness, which is your social connection score.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Boom. That's not just the happiness advantage people. Those are the happiness actions. And I'm telling you, based on the research, the man is right. You got to do it. And what I like about what you're teaching us, Shawn, is that through these habits, and you said a gratitude practice, a journaling practice, exercising every day, taking two minutes to write a note to somebody. These are simple things that leverage all this research. I always say, Shawn, this is not just a listening podcast. This is a fucking doing podcast. So do those things for 21 days. And I think you will be shocked at how the needle moves or as Shawn likes to say, you swing in a new direction.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So thank you for explaining what the four habits are that you've been researching, that you recommend to everybody. And what I'd like to do, Shawn, is can we go back in time to that moment in your life when you were depressed? And could you just explain to the person listening, how exactly did a daily gratitude practice help you when you were a depressed 26 year old researcher at Harvard?
--:-- Shawn Achor: Gratitude, for example. In those moments, I need to stop scanning for all the deficits in my life. And I need to use some of those finite resources to scan the world for the things that I was grateful for. And it was hard because my brain kept being like, yes, but what about this? But what about this thing you don't have? So I literally trained my brain and we train it exactly like we've seen anything else with the human body. I had to keep doing it. Like I can't build a bicep if I only lift a weight once, then I'm done. I had to do it every day and I had to create a pattern out of it, even when I wasn't sure it was going to work. And even when I could see no change in my life, I'd say for the first two weeks, I saw no change in my life. I'm just sitting there writing down things I'm grateful for. And my life still feels terrible. Like I remember breathing hurt when I was depressed because everything hurt and everything didn't seem like it was worthwhile.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think one of the most impressive things about your experience, Shawn, is that you actually kept doing it even while your life felt terrible. And just to remind everybody, this was at a moment in your life where here you are as a graduate student researching optimism, and yet you're struggling with profound depression. Can you talk to me about what it was like to live in those two realities where you're showing up and faking it in your day-to-day life as a researcher of optimism? And yet deep down, you're struggling with profound depression?
--:-- Shawn Achor: I don't get to talk about this much in any of the interviews, so I'd love to talk about this too. Because I think you're going deeper than some of the surface questions we normally get. I think that the habits are what pulled me out of depression. I write my gratitudes. I journal, I do exercise, I write a two minute kind note almost every day. I'd say 90 plus percent days since my mid twenties. I know that when I don't do those things, it's like when I don't brush my teeth, I get this film in my mouth. That's what I feel like my world looks like when I don't do those habits. Those habits are the building blocks for creating happiness.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What was the turning point for you?
--:-- Shawn Achor: The turning point for me in all of this was actually not me. My job was to make sure other people didn't get depressed. So I kept trying to be there for other people. I was just supposed to be this paragon of knowing what you're supposed to do and optimism. And I kept going deeper and deeper in depression because I knew that there is a dissonance between what I was feeling and what I was showing to the world.
--:-- Shawn Achor: The turning point for me and what actually got me to try to do those habits was at the bottom of the depression for me. I turned to my eight closest friends and family and told them that I was going through depression. And a couple of these people were sort of my competitors there at Harvard, or my peers. And I told them I was going through depression. I said, it's genetic. There's nothing you can do. My grandmother, grandparents, and like, it's genetic. I just wanted to tell somebody. But immediately, the groundswell support was phenomenal. They kept calling me. They emailed me. They met up with me. They brought me cupcakes. But as soon as I did that, everything changed.
--:-- Shawn Achor: And the reason for it was actually a study I found way later in my life. It was a study by these two researchers in Virginia. And they found that if you look at a hill you need to climb in front of you, if you look at that hill by yourself, your brain shows you a picture of a hill that looks 20 to 30% steeper when you're alone compared to that hill that you look at of the same height while standing next to someone who you're told is going to climb the hill with you. So I said that in a convoluted way. When you're alone, hills actually look 20 to 30% steeper to the visual cortex, which is amazing because I thought we have this objective view of the world. That's bad. This is good. This is how tall that mountain is.
--:-- Shawn Achor: It was one of those matrix moments where I realized that the world is not objective. It's subjective. Those challenges are collapsing and expanding based upon whether or not you think you're radically alone going through this and trying to get out of this or whether you're with other people. So as soon as I opened up to other people, that was the turning point. Because it was the move from happiness as a self-help idea to this recognition that happiness was not an individual sport at all. And suddenly that hill of overcoming depression in front of me dropped by 20 to 30%. And they opened up about things they were dealing with, challenges they were experiencing. And we started creating these meaningful narratives and social bonds.
--:-- Shawn Achor: So it was a combination of habits and social connection and a mindset shift that allowed in that moment to break from this idea that nothing matters and that there's nothing that I can do that matters. And I have to just wait for the world to change.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I have never heard anybody say that happiness is a team sport. You're saying when you prioritize connecting with people in a more meaningful way or even simply to seek some support and help, the result that you feel is more joy and happiness even as you're going through these very difficult times. And I'm starting to really get at a much deeper cellular level what you're saying. We need a different definition for this. It's not pleasure. It's something else that's way more important.
--:-- Shawn Achor: Well, it makes perfect sense. The Surgeon General just had that op-ed piece about the epidemic of loneliness. And he talked about his own struggle with it and how the turning point was him admitting, just like you did, to his family, friends, and to a few colleagues that he was really struggling with this. And it was their checking in on him and them sharing back that they felt disconnected from social groups and from themselves as well that really was the turning point.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But I love that you added that research because it is true. When you are down and sad and you feel like a sad sack that nobody wants to hang out with, that's the story you tell yourself. And that story then makes you keep isolating. And it's when you reach out that you change. And then that provides a little bit of that intrinsic lift that you need. Maybe there is something I can do. Maybe there is hope.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I promise everybody, we are going to get to the uppity up on happiness. But one of the things about happiness when you talk about as a topic is you got to go down before you get back up. And we got a lot of questions from listeners who are feeling a little down. So I want to take a quick pause, let our sponsors lift you back up because they allow us to bring you all this amazing research at zero cost. And Shawn, when we come back, we are going to dig into a few more questions from our listeners. And we are going to talk about amplifying happiness as well. Stay with us.
--:-- [Musical interlude]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and today you and I are getting a master class in happiness research. Shawn Achor is in the house. Three New York Times bestsellers, research at Harvard. The guy has not only the research but he's got the tactical takeaways too. We are teeing up your questions about happiness and letting the expert, Mr. Shawn Achor, answer them for you. This one is super relatable and it comes from a listener named Charmaine.
--:-- Charmaine: Since my teen years, I've been asking myself, why am I here? What's my purpose? How do I create happiness within myself? I've made so much progress, yet right now I feel lost. I feel like a failure. I feel not good enough. I feel like I'm not a good enough mom to my daughters. I feel selfish. I feel off course and like I'm not living up to my potential. I know I am blessed and I do a lot of things right. I don't think I'm depressed. I'm not completely unhappy. So what the fuck am I? I'm in some goddamn vortex of nirvana and hell.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shawn, what pops out at you?
--:-- Shawn Achor: So many things. First of all, what I kept hearing in my head over and over again is this sounds like me. This sounds so human. I think we fluctuate all the time between this. Like I've got things going and then, wow, I certainly don't. Like if I have a really productive Monday, I get everything done and I'm super cleaning the house. Tuesday and Wednesday are terrible. I'm exhausted. I don't want to do anything. I feel like I waste every Tuesday and Wednesday whenever I have an amazing Monday. I think that that's because we swing.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I think that I could be doing better as a dad. I could be doing better as a husband. I know that when I work really hard at being a great dad, I know I immediately look around at all the people where they're doing amazing things at work. And I'm like, whoa, I'm so blind. Then when I do a ton of stuff for work or travel ever, then I'm like, oh, I should be a better dad. I swing back and forth between this. And I think what we need are those anchor points in the midst of it.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I researched this but I also went to the divinity school before getting into this. So what motivated my beliefs in why positive psychology mattered came from this belief that the story we tell ourselves and the lens through which we view the world changes how we act in it and where we find our meaning. And I think that those belief systems answer some of those questions about how can I feel loved even when I'm not achieving my highest, or my potential.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can you just back the truck up for a minute and explain what is a happiness anchor point? You drop all these terms and I think you forget that I do not have a PhD in happiness research, okay? And I want to know what these tools are. So what is a happiness anchor point and how do we create them for ourselves? It sounds like the more that we stay true to what we value, the better chance we have to stay happy. But the fact is, it's hard to do that in today's world, where there's so much in your daily life that's fighting for your attention. I mean, it's so easy to lose any anchor that you may have and just start to drift. That's very difficult, because then we get on Instagram and we know exactly who's doing great based upon likes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or based upon some sort of quantification or money can tell you who's doing great and who's not. And none of those fill that void. So where those anchor points could come from, I think that they have to come from other people as well.
--:-- Shawn Achor: There was a study that came out of Stanford that found that loneliness had nothing to do with actually the number of people within your life. Loneliness was simply the absence of meaning you felt in the relationships with other people and their meaningful impact upon you. That if you weren't doing anything meaningful for other people's lives, then you didn't feel social connection for the people that are around you all the time. And vice versa. So if that's the case, if meaning is what's driving our levels of happiness, my grandmother said it, you know, she's like, "If you want a friend, you have to be a friend." And I was like, okay, that's overly simplistic. I don't want a girlfriend. That's not working out for me. I can't be the girlfriend. So in that moment, I didn't understand. Now I get it.
--:-- I think we're searching for meaning, and people search for it in different ways—religion, philosophy, psychology. I think that a lot of the things we search for don't work out for us, which is why we get to the point where we feel this vortex of "I've got it, I don't have it, got it, I don't have it," because we're reaching for things that are oftentimes illusory while we're grabbing onto things that are true. My mentor, Tal Ben-Shahar, said, "You're never as great as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are." What I loved about that is that it meant there was a middle path. Sometimes when I think I'm a great speaker, I get humbled very quickly. Or if I think I'm not doing great, occasionally I'll get an email that says, "Hey, this was really important to me." That middle path was the one I want to be in. It's this recognition: I am not at my full potential, but that's okay. And the reason that's okay is because I'm having a meaningful impact upon other people.
--:-- So that habit I mentioned—writing a two-minute pause of email praising or thanking someone else—I found that one to be probably the most helpful of any of the things I've researched. You can take someone in a socially isolated state with high levels of introversion, and if every day they scan for one new person to write a two-minute email to, they stop on day eight. On day eight, that's when they realize fully that they're not a crazy extrovert with all these friends. They're like, "I wrote to everyone in my favorites list and my mom twice. That's everyone." Then they scan and remember: who's that mentor who got me into this job? Who's that high school teacher who seemed to have some answer to some of those questions? Or my kid's first grade teacher who transformed my son's life, but I don't talk to them anymore because my kid's in second grade. You start to see all these people that are in our lives that we're not connecting with. A two-minute email thanking them or praising them or saying, "I've seen how you've been going through breast cancer, and it inspires me that you're able to find happiness in low health when I struggled to find happiness when I seemed to have higher health." Those brief, meaningful acts—using technology for two minutes—we found that if you do it for 21 days in a row, your social connection score rises up to the top 15% of people worldwide, including experts. What we found was that you were lighting up these nodes of meaningful connections on your mental map of social connection.
--:-- I think if you look at the philosophers, if you look at religion, if you look at psychology, they keep breaking down this idea that you can achieve happiness alone, that you could just figure out your thoughts enough and then you did it. Happiness and meaning only come from this interplay with the ecosystem, with others around us.
--:-- I love that. Oh, I could tell one quick study. It's a beautiful one. It's not about humans. This was also in the New York Times. They found all these fireflies—fireflies everywhere light up individually and randomly in the dark. That's how they attract a mate. Their success rate per night per bug is 3%, which I'm told is good. But these researchers found on opposite sides of the globe, two species—one in Southeast Indonesia and one in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee that you can take buses out to go see—and these fireflies have neurotransmitters that allow them to all light up and all go dark at the same time. That's beautiful, but not that smart because we live in a survival of the fittest world. We're told to be the fastest, smartest, brightest light shining, otherwise you'll never be successful.
--:-- At MIT, they studied these fireflies and realized we just misunderstand how systems work. When they lit up together, seemingly in competition, the success rate doesn't drop. The success rate goes from 3% to 82% per bug. It's not like one bug does better. The whole system was doing orders of magnitude better than we thought was possible because as they lit up together, their light became brighter, attracting more and more potential mates than a single light would have been able to do, creating these virtuous cycles. We kept seeing the same thing when we looked at humans. We found that the greatest predictor of long-term levels of happiness is social connection—the breadth, depth, and meaning in your social relationships. So it's not something you can figure out in your head and then hold happiness forever. It's about finding a way of lighting up with other people and getting them to light up as well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I love about your research is that you're making it actionable, because I think that's part of the problem. When we feel shitty and we say shitty things to ourselves, we don't take the actions that actually change it. I heard one time I was on a plane and the woman sitting in the back was talking to somebody else loudly that she had just met about all of these psychological understandings about herself—a litany of all the psychological problems that she had. I realized she'd been going to therapy for years. She had this incredible knowledge about herself and understanding of where she was, and at no point did she ever mention anything she was doing about it. She was talking to a stranger about it, which was more trauma dumping than actually trying to move forward.
--:-- I think there's this moment where I really thought that if I read enough books, I'd find happiness. I thought if I read enough books, I'd be smart and then people would like me. That wasn't completely not true. I love what you're saying—there's this interplay between the beliefs and the actions we do. If you say you believe those things but you're not doing any of them, I'm not sure you actually believe them. There's got to be a connection between those. And what I would say in addition to that is: don't try to do it alone. We treat happiness like self-help—I know our books are in self-help sections sometimes—but as soon as we do this on our own without that friend, without that mentor, without those people that we're doing meaningful acts for, then we get frustrated very quickly and think we're doing something wrong. What's wrong is actually the formula. Happiness never works out if it's an individual pursuit. You can't do enough yoga to force yourself into happiness unless that yoga causes you to be more peaceful with that interaction with your mother-in-law.
--:-- Shawn Achor: Oh, that's what you mean when you say it's a team sport. It's not that you need other people to be happy. It's that your happiness and your ability to access joy in your life lifts you up, and then that impacts everyone around you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is so cool. And this is also a very cool moment for us to hit the pause button with Shawn and hear a word from our sponsors. I would be happy, happy, happy for you to take a listen to them. And when we come back, Shawn's going to tackle a question about how you can remain happy when the people around you and your family are miserable. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. Today you and I are getting a master class in the research around happiness with none other than Shawn Achor. And Shawn, I want to just jump right in with another question. This one is from Pam: "I've heard you're only as happy as your happiest child, and I've got just the one and he is sure not happy. He lives with his face in his phone and says he doesn't mind being a loner. I know he was happiest many years ago when he had a girlfriend who adored him and he was really active. Now he's 26 and should be in the prime of his life, but he isn't. And as a result, I feel deeply unhappy. How do I move past this? And can I help him to do the same? At 62 and four years out from breast cancer treatment, I think it's time to find my warm people and find that happiness. Thanks."
--:-- I hear that. I have two kids of my own, and so much of my happiness is built upon them and because of them. When they're hurting, I so wish it was me. So I think that's unavoidable. The fact that there's pain associated with that love should not be the surprising part.
--:-- Shawn Achor: We got to hear only a little bit of her story, right? Her story was her son's story mostly. Then we heard that she went through breast cancer. I would have loved to hear her story. And yet we're hearing her story as a bit character or as a side narrator of her son's story, which means that our happiness becomes very fragile. They always tell you, diversify your portfolio—don't be all in stocks and don't be all in bonds. Don't be all on one thing. I think the same thing happens with meaning. We see it with people who love their kids. We also see it with workaholics where they love something and it's meaningful—the work is meaningful and pleasurable and they're good at it. So they just do more of it. But the more they do that and they don't do other things, they're slowly taking out other meaningful parts of their life so that their entire meaning portfolio is all in one stock. It's all that son or it all becomes that work. We don't even know what to do with ourselves when we don't have work to do. That's the workaholic—they get free time and they're like, "What do I do? Maybe I'll just have a few more emails and I'll feel happy again."
--:-- Mel Robbins: I remember when we first met, you had to make yourself a promise that whenever you're on a plane, you're going to put your laptop away and force yourself to watch a movie. Because you were starting to see that you loved work so much—and this was me too—that you hadn't diversified where you got your happiness from. So I think about that swinging. And if you never knew the depths of sadness, you wouldn't ever experience the greatest heights of joy. I had that experience watching my husband struggle with depression, and I could throw every book on the planet at him, every podcast episode at him, but I can't do the work for him. I can just hold space for that. And I think we have to do that for ourselves. On those days that you feel like shit, you've got to hold space, and eventually it's going to swing back. But the truth is, I get very triggered when somebody that I love is sad and I want to fix it, Shawn. How do you show up for others?
--:-- Shawn Achor: It's such an interesting question. When we speak to groups of people, you get 300 people in a room. Statistically, someone's going through grief. Maybe 20% are on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication. 10% or more have been abused. The more I think about it, the more I become paralyzed as a speaker. If I thought about that, I definitely would soft pedal some of the things in *The Happiness Advantage*. If one of my friends had just lost their son, I would not go immediately to this because I think there's a moment—a long moment for grief—that we need to allow and recognize that that's part of love and part of being human.
--:-- What's helped me hold that space that you're describing is that after a talk, someone will come up to me and say, "This traumatic event just happened to our kid." And I immediately think in my head, "Why did I say some of these things?" And they were like, "You have no idea how much I needed to hear this today." So my beliefs and assumptions about what that person needed to hear were completely wrong. I give myself space to realize in those moments that I don't have everything figured out, which is actually really helpful in a way that links back to what you were describing.
--:-- This was exactly what my parents felt about me when I was depressed. My parents have said it to me. They were like, "We felt hopeless. We watched you go through depression. We saw you were depressed and we couldn't do anything. And you were in Boston, far away from us." So I could hear them feeling the same thing that that parent felt. And that's why I'm a happiness researcher now, because I went through that depression. That moment of suffering that you're describing—what I keep telling parents when they say, "My kid is depressed," I say, "I was too. And that's not the end of the story." That's very typical. That is very normal. I think we panic when we don't feel the happiness we're told we're supposed to feel all the time. You should not feel happy all the time. If you do, that's a disorder—you're divorced from reality. What we want you to do is that when you feel swung towards the negative side and you're doing deficit thinking, we need to spend some of those precious finite resources on scanning for the positive parts of the story that are equally true, or to talk about our story instead of just our son's story.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think that the numbers that you said about an audience are way higher. And I would push back on you and say that the research and the recommendations that you're making work, and everybody needs to hear them. If you're in a state of acute grief, then you're not going to be capable of doing it. But the second that you're grabbing for a lifeline, these simple habits that you're talking about—simply getting out of bed, exercising, journaling, practicing gratitude, and then sending a note of kindness, and it might just be to people that helped you during the funeral—that gives you a lifeline. That gives you access to the power within you, that helps you come back to yourself. I think we make the mistake of tiptoeing around people's depression and people's sadness, and we treat them with kid gloves when actually what they need is not only the empathy and the support and the check-in, but these guideposts that help you swing back in the direction of feeling happier again.
--:-- I want to go to another question that we have. I bet you've got a great answer for Anne-Marie.
--:-- [Voice memo plays]
Anne-Marie: Hi, Mel. This is Anne-Marie calling from Guilford in the United Kingdom. Absolutely adore listening to your inspirational podcast, thank you. Can you advise people who perhaps have a chronic illness and can't exercise or work full time how they too can lead a happier and more fulfilled life? How do you stay motivated and hopeful and keep joy in your life? How do you prevent yourself from spiraling and thinking the worst because you're sick so much of the time? Thank you so much and sending all love.
[End of voice memo]
--:-- Shawn Achor: It's very tough. I faced that last week when my heart wasn't doing well. I actually looked outside the window and there was a security guard outside of the hospital, and I so much wanted to be him. I wanted his life where he wasn't caring about health. So this question hits home where someone has to think about their health all the time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I used to write in books when I signed them, I'd say "Happiness is a choice," Shawn. I don't do that anymore.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I have an idea.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, good.
--:-- Shawn Achor: What if you wrote "Happiness is an option"?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I like that. I have another idea. I want to talk to you listening to us right now. Yes, you. You know how in the beginning of our conversation, I asked you to pick an area of your life where you wish that you could access more happiness, and I asked you to be selfish and to listen to all of Shawn's insight and research and tools through the lens of that particular aspect of your life? I now want to ask you a question: what if happiness was an option for you in that area of your life? You know that relationship in your family that makes you miserable—what if happiness was an option? What if a career where you felt more joy was an option? What if you being happy with the habits or the morning routine that you have is an option? That just opens up a whole new level of creativity and freedom, doesn't it? Because when it's an option, it means that there are multiple ways that you can attack it. It means that you can think about it differently. It means that you're not stuck where you are. Shawn, what do you think about that approach?
--:-- Shawn Achor: "Happiness is an option." I like that because "choice" seems to add a burden where I don't want there to be a burden, but a recognition that it's an option. I love that. I might use that now. That's great.
--:-- When we can't do something, we're outlining something that's a deficit—"I can't exercise." But we know that most of these habits don't involve exercise. So there are things that we can do in those moments that can raise levels of happiness. I think the choice is just harder. I think the choice is harder when you're being racially discriminated against or when you have a health issue or when your kid is depressed. I think the choice becomes harder within those moments, but still it's an option, as you're describing. And where I think we get meaning, even when our own body becomes our prison, is from other people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, when you say meaning comes from other people, I want to be very clear, everybody, because we are also saying you have to stop thinking "I'll be happy when I get in the relationship" or "lose the pounds" or "finish the PhD" or "have my first song playing on the radio." So "I'll be happy when" or thinking that some achievement is going to make your life fulfilling—no. What becomes fulfilling in life is working on this thing, climbing the mountain. So I want to be very clear that Shawn is not saying that other people are the source of your happiness. What Shawn is saying is that meaningful connection with other people creates feelings of meaning and joy and happiness in your life, and that serving others and helping other people creates meaning and joy. Am I saying that correctly, Shawn?
--:-- Shawn Achor: Yeah. We were working in Flint, Michigan, in the midst of inequality and discrimination and racism. We were trying to raise levels of happiness for the teachers so they'd stay for more than two years. What we found while we were doing this is that only in the classrooms where we were able to raise the levels of happiness for the teachers did the teachers, students, parents, or guardians' well-being scores start improving dramatically. We were only working with the teachers, and yet the students' test scores in those classrooms were rising. We found that if you could change the mindset and behavior of some of the individuals within an ecosystem, you could actually measure the impact on people two, three, four degrees separate that they never even met. The reason I highlight that is one, that makes us feel good about ourselves, but two, it's the reason for taking that next step. If doing this gratitude journal is just about me, it feels empty and vacuous. What we were finding in the midst of this is that when people were able to raise their levels of happiness, joy, and meaning, it caused other people to see that happiness was an option.
--:-- There was a study that came out about it being better to live a meaningful life than a happy life. As soon as you split meaning and happiness, we've already made a mistake.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Isn't it the same thing?
--:-- Shawn Achor: Yes, they should be, because it's very difficult to stay happy when you feel like your life is meaningless, and it's very difficult to keep doing meaningful activities if you don't feel any joy doing that or any return on it. Let people be part of your life as well. That's when we start to see those larger gains in people's levels of happiness.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shawn, I'm just processing everything that we've already covered. And I know there is so much more that you can teach us, but can I just take a second and make sure that I can synthesize everything that we've covered so far so that nobody misses out? Because so far this has been jam-packed with takeaways and insights.
--:-- So first, if you're unhappy, you're not playing a big enough game in life. You're too focused on your own misery. You're too focused on yourself, and gratitude is one way to make you see the bigger picture. All of these things are about getting out of your own teeny tiny selfish miserable focus and expanding your eyes to see that there's a lot more about your life experience and about what is your potential that's available to you when you stop staring at your navel and complaining about everything that's going on.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I could just listen to you forever because I feel like you're able to synthesize this in such a beautiful way. And you can hear it from the people who call in. Even though they're suffering, you're doing something so meaningful in their life. You know, we get so focused upon whether or not a glass is half full or half empty, and then we decide our happiness based upon that—optimism or pessimism. But I've always had this picture in my head: we're so focused on this glass being half full or half empty, but ignoring that there's a pitcher of water sitting right next to it that we could fill it up with. When we do these habits and when we care for and let other people in, we're filling up that glass, and that glass does not look like it did the day before.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, that's great. I always like to say that it's not about the water that's in the glass. It's about the fact that you have a glass. You can dump the water out. You can fill it back up. You are the glass. And all the tools that you're giving us today—whether it's a different way to think about happiness, whether it's a new definition that includes both moments and moving toward growth and how you can incorporate joy, whether it's the four habits that you walked us through—those are all ways that you can empty the glass or you can fill it with more experiences of joy, which lift you up, and then that impacts everything about your life.
--:-- But if you had to bottom line it, especially if you're talking to a listener who's like, "I'm the glass, Mel, there's a pitcher next to me, Shawn, what the hell are you guys talking about?" Can you just bottom line what somebody should do right now to tap into this concept of happiness and joy?
--:-- Shawn Achor: Accept where you are right now, but realize that this is not the end of the story. I believe that change is radically possible from our genes and our environment when we change our mindset and change our behavior and we link in with other people as well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I feel like I'm going to be thinking about this interview for a long time. You've just got this depth that makes it just beautiful. I learned a lot from this.
--:-- Shawn Achor: I learned a lot from this too, Shawn.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And more importantly, everybody listening, I hope you're not only thinking about what you learned today. I hope you put it into action. Because as you know, this is not just a listening podcast. The Mel Robbins Podcast is a doing podcast. And there's one thing I want to do before I say goodbye. I want to make sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to push a door wide open to a happier you, because happiness is an option. So take it. I love you. Okay. Am I okay, Jesse, to go? Yeah, okay.
--:-- [Sound of throat clearing]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Ooh, I guess I'm not happy about that. There's something in my throat. Okay. Wow, that is a big truck going by. You know what? I'm not happy that the truck is going by, but I feel a lot of joy in my heart because we're making progress on this episode. And you can feel—
--:-- [Sound of truck rumbling]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God. Okay. I have to take this off because I've been harassing her. There is the truck again. My God. Leave it to Mel to schedule podcast tapings on a construction day.
--:-- We're going to do something a little different today. And I don't know if we've told you this or not, because I like to invite you onto the podcast and then completely surprise you by what we're doing. So you feel very uncomfortable. Just kidding.
--:-- Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
