E038: Happiness

Music. This is the world of work podcast with James and

hello. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. We are at the start of I guess it's series five. Now, is it? Well, if we count our summer specials that we did in the summer 2019, as a little mini series, then this is the fifth of a series we're doing. I think

by the time the end of this series is out, we will have been working together almost a year. That's incredible, isn't it? That's true. Incredible is an interesting way. How did we last Well, I

was gonna say it's somewhat incredible. You're still here, you're still here in the room, not least because my dogs developed a bit of an obsession with you, which is a bit strange. That's fun, but, yeah, that's pretty good. We've talked about quite a lot of things. We have talked about a lot of stuff. I mean, this is like episode 30 something. Is

it weird that we've talked about a lot of stuff? And yeah, I feel we always have the same conversation, which is, how can we make the world a better place? It could be better.

Yeah, it's good. So, so how are we going to try and make the world better with this serious What do you

think so? Well, I know how we got to this list of subjects, so that might be helpful for listeners to understand. So we have, pretty much every time James says, Oh, that could be another podcast, or we come up with an idea, we put it on a big list, and then every so often, we look at that list and think about what themes are in that list and what we're interested in talking about. And I think more and more in series three, when we were talking about behavior change and motivations, and a little bit when we were talking to some of the interviews that we did about culture and engagement, yeah. And

I think, I think more and more from my own personal place, I kept having conversations in my coaching work and my facilitations work about how people can do more for themselves to improve their quality of life, yeah. And what does that look like, and what does that mean? And some of that was about self care, self awareness, and some of it was about growth and development, and some of it was about personal effect. There were lots of things, but I think we kind of both converged on this list of here are the things that we think materially, if people adopt some of the learnings, they can improve the quality of their life, yeah, cool within a work context, and also how work plays in the context of their life, yeah? And so I kind of, I think, I know, I said, Well, please, can we do that as the next series? And you're kind of like, well, yeah, that's kind of what, let's what I'd like to do too, yeah. So all in all, this series is about, I think, growing your own self awareness, yeah, developing yourself, yeah. And it is about understanding happiness, contentment, the role work can play, and how to arrive at a place where it's providing that function. Cool.

I'm happy about that. This is making the world a little bit better for you by developing and growing and

yeah, and I just the bits. I really love it when people say to me, Oh, I was listening to podcasts. And I don't think me wrong. I'm not talking about, like, 1000s of people, but it does happen regularly, where people say, I was listening to your podcast. And I've done this, and it has made things better. And I just, it's rewarding, isn't it? Yeah, I love that. So it's a fun, fun topic to Fun, fun area to explore. And I think we've picked out six good topics, cool. We're doing six. We're doing six. Well, sometimes we start with six and end up with more, but we are known to happen. I'm kind of, I'm kind of doing that pre commitment thing, saying, if I say six, do we

have six? Yeah. So we're aiming to do six. Okay, and hopefully we can do that. Um, so today's episode, we're actually going to start by focusing on happiness as a context, a concept, and we're going to think about happiness from sort of a global perspective. We're going to think about happiness from a personal perspective, and we're going to think about the role of happiness at work. So it's a bit of a strange jumping off point, I guess, for personal development, but for me and for us in the conversations we've had, it's a little bit of that goal piece, right? So when we do personal development, and we do, you know, trying to improve ourselves and trying to change aspects of our life, why are we doing it? Well, probably, ultimately, we're trying to do it to get somewhere, and that somewhere that we're probably trying to get to is probably loosely defined as happiness. So that seems like a good, you know, start with the end in mind and all that kind of stuff. Start off with some happiness. Okay, sounds a good place to start Cool. All right. So before we jump into it, how can people find out about us? Bearing in mind, we're on our new website now my

life. So firstly, I would suggest you check out our new website. Yeah, it's lovingly developed by James. Yeah, it's www dot world of work. IO. So that's World of work.io,

and there's loads of goodies on there. And you can sign up for Wow mail as well, yeah, which means you get updates about all the stuff we're doing. But as always, we still really love to speak to you on social. Yeah, particularly since it's been a little while since we've been live. Yeah, so come tell us, if you're listening to the new series, what you think, what you make of happiness being the first episode. And the really best place to get us on Twitter at the WoW podcast. We are also on Insta, Facebook, LinkedIn. Come find us. But absolutely, the best place to get hold of us is Twitter at the WoW podcast, mostly because both of us are quite love our Twitter. Yeah, we're usually on there every day.

Yeah, we'll check it. Don't you worry. We'll check it, and we're and we'll always get back to you as well. Cool, all right, so that's us. So in terms of the approach, it's a standard episode. So we'll start with some definitions, and then we'll do some research Roundup. We'll do some list of a week. We'll do some tales from a keyboard, reflecting on our sort of real life experience of what we're talking about, we'll end up with a couple of top tips or final thoughts, and then we will close up and get out of your way and let you get back on with your your lives. So why don't we go straight into some definitions? How do you feel about that? I feel pretty happy. Oh, do

you feel happy already?

So here's the lesson, right? You just need to come up with some definitions, and you'll be happy in life.

So on that note, moving on quickly, very quickly. I'm not sure what I make of that. Well, I'm going to kick off definitions with happiness, because I think it's, I think what was really interesting when I tried to find some definitions of happiness is that the dictionaries are uniformly rubbish, yeah. So I've actually looked to a research called Sonia Leo bimsky. So who was that? Her name's Sonia Leo baumski, good. And she argues happiness is the experience of joy, contentment or positive well being combined with a sense that one's life is good, meaningful and worthwhile. That's nice, yeah. And I could probably break it down and argue against it, but I don't want to, because I think that's my definition of happiness. So I'm going to go with it. And I usually break definitions down. I don't feel like doing it today, because it's a nice thing. So then we've got contentment. And they kind of into there's lots of you find happiness, contentment and well being, being moved around and interchanged later. There's a lot of so I've gone to alidog.com which is a psychology students website support, and it says contentment is a feeling of happiness, safety and comfort that comes from being in a situation or experience that causes one to feel this overwhelming sense of satisfaction. For example, a person might survey the Thanksgiving table or Christmas table and their loved ones around it, and feel contentment with their position in life and their family connectedness. That's nice. Yeah, it's brilliant. I have yet to find a single person who honestly looks around a family eating occasion and goes, Wow, this is great, because in my house, family eating occasions are quite loud and usually got some form of argument going on that could be contenting. But the idea that you survey a scene and are happy with your lot in life certainly is contentment. I would argue. I felt increasing periods of contentment in the last three to five years of my life, as I've become much more aware of how, how good I've got it, I guess. And so for me, that's a real contentment thing. So then flow, I've got in here, here, and flow is with the flow is one very well, in fact, sorry. Now let me start with work engagement. So working, because it'll help, it'll make loads more sense. So work engagement, harnessing of organizations, members selves to their work roles in engagement, people employ and express themselves, physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances, right, which sounds almost Machiavellian. So the idea is that organizations harness their members to their work roles. So they are they are voluntarily consumed, subsumed by their roles. And so when they are engaged, they express themselves fully, physically, consequently, emotionally, is the argument. Emotionally is the argument, and they're fully engaged in what they do. And that links us really nicely to flow, which is an act, something that's been quite heavily researched by a Hungarian American academic called Mihai sezek zent Mihai, who argued that flow is the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement in their activity. And you often hear words used around the concept of flow, like immersion or immersive in the zone, and it's about when people hit their sweet spot. But. It also can be about acting with a kind of blinkers on around what you're doing. And I think it's really interesting. The most similar place I've heard language like this, but in a negative way, is when people have talked about being in the grip when you're stressed and you get so focused on a task that you can't see what's around you, and you get sort of, yeah, it's kind of an inverse, isn't it? Yeah. And I That worries me a little bit that these two things, one is apparently so positive and one is apparently so negative, and yet they present in the same way. Yeah. But I think flow is a really interesting concept. And I had a, I have to say, I had a really interesting conversation with my partner's brother when I was at South Africa last year about flow and about this idea that he's a computer, I don't know. Person, he's a computer. Person, he builds, build stuff in computers. Anyway. He was talking about how it takes him a while to immerse himself in the design and the and the language of programming, yeah. And then he will have a period of work where he is in there, yeah, side what he's doing, sure. And he was talking about flow and, and that makes total sense to me, because I think if you're trying to layer up knowledge and build an environment in your head, then of course, flow is something you really need to get to so you can follow it through. And then the final one I want to pick up on is purpose. And this is from the John Templeton Foundation, which is not a source of views before, but I really like it. Purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once personally meaningful and at the same time leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self. And I really like this concept. I like this concept of purpose being an intention to accomplish, which I think makes sense, but that it has this dual aspect of being personally meaningful and also productive engagement with some aspect of the world. And I think quite often, when you see disengagement of staff in the nonprofit sector, one of those things is failing. Okay, either people are feeling no longer that it's personally meaningful, or people are feeling like it's not actually contributing, and although it's meaningful, it's not getting Sure. And so for me, I really like that one. So that's nice, isn't it? Yeah, I really like it. So I should be going back to that website to see if I can find more stuff. But that's a really simple happiness, contentment, engagement, flow and purpose, definition, discussion, cool. That's some useful stuff that I think sits around reframing of happiness. Should

we I hope so. So hopefully you're now going to take us through how we can be happy. Oh, well, let's

see the research perspective. Yeah, research, pardon me, research, round up on all this. So yeah, let's jump into that. It's been a while since we've done a research round up. Hopefully it's kind of fun. I'm going to start by just touching on what is happiness. So we've had the definition, which is really helpful. I just want to call out that when you look at definitions of happiness, there's a range, right, different people think slightly different things. But from the, I guess, the depth of emotion, when people talk about happiness, they talk generally about a range of positive emotions, and those kind of go from contentment through to sort of sheer joy at all. So there's a breadth in there that people are talking about when they're talking about the depth of that emotion. And then there's also a temporal aspect to happiness. So there's being happy in the moment. You know, at the moment right now, are you in that state of existence which embodies happiness? And so that's sort of immediate happiness. But there's also a much longer term view of what happiness is. And when you look at really long term views of happiness, you start to look at things like quality of life and life satisfaction and things like that. So I just wanted to call out those different dimensions of happiness. And as I go through the research round, I'm going to start with a sort of Mac review of happiness overall. Then I'm going to touch on happiness at a personal level, and then we're going to look a little bit at happiness in relation to work, and how happiness correlates to work and some things like that. Did I hear rumor of a quiz? There might be a quiz, if you're very lucky, Jane, I will behave. Yeah, you behave well, and then we'll get a nice quiz, hopefully. Okay, so in terms of the next bits around happiness, when we look at happiness at the macro level, what you find is you get people looking at happiness at sort of a country level, or trying to assess different groups that are happy. And how do you analyze people's happiness? And what we find is that when people look to measure happiness, they tend to use a similar, rough approach. So fundamentally, when you're assessing happiness, it's really assessed through fundamentally asking people, are they happy in different ways, or getting them to do questionnaires or getting them to self disclose or assess their own assessment of their happiness. So there's very little sort of external assessment of somebody's happiness, if you will. So I'm just going to run through a couple of ways that this is done so you get a sense of how it works. So one of the one of the ways it's done is through something called the subjective happiness scale. And here what you do is you ask individuals to rate themselves as either happy or unhappy, and to identify specific descriptors associated with that and that gives you a sense of overall happiness. There's something called the positive and negative affect schedule, which involves individuals completing a 20 item questionnaire looking at a range of time periods and how they answer those different questions on sort of a scalar base. Gives you a happiness. Or an indication there's something called a satisfaction with life scale. And again, this is a seven point scale between unhappy and very happy. And you get people to select where they are in relation to five statements about their life, and that gives you a score. Or there's someone called the cantrer ladder. And the cantral ladder is used by World Happiness reports, which is one of the locations from which we got stuff for today, and mechanical ladder basically just says to people, think of a ladder. At the top of a ladder, at number 10 is the best life you can imagine, and at zero, at the bottom is the worst life you can imagine. Where are you on that scale? So again, it's just getting people to think and disclose where they are. So that's how people look at measuring happiness at these large scales and trying to get overall assessments of happiness. So do you know what's next? Go on? Yeah, it's Chris time. All right, I'm ready.

So we've done a couple quizzes. Hopefully this one's kind of fun. Now, what we're going to do with our quiz is we're going to play higher or lower. And what we're doing is we're playing higher or lower on the 2019 World Happiness Report ranking of countries by happiness. Do you reckon we're the only people in the world who've ever played this game, or do you reckon others have

been no, I'm relatively confident that no one else played higher or lower. Okay, I mean, in a formal quiz setting, clearly, someone will have sat in an office and gone, hey, guess if we're higher or lower than this country? Yeah, right. They will have done that. They will not have made slides.

No, I guess having slides is good. It makes this a little bit exciting. So if we look at this, what we're going to do? Well, first, I'll tell you how this works. So every year the World Happiness Report that's published, and it pulls together rankings of happiness by country based on different things. And so you survey large aspect, large populations in different countries on different criteria, and you get an aggregate score. And a lot of this is for control, lot of it's used in this and it spits out the world's countries into a list between, you know, this year, in 2019 they went from one to 156. That's the countries they did. And scores range across a range of areas, but scores basically go from zero to 10. So 10 to max, from zero is the worst, the highest score was just under eight, and the lowest score was just under three. So that's kind of a real range that exists in the world, across those countries. But we are going to start off with a country that is not too far away from where we are in Europe. At the minute. It's 17th under ranking. Its score was 6.985 and the country is Germany. So that's our starting point. That's where Germany is. So we're going, we're going next. We want to know, is Australia happier or less happy? Happier than Germany? Australia is happier. Gosh, you're right.

I know I'm right. Yeah. Okay, so I've never met a group of people who are happier with their lot than Australia. Ah, well, that's interesting. Well, I have. I've met plenty but, but there is something about the way they It's so lovely.

Okay, so we've gone up to Australia. You're absolutely right. Australia are at number 11. They've got a score of 7.228 so they're pretty happy. Next up, the United States of America. Where are we going with the US? Happy, less happy. You're pretty good at this. For us, we need to drop all the way down to 19th. So 19th, happiest country this year, is for USA.

Why is it? Every episode we do, I end up thinking about equity theory. I'm gonna have to go back to our process theory, stuff, motivation, yeah.

So, so that's USA. So USA goes down to 19 with a score of 6.892 I feel like a judge slightly lower than Germany, yeah. So the US are below Germany. So Germany, we're 17 for us to 19, yeah, but not by much. It's like, not by much anyway, yeah, exactly, decimal, basically,

Japan. Where are we going? For Japan? Crikey, I'm not familiar with Japanese. We're checking it out there. I'm gonna go higher. So Japan is higher than us, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go higher. All right,

so this I found interesting. So the US was at 19, with 6.892 Japan is number 58 on this list, with a score of 5.886 So Japan is, you know, well over a full point lower

than the US. So I'm really interested in that, because I'm also interested in culturally, how that works, and what the question is, yeah, of course, it's hard, right? It's hard, but all we can go

I also don't know what Japan's like. Oh, I'm really sad. I don't want that. I'd like Japan to be a happy country, really beautiful country. Yeah, exactly. It's funny, isn't it? They've had a rough, rough few years, though, well, with natural disasters and stuff. Yeah. Okay,

so Japan, we're going south, south, south from Japan. If we head down that way, we get to New Zealand. Where do we think New Zealand? I don't know. I would say top 10. Top 10, no question. Okay, well, let's,

let's chuck a chuck one in there. So, Australia, were 11, are New Zealand happier or less happy than Australia?

Bearing in mind, this is self reported, yep, this is thinking I am actually, I am actually what is referred to as worrying my lip. Okay, actually, yes, pulling my lip. Thing. King. And the problem is, I'm trying to push away all my horrific biases, having been to Australia and lived there for a year. Oh no, I'm going with Kiwis being New Zealanders being happier. All right,

you're right. So New Zealand on this list are the eighth happiest country in the top 10. You've

got it, right. Cool. So I think you did. How many Scandinavian countries in the top five? I

don't have a full list here, but it's like my desktop, but the top are predominantly Scandinavian countries. I'd say half of the top are and then some other ones in there are places like Switzerland. I just pulled out a few to give people a sense. So that's the end of a quiz, but I'll just run through some of the countries so people get a sense of them. So number one is Finland this year, with a score of 7.769 and then following on from that, it is like Finland, then Norway, then Denmark, then Sweden and then Switzerland, or something like that. It's about kind of clustering initially. Other ones I pulled out for interest, New Zealand at eight, Canada at nine, Australia at 11, UK at 15, Germany, 17, us, 19, we're at 15. UK at 15 in 2019, yeah, 7.054 Yeah. Okay, that should have been in the quiz, because I would totally have got

that. Well, yeah, I probably should have put that one in um, USA at 19, Italy at 36 Japan at 58 China at 93 Palestine at 110 Kenya at 121 India at 140 and propping up the table is South Sudan at 156

Yeah. And I think, I think you know it, if you go back to the what we've learned right at the beginning about so much about psychology from recording this podcast, it doesn't matter how good the other things are, if you have something really bad going on. So if you have famine, if you have war, you know there's nothing you can do that's suddenly going to improve that, unless those until those things are removed, yeah, and that. So that doesn't surprise me. It makes me a little sad, but it doesn't surprise me. Yeah, and

you know, if you actually want to spend some time, you can dig up the World Happiness reports. They're all available online as PDFs, going back through multiple years. And with these scores, they actually break these scores down into constituent elements. So within these they talk about the factors that contribute to them. So they say, you know, what proportion of happiness is explained by GDP per capita? What is explained by generosity, what's explained by dystopia, what's explained by local perception of corruption, what's meant by freedom. So there's stuff like that. So it's really an interesting thing that's worth having a look at. So that's a snapshot globally of who's happy at the macro level. I'm going to do one other bit. I'm going to look quickly at what are some of the factors that correlate to happiness. And I've got these from there's a website which is really fun, called our world in data.org and they've actually used a bunch of World Happiness reports in some other places, quite a bit on that website. It's really good that brings together some of this. And I'm just going to call out some of the things that they call out through the World Happiness reports as correlating and contributing to happiness. So there are nine things I've pulled out that I think are kind of interesting to think about that contribute to happiness at a notch at a national level, obviously individually, but contributing at this sort of level of reporting. And some have got stronger correlations than others. I've been a bit sort of loose in defining what is very strong, what's strong, and things like that, but I've tried to pull it from here and red on always show like correlation figures. But I've just done it loosely so things that are heavily coordinate correlated with this are things like, at number one, I guess, totally unsurprisingly, a mental illness. So things totally unsurprisingly, like depression and anxiety correlate negatively with happiness. I guess there's no surprise. It's kind of the same thing. But it means, to some extent, if you address those things, you can address happiness, freedom is another one big relationship between how free you feel as an individual and how happy you are, or what your life satisfaction is. Physical health also correlates quite a bit. And then some other factors that correlate with happiness are personal income. So proportionally how wealthy you are to your peer groups is your personal income. So that equity piece comes in as well, if you're doing well within your peer group, within your nation, and that correlates to your happiness. But at the same time, at a global level, your nation's income correlates to your happiness, and then things like disability as well correlate. So if you have, you know, if you have a disabling incident in your life, then you'll see a fall in happiness, and then it recovers a little bit, but it doesn't recover to its pre disability state. So there's some stuff in there. And then a couple of other things that have got smaller correlating factors that still contribute are income growth. So the rate of income growth in your nation affects your happiness. There's a correlation there life events. People are happier before they get married, and people are less happy before they get divorced. So in the run up to a positive life event, like a wedding, people self assess is more happy, and in the run up to negative life events, fake self assess is less happy. I guess there's no surprise. And then there's an interesting one about a correlation between certain aspects of culture and happiness as well, but I'm not. They're going to delve into that one. It's just worth calling out that, you know, certain groupings of countries have sort of happiness trends that are kind of interesting, but you can see more in the report itself. So that's kind of a macro overview. Have you got any thoughts on happiness at a macro level and these types of reports? Well, I've

been busy googling because I particularly fascinated by the Japan, okay, example, because it's been consistently down in the dumps around the 40s and 50s. Yeah, and I'm interested in, I think, I think there's a real interest for me in some of the countries that I look to be a little bit lower have just such different cultures. And I wonder, yeah, I wonder. I do wonder about things like the proud versus humility dichotomy, that when you think about that, we're being asked that question, I think that there is certainly depending on your personality and the kind of kind of values you have, you may underplay or overplay that, yeah, it's hard to get a normalization at a cross culture.

I think it is really, really really difficult. So I think, but I think it's, you know, the bottom line is, what we're trying to argue is that at a national level, we should care more about this

stuff, absolutely, and you got to measure it before you change it, don't you? Yeah, and that's

great, and that's important. And I really like the correlations, because I think they really help bring home what we need to be doing stuff about, yeah, right, yeah. And obviously, everyone, people are contented

and happy. There is less unrest, there is less, more harmony crime, there's less. There's got to be less of so of conflict, yeah. And through

all that comes more efficiency and all that. It's fairly virtuous. And obviously I only called out a few, right? I didn't call out stuff like, no.

So all of you listening who weren't mentioned, it's not because you're not happy. It's just James has picked a few.

Yeah. And same with all the correlating factors. I only picked out some of the correlating factors some of our countries. It's just a snapshot, but it is worth having a look at. I would argue it's really important to work.

Yeah, it is. And they keep developing it, yeah. And the trends every year are good, and the reports always have a deep dive into a different aspect as well. So they look at some. You know, we normally have six or seven chapters every year, and they cover a range of different things, so it's worth looking at them. I'm going to jump on now and have a teeny little look at personal happiness. I'm not going to spend too much time on it here. We're going to touch on it a little bit in our list, but I just want to call out a website called action for happiness. I guess it's an organization called action for happiness, and the Dalai Lama is involved in that, and they look at trying to, I guess, make the world a bit of a happier place. So personal happiness, I guess, means something a little bit different to everybody else, and everybody's unique in the way that they become happy is different for everyone, right? That's all kind of, right, but there are some things that I guess, everyone can do to become a little bit happier. And one of the things that action for happiness have done is they've pulled together a list of 10 keys to happier living. So these are 10 sort of things you can do to be a bit happier in your life. And we just want to share these on here. They talk about these as the 10 keys to happier living, but they also talk about it as a great dream model. And you might have seen the great dream model on, you know, on social media or on the internet. It's worth having a look. They do courses as well. There's a whole sort of happiness set of courses that they do. You can sign up to deliver that course so you can find people delivering that course near you. It's a multi week I think it's like an eight week course or something like that. I could be totally wrong on that, but I think it's eight weeks, and they touch on these things. But for this episode, we just want to cover the things that are in this great dream model. And obviously, great dream is, you know, the first of each of those letters, or each of those letters related to a word. So I'll read through them, and then I'll say a teeny bit more about them. So great dream is, giving, relating, exercising, appreciating, trying out direction, resilience, emotions, acceptance and meaning. And really, what it says is, if you get some of these things as pillars within your life, they can contribute to your happiness, and these are the types of things that contribute to both your sort of immediate happiness, but a lot of them also contribute to that longer term sense of happiness, about life satisfaction, definition of happiness that a lot of people aspire towards. So if we run through them really quickly, giving, this is all about doing things for others. So altruism and helping others correlates and helps people be happy. Relating, that's about building good relationships, having relationships, being social to the right level for you and having support from others leads to happiness. Exercise of any type, really, you know, I mean, depending on where you are and your sort of physical fitness and things like that, exercise of any type is really helpful. Appreciating leads to happiness. So that's about being mindful of the good things that you have, having some gratitude, appreciating the good things, focusing a bit on those leads to happiness. Trying out is the tea that's about learning new skills. It's about mastering things. It's about developing and growing that contributes to happiness. Direction. It's about working towards goals. It's about having an end state that you're trying to get to. It's about being on a journey that leads to happiness, resilience and having an ability to bounce back contributes as well emotions, having positivity and focusing on helpful emotions, and to some extent, reframing and adopting a sort of a positive mindset leads to happiness. Acceptance is about accepting yourself, and you know, coming to terms of who you are, and, you know, just accepting that person for who they are, and not necessarily trying to force change, leads to happiness. And the last one is meaning. And this is about trying to find some type of purpose, or, you know, heading in a certain direction that's purposeful for you, and that you feel like you're contributing to. And you had a definition of purpose at the beginning that we both kind of liked, and that fits with this. So that's a great dream model. Have you seen that one before? Have you seen that one or similar? Yeah, I have.

Yeah. I like it. I'm really, sounds really petulant, really uncomfortable with things that fit into initial spelling stuff out, because I feel like it's been shoehorned. Even if it hasn't, it just feels unlikely to me that that's exactly what they meant so, but it makes it memorable, right? I

don't think it does, though. I think I'll remember great dream, but I won't have any members of it, because it's just not important to me. Okay, do I think there's some good stuff in there? Yes, do I absolutely love what action for happiness? Yeah, does? Yes, absolutely do. I particularly love that model, no more than any other cool kind of, kind of, sorry,

yeah, I'm kind of a little bit, I suspect I'm a little bit tired in this space of lists that are acting as models. And it's not really a list of things and, and I guess it's broad and

it's simple, and it's about Yeah, in a certain direction, it's not, it's about nudging, yeah, yeah. But I just, I just, it could be another list and it would, I would equally

like it, yeah, yeah. But I guess, regardless of a structure, a lot of a bits in there, I kind of think stand up. I like

the work they do. I like the fact that they're operationalizing this stuff. That's what's exciting to me. I like the fact that they tweaked calendars of actual things you can do every day. Yeah. And for me, there's a lot of writing in this space that I feel like is quite easy to do, unless it's the hardcore research, like the country's one, and I'm much more interested in the people, and making it happen and actually giving people practical tools to

improve their Yeah, yeah. So it's worth kind of trying to explore. That's really all I've looked at for personal happiness. There's lots of other stuff out there. We'll do a little bit in the list, but that's really all I called out. I was going to go on now to talk a little bit about happiness and the role of happiness in work, just to have a bit of reflection on that. So if we look at that, I've got a couple bits. There's part of Berkeley out in California. I've got a part of a university called greater good, and they've done some stuff around happiness at work, and I've tried to pull up some stuff from them. So I was going to touch on the impact of happiness at work. So, you know, what are the benefits of happiness for individuals, and what are the benefits for the organization of having happy individuals within them? And then touch a little bit on how you can create happier workplaces, because I think those are things that are useful. So if we look at the benefits first, then benefits for individuals are so wide ranging, right? You know, being happy at work does a lot of great things for you, and some of the things they call out are that, as an individual, if you're happy at work, it actually leads to better physical health and and higher levels of well being. So I guess that makes sense, but it's just interesting to see the whole physical health called out as well. Happy individuals are more creative, they're more productive. They tend to progress more quickly in their careers. You know, happy individuals move up that corporate ladder or move into the places that they want to be more quickly. They tend to be more authentic at work as well. You talked earlier about flow as an experience. It says that people who are happier tend to experience flow more in work and find more meaning in work. Now, of course, we've got we've got, like, what direction does this stuff go? Right? I mean, what's the cause and what's the effect? But nonetheless, happier. People tend to be better big picture thinkers. They tend to be less stressed and more resilient. They tend to be liked more and more popular with others. They tend to be trusted more with others, and they as also as a result, or maybe as a result, they tend to be more supportive and helpful about those as well, and they tend to be more effective with

leaders. It's so funny because I read that list and I read it in reverse, almost. Those are the things that make you happy. So so these are the things you can do to add someone's work to encourage the opportunity for them to be happy. Yeah. So I would argue that giving people the opportunity to be more creative and productive and being more authentic at work and create an environment where they're less stressed and more resilient, is all the things that organizations should be doing in order to enable people. Now I know that a lot of this won't have any causation be a correlation effect, but I just these ideas people are more effective leaders and more liked by others. Yeah. Versus it's all a sort of chain reaction, yeah, yeah, it's hard to pay. You're probably not happy because your work is not satisfying, yeah, because you don't feel it, and therefore you're more reluctant to be an effective leader. Yeah,

you know, where does it start? Right? Cycle, and what is it? Yeah, but,

but without, without question. I also I'm just gonna say I sometimes I think it should be enough to say it is a good thing if people are happy in their workplace. And I feel like sometimes we're justifying it, and I there's a sense of not needing to make the argument sometimes, sometimes we shouldn't have to make the argument. People just need to be better. We

shouldn't need to. But again, this goes back to what's the purpose of an organization, and we need to define, we need to fit within that construct. I think so.

I agree. And I get that organizational purpose might be a conflict of individual purpose at times, but but the idea that that we have to evidence that we need to say that being the idea, we're

effectively adding weight to the argument that you should only encourage people, you should only create an environment where your workers might be happy because it it benefits your bottom line and and that makes me deeply sad, and makes me question The society we're creating, yeah, because I even got 200 years, I don't think that was the case, because we had philanthropy.

We still have philanthropy, but that's the legal obligation for directors, right? I mean, that's what they've got to do. If they're not doing that, they're not living up to their obligations as directors of corporations. It

depends what the organization's purpose is and what they've told their shareholders they'll be doing? It

does, but contractually, that's what directors do, right? You know? I mean, that's fair. That's the role of a director. What to maximize return to shareholders? Is it?

Is that assumed? Is that in the legislative of automatically, or is that I, because I My understanding was it was their responsibility was to ensure the organization stuck to its strategy and met the obligations and the promises that it was making and actively predicted it, not that it had to maximize it otherwise Apple would fail to make the argument that they've made. I think twice about we're not going to do these things because

they're wrong. Well, they're also better for them than a long term for their shareholder, yeah,

but that's not what he said. That's what does the argument No, but the argument was, if they're not doing it for that purpose, and if they're saying we don't matter whether that's true or not, then they would be breaking that assumption.

Yeah, well, I mean, we can check it out. I'm pretty sure of it. As a director, that's your legal obligation. Yeah, well, that's terrifying shareholders. I'm pretty sure it is. Isn't that depressing,

though that's reality, then, no, it's the reality we've constructed as a society. Yeah, but that's depressing. I don't

we don't disagree, but it's our model depressing. Yeah. Anyway, we're getting a bit off track on this kind of stuff. If we talk about benefits for organizations, when we talk about, you know, organizations, if the individuals working in an organization are happy, what are some of the benefits Well, some of these might make you unhappy as well. When individuals are happy and they work, they deliver beyond their job descriptions. They're more committed and driven. They turn over less frequency, frequently. So there are fewer sort of costs associated with that. They require less healthcare support and associated cost. So things like insurance and things like that, where that's relevant, they make fewer mistakes, have fewer accidents, they're more efficient, and they add more value, and they generate higher customer loyalty and better customer relations because they're happy. So that's really some of the payback to their shareholders, right? And I

get that, but nowhere have I yet seen whether the cost of keeping them happy is sufficiently small that the benefits that they they reap from that, yeah. And

I guess it depends on your current state as an organization and what you need to do to make people happy. And what about your annual marginal advantage, competitive advantage? Yeah, exactly. And

where are you, and what's your highly competitive industries really struggle? Yeah, yeah. So that's some stuff on the impact of happiness at work from from the same people, the greater good people at Berkeley, if we look at some of their work, they call out some things that you can do to create happy workplaces. Now, when we talked about the benefits for individuals, we called out some things there that I think you rightly said, are the types of things that can make people happy. So doing things like helping people or giving them permission to be authentic at work might make them happy, giving them opportunities to be creative, opportunities to be productive, all that kind of stuff. So it can go both ways. But what these guys have called out in relation to creating happy workplaces is a couple things. They've called out four main points that I think are interesting and that I think fit with things that I've seen. So firstly, they talk about instilling purpose, or creating purpose, or aligning purpose, when they talk about increasing engagement, when they talk about improving resilience, then they talk about increasing kindness. So these are the four things they call out. So if we look at instilling purpose, they've got a nice little piece here from a quote that I like from somebody called Morton ham. Person, and it says that you have a sense of purpose when you make valuable contributions to others, individuals and organizations or to society that you find personally meaningful and that don't harm anyone, right? So, I mean, that's kind of similar to what you talked about with purpose earlier. Similar, yeah, I would say, Yeah, super similar. Just, you know, different phrase, but if you can help create that sense of purpose within your organization, then you can lead to happier, happier people in your organization. And of course, individuals can create a bit of their own purpose, but organizations can do this as well, and places like Patagonia are great examples of creating a purpose and trying to stick to it from the next one seeing

what they've done, which the bit about returning their tax rebate. Oh, yeah. I remember, yeah. So the US have a big tax rebate recently, and Patagonia have said they're donating all Yeah. And I just, I think if it's a great example of organizing your organization in line with your values, such that your employees who are attracted there in the first place will feel proud, yeah? And you'll really feel purpose. I mean, they make the news. How proud would you be if that was your organization? Yeah, it's

good. So next up, we had increasing engagement. So here what we say is that, you know, the more engaged staff are, the happier they are. And this is kind of a two way thing, right? The language I'm not entirely sure about, but they talk about pillars of engagement, and they call out several of them, but I kind of like so one to help people be engaged. You want to have permission for fun and levity at work, so bring a bit of enjoyment to the workplace, and that'll help people be engaged. Next is around autonomy, and I guess, self control at work. So if people have space to be autonomous, that'll help them be engaged. And the last pillar they call out is really the opportunity for immersive work. So certainly in some roles, you spend all your time in meetings, and you don't actually get a chance to do any immersive work. And if you don't get a chance to do that kind of immersive, fun work, or immersive absorbing work, I should say, then it's harder to be engaged. So I've not seen engagement looked at as those three pillars before, but it's kind of fun, autonomy and immersion. Have you seen that kind of split before for engagement? Sorry,

I've gone quite some thinking I'm just going through all the different models of, no, I don't think I have not. I don't think so. I kind of like I hadn't seen it before.

I think I like it. I certainly like bringing fun and levity. And, I mean, that's such a powerful thing, autonomy, I agree with. I don't know that it's complete,

but I think, I think fun is right for some organizations, I think, and for some people, I don't think everyone wants fun at work. I think some people, what about levity? Then, you know, permission for levity. I mean,

what would you I don't know, I kind of come back to, can't you just be allowed to be yourself? Some people are not natural.

I don't think this is mandated fun. I think it's permission for fun. Okay, well, permission is

fine, but I think I think there is a difference. And I think if there's a culture that expects you to be fun, that can be terribly intimidating. I think

that can be Yeah, so if it's mandated fun, then that can be dreadful. But if you feel the equivalent of friends when Monica says, let's have some organized fun, yeah, just not fun. You don't want that. But yes, the

principle I like, I just, there's always that warning of someone very enthusiastic could go into an HR department just as a bad idea. Yeah, it's just too much, isn't it? Yeah, particularly if it's, you know, if you've got a group of people who maybe don't, who maybe see work as just work, and it's great, and they work hard, but they only see it as work. Yeah,

agreed. All right, then the next thing I talk about is improving resilience. Resilience at an individual level, organizational level, helps people be happier. I don't propose we really chat about that. We've done our whole episode in the past on resilience. And there are lots of different ways to improve it, but that is an important thing for happiness. And then I kind of like this last one they call out, which is around increasing kindness. So it says, kind of workplaces make people happier, right? So, you know, things, one of the examples they call out is that in some places they've said, you know, apologizing makes you weak, or saying you're sorry makes you look weak, and things like that. But in this context, I say absolutely not. You know, there's kindness associated with telling people when you've made a mistake and things like that. And it's that kind of shift in mindset towards a kinder working place, which is socially conscious, emotionally intelligent, civil, being kind, listening, apologizing, treating people with respect, all that stuff, creates a happier workplace. So kindness leads to happiness as well. And that doesn't sound like rocket science. Rocket science to me, but I kind of like it. What's your Have you worked in kind places? Yes,

I have, yeah, and for the longest time, my pin tweet was it is better to be kind than be right cool, because I spent a long time wanting to be right about a lot of things, although, ironically, I never minded when I wasn't right. I just liked being right. Yeah, right. Fun, which is probably where I learned to talk a lot. So I figured if I said everything, that eventually I was right, something was gonna stop clock once, twice a day and all that. Yeah, but I I think there is not nearly enough kind. In the world. I don't think there's enough compassion in the world. I don't think people think nearly enough about how to moderate their own behavior such to extend to people the courtesy of space and kindness. Yeah. And so for me, having a kind workplace has dramatically changed my experience of the world, yeah,

and that stuff links to things like variability for inclusion, and it links to psychological safety. I mean, don't you think that that helps with that?

I think it massively helps with that. And I also think it massively helps with some really specific stuff, when things go really wrong in life, like, really wrong. I mean, big stuff, yeah, you know, when people die, yeah, when people get sick, when there are problems, proper problems at home, relationships break down. If people can be kind at work in those situations, it can make all the difference. Yeah, yes. So yeah, I just it's the it for me, it's the saving grace in this whole conversation, kindness. Well, just that beyond this happiness and beyond all of these things, I suspect the single biggest thing we can all do to make each other happy is be a bit nicer and work at it a bit more.

Yeah, and so a lot of what we've talked about is things that can help you be happier as an individual, but there's also a bit of an obligation to help other people be happy, and kindness support some of that as well. I think yes,

and I think one of the other things I would say is, if you are happy at work, being kind to people who aren't is a massive thing don't judge. Can be quite simple for being grumpy when actually it's because they're really not happy. Yeah,

yeah. Okay, so that's a little bit on creating happy workplaces. The last thing I want to touch on before we get on to your list of a week is around finding work that makes you happy. And what I've got here is I've got something from tal Ben Shah's book happier, which is just a little framework that can be used to help you find, I guess, happiness at work. And if anyone's looked at Jim Collins hedgehog model, where he talks about finding the sort of hedgehog concepts for your organization, finding your strategy. This is kind of simple, similar. It's kind of creating a Venn diagram, a three circle Venn diagram, and bringing stuff together to work out where your, you know, super happy point is at work. And it's just a simple activity. What it says you should do is you should think about things that that you think or give you meaning, things that give you pleasure and things that you're good at doing. So he says meaning pleasure and strength are the three areas you want to think of, and you want to come up with a list of things that fit into each of those boxes. So the example that he uses talks about, under meaning, things that give in this example, meaning are music, politics, writing and helping children, right? So that's four bits of meaning. Then you want to think about things that give you pleasure, right? So in this example, it's sailing, music gives you pleasure, reading gives you pleasure, and helping children gives you pleasure. And then you want to think about the things that you're good at. So what are your actual skills and capabilities? Well, in this example, this individual is funny, they're enthusiastic, they're good at problem solving, and they're good at working with kids all right. So they've got those three separate circles. And then if you bring them all together, what you want to try and do is you want to try and find commonality amongst them all. So is there something that gives you a sense of meaning, gives you a sense of pleasure, and which plays to your strengths that you can focus on? So in this context, you'll see that, I guess working with and helping children comes across all of these different areas. And then something like music appears in both meaning and pleasure, and problem solving appears in both strength and meaning. So maybe what you'd want to do in this context is to say, I want to work with and help children, but I want to work in the domain that I like, which is music. So maybe I can do some music with children, or something like that. And then the argument is that if you find something that fits all these areas, then that would be a good direction for you to spend time and focus on.

So have you when you've been looking at, have you come across, and I really am not going to pronounce this correctly, ikigai, oh. Ikigai, yeah, a very similar type of thing, which

is the Japanese idea that you find, what you put out, what you love, what you what the world needs and what you care, yeah, be paid for. So I could go sometimes three and sometimes four, yeah, so the one I know is four, and it's what you can be paid for, what you're good at, what you love and what world needs. And then the idea is that the needs and love is mission, yeah, the love and good at is passion, yeah, the good at and paid for is profession. The paid for and needs is vocation. And all of them together are ikego, which is finding your life's purpose, yeah? And it just strikes me, you know, now, that you said it's basically the same thing, right? No, no, and that's

not what I wasn't calling that out, but I kind of the way, I think is it, is that I say ikigai, so when they that's presented, it's always talked about as finding your life's purpose. And I've been, I've been scratching my head the whole episode. I've been thinking, why is purpose so intrinsic, sure to all of this, and I know it is for me, because I know that I'm very purpose driven. I've read Paul Dolan's book about purpose pleasure, yeah. And I know where I am on that, which is a great book, by the way, I strongly advise you reading it. And it's just there's been this thing in my head that I've been thinking the whole way through. And then I saw that picture, I was like, hang on a minute. And. And for me. And also, when you said Japan wasn't very happy, which really threw me, because I was like, I'm sure I've seen a model. Yeah. So, yeah, I will post up a picture of that model as well, because I think it's a useful addition to what you're talking about. I'm not saying it's replace it, but it is a really useful addition, and it's a really, it helps me get to the bottom of why happiness and purpose are so linked. Yeah, yeah, me anyway, yeah, it's interesting, and that is massive. Yeah, we should totally post that up. Yeah, that's good, but that's kind of the end of research Roundup. So just sorry. I didn't mean still there. No, no, no, it's

great. Quick recap. We talked a little bit about dimensions of happiness, from contentment through to joy, for depth of emotion, and then from immediate to longer term, for ways of thinking about it, from in the moment, happiness versus life satisfaction. Talked a little bit about the fact that it's measured as an individual assessment most of the time. Looked at countries and their happiness around the world. Looked at some of the factors that correlate to happiness at a national level. Then did a little bit of a great dream model, some reflections on actions you can take as an you can take as an individual to be a bit happy in your personal life. Talked about the benefits of happiness for organizations and individuals when individuals are happy in the workplace. Talked a little bit about some things that organizations or individuals and organizations could do to create happy workplaces, and then talked a little bit about a bit of an activity that you can do to try and find the things that would make you happy in the workplace, or, I guess, give you purpose and fit in with the ikigai model of happiness and purpose as well. So that's our research Roundup. Hopefully, it's a bit of an insight into happiness and fits with our personal development and self awareness and direction. Theme for this series, would you like to pick up and do a list of a week for us? Yeah. So

this week's lift, the week is from tal Ben Shahar book, happier. Can you learn to be happy? Apparently, it's the blurb on the front, the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard today, probably says something in itself, right? Yeah, well,

yes, moving on. But so this is called Seven meditations on happiness, and it's, you know, it's basically seven things that it's probably useful to reflect on if you are considering thinking about how to positively impact your happiness. And so his first is self interest and benevolence. So when he talks about it, he's talking about finding ways to do things for and help others. And we see this all the time in volunteering in a nonprofit. So by helping others, you help yourself. I always think of the brilliant episode of Friends when Phoebe, for those of you, you can Google it, but Phoebe tries to dog friends references, yeah, probably, but it's really relevant, right? She argues that there's no such thing as altruism, because she says, ultimately, you always feel good about yourself. Now I'm not going to get into the altruism argument, but the point is, you do, you know, volunteering and taking time and supporting other people is a fabulous way of seeing, particularly having a rough time. You know, even if you having a rough time, you're not great at work, if you go and do something for someone else, you will feel good about it. Yeah, it'll pick you up. You're like, oh, look, I can be useful to someone. The second is happiness boosters. So this, this idea of micro busters that find little things that make you happy and fill your life with them. Are there any little things that make you happy? There's

loads of little things that make me happy. I absolutely I hate getting up in the morning, but I love being at the top of Blackford Hill five o'clock before everyone else. And I take great joy in that. I take great joy in walking down there's a street in Edinburgh, where every single side street you look down, you can see our seat. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I, every single one I look down, there is there, is, there is. I still live here. And for me, they quite often come from my physical environment. I like looking at nice houses that we walk down the street and feeling like I'm in a beautiful city. Yeah, so, and I think it's really important. I so there's a piece of dog training, dog training, yeah, but I really like, No, I have to, I have to explain this. It's so cool. This dog trainer says you need to give your dog something to look forward to every day that they enjoy. Great, something to look forward to every week that they love. Wow, and some and then irregular, irregular, really special things and time with you. And I don't think that's a dog thing. I think that's a brilliant lesson in life. Find one thing that makes you happy every day and do it, yeah? Find something every week that you can properly look forward to. Yeah. I think that's half the battle, yeah. So I love that, and I thought really rang true with the whole happiness boosters thing. Then he talks about beyond the temp. Some of this language isn't my favorite, but I get his points beyond the temporal high thinking about long term happiness, not just immediate gratification. The way I think about that is, if you read Paul Dolan's book, he talks about purpose versus pleasure, so the satisfaction you get from immersing yourself in pleasure versus purpose driven activity, which has some relevance. But also in this list, he's talking about thinking of things that will make you happy in the future. So for that's a classic example of like, exercise, right? Yeah, once you're fit, it's a joy to do, yeah, and it's really, really lovely, but the journey there's hideous, letting your light know. So. Letting our light shine. So give yourself permission to be happy and do the things that make you happy. Don't hold yourself back from it. And here's the thing, whilst being sensitive to other people, be vocal about being happy, yeah, like it's a lovely thing to say, I'm happy. Imagine, visualize the future and where you'd like to be, look back from there and do all the things that make you happy, which feels really relevant to goal setting that we talked about in a previous series. Take your time. We are all busy. Simplify your life and make things. Make time for things you know that will make you lastingly happy. You take your time. Yeah, don't, don't say yes to everything. I read a brilliant ex. I can't remember what the acronym was the other day, but Oh, Jomo, instead of FOMO, fear of missing out, of missing out, Joy Of Missing Out. Nice. I like it. Yeah. So the joy of sitting on your sofa at Friday and everyone else is out and going, I am in my house in my pajamas watching telly,

it's like giving yourself the time to do that stuff, and like decluttering your life a little bit and making sure that you set aside a bit of time, like, you know you're talking about with dog training, like, set aside a bit of time every day to focus on your happiness. Set aside a bit of time once a year for something that's really great for you. I think that's important.

So, yeah, I like that one. And then the happiness revolution, understand that happiness is important, and try to make it a bit of a focus for your life. And I would put that one at the top, yeah, just admit you want to be happy as a good start and that there are things that you can do that are in your control to make you a bit happier. So there you go. Self interest and benevolence, happiness boosters beyond the temporal high, letting our light shine. Imagine, take your time and the happiness revolution.

Talking about a revolution. Let's move on and do something else here. That was our list of the week, and that's our research Roundup. I think hopefully that's a bit of an introduction to happiness, and hopefully it's kind of interesting. We've tried to get some slightly practical, but also some slightly higher level stuff in there as well. Have you got any sort of reflections from your own life? Tell us from a keyboard about happiness that you think happiness that you think are relevant for this.

Or I guess the bit that I would probably pick up is the care that you need to take when immersing yourself at work and being truly happy at work. So going back to stuff that you talked about, about why it's important to be truly happy at work, it is, but get yourself too happy at work, and you will use it as a distraction from where the rest of your life isn't satisfying. And it's not work holism. It's slightly different to that. It's about saying this is going well, and I love this, so I'm going to rely on this for my satisfaction and my worth, rather than identifying that, I probably need to do stuff about other areas of my life. Yeah. Okay, so that's, that's my little warning, that that happiness, happiness that's associated too much with any one area of your life is probably a bit of a risk, and trying to find a balance is fine. So don't put all your eggs in one basket or whatever. Yeah, that's exactly why

is, I think. So that would be, and the reason it, I guess it's, I'm saying that is because I've been there, yeah, I've been there and I've, I've seen the rest of other areas of my life just slipping away. Yeah, and instead of doing something about it, I have just thrown myself more into work, because that's where I'm getting, that's where I'm getting my it's kind of addictive, isn't it? Yeah, well, so it's not even that I'm just getting my happiness hit there. So why don't I keep getting it? Yeah? And and the lesson learned was it took me a long time to build back up where actually, if I'd probably done a bit more work earlier, I'd have probably been all right, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

No, it does make sense. I guess, yeah, I guess for me, the call out I'd have is around something that we've heard a few times. It's about those sort of happiness boosters, but little things that give you happiness. And I really think it's something really powerful about just writing down, what are the little things in life that make you happy? You know, can you come up with a list of 10 to 15 little things that you genuinely think make you happy? And then, if you can be mindful that those are things that make you happy, every time you do it, it's a bit of a pleasure, and being conscious of it helps you appreciate what's going on. And I think that helps with happiness. I've happiness. I think that's something that that, I think is a useful way to do things. So, you know, it's not a great insight into things, but hopefully that's a bit helpful, no, but I think it's true. Yeah, any top tips or final thoughts about happiness?

I guess the thing I would say is, Be really clear what makes you happy, and Don't set yourself goals just because other people Yeah. So for a long time, I subscribe to what my peers would have argued is happiness and satisfaction. It's so hard to stop doing that automatic. It's also automatic. If you don't know what it is, yeah, you default, yeah. You default to someone else's Yeah. You know, it's what my brothers would have told me, that would have made and it's, you know, it's you know, so far away from what makes me happy. Yeah, it takes time to work it out, but that's absolutely true. So

yeah, that's, that's probably the thing that I would say most be really clear what makes you happy, and don't be afraid to be different. You know, it's okay if the thing that makes you happy is not what, what everyone else makes totally you know. Need to be satisfied by buying a house and having kids. If that's not what's going to make you happy? Yeah? And you don't need to be really successful at work as long as you can find a financial security. Yeah, if that's what you need, you don't have to be the boss. No, no, if that's not what you want. So don't feel you have to describe that, because everyone says that you should. Yeah, that's my lesson. That's nice and tip.

I guess my tips kind of similar to that, but a bit different. And it's that sometimes chasing great isn't the right answer, right if your goal is to be happy in the moment all the time, and that's never going to happen, you know, life's got ups and downs, and it's got a variety of things that impact you, and it's things full of things that you can't control. So I think for me, contentment is kind of a right thing to try and go for over the longer term. So, you know, chasing highs of happiness will only probably, in my view, leave you upset because you'll never be able to maintain those highs of happiness. And so it's about looking at the broader view and trying to focus at, you know, contentment and satisfied life over a longer period of time. And I think that's an achievable goal, in a way that I think spikes of happiness throughout every moment of your day are never going to be possible. And if that's what you aim for, I think you'll be upset. It's

so funny, because I don't see the difference between so for me, the difference is, like we've talked about these definition differences, but deep down to me, happiness is contentment, yeah, and that's where I am in my life. And it wasn't where I was absolutely wasn't, but it's where I am now. And

sometimes that's the joy thing, like, Are you laughing, joyful, fully immersed in a moment? That's one bit of it. But I'm with you. I think, contentment for

right? So the way I talk about it, so I always talk about the am I buying lottery tickets? And why? If I'm not buying lottery tickets, I'm really content, yeah, because, because, even if I want a load of money, I probably wouldn't do anything. There's nothing that I would significantly change. You might do two podcasts, and if I am, yeah, maybe. And if I am buying lottery tickets, why is it? Because I want to change something, and if I want to change something, I'm probably not happy everywhere. Yeah,

all right, so I guess that's our final thoughts. Let's check out of here. You can get in touch with us usual ways. Websites out there, World of work.io, www. See different bits of information that we've got up there. You can sign up for the wowmail there. Sign up for wowmail there. You can get in touch with us with the various social media platforms. We've got a whole bunch of those. We're the best ones. Jane,

so we're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, and we're on Instagram, but by far our biggest active sort of interactions with people, and the way people talk to us is on Twitter, at our podcast, we've both got our personal accounts, but we are Yeah. We always check,

yeah, that's true. And if you like what you do, like what we do, like what you hear, get involved and write a review or give us some stars somewhere. That's always a helpful thing. That is always a helpful thing, pretty

helpful. And we'll be going on in the next couple of episodes to focus a little bit more on personal development and self awareness and self management and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, because

I think it's one thing to want to be a bit happier, but you also need the tools to think about practically. How can you make change in your life, right?