The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 So let's, let's get into it then. Your book is a fascinating study in happiness and its place in

00:00:10.400 our lives. And this is a subject that I'm really interested in and some of my writing and my work

00:00:16.880 in religion and literature. And, you know, there are a lot of places that we could begin and go

00:00:23.760 into discussion, but I was interested in a stat of a survey that came out recently where

00:00:31.480 survey said that 69% of people in 42 countries stated that happiness is extremely important to

00:00:41.400 them. But it seems like there's been a lot of pushback in recent years against the idea that

00:00:48.380 we should view happiness as an important part of our lives. Different influencers have been talking

00:00:54.960 about how happiness is not really something that we should be pursuing, or, you know, we'd be better

00:01:02.940 off if we didn't make it such a goal in our lives. There are other people out there, influencers and

00:01:10.120 scholars alike have been talking about how maybe we should strive for other things except for

00:01:16.880 happiness. And do you, my question is, do you view yourself in your book as maybe part of a pushback

00:01:25.480 against this pushback, if you will? And if so, you know, why do you think it's important to,

00:01:33.780 to oppose this anti-happiness narrative? Well, yes, thank you for that question. It wasn't written as a,

00:01:42.360 I wasn't even aware of the original pushback in order to push back against that.

00:01:46.120 I think it's the people who say, oh, you know, you shouldn't pursue happiness, or there's, there's

00:01:53.560 a deleterious element to pursuing happiness, I think are missing a key element to happiness,

00:01:59.320 which is that you shouldn't be willfully pursuing happiness. So in the last chapter of my book,

00:02:05.520 I have a quote from Viktor Frankl, where he's basically saying, I'm paraphrasing his words,

00:02:10.920 I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he's basically saying, as relating to success,

00:02:15.240 don't pursue success willfully success is something that comes as a result of you, you know, doing the

00:02:22.060 right things. Well, the exact same quote applies, simply replace the word success by the word happiness.

00:02:27.980 So I don't get up in the morning. My objective today is to be happy, but rather, if I have adopted a certain

00:02:39.140 set of mindsets, if I have implemented certain decisions that I know, statistically speaking,

00:02:46.080 are correlated with downstream effects of happiness, then I will wake up inherently happy. So, so I agree

00:02:53.460 that the willful pursuit of happiness is not going to make you happy. But let's take an example. If you

00:03:00.500 have made a good choice in terms of the spouse with whom you're going to share your life. And if you've

00:03:07.480 also made the right decision in terms of which job provides you with the greatest amount of possible,

00:03:14.620 you know, purpose and meaning, well, you're well on your way to cracking the code to happiness. Because if I

00:03:20.740 wake up in the morning next to the person in the bed with me, and that I really liked that person,

00:03:25.660 then I go off to a job that, you know, makes me rub my hands in existential glee. And then I return

00:03:31.480 at home to that bed next to that person that I liked in the morning when I left, well, I've pretty

00:03:36.300 much I'm happy throughout the day. So, so I again, but I didn't willfully set out to say, I need to be

00:03:43.720 happy. And therefore, let me do ABC. I, there's a, I live the life that was authentic to me, whereby the

00:03:51.300 choices that I made are congruent with my values. And then the result of that is that I'm content and

00:03:57.860 happy.

00:04:01.940 Yeah. And so maybe jumping off of that, you know,

00:04:07.600 there's so much discussion in, in our culture on happiness and how we should be pursuing or whether

00:04:15.580 we should be pursuing it. And I think you really, you've given a great modus operandi, if you will,

00:04:23.540 of how to go about maybe achieving it in our lives. And with all the discussion about it,

00:04:31.160 I wonder if you feel like we, we don't talk about it enough in our culture, or maybe we don't talk

00:04:40.940 about it in the right ways.

00:04:44.000 Right. So I, so I think in a sense that speaks very much off the first answer that I gave, which is,

00:04:49.620 it is wrong to talk about it as though you should pursue happiness. So that's kind of like,

00:04:56.080 I don't know if this is a perfect analogy, but if I, if I were to say to you,

00:05:02.000 you know, we've evolved a mechanism called kin altruism, which is where we're altruistic towards

00:05:10.180 our kin. Why would we have evolved that? Why would I jump into the river, risk my life to save three of

00:05:15.720 my children? Well, if you understand that evolution only cares about the propagation of your genes,

00:05:21.200 well, then it makes perfect evolutionary sense from a evolutionary calculus perspective that

00:05:25.960 even if I were to die when jumping in that river to save the three children, the three children on

00:05:31.540 average share 50% of their genes with me. Right. And therefore it makes, it makes adaptive sense that

00:05:37.780 I would engage in this behavior. Now, why am I giving this analogy? Because most people who

00:05:43.100 instinctively jump into the river to save their three children are not willfully aware of the

00:05:50.100 evolutionary calculus that I just told you, right? They didn't say, well, you know, if it was only one

00:05:55.200 child, I may not jump into the river because that's only 50% of their genes, right? It's, it's an

00:06:01.520 instinct that's built into us. And then the behavior manifests itself. And if the behavior is adaptive,

00:06:07.240 then it makes sense that evolution would select it. So in that sense, happiness is something similar.

00:06:12.720 It's not something that is necessarily within the purview of my conscience, conscious machination.

00:06:18.620 I don't get up and say, there are five things that I can do today to maximize my happiness.

00:06:24.860 But again, if I've lived an authentic life, if I've done enough introspection to say, what do I want

00:06:30.720 out of life? Well, I would love to be a parent. I would love to raise children. I would love to be

00:06:36.000 married to someone who respects me and who's my best friend. I would love to have a job that,

00:06:42.060 you know, every single day gives me great purpose and meaning. I try to do things in moderation.

00:06:47.400 So I have a chapter on everything in moderation, which Aristotle had talked about, Maimonides had

00:06:52.740 talked about, Buddha had talked about. And so I demonstrate that for most things in life, the edict

00:06:59.620 of all things in moderation is exactly correct. I also live life as though it's a playground.

00:07:05.900 I immerse myself in play, even when pursuing very serious things like science. And so there's a set of

00:07:11.800 these edicts, which if you apply, statistically speaking, it will increase your likelihood of

00:07:18.800 being happy. And that's statistically is really the important word here, because unlike many books in

00:07:24.900 the self-help market that guarantee you do ABC and you'll be happy, do ABC and you'll be a better

00:07:31.640 employee. I'm saying that life is a game of statistical probabilities, right? So if you don't

00:07:40.760 want to, if you want to reduce your chances of getting lung cancer, don't smoke, but people who

00:07:44.680 don't smoke also get lung cancer, but you certainly reduce your chances if you don't smoke. So by the

00:07:50.140 same token, all other things equal, if you pursue intellectual varieties, that's going to increase

00:07:56.940 your happiness. If you live life in such a way that you minimize the likelihood of future regret,

00:08:02.840 that's going to make you happy. If you choose the right spouse, that's going to make you happy. So

00:08:06.580 yes, we do speak about happiness the wrong way, only in the sense that we think that we should

00:08:12.320 have a general goal called happiness. No, happiness comes from living a good life.

00:08:17.500 Yeah, I, I certainly agree with that. My, my own approach to this is if you pursue the good,

00:08:26.780 you can get happiness as an ancillary benefit, you know, can't grab it directly.

00:08:33.080 Exactly right.

00:08:34.220 Yeah. I was really interested in some of the figures you mentioned who've written about

00:08:38.560 happiness and that you've now written about them. Do you view your approach to happiness as

00:08:45.560 maybe influenced by any of them in particular? And I missed the first part in terms of what the

00:08:53.260 ancient wisdoms? What did you? Yeah, the, the ancient writers and sages, Aristotle,

00:09:00.020 and more recently, Viktor Frankl. Do you view your approach to happiness as influenced particularly by

00:09:10.680 any one of them? I mean, I could point to a singular one, although I think it's more a,

00:09:17.380 a school of philosophy that is more like, so I do think that there's a lot of value in the Stoics.

00:09:25.640 Not all of it though. So for example, so this, the Stoics were very good at being the precursor to

00:09:32.700 cognitive behavior therapy, right? Cognitive behavior therapy is the idea that oftentimes we suffer from

00:09:38.680 psychic maladies because our cognitions about something is wrong. And if I can now change

00:09:45.480 the cognition towards that something, then there will be better behaviors and hence CBT is cognitive

00:09:51.300 behavior therapy. So the way that you view something is often what causes the harm more than

00:09:57.280 the thing itself. Well, that's exactly one of the fundamental tenets of Stoicism from 2000 years ago,

00:10:04.580 where, I mean, I'm paraphrasing the exact tenet, but it basically says it's oftentimes not the event

00:10:11.260 that is the most painful, but the manner by which we react to the event. Now that is within my control.

00:10:18.080 The event happening is not within my control. How I choose to respond to that. And so I take great

00:10:25.480 solace in that because we know from contemporary clinical psychology that CBT is one of the most powerful,

00:10:33.380 effective tools to combat all sorts of mental ailments. And so I would say that the Stoic

00:10:38.660 philosophy is certainly one that is worth exploring if you're interested in happiness.

00:10:45.060 If I talk about a singular person, then probably Aristotle, well, first of all, because he's written

00:10:51.820 some incredible stuff on that. You know, a good friend of mine who's a fellow Lebanese author,

00:10:57.860 his name is Nassim Talib, used to, you know, kind of tease me many years ago. And he'd say,

00:11:05.280 you know, God, I don't know what you guys study in psychology, because everything that there is to

00:11:10.220 understand about human nature, the ancient Greeks have already told us what it is. And I mean,

00:11:15.180 I understood he was kind of ribbing me. But as I was doing a deep dive, in terms of the research for

00:11:22.000 this book, I started thinking, you know what, I think that maybe Nassim was onto something because

00:11:26.320 every time I would get an insight that I thought was unique and brilliant on my part, because I came

00:11:33.200 up with it, well, here comes Epictetus. He's already said it 2000 years ago. And here comes Aristotle,

00:11:38.380 and he beat me to it by a couple of millennia. So that was quite a humbling experience, because you

00:11:43.700 really do realize that while many philosophical traditions are very rich and varied, there really

00:11:52.680 was something in that Greek water that made those ancient Greeks, and in some cases, Romans,

00:11:58.560 quite unbelievably adept at understanding human nature. Oh, for sure. Do you know the South Park

00:12:08.980 episode, The Simpsons Already Did It? I don't think that's the title of the-

00:12:13.160 I don't.

00:12:14.180 But you know South Park, right?

00:12:17.320 I do know what it is, but I've never watched it.

00:12:20.640 Oh, it's such a great, wonderful show. The humor is so sharp, and the satire, and they did

00:12:29.480 one episode where the boys are playing, and they're trying to come up with wild schemes and plots,

00:12:37.800 and like, oh, I'm gonna go fly out the sun and take a big thing, shield the town from the sun,

00:12:44.900 and the other one says, oh, they already did that in the Simpsons episode. And they said,

00:12:50.320 no, I'm gonna go and chop off the head of the statue of the town pioneer, and I'll create chaos that 0.83

00:12:58.840 way. Oh, the Simpsons already did it. And every time they try to come up with some wild and scheming 0.56

00:13:06.640 plot, they discover that. It was already done in the Simpsons episode.

00:13:10.440 So I'm South Park, and the Simpsons are the ancient Greeks. 0.60

00:13:14.520 Oh, well, yeah, the Greeks. So I'm working on this book now, on the Divine Comedy, on Dante's

00:13:22.900 Divine Comedy. And so there's this one section that I have titled, The Greeks Already Did It, 0.97

00:13:30.340 because every time Dante tries to create this fantastical situation, he's almost inevitably

00:13:40.100 drawing on something out of Greek mythology. It's so hard for him to seemingly to create something

00:13:47.920 original. And so I titled the chapter, Greeks Already Did It, like Simpsons Already Did It.

00:13:54.940 It's just amazing, their precedents, and whether it's philosophy or mythology and the stories.

00:14:04.100 But yeah, getting back to the Greeks, it's really, really interesting to me that you mentioned the

00:14:10.940 Stoics as a school of thought for an influence for a source of happiness, because I think maybe

00:14:18.180 many of us today, those of us who are familiar with Greek schools of thought, if we're thinking

00:14:26.100 about happiness, we would think maybe more of the Epicureans than Stoics in terms of happiness.

00:14:33.200 But to use a Stoic as a model for happiness, I think, is really quite an interesting approach.

00:14:39.520 Thank you.

00:14:40.020 Yeah. So what about for people who do believe that happiness is important, not the school of thought

00:14:53.940 today who are pushing back against the happiness narrative, but for those that say, no, happiness

00:15:01.800 is important and maybe we should even be striving for it. But there's still a debate of where exactly

00:15:10.460 in our lives we should be pursuing it, what arenas we can expect to get happiness. And it seems to me

00:15:19.040 that this often comes up, or one of the most contentious areas this comes up in, is the issue of work

00:15:25.540 and whether we should be looking for happiness in work and saying, okay, I'm only going to view work

00:15:34.300 as a means to an end, and I'm going to look for happiness elsewhere. Or should we be actually

00:15:41.580 expecting that our work, our careers, our jobs could make us happy?

00:15:47.480 Right. So in an ideal world, yes, I think that we can obtain happiness through our chosen job

00:15:58.520 or profession. Now, and I will in a second explain what happens if we can't get that at work. But for

00:16:06.060 now, if I'm going to describe what are the key metrics that I should aspire to attain in an ideal

00:16:14.240 job, I talk about two key metrics, metric one, or pursuit one, any job that allows you to instantiate

00:16:24.120 your creative impulse, all other things equal is a direct pathway to purpose and meaning because the

00:16:30.160 act of creation, immersing yourself in creativity is by definition, something that's going to give me

00:16:35.440 purpose and meaning. Now that can cover a very large panoply of professions. I could be a standup

00:16:41.460 comic, I could be a chef, I could be an architect, I could be an author and professor, I could be a

00:16:46.620 podcaster, each of these people are immersed in completely different domains. But they share one

00:16:52.180 thing in common, they are creating something a new that heretofore didn't exist until I came along

00:16:57.840 and created the standup routine to make the people laugh tonight, created the dish that's going to make

00:17:03.900 a great culinary experience, created the bridge, created the book, created the podcast that we're doing

00:17:09.440 right now. So the act of creation is akin to a mystical process. There's something that is so

00:17:16.740 beautiful. When I open my laptop, the first time I open it to start that, I open the word document and

00:17:24.820 I'm about to strike that first letter of the new book. And then through this incredible process where

00:17:32.980 these neuronal firings happen in my brain translating into my fingers. And then 12 months later, 14 months

00:17:40.120 later, I send that book to the publisher. And then a year after that, people send me selfies of my book

00:17:47.420 with them sitting on a beach somewhere. What could be more purpose and meaning than that, right?

00:17:54.400 I have shared something from the deep recesses of my mind that now someone else is choosing to spend

00:18:02.580 their time consuming. That person at the beach can choose 1 million things to do. And somehow for that

00:18:09.640 small moment, I won their attention. That's very humbling. That's very beautiful. And the same thing

00:18:14.920 applies if I were a standup comic or whatever other one of those creative professions. So number one,

00:18:21.540 if possible, if you do something with creativity, that's going to give you purpose and meaning.

00:18:26.720 Second one, maybe a bit more earthly and less philosophical, anything that grants you temporal

00:18:34.520 freedom in your day-to-day is going to make you happy. So contrast, so I work very, very hard. I work

00:18:43.040 very long days, but I'm a vagabond, right? Right now I'm talking to you and we're having a fun

00:18:50.680 conversation. Then I'll go off to the cafe for two hours, start thinking about my next book prospectus.

00:18:55.800 Then I'll go and, you know, in French, you say flanay, like vagabond. I'm just kind of floating

00:19:01.220 around. I'm always working, but I don't have what I call scheduling asphyxia. Whereas contrast that

00:19:08.940 to the factory worker who doesn't even have the dignity to decide when they can relieve themselves

00:19:16.340 by going to the bathroom at 10, 15, there is a union mandated break where you can get a bathroom

00:19:21.800 break. And at 12, you get to eat for 25 minutes. And so that temporal freedom. So the fact that I can

00:19:28.560 kind of go off and create, and I can do so at my pace. Now that doesn't mean that I don't have

00:19:33.860 specific meetings to go to, but generally speaking, I can float around. That gives me great happiness.

00:19:40.660 Now, what about the person who doesn't have the luxury to be able to do that? They have two

00:19:47.460 children that they didn't expect to have this early in their lives. They have to put food on the table

00:19:52.340 and they become a bus driver. Well, any honest job is dignified, but then in this case, you may not be

00:19:58.620 able to instantiate what I'm saying within your job. How about after you finish your job, you've always

00:20:04.680 wanted to do glassblowing as an art form. Why don't you, instead of watching TV for four hours,

00:20:09.600 sign up at the local high school where they have an adult learning center, glassblowing and ceramics

00:20:16.740 and do it then. So there's still a way for me to instantiate my creative impulse, ideally at my job,

00:20:23.080 but even if not at my job, I could do it elsewhere. And if I could just add one more thing to my long

00:20:27.380 winded answer, even if you're a bus driver, there are ways that you can approach your job that comes

00:20:35.580 closer to the ideal that I'm proposing or not. So example, I have been on a bus ride where,

00:20:42.720 because I'm someone who has a very open spirit and I'm always looking to chat with random people

00:20:48.440 about all sorts of interesting things, the serendipity of meeting strangers, the magic of

00:20:53.780 that. I remember, I think I was returning either from New York or from Albany back to Ithaca.

00:20:59.540 I did my PhD at Cornell University, which is in Ithaca, New York. And on that bus ride back, it was

00:21:05.680 like a couple of hours long. I struck up this incredible conversation with the bus driver and it was a

00:21:11.480 very intimate conversation. As I was leaving the bus, a lady came up and she said, I just want to thank

00:21:15.520 you. I said, thank me for what? Like I hadn't even spoken. She goes, well, I was, I couldn't help but

00:21:19.220 overhearing you and the bus driver chatting. It was a beautiful conversation. Well, that bus driver

00:21:24.460 created the opportunity, talking about create creation, created an opportunity. He was open

00:21:31.060 to the world, that he was open to having an exchange with a random stranger. Now contrast that

00:21:35.540 to another bus driver who views his job as I take people from A to B, otherwise I'm completely closed

00:21:41.420 off. Both of these people are bus drivers. One of them creates much more opportunities for communal

00:21:47.600 bonding and so on. So I would say that those are the two fundamental markers that lead to occupational

00:21:52.880 happiness. Yeah, wonderful answer. There are so many different aspects of that I would want to go

00:22:00.860 into. One of them that jumped out to me, one aspect that you brought up was finding the elements of

00:22:09.460 happiness in your scheduling of how you work and the kind of freedom that you have maybe within those

00:22:18.340 spaces. And I really resonated with that part because, you know, as also someone in a similar space and

00:22:28.200 in academia, and also as a writer, I don't have that kind of nine to five schedule or a factory worker

00:22:36.080 schedule. And so there's that blessing you could say, but also a curse. Some also might describe the

00:22:46.260 aspect of where you're always working because, you know, you're never free from that. You're always

00:22:54.620 thinking about ideas and you're writing and, you know, you may not even have a set office, but your

00:23:01.660 office is everywhere because your ideas are... Your office is here. Yes, exactly. So as soon as you get up,

00:23:09.520 you know, from the moment you get up and then from the moment before you hit the pillow at night,

00:23:15.300 it can always be work. But then it's finding the freedom within that perpetual work to

00:23:22.300 be experiencing the happiness. Exactly.

00:23:28.160 The Seinfeld once described that. I heard him on an interview. He said, you know, someone once asked him

00:23:35.920 about that because he said, you know, he's always working too because the ideas for his jokes are

00:23:40.540 always coming to him and he's always trying to refine them. And they asked him, isn't that a

00:23:46.360 kind of torture? Like you can never be free from work? And he said, well, the optimal kind of work

00:23:52.320 that you want to find is the right torture for you. Exactly. But that's, but maybe from your

00:24:00.140 perspective, you're trying to shift the paradigm of that instead of looking at it as torture,

00:24:04.760 looking at it as this kind of happiness because you found that right form of, if you want to call

00:24:11.540 torture or burden or whatever it is. I actually call it, I mean, not to kind of use an ephemeral

00:24:18.820 term, but I find that it's a form of intellectual hedonism. I mean, I operate in the greatest pleasure

00:24:25.200 seeking ecosystems, which is the world of ideas. Nothing could be more pleasurable than that. So even if

00:24:32.660 we use kind of the regular colloquialism of, you know, Epicurean pursuits, well, yes, I mean, juicy

00:24:38.600 burgers are great, but juicy ideas. Now that's really what titillates me. And so no, to me, it's, I mean,

00:24:45.320 I understand that there's the burden of always having the hyperactivation of your thinking, but if I'm

00:24:50.600 thinking about important things, if I'm not thinking about the mundane administrative things of being a

00:24:55.460 professor, that is asphyxiating, but the, the creative stuff, you know, what, what should I think

00:25:01.940 about my next book? What would be the narrative of my next book? I could spend 10 days without sleeping

00:25:06.380 thinking about that. I love that stuff. I, I, I get high on it.

00:25:12.020 Yeah, me too. That's, um, and maybe that's where you can bring in Epicureanism as a way to enjoy what

00:25:20.240 you're doing. Exactly. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. So I only have five more minutes, um, on my end.

00:25:30.920 So I can maybe conclude with one more question. I'm really interested in the connection between

00:25:39.660 religion and happiness as someone who works in the area of religious studies, uh, Jewish thought. And,

00:25:46.940 and, and you mentioned, uh, in your book, uh, you talk about the, the links between religion and

00:25:52.320 happiness. And, um, um, I'm curious if you think that, uh, people who are, are tone deaf to religion as

00:26:02.540 the philosopher Isaiah Berlin once described himself, if they have a lesser chance of being happy than

00:26:09.020 those who have faith, because, uh, as you discussed there, there is this link between religion and

00:26:14.780 happiness. So is, is religion just, uh, one more means of obtaining happiness and how do people who

00:26:21.680 don't have this religious sensibility, how might they be able to, to access the kind of happiness

00:26:28.440 that religious people can experience? Yeah, that, that, that's a great question. And I actually 0.65

00:26:32.800 exactly addressed that because I didn't want the people who were irreligious to walk away thinking,

00:26:37.940 well, they're, they're now doomed as they have fewer, you know, pathways to happiness. So you're

00:26:43.920 exactly right. There is a moderate positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.

00:26:49.540 The more religious I am, the happier I am. But I actually argue that there are very earthly reasons

00:26:55.300 for why that link might exist to the extent that religion provides me greater communality,

00:27:03.380 greater cohesion within group members. It offers me some form of purpose and meaning. Uh, it allows me

00:27:11.680 to have greater bonds of reciprocity within group members. Those are all very earthly human needs.

00:27:18.580 And then religion is simply instantiating those human needs. It's, it's offering a vehicle for those

00:27:23.400 human needs. Then it makes perfect sense for, for the research to have found that there is a positive

00:27:28.380 correlation between religiosity and happiness. But then right after that, exactly to your question,

00:27:33.680 I say, but wait a second, what if you're not religious? Well, then there, I argue that there are still 0.62

00:27:38.360 ways by which I can go out and grab the awe-inspiring spiritual experiences that cause life to be

00:27:46.200 magisterial. So to, to my earlier point about striking up a conversation with a random stranger,

00:27:52.420 that moment where two people who until that moment did not know each other could immerse themselves in a

00:27:59.380 intellectual tango for the next 30 minutes and both walk away feeling enriched. That was a spiritual

00:28:04.500 experience. Uh, uh, you know, looking at how my children are growing and developing into young

00:28:11.360 teenagers, uh, you know, who have moral code, who have interesting ideas to discuss with me,

00:28:18.340 that is a spiritual experience. So, so there are many, so there are many ways by which I can tickle my

00:28:24.580 spiritual itch. One way is through immersing myself in, in my faith, but there are many,

00:28:32.040 many other ways by which I can also achieve that goal. Uh, I argue that there are, in addition to

00:28:38.540 the religious pathway, there are two other ways by which we can all be immortal. So even if I don't

00:28:44.380 believe in religion, I can still aspire to be immortal. It's either through genetic propagation.

00:28:49.900 I mean, literally having children causes me to be immortal. I, I, I, you know, my children are a

00:28:56.120 vehicle of my immortality. I know it doesn't sound romantic, but that's literally true. The other way by

00:29:01.140 which I can be immortal is through mimetic immortality. If, if I write a book that is going

00:29:06.780 to be read for many years to come, therefore that legacy causes my ideas to be immortalized in a

00:29:14.380 library, in other people's minds and so on. So there are many ways by which I can itch that religious

00:29:20.360 itch or scratch that religious itch, either by reading some Jewish or Christian or Islamic texts or

00:29:29.400 whichever your religion, or simply by appreciating the majesty of life.

00:29:35.040 Well, that's a really beautiful answer and a wonderful way to conclude this discussion.

00:29:42.040 Thank you so much, Dr. Saad, for your time and your graciousness. The book is The Sad Truth

00:29:49.900 About Happiness available now from Recknery and I, I highly recommend it to all readers out there.

00:30:00.180 Thanks so much.

00:30:01.580 Thank you, Dr. Goodman. Cheers.

On Happiness and the Good Life - My Interview with Dr. Daniel Goodman (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_624)

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