The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Secrets of Happiness (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 everybody thank you for joining me today i thought i would spend a bit of time discussing

00:00:08.720 the sad truth about happiness eight secrets for leading the good life and the reason why i'm

00:00:17.000 taking the opportunity to do so now is because the the hardcover came out last july but i'm

00:00:26.660 delighted to report that the paperback was just released yesterday so i'm really really hoping

00:00:33.960 that if you love my work if you appreciate my work if you like my writing you'll give this book a shot

00:00:40.420 it's done reasonably well but not nearly as well as parasitic mind

00:00:46.400 i guess there are several reasons for that one of which is through no fault of my own what happened

00:00:55.640 is that the uh the publisher uh that i was that was publishing my book regnery which is a probably

00:01:04.160 the most uh famous conservative imprint uh in the united states uh was bought over by skyhorse

00:01:14.500 publishing and so and and the sale the chaos was happening at exactly the time that my book was

00:01:22.460 originally released uh i think it was july 25th of last year as a matter of fact two weeks before

00:01:28.140 my uh book was to be released the digital uh marketer of regnery uh left and then also about

00:01:38.500 two weeks before my book was released last july the the in-house publicist who takes care of you know

00:01:46.140 promoting my book uh also left and so it was complete chaos you know things fall through the

00:01:54.380 cracks and so in a sense i've got a second chance to release the book because it's being released but

00:02:00.980 by the way not all books very few books uh you know get released from hardcover to paperback usually

00:02:07.180 they do if if they've done well and so uh you know if you really love my work you know i don't know

00:02:12.460 how much it costs maybe 16 18 bucks get out there and get it because it really is a fun book very

00:02:19.800 very different from the parasitic mind the parasitic mind is what happens to to human minds when they're

00:02:25.740 parasitized by dreadful ideas whereas in a sense this is the flip side what happens to people's lives

00:02:33.480 if they make good decisions if they adopt uh you know positive and hopeful mindsets

00:02:40.760 now so maybe i can just i'm just going to maybe spend a few minutes talking about each of these

00:02:47.740 chapters and in no way should you think that my giving you the synopsis means that i'm you know

00:02:52.320 i've given you uh you know the full story they really and what what's really i think fun about the book

00:02:58.380 is that it is a mix of my personal history dealing with happiness what are some of my own secrets for

00:03:07.320 you know why i'm happy uh coupled with ancient wisdoms and backed up by contemporary science

00:03:13.500 some of you may have heard me say this so i'll start with why i wrote this book

00:03:19.160 if you would have asked me when i finished uh the parasitic mind and when it was getting first

00:03:26.840 published in 2020 uh what would be my next book i i would have been hard-pressed to tell you oh my

00:03:33.500 next book is going to be a book on happiness what ended up uh you know exciting me about the prospect

00:03:41.080 of writing a book on happiness is a couple of reasons and i guess that's that's chapter one

00:03:48.160 where i the chapter is titled on being the happy professor i explain you know why i wrote the book

00:03:54.720 and so maybe i'll just summarize a few of the points from that chapter so i would receive tons of

00:04:01.120 messages uh both public messages and you know private emails and private messages and dms

00:04:06.740 from people saying you know you deal with so many difficult issues so many contentious controversial

00:04:14.860 thorny issues and that you always seem to be playful always seem to be happy and hence people started

00:04:21.200 calling me the happy professor and the happy warrior the happy honey badger what's your secret how

00:04:27.380 why are you so happy how tell us tell us what's your secret to to being so playful and happy so

00:04:33.320 that was the first thing that sort of put the idea of writing a book on happiness on my radar and then

00:04:39.740 also i noticed that whenever so i operate as an as an academic i operate in what's called

00:04:46.740 descriptive world right so in other words as a as a psychologist consumer psychologist evolutionary

00:04:52.500 psychologist uh i deal with describing behavior you know why do people do the things that they do

00:04:59.100 and prescriptive world would be much more say what jordan peterson does which is you know he's a

00:05:06.580 clinical psychologist and so he's prescribing behavior this is what you ought to do to get over this

00:05:12.380 particular you know mental ailment and so having always operated much more in descriptive world uh you know

00:05:21.500 i never thought that okay i'll write a happiness which is a lot more prescriptive but then whenever

00:05:26.240 i would post something that was prescriptive in nature where i'm giving people some advice about

00:05:31.420 how to be a an author how to be a good scientist how to be a good spouse whatever uh that would be some

00:05:40.700 of the material that would most resonate with people people would write to me after saying oh my god you

00:05:45.980 don't know how much that helped me so for example if i said you know here are the the secrets

00:05:51.420 to how i lost 86 pounds which which i did and people say oh my god that was the most impactful

00:05:57.520 thing that i've you don't know how much it helped me i ended up you know uh implementing your regiment

00:06:04.020 and i i lost 40 pounds and it wouldn't have happened had i not listened to you and so i thought okay well

00:06:09.160 do i have what it takes to actually write a book that is uniquely fresh and the reason why i'm saying

00:06:16.160 that is because you probably know that the topic that has been most covered by philosophers

00:06:24.940 through the ages is on the prescription on how to live the good life right i mean certainly the

00:06:31.340 ancient greeks spent quite a bit of time there's a whole bunch of schools of philosophy from ancient

00:06:36.740 greece that are all about what is the optimal way to live a meaningful purposeful good life and so i

00:06:45.040 thought okay well you know do i have the chutzpah the hubris to be able to actually add to that

00:06:50.900 pantheon of millennia of knowledge and and so i at first i was you know a bit concerned but then i

00:06:57.280 thought okay well you know my personal story is unique right and if i couple that with those ancient

00:07:04.220 wisdoms and backed up by contemporary science then i can have hopefully something fresh and so that's

00:07:09.320 that's what led me to to write the book okay so then in chapter two i get into some so that the

00:07:18.240 title of that chapter is ancient and modern wisdom regarding the good life so what i do there is i talk

00:07:23.500 a bit about some of the ancient wisdoms you know here here come this you know the stoics and their

00:07:28.520 philosophy by the way some of you may know that you know the stoics in a in a very direct sense

00:07:35.500 were preaching cognitive behavior therapy before we had a name for it in clinical psychology right i

00:07:41.280 mean the more i dug deep into ancient greek philosophy which i already you know knew quite

00:07:48.240 a bit about it but then for in writing this book i i did a much deeper dive and some of you may have

00:07:53.840 heard me mention the story i mean every single time i would think oh my god i just came up with this

00:07:59.500 brilliant insight unique fresh insight then i would find out oh seneca already said this 2000 years ago

00:08:07.160 oh epictetus already said this 2000 years ago so it was really quite uh astonishing if not humbling to

00:08:15.280 see the extent to which these guys without having the the tools of what we would today call the

00:08:22.220 scientific method uh were able through observation and through internal inspection and

00:08:29.100 philosophizing and logic and rationality we're able to come up with insights that of course have

00:08:34.980 proven to be true across millennia and so what i do in that chapter is i i discuss some of these you

00:08:40.940 know you know here comes seneca here comes uh epictetus here comes aristotle and so on uh but then of

00:08:48.060 course i back these up with contemporary science from positive psychology from happiness studies from

00:08:54.800 neuroscience from uh you know social psychology uh demonstrating how you know many of these uh

00:09:04.880 ancient wisdoms are certainly backed up by contemporary science and so on so that's what takes place in

00:09:10.900 chapter two then in chapter three titled key life decisions the right life partner and the ideal job

00:09:18.060 what i'm basically arguing there is that they really are two fundamental decisions that you'll make

00:09:24.640 that will either impart the most amount of happiness in your life or the most amount of misery now

00:09:32.320 few people would be surprised to know hey no kidding if you if you if you marry the right person

00:09:39.360 uh that's great and if you have a job that gives you purpose and meaning that's great sure well first

00:09:45.100 it's important to to point out that of all possible decisions these two are truly the ones that are going

00:09:50.580 to give you the most bang for your buck but of course the devil is in the details how do you make those

00:09:56.720 decisions right i should mention that i make it clear throughout the book that unlike many you know

00:10:05.600 prescriptive folks and self-help gurus and life coaches and so-called clinical psychologists and so on

00:10:13.320 i have the epistemic humility to simply tell you that i'm going to make you statistical arguments in other words

00:10:25.240 there is no guarantee in anything that i say other than yes of course it's backed up by science it's backed up

00:10:32.560 by ancient wisdoms it's backed up by my personal life trajectory but life is a statistical game right so i could

00:10:39.840 tell you if i'm a physician i could tell you look don't don't smoke and you greatly reduce your chances

00:10:45.160 of lung cancer that doesn't mean that non-smokers don't get cancer right but you certainly are playing

00:10:50.720 the right odds if you don't smoke right and so any prescription that i offer in this book and please

00:10:58.980 i truly but believe me i yeah i make like a dollar fifty or something for every book that is sold so

00:11:04.560 it's not so much i mean yes it's nice to make money but it's it's that i want the book to be read

00:11:09.720 by as many people as possible because it truly is a fun book after i published the book i'm very

00:11:14.860 protective over you know who reads my book and even my wife didn't read you know an early draft of my

00:11:20.500 book she only read it when it was published and i remember she went to the cafe she devoured it when

00:11:24.780 she finished it she had tears in her eyes and said my god it was such a such a fun book such a great book

00:11:31.340 so many amazing anecdotes so i'm telling you you'll you'll enjoy it so please give it a shot

00:11:36.040 and hopefully we can get a viral moment going but in any case uh when i'm talking about uh

00:11:43.720 statistical regularities what i'm saying is look i can't guarantee you that the person that you choose

00:11:50.660 you're going to be forever happy with and i can't guarantee you that the job that you choose

00:11:55.320 is the absolute optimal one that would bring you maximal happiness but boy i can offer you

00:12:00.240 some guidelines that will greatly augment the likelihood of you you know hitting the bullseye

00:12:08.040 so let me discuss very quickly each of these and again the fact that i'm telling you these the

00:12:12.640 synopsis in no way should you think that you know you've gotten the key gist of the book you really

00:12:17.320 need to read all the fun stories the the jokes the the personal stories it's really fun anyways

00:12:24.060 so when it comes to choosing the right life partner in evolutionary psychology you've got two

00:12:29.700 uh if you like opposing maxims there is the birds of a feather flock together and then there's the

00:12:37.480 opposites attract and you've probably heard in just everyday uh you know parlance uh you know

00:12:45.300 people say oh you know opposites attract is a lot sexier it's more fun you know you know you're the

00:12:51.320 yin to my yang and so on well opposites attract is a great thing for short-term mating right i may be

00:12:57.880 sexually restrained and i may be an introvert you may be sexually adventurous and outgoing and and that

00:13:05.880 mix might actually make for a great uh you know sexual dalliance behind the the shed but if we're

00:13:13.940 talking about maximizing the long-term probability of success of a marriage then it's overwhelmingly

00:13:23.180 the research is unequivocal it's overwhelmingly the case that birds of a feather flock together

00:13:28.640 now flock together on on which dimensions i mean right it's not it's not it's we're not trying to

00:13:35.820 marry someone who has similar eye color to us when we're talking about birds of a feather flock together

00:13:41.560 here we're referring to uh shared values shared belief system shared life goals right the the the

00:13:53.200 the obvious example i give is let's suppose that i am i score very highly on religiosity so that

00:13:58.540 much of my daily life is is guided by you know a a personal relationship with with with my god

00:14:07.200 and my spouse happens to be a caustic atheist well it doesn't guarantee that we won't be happy

00:14:15.480 together but boy are you putting the odds against us because on a fundamental issue we seem to disagree

00:14:22.140 and so yes you know it's nice to romanticize the love conquers all but it doesn't as i said life is a

00:14:29.640 statistical game and so you need to play the proper odds so if you marry someone with whom you share

00:14:36.240 many of these assortative cues like belief systems like life attitudes like moral codes uh then boy are

00:14:46.500 you increasing your chances of being married uh and there i talk about things like for example

00:14:51.260 the neuroautonomy of of of physical attraction i mean yes it's it's normal when we first are in love

00:14:58.660 we we get the tingling thing in our fingers and we get the butterfly in our stomach now that doesn't

00:15:04.240 mean that we're not sexually attracted to our partners 20 years later but many of these physiological

00:15:09.500 mechanisms you know they they wane that doesn't mean that we don't want to be intimate with our

00:15:16.060 long-term partner and so on but it's not the same thing as when we first got together the first three

00:15:21.240 months so if if physical attraction and you know the the lust is what you think is going to get you

00:15:28.560 through uh you know 50 years of marriage then boy have i got uh news for you so okay so when it comes

00:15:38.380 to choosing the right the life the right life partner we really want to go with birds of a feather flock

00:15:43.760 together now when it comes to the ideal job i argue that there are two key metrics that you should aim

00:15:52.980 for if possible i understand that not everybody has got the opportunity to implement these in which

00:15:58.560 case you could implement them after work but let me just first give them to you i work very very long

00:16:04.280 hours i'm always working non-stop but i don't feel like i'm working why because today i said you know

00:16:10.940 what i feel like just connecting with folks all right let me call a a x spaces at 7 30 it wasn't this

00:16:18.760 morning i had no intention i would i couldn't have told you that i was going to have a 7 30 x spaces

00:16:24.260 i'm sure it'll end up being a couple of thousand people right and so i vagabond i'm a intellectual

00:16:31.860 in french you say flaneur flaneur is someone who kind of floats around now that doesn't mean that i don't

00:16:38.480 have a set schedule i have many meetings i've got to teach courses i've got to meet graduate students i've

00:16:45.000 got to go to departmental meetings i've got to meet editors i've got to you know whatever there's a million

00:16:50.720 meetings but yet i still feel that for much of my time i get to choose where i'm going to be and work

00:16:58.660 on what so then so so the idea of having what i call temporal freedom is incredibly important i contrast

00:17:05.240 that with someone who works on the factory line where the union mandates when you go for lunch for how long

00:17:12.140 you go for lunch and when you take bathroom breaks so even how when i can relieve myself by going to

00:17:19.140 the bathroom is mandated by someone else okay now again i don't mean to imply that all jobs are not

00:17:26.500 any honest job has dignity in it but i'm talking about when i have to ask you for permission to be able

00:17:32.500 to take a break because i i i seem to you know have to really need to go to the bathroom today because

00:17:38.960 maybe i drank too much coffee well then that's probably not as good as another person who can

00:17:43.800 decide that you know what today i'm not feeling creative i'm just going to go for a jog now which

00:17:49.080 leads me to the second point i mentioned the word creative i argue in the book that anything that

00:17:54.680 allows you to instantiate your creative impulse by definition is going to grant you more purpose and

00:18:02.680 meaning right so yes being a managerial accountant is important and being an insurance adjuster is

00:18:09.600 great and being a bus driver is wonderful uh all jobs are have value and are inherently dignified if

00:18:18.700 you pursue them with honesty but a stand-up comic a chef an architect an author

00:18:27.580 they're doing something distinct and that until they came along that great plate that the chef made

00:18:36.560 that great bridge that the architect created that great book that the author wrote that great stand-up

00:18:42.780 routine that made people crack up for two hours didn't exist until that creator came along and created

00:18:49.780 that uh well that creation and so there is something so uniquely satisfying and being able to immerse

00:19:00.640 yourself in the creative process so now you might the next thing you might say well yeah sure okay great

00:19:05.020 you know it's easy for you the fancy professor to say hey you want a job that has temporal freedom

00:19:10.800 and gives you creativity but that came from the fact that i knew myself well which i talk about this by

00:19:17.580 way in a later chapter where i talk about the old delphic maxim know thyself i knew that i would not work

00:19:25.440 well with the boss i knew that i wanted to live a life of creativity i knew that you know i can't suffer

00:19:32.760 from scheduling asphyxia where every minute of every day is determined by someone else that my fate is

00:19:40.200 sealed if i were a pilot and i'm doing the montreal to singapore flight well i know that i'm screwed once those

00:19:46.600 doors law are locked i'm done there's no floating around i'm in that flying tube for the next 16 hours

00:19:54.200 and so now you might say okay but what if i can't do that well then there are still ways by which you

00:20:00.900 can instantiate what i'm talking about let's suppose you're a bus driver okay well you could be a bus driver

00:20:08.240 that views your job as driving from a to b and doing that route eight times a day that's it you

00:20:16.400 just you just carry people you drive people from point a to b you do that eight times a day that route

00:20:22.320 and you go home or you can view your job in part as an opportunity to strike up conversation with people

00:20:31.060 as they you know they they come and sit on the bus and the reason why i'm telling you this specific

00:20:35.720 example is one time i was returning i think i was coming back from new york city back to ithaca

00:20:42.220 uh ithaca is where cornell university is that that's where i did my uh master's of science and phd

00:20:49.260 and so i was returning uh i can't remember if it was alba i think it was new york city and so i was

00:20:55.160 taking a bus like uh one of those uh you know greyhound buses and you know being someone who's

00:21:01.840 extroverted very sociable and so on i sat next to the bus driver and we ended up having this

00:21:05.900 incredibly intense and intimate conversation i think i think the bus driver's probably about four

00:21:10.700 hours maybe four four and a half hours and at the end of the conversation as we came to ithaca

00:21:17.200 a lady came up and said i just want to thank you and i turned i said thank me for what i mean i

00:21:24.360 hadn't even talked to her she goes well i couldn't help but hear how you two you and the bus driver

00:21:29.600 were speaking to each other and i just thought it was such a wonderful uh honest and warm conversation

00:21:35.700 that i could be privy to and just thank you for making the bus ride so nice well that was very sweet

00:21:41.840 but it's the bus driver in a sense who granted me the opportunity to chat with him had he been

00:21:49.400 closed off had he not created that moment of intimacy for us to chat with each other

00:21:54.880 that you know i'm sure he doesn't remember me today although i remember i remember that story

00:22:00.600 enough to tell it to you 30 years later probably 32 years must have been around midnight maybe 92

00:22:07.520 so so there are ways by which we can still tackle our jobs in a way that might adhere to some of the

00:22:18.100 the uh prescriptions i'm offering okay let's move on chapter four i hope by the way that this is

00:22:24.620 exciting you to get the copy i really you know when you i mean to the point of creating i mean when

00:22:31.360 you create something like a book first of all it's an incredibly i mean nothing could be more intimate

00:22:36.580 right i mean i mean i would argue that you know being a porn actor is is less intimate than being

00:22:41.940 an author because when when when you're an author it's your it's your mind and your soul that's naked

00:22:50.300 in front of thousands of people maybe millions of people right it's i'm sharing my deepest thoughts i'm

00:22:57.420 sharing stories from my personal life i'm i'm taking positions right so so it's something that's very very

00:23:05.500 intimate and that one day somebody sends you a selfie they're sitting on a beach in abu dubi

00:23:13.160 and they're saying hey professor sarah they tag you look what i'm reading and you're thinking my god

00:23:18.480 there was a day three years earlier when i opened my laptop opened the word document called it whatever

00:23:26.660 the parasitic mind started striking the first letters the first syllables 12 14 months later i had a draft

00:23:37.280 ready i submitted to the publisher they give me some feedback i make a couple of changes submit the

00:23:44.420 final version goes to production and then a year later people are sending me selfies of them reading the

00:23:52.480 book or they send me a photo of you know their dog standing next to my book or their cat or their

00:23:58.900 one-year-old child and and when i'm seeing that i'm not saying oh my god look i just made money i just

00:24:05.300 made three dollars off this book it's it's the excitement that your ideas are being consumed by

00:24:12.100 you know i mean think about a person who's going to the beach and at that moment there are one million

00:24:19.260 other choices that they can make and yet somehow for that brief moment your book won they said oh

00:24:27.220 let me take gadsad's book to the beach and read it now my god what what a privilege it's humbling

00:24:33.240 that you can actually grab someone's attention for those minutes when they can have chosen a million

00:24:39.080 other things and so when i sort of implore you to give the book a shot it's because i promise you

00:24:45.600 it's a really really fun book and it's not because i wrote it it's i truly think it's you know some of

00:24:51.200 my earlier books let's say my evolutionary psychology books they're they're great books they're they're

00:24:56.020 they're wonderful to read but you know they're they're more i mean at least several of them are

00:25:00.740 very academic books one of them the consuming instinct is meant for their general audience that

00:25:05.340 one is super fun but this one it's about happiness and well-being and how to choose a wife and how to

00:25:11.620 have fun so it's really it's great anyways so chapter four is titled the sweet spot all good

00:25:18.060 things in moderation and so here let me go back to the ancient greeks some of you have probably heard

00:25:24.520 the golden mean this is aristotle's golden mean and a golden mean and his treatise his nicomachean

00:25:33.600 ethics where he basically says you know too little of something is not good too much of something is not

00:25:40.440 good and you know the sweet spot somewhere in the middle hence the golden mean so in his case he

00:25:45.180 talks about let's say you know you could have a really cowardly uh soldier well you don't want a

00:25:52.760 cowardly soldier that hides in a corner and sucks his thumb on the other hand you don't want the other

00:25:58.500 end of the curve someone who is so reckless in his risk-taking that they become a martyr because they

00:26:03.960 they take no precautions and very quickly they die somewhere in the middle between abject cowardice

00:26:09.800 and reckless martyrdom is the sweet spot now i argue in this chapter ladies and gentlemen that there is

00:26:18.340 no universal law that is more powerful and ubiquitous than that inverted you inverted you means exactly

00:26:30.280 that it's the mathematical form of the too little of something is not good too much of something is

00:26:35.840 not good and the the best point the optimum point is somewhere in the middle hence it looks like

00:26:40.660 an inverted you and i show in this chapter across a bewildering number of examples at the neuronal level

00:26:50.100 meaning how your brain operates at the individual level at the group level at the societal level

00:26:57.840 that this universal law of the inverted you defines optimal performance optimal flourishing optimal

00:27:07.020 happiness so you might say okay but what do you mean give me an example well let's say wine consumption

00:27:14.480 well it follows an inverted you if you don't drink any wine or if you drink too much wine it's worse than

00:27:20.960 drinking some moderate amount of wine let's talk about exercise intensity if you exercise with too

00:27:27.480 little intensity it's not good if you exercise with too much intensity it's not good for all sorts of

00:27:33.740 reasons that we don't need to get into and that it turns out that the optimal intensity level is

00:27:38.740 somewhere in the middle let's talk about perfectionism something that i suffer from greatly if you're not in

00:27:45.360 the least bit perfectionist in your work well what happens your work will suffer imagine you're an author

00:27:50.800 and you don't really care about those pesky details about accuracy of references and so on you don't check

00:27:56.440 your work many times well then you're going to have a million typos a lot of citation errors a lot of

00:28:02.480 errors in your references on the other hand if you are on my end of the maladaptive curve you're too

00:28:10.240 perfectionist you end up checking your work nine million seven hundred and thirty three thousand times

00:28:15.260 where all you end up doing in your seventy four thousandth path is find one comma that was missing so you

00:28:22.900 wasted three days rereading the galley proofs of your book and you just found one typo maybe had you not

00:28:30.120 done that last pass you could have been thinking about the next book you should be working on and so

00:28:34.860 there is a law of diminishing return if you're too perfectionist something that i've always suffered from

00:28:39.980 and so what i do in that chapter is i show that in our personal relationships in our relationships with

00:28:47.000 ourselves in our relationship with others in in economic relationships in relationships between

00:28:54.400 countries all all human phenomena are guided by one universal law of optimal flourishing and it's the

00:29:05.520 inverted you so i mean if you only read that chapter it will be well worth the money that you might

00:29:12.120 spend on the book okay let's move on to chapter five give me some kind of thumbs up are you enjoying

00:29:19.500 this give me something are you having fun i want to it's hard to tell i just see people coming in

00:29:24.180 quite a few people here but i hope that people are are enjoying this by the way after i finish this

00:29:30.340 i will eventually post you know the the taping of me speaking on my youtube channel thanks god thank you

00:29:39.160 for those who are doing thumbs up thank you i appreciate it and then i'll also post on my podcast

00:29:43.400 it'll also be recorded you know on the link on x and if you want to ask me questions i don't as you

00:29:53.960 see i i don't take questions here first there are too many people and you know then it becomes very

00:29:58.580 difficult to manage one of the benefits that i give subscribers is that i create a thread in this

00:30:04.800 subscriber only area where people can then post questions and then up to you know 9 p.m tonight

00:30:13.760 and then i will go and answer in writing those questions so if you love my work if you support my

00:30:21.720 work if you want to have access to exclusive content i often will post book recommendations i will post

00:30:30.380 academic articles that i love for various reasons so go it's i don't i can't remember how much it is

00:30:36.000 maybe five or six bucks a month you certainly get your money's worth it's the equivalent of a latte

00:30:40.860 and you know i try to post one two three at least exclusive things per per week all right so chapter five

00:30:49.560 life as a playground that that was a really fun uh chapter to write i mean every chapter was fun

00:30:56.060 but by definition since i'm talking about play so i begin here by talking about the importance of play

00:31:04.260 from an evolutionary perspective and the reason so for those of you who don't know i'm an evolutionary

00:31:10.400 behavioral scientist right i apply evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to understand

00:31:16.100 human phenomena well play has been studied quite a bit by evolutionists but certainly by uh you know

00:31:24.020 evolutionary minded zoologists who study it who study play behavior and animals but also studied by

00:31:29.760 developmental psychologists who are evolutionary minded what why do why do children play but of

00:31:35.620 greater interest to what we're talking about here is we shouldn't think of play as something that

00:31:42.700 you outgrow in the way that you know you you know you you no longer need your wisdom teeth right i mean

00:31:49.900 we don't we no longer really they're they're vestiges of an evolutionary past and we don't we no longer

00:31:54.640 need to play you know once we once we reach adulthood well it's time to get serious nothing

00:31:59.680 could be further from the truth play is an indelible part of our human nature and by the way speaking of

00:32:05.940 earlier this idea of birds of a feather flock together there's actually some interesting studies that show

00:32:11.320 that there's a scale called i think the adult uh playfulness scale or something of that effect

00:32:18.400 and people who assort on that scale end up having happier marriages which makes sense if i'm someone

00:32:25.920 who's very much of a joker i play around i have fun i i prank you you know i i i approach life with a

00:32:32.600 twinkle in my eye now if you have if my spouse happens to be someone who's very sullen and caustic

00:32:37.380 and acerbic well that's probably not going to work out but if we both match one another

00:32:42.280 on the adult playfulness scale well let let the games begin and so i tell actually some really

00:32:48.480 personal stories in the book of my wife and i you know where you know one time i i come and say i had

00:32:53.540 lost a lot of weight so you know my abs are starting to show i go see my wife and i go you know look at

00:33:00.020 this look at this body and she she looks at me and you know doesn't say much i i said well boy that

00:33:06.960 doesn't sound like you're uh very impressed with my physique she said no no i'm just thinking about

00:33:12.340 how you know we'll need to get a bigger house in order to support your ever-growing ego right well

00:33:19.240 that you know we take shots at each other we joke around we hug it out we have fun i tease her she

00:33:24.820 teases me we don't take ourselves too seriously we're always joking that's what makes life fun that's

00:33:32.260 what makes a marriage fun is you've got you know this best friend that you can you know it's it's

00:33:37.580 it's a it's a forever uh play date right well it could be more beautiful and so but in the chapter i

00:33:44.900 don't just talk about joking around i basically argue that even very serious things can be construed

00:33:50.980 as play so science is a form of play right because think about it this way when you're creating a

00:33:58.180 one thousand piece puzzle you're putting it together right well that's what science is there

00:34:04.820 are a thousand variables out there some of which are linked together some of which are correlated

00:34:11.240 some of which cause each other well now my job as a scientist is to come along and to be able to

00:34:17.100 construct a puzzle that allows me to make sense of between you know which variables are the predictor

00:34:25.100 variables which are the dependent variables which are the causal variables so one of the things that

00:34:30.940 i love about my job as a professor is that whenever i'm i start working on a research project well first

00:34:35.840 it's really fun to come up with a research topic oh hey i wonder why people do this let's try to

00:34:40.440 construct a research question and try to study this okay let's try to propose some hypotheses now you go

00:34:46.240 out you spend a couple of years developing the the data collection tools you collect the data now you

00:34:51.880 analyze the data ah the data didn't didn't cooperate it somehow didn't come didn't adhere to your

00:35:00.760 positive hypothesis what happened can we can we now think back why what we seemed was like a really

00:35:07.360 reasonable expectation didn't work so it's fun it's exciting right so life as a playground is such an

00:35:16.880 important mindset to adopt when you are just yeah i mean life has difficulties and boy can you inoculate

00:35:26.600 yourself against some of these difficulties if you can have fun and play and i actually talk about

00:35:32.580 examples of how even in the most dire of circumstances me going through the lebanese civil war as a child

00:35:38.660 holocaust certain people who went through the holocaust both they and i in our

00:35:46.140 respective dire circumstances still had a need to play there's a great book uh i don't i don't have

00:35:53.620 the reference with me but i i cited in the book uh where by a scholar studied play behavior in the

00:36:01.560 concentration camps so i mean imagine i mean even the movie life is beautiful right because i think the

00:36:08.040 1997 oscar winning movie was about how a father tries to protect his son in the concentration camps

00:36:16.600 by trying to convince his son that all that he's seeing all the horrors that he's seeing is really just

00:36:22.860 one gigantic game so he's trying to protect the innocence of his child by turning the holocaust

00:36:30.060 into a game okay let's move on to chapter six there are there are nine chapters in total

00:36:35.160 chapter six is titled variety as the spice of life and then in brackets sometimes well of course the

00:36:42.640 maxim variety is spice of life is is an old maxim the reason why i put sometimes is because it in many

00:36:48.400 in many places variety seeking is is condoned and in at least one case it's condemned if you are in a

00:36:55.520 marriage or in a monogamous union then you know sexual variety seeking may not be appreciated by

00:37:02.680 your spouse notwithstanding the fact that of course people uh have a penchant for such sexual variety

00:37:09.500 seeking so i talk about sexual variety seeking i talk about food variety seeking i talk about various

00:37:14.900 forms of variety seeking but the one that i spend the most time on is intellectual variety seeking

00:37:21.300 of course i do that because you know i've been a professor for 30 years so that's the one that

00:37:27.720 is most personally relevant to me and here i talk about the schism if you'd like the tension

00:37:34.660 between the specialist and the generalist right so in academia people are trained to be hyper

00:37:41.820 specialists you know a lot about a very very small thing now that's fine in many cases for you

00:37:48.840 in order for you to make contributions in a field you really have to be a specialist

00:37:53.780 but really the big thinkers the ones who crack big scientific problems are always operating at the

00:38:02.780 intersection of disciplines right and that's one of the reasons by the way why i say that my biggest

00:38:09.340 hero is leonardo da vinci because leonardo da vinci is literally i mean literally in a temporal sense

00:38:16.420 he's the renaissance man but he's he's the renaissance man because he's an anatomist he's an

00:38:22.520 engineer he's a futurist he's a sculptist sculptor he is a painter right so he's a scientist actually i

00:38:32.460 just read recently a biography uh on leonardo the it's titled leonardo the first scientist by

00:38:40.440 michael white i highly recommend it i mean i just devoured that biography i actually have

00:38:46.360 two other biographies on leonardo da vinci uh the most recent of which is the one by walter isaacson

00:38:53.080 walter isaacson is the one who also did the biography the recent biography on elon musk who i must say

00:39:00.700 i've become uh very close with recently uh we've we've become good friends uh so in any case so variety

00:39:11.580 as a spice of life is a very interesting maxim and that for many things in life you really do

00:39:19.380 need variety think about say your tourism behavior you can go every year to that beautiful jamaican

00:39:27.540 resort that your family loves and if you go every year there the water is going to be beautiful and

00:39:32.260 the beach is going to be beautiful but there are 200 countries in the world all of which have something

00:39:38.120 unique and magical to offer boy if at the end of your life you could tick off as many of those

00:39:45.200 countries as having seen experience you've you've interacted with those cultures well you're the one

00:39:51.540 who wins at the game of life and so yes there is a balance to be struck between doing something that

00:39:59.400 you love repeatedly so routinized behavior and seeking variety but all things all other things

00:40:06.220 equal ceteris paribus as we say in latin uh variety is indeed the spice of life chapter seven

00:40:12.300 is titled on persistence and the anti-fragility of failure here what i'm basically arguing is that look

00:40:19.000 many of the all of the consequential things in life that you might do that have import that have meaning

00:40:25.680 that grant you purpose and meaning are going to require persistence doggedness stick-to-it-ness and that you

00:40:32.720 have to be anti-fragile at the prospect of failing and so i it's it's it's a really great chapter because it's full

00:40:40.840 of uh stories of some of our biggest stars in different domains and their stories of rejection and their stories of

00:40:50.580 failure so let me mention a few lionel messi right i adore lionel messi the greatest soccer player of

00:40:57.120 all time he was told he's too small and too frail to even become a professional soccer player not to

00:41:04.760 become the greatest soccer player ever even to just become a professional go get out of here kid find

00:41:10.760 something else to do imagine if he had listened to that advice or that evaluation michael jordan was cut

00:41:19.200 from his sophomore high school team imagine that there is a high school coach

00:41:23.680 who looked at michael jordan and said that there is someone on that high school team

00:41:29.440 that is better than michael jordan so i should cut michael jordan

00:41:33.480 who becomes the greatest soccer basketball player ever

00:41:36.500 zinedine zidane the greatest french soccer player of all time who's won the world cup

00:41:41.060 could have played for art for algeria

00:41:43.620 by by ancestry or he could have played for france the algerian coach looked at him and said i'm not

00:41:50.380 interested in this guy he's too slow he becomes the greatest french player of all time and probably

00:41:56.020 one of the top five players of all time right jk rowling was rejected by every single publisher

00:42:03.020 until she was famously accepted by that last publisher through the serendipity of her daughter's friend

00:42:10.540 right so imagine had she not and she was destitute and she was clinically depressed

00:42:17.260 and she was uh nearly homeless if i remember correctly and yet look at her today

00:42:22.660 uh steven spielberg was rejected from the usc film school not once not twice but three times

00:42:30.400 right so there are people who said you suck you will never be a filmmaker there's no point in us

00:42:36.620 accepting you into our film school he is the film director of some of the most iconic movies in the

00:42:43.060 history of cinema so you can't really do anything meaningful in life if you are so fragile to failure

00:42:52.360 so so stunted by the possibility of rejection okay moving on to chapter eight it's almost never too late

00:43:01.820 eradicate regret let me give you here a a bit of the framework that shapes that chapter this is

00:43:11.060 actually from my former professor of psychology at cornell when i was doing my phd there thomas

00:43:16.640 gilevich who by the way i was so pleased and and honored and proud when i just i went back last month

00:43:25.380 to cornell and i gave two talks i gave a talk on the parasitic mind and a and a talk on global jew

00:43:30.920 hatred and in one of the talks i'm looking around who do i see i see my doctoral supervisor the one who

00:43:37.860 supervised my my doctoral dissertation jay russo who's a cognitive psychologist and i see right there

00:43:44.900 in the middle of the room thomas gilevich wow so it was really nice to to to now be professing

00:43:53.080 in front of my former professors what a what a thrill it is to circle of life in any case uh

00:44:00.460 the reason i'm mentioning thomas gilevich because he pioneered something that was known even before

00:44:07.620 he he studied it it's known in in you know in many different uh settings that there is a difference

00:44:14.140 between the regret due to actions versus regret due to inactions so for example if i say i regret that i

00:44:23.020 uh was unfaithful in my marriage because that led to the my divorce and so here i'm regretting

00:44:30.960 inaction i regret that i cheated on my wife okay if i regret due to inaction is you know i really

00:44:38.680 regret that i never pursued my love of art because i always really wanted to be an artist i ended up

00:44:46.340 becoming an accountant because my dad was an accountant and his dad was an accountant and then i suddenly

00:44:51.640 wake up at 55 and it's a perfect prescription for me to have a midlife crisis because i haven't lived

00:44:59.600 an authentic life so authenticity as i explained in that chapter is not just the the authenticity and

00:45:06.180 realness in our personal relationship right like you could meet someone you go my god that person was

00:45:10.160 so fake they were so inauthentic so i mean that's true we can use the term in that sense but i mean it

00:45:16.040 in an existential sense were you true to yourself to your passions to your desires in terms of where

00:45:24.260 you want to contribute in life and yes you might become a pediatrician because you come from a long

00:45:29.260 family of physicians but you realize i only did it because my parents were both physicians i hate medicine

00:45:35.360 i always wanted to be an architect i love aesthetics i like i love art and therefore i wake up at 55

00:45:43.900 and i hate that i squandered my life and it turns out guys that when you ask people over the long run

00:45:50.820 which regrets loom largest well guess what it's usually regrets due to inaction not action and so

00:46:01.140 when students come to me and say hey professor i hear that you know there's a lot of you know uh

00:46:07.120 market opportunities if i get a degree in big data analytics what do you think i said no no no no no no

00:46:12.860 don't don't ask me like that yes there might be big demand for people who know big data analytics

00:46:21.460 or who know how to apply ai and marketing analytics or who know how to you know develop econometric

00:46:29.360 models to forecast the economy that's great but does that make are you passionate about this and at

00:46:35.660 first it sounds cliche-ish right because they're like they just want me to say yeah yeah that's a great

00:46:40.120 job opportunity and you know you'll make a lot of money so that's not going to bring you happiness

00:46:44.740 as i explained by the way so in the earlier chapter when i told you chapter two i talk about ancient and

00:46:51.400 modern wisdoms regarding the good life when it comes to some of the contemporary science what i do in that

00:46:56.740 chapter is i talk about how does our personality affect happiness how does religiosity affect happiness

00:47:02.300 how does culture affect happiness how does money lead to happiness right and and the answer is no and

00:47:10.260 by the way in my recent chat on an x spaces with elon musk i brought up that point because what what

00:47:17.120 better person to bring it up to than the the richest person who's ever lived and and he confirmed

00:47:22.140 that no it's yes he's not necessarily infinitely happier than you because he's got you know 200 plus

00:47:29.340 billion dollars and and you don't i mean up to a certain point have money can buy you happiness

00:47:35.460 right as you can feed your children you have your basic necessities you don't have to worry about

00:47:39.440 health care uh you can take a vacation once a year the typical study has found that i mean of course you

00:47:45.860 need to maybe change it now because of inflation but the the classic study shows that the inflection

00:47:51.060 point happens at about 75 000 once you make more than that you're not really getting much of a bank for

00:47:56.500 your book so if you if you make 200 000 or you make 120 it's not going to necessarily add happiness to

00:48:02.260 your life and so when someone comes to me and says hey professor what do you think you think i should

00:48:06.680 study behavioral finance i there are really good opportunities at jp morgan i go no don't ever ask

00:48:12.880 that question that's a recipe for leading a miserable life and so in that chapter i talk about how you can

00:48:20.420 have a mindset that ensures that when you're 85 and looking back at your life you don't experience regret

00:48:27.000 if i after i finish this session where i'm giving you all of this juicy stuff from my book and i go to

00:48:35.200 amazon.com and i don't see that a whole bunch of you didn't buy a copy you would have cheated because

00:48:41.200 that's the social contract i give you my time i give you my wisdom you support those who give it to you

00:48:47.040 so go out there and order a couple copies don't be parasites all right so let's finish with this

00:48:53.240 chapter i give two examples of because remember the chapter's titled it's almost never too late

00:49:00.320 why did i put almost because if today i decide you know i really want to pursue

00:49:05.840 my dream of being an nba player well it is too late in this case right i'm too old

00:49:12.020 i'm too short i mean yes there they've been actually shorter players than me uh not too many

00:49:20.100 and it's unlikely that a 59 year old guy is going to make it to the nba i hit that train is passed i'm

00:49:28.300 not going to become a ballerina even though i was a phenomenal soccer player it's too late for me now

00:49:34.240 to go and play for barcelona so but for many many things it really is almost never too late

00:49:42.000 let me give you two quick stories i tell two stories i won't i won't give the whole details

00:49:46.380 away but i tell two stories of a guy who got his phd at 91 or 92 and another guy who came on my show

00:49:54.440 you can go back and watch our show i think his name is my manfred steiner who who was an md

00:50:00.980 medical doctor in the from the 50s then got a phd in 19 excuse me 1967 in biochemistry

00:50:09.000 on his way to uh specializing in hematology blood disorders but his love had always been physics

00:50:18.640 and he had never pursued physics because his family told him come on do something serious do

00:50:23.540 something practical become a physician what's this physics bullshit well after he retired from his long

00:50:30.460 illustrious medical career he decided i'm going to pursue my main love in his 70s he began his studies

00:50:37.880 in physics and at the age of 89 finished his phd in physics and came on my show you listen to this

00:50:46.520 guy you go my god this this guy's buddha it's unbelievable right 89 years old he's finishing

00:50:53.760 his phd and he's saying oh you know i'm gonna now work to try to publish the you know paper for my

00:50:59.860 doctoral dissertation he's not doing it because of job opportunities he's not doing it because he's

00:51:05.820 trying to beef up his cv he's doing it for the most pure intrinsic reason he's a true sophist in the

00:51:14.000 sense of the lover of learner right philosophy to philosophize to to engage knowledge to engage

00:51:21.580 right in arabic you say for like the the real sense of philosopher right that's why when you when

00:51:28.480 you get a phd it's philosophia doctor right it's you are a philosopher that's what this guy is he's

00:51:35.960 doing it for no other purpose than the love of doing it that's how you should live life then finally

00:51:41.640 in chapter nine don't worry be happy i i i give a couple of examples of stories of people who have

00:51:49.120 found a way to be happy despite the fact that they went through unbelievable circumstances and so that

00:51:56.880 even when you are faced with trials and tribulations that seem bafflingly cruel they still found a way

00:52:05.120 to be happy don't worry be happy so bottom line to conclude the book is a really positive book filled

00:52:13.260 with endless prescriptions on how to live life i should mention by the way i should maybe mention this

00:52:18.680 at the start of the book at the start of the session about 50 percent of our happiness stems from our

00:52:26.500 genes but that the good news is it leaves another 50 up for grabs so what does that mean i may have

00:52:34.400 the unique genetic combinations that defines my personhood so that i wake up and i have a sunny

00:52:41.020 disposition i'm happy whereas you have a disposition that's more sullen okay there are individual differences

00:52:47.880 and as i said about 50 percent of our differences stem from our genes but then if you who's the

00:52:55.300 sullen one makes the right decision in your marriage for example and me the sunny one chooses wrongly

00:53:02.720 then i may end up being a much more miserable person than you so and i basically talk about speaking of

00:53:09.220 relationships i i talk about research from harvard a longitudinal study of more than eight decades that

00:53:17.220 shows that the the number one predictor of happiness and well-being is having tight social

00:53:23.020 relationships more so than what your cholesterol scores are it has a greater protection on your heart

00:53:29.100 than your cholesterol scores okay so having meaningful relationships building strong bonds with people

00:53:36.540 that matter uh is certainly a ticket to happiness as aristotle already knew several thousand years ago

00:53:43.420 so there you have it folks the sad truth about eight about happiness eight secrets for leading the

00:53:48.420 good life please get a copy please tell others it's such a fun book thank you so much i know that you

00:53:53.980 could have been many places right now you chose to be with me for an hour so i i take that very

00:53:59.160 seriously i thank you for your time if you wish to ask me questions please subscribe and then you can

00:54:05.400 post a question in the thread for today's session thanks everybody talk to you soon take care ciao

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 16, 2024

The Secrets of Happiness (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_670)

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