 All right, happy New Year everyone. AJ and Johnny here, we are so excited to kick off the New Year with happiness. Now last month we talked all about habit building to get you ready for those New Year's resolutions and hit the ground running here in 2019. So if you're tackling some new habits in the New Year, dive back into last month's episodes. We had an amazing in-depth toolbox episode. We dug into the science behind willpower and self-awareness. We also looked at two very interesting articles that discuss some of the common problems everyone encounters when it comes to building new habits and maintaining those new habits. And we had one of our favorite authors on Charles Duhigg, amazing author of The Power of Habit. And we had an amazing conversation with him all around exactly how to keep that willpower going. Now we wrapped things last month with a Q and A with Lisa Wimberger, the founder of the Neurosculpting Institute, looking at how to rewire our brain, especially how to overcome that fight or flight response that some of us may be feeling, especially when it comes to socializing. Now in this episode, we're gonna talk all about happiness, what it is, what it isn't, and how we can start to create some aha moments for you because I know diving into this research, I learned a lot about happiness. And then we're gonna take a deep dive into designing a life that leads to happiness and fulfillment. Who doesn't want that? And there's so much more. So this is gonna be a two-part toolbox episode. I know, Johnny, you're very excited to kick it off in the new year. Certainly am. Now, this theme of happiness, when we think about it, I think there are a lot of misconceptions around happiness. In fact, a lot of us tie happiness to pleasure. But let's first just look at the definition. If we pull up the old Miriam Webster dictionary, well, they define happiness as a state of well-being and contentment and a pleasurable or satisfying experience. And I think most of us, when we think of happiness, we think of number two. We think of that pleasurable or satisfying experience. And for a lot of us, we think of happiness in the past. Thinking about those times in our lives where we did feel happy, whether it was on the beach, drinking a pina colada, up in wine country, having some wine, whatever the case may be, that's where a lot of us get stuck when we think about happiness. Well, if I told you to be happy right now, you would do the immediate gratification trick to get happy, right? And if, but if I challenged you and started asking questions about that happiness and why you were doing that and why is that going to lead to happiness, after a few questions, that idea might change. It's just what we're gonna go to first for instant feeling good. And of course, who doesn't want the pleasurable side of happiness, right? When we think about happiness, everyone wants some pleasure in their lives. I know for a lot of us, that is the one thing we think of when we think happiness. Well, if I, what is it? It's Friday, it's Thursday, right? It's about three o'clock. And if I said, AJ, you know what? We need to go out and have some fun, right? Yeah. The first thought is like, all right, what pleasure? Let's hit those buttons. Let's get boozing. Let's see what's going on. But if we pulled out a bit, right? And we're able to start asking ourselves questions about, okay, what is going to allow us to be happy even later on this evening? And then tomorrow, Saturday is drinking right now, going to allow us to be happy later. When you get home, wasted, how's Amy gonna be jet? Well, how am I gonna get my workouts in the morning? That's the next question. Then Saturday, right? How's that going to line up if our answer to happiness was to go boozing right now? And so there is, I guess it's a different picture, one from farther up than the other one, right? A bigger piece. Yeah, and I think contentment, okay, we're starting to get somewhere when we talk about contentment versus pleasure, which can be overwhelming, right? Ice cream makes you happy, but you can't eat gallons and gallons and gallons of ice cream. The pleasure is going to end, especially if you're lactose intolerant. That's maybe after a couple spoonfuls. So pleasure is not what we're searching for here. And Dr. Rubin Kodrum wrote an article in Psychology Today with an amazing definition. And basically it's more than a simply positive mood, happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life. That is a life with a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. Now, we have a great interview coming up with Dr. Russ Harris, the author of the Happiness Trab. And he describes happiness in a way that we also really like, living a rich and meaningful life in which we feel the full range of human emotions without a struggle. Well, okay, that's a little different than this whole pleasure concept, right? The full range of emotions without a struggle, well, there are some positive emotions and there are some not so positive emotions in there. Yes, and there's also positive emotions linked to struggle and linked to negative emotions. So when we think about this idea of happiness and chasing happiness and wanting more happiness in our life, we gotta look beyond just pleasure. And of course, when we think about, okay, contentment, right? Well, contentment opens a whole other door for us. I can feel content without having a massive amount of pleasure. I can feel content without going out to the bar boozing, without going out chasing conversations or chasing fun. So contentment is more about life satisfaction, is more about finding that happy medium, whereas pleasure is obviously chasing what feels best in the moment. What feels best in the moment, but also, you know, I think it also has to do with alleviating emotions that may be tied with the past and knocking out emotions that might be tied to what's coming up in the future. So past resentments or future anxieties and alleviating ourselves of those as well, because I think those certainly play a large role in what we're gonna do in the moment, right? Absolutely, and I feel when I was thinking about this episode and I was thinking about all those moments in my life that I felt my happiest, a lot of times, if I really were to steal it down in those actual moments, I don't know that I was truly happy. I don't know that I was truly present. So if you take the example of sitting on a beach, right? Enjoying an amazing vacation. In that moment, you're sitting on the beach, there are gonna be times that you're having that internal dialogue struggle of, oh, I got those emails, oh, man, work when I get back, it's gonna be a pain in the neck, oh, I gotta handle that conversation, I don't wanna do that. So it doesn't always mean that you're even happy in the moment. For a lot of us, we look back fondly on the past and we determine, oh, I was happy then, I was happy here, I was happy there, but oftentimes in the moment, that happiness is more fleeting. My sister, she had gotten married a while ago and her wedding was in the Keys in Florida. And I remember going in on that island, there wasn't any, it was one of those islands where there's no internet service. They try to make it as remote as possible so the only thing that you can do is to relax and not do anything else. I'm already getting a little stress hearing about that. I don't know how relaxing that is, no Wi-Fi, no technology. Absolutely, and I remember, I was like, well, that's nice at all, but I got stuff to do, right? I can't believe I'm stuck here for six days or whatever it was. And it was something in that trip that I remember finally, what was it like, four days in, five days in, that I just stopped all that nonsense altogether. I didn't quit thinking about the past and quit thinking about what I had to do. I was just like, well, I'm stuck here, I might as well enjoy it, right? So finally on that day, and I had one of the most amazing times that of course I was like, well, that sucks because I gotta leave tomorrow. I want more of that. But there was a wind-down process that needed to happen in order for me to enjoy that. There was no way I could just flip the switch and say, okay, now I'm just gonna relax. There was a process that my body needed to do to get to that point. Now, could I have maybe helped that? I'm sure I could have rather than fighting it. And I think this is also a lot of what people who do a lot of meditation or go on these retreats discuss where it takes a few days for you to finally quit fighting all the thoughts and just focus on there and then. And then of course all the sensations that come with actually being present for the first time. Well, yeah, we had Jesse and surround one of our favorite interviews last year, 2018. Yes. And he did just that. He went to a monastery. Yeah. And for a guy who's wired in, who's an entrepreneur, who's got a lot going on, he was bouncing off the walls. So unplugging may not always lead us to that happy moment immediately. But the more we can focus on becoming present in the moment, that allows us an opportunity to start to find some of this happiness. Now, another thing that when people think about happiness, they think about comfort. All right, the more comfortable I am, well of course the more happy I am. But comfort and happiness are not the same thing. No. In fact, if your attempt at happiness is to stay in your comfort zone every day of your life, as we know with all of our boot camp participants, comfort zone is not where happiness is found. It's not where the magic's happening. Absolutely not. And I marvel at the people who are able to be content by just being comfortable because as I had mentioned, I start to, it's just not my DNA. I need to be doing stuff. And this is what's going to get, and we're gonna get to this later when we're gonna be talking about finding meaning and purpose, right? Right. Now, you actually had a great conversation with one of our coaches here, Michael, who also helps us on the show helping with all this amazing research. You may have worked with them in our core confidence programs or seen them on some of our master classes. But you guys actually talked about the three influencing factors of happiness and it was such a great conversation that we're actually just gonna listen to it now. So Michael, you've pulled a great study that's really gonna set up this episode in this month. Would you like to tell us more about it? Yes, I think when we talk about happiness, we are going to do this extensively throughout this month. I think the most important thing to start with is to look at the three factors that make up happiness. It turns out there are three influencing factors. This goes back to a psychologist, Sonja Leon-Bomirsky. That's a tongue breaker right there who works in the field of positive psychology. And she's done some in-depth research about this and we'll link to her work in the show notes. But it all starts with, let's start with the first component. So this is the environment, our circumstances, right? Where you live, maybe your health, your job, stuff like that, right? The country you're living in. So you would imagine that this has a lot of influence on your happiness, right? Well, I think a lot of people would think it's a major part of a component to that happiness. I think that's the misconception. Yeah, and what she found out, however, was that this accounts for 10% of your happiness, 10%. The difference of living in a first world country, third world country, being rich, being poor. Yeah, there's a difference and the difference is 10%. So are you telling me that sitting on the beach with a pina clada is only gonna be 10% of that happiness? No, because there are two more components. There are two more. We're just covering, this is going to influence your happiness at about the level of 10%. Now, the next one, the next influence on your level of happiness is going to be your genes. And I don't mean your pants, I mean your DNA. And this is a little bit of bad news, right? Telling people that the amount of happiness you're feeling is strongly correlated with the DNA that you've been given. And yeah, it's kind of bad news, but I mean, this is the science, right? For us, it's really important that we share the science and we don't just make up stuff. And guys, this is how it is. So in a recent and massive study, they studied the genomic data of 300,000 people and there were 190 researchers involved in that study. And what they found was that there's just a very small handful of genetic variants that are responsible for the happiness or as they put it, the subjective wellbeing, there's a fancy word for you that's responsible for this happiness. And here's the bad news, it's 50%. Of your happiness is determined by your DNA. So that's a little bit of a sucker punch there because 50% is a lot. And we've all seen those people who seem that they run at a highly positive manner all the time and it's easy to get mad at those people. And I have been personally called somebody who is happy go lucky but I hadn't always been that sort of person. Even if you draw the happy card and 50%, you got the best genes in regards to happiness, you get all the good variants, right? Now you're still only at 50% happy. It's a good start but I wanna do more than that. I wouldn't want to stay at the 50%. I wanna get to 100, I wanna get to 90. And this is where the third factor comes in. So we had 10% environment, we had 50% genes and now the remaining 40%, that's the mindset. That's when you see the glass either half full or half empty. And by the way, Johnny, I don't like the metaphor at all. When people say, hey, you know what? Should I see the glass half empty or half full? I'm like, dude, if you're in a bar with friends and you're drinking, you shouldn't be wondering if your glass is half full or half empty. You should be drinking that drink and have fun. Anyway, but it's just my riff on that metaphor. So you have 40% of your happiness that are dependent on how you think about things. And I think that's such a great piece of data to process. It's such great news because when I came to the recording and I was wearing my pink bunny suit and you said, Michael, what on earth? Pink bunny suit to a podcast recording. Are you kidding me? I could have taken this two ways, right? I could have said, oh no, I'm such a dummy. What was I thinking? Pink bunny suit, not working. Or I could say, okay, you know what? I learned something here. Great, next time I'm not gonna wear a pink bunny suit. Next time this is gonna stay in the closet until it's time to party. And by the way, I'm not wearing a pink bunny suit. I'm just making that up to draw a picture in your head. Sorry about that. But that's the difference, right? How do I process the things that are happening in my life? Am I learning from them or not? You know, it's something you brought up earlier about it when we said that your genetics are gonna account for 50% and you said, I'm sorry, that's just the facts. Well, here we are with now mindset being 40% of it. And once again, we're sorry, but those are the facts. That means that your happiness is dependent on you. And I can tell you that when I learned that, and that's one of the first things that I learned when I got into self-development, and that changed my whole world. Because up until that point, I was angry, I was bitter, because I was looking for happiness. I was under the impression that happiness was something that needed to be earned. It was something that you had to go get, you had to achieve it. I didn't know that you could just be happy. I'm reminded of the discussion that you and AJ had with Dr. Stephen Hayes. And I think what's important to point out here is, A, if you haven't listened to that episode, you're crazy, you need to listen to it. But also, we're talking about getting happy and using tools and techniques to get this, to get this happiness into our life. But let's look back at the definition of what is happiness. It's living a good life with a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. So that means that if you're getting out of bed in the morning or going back into bed in the evening and you're thinking, oh, I'm not feeling happy, go lucky right now, that's not the right question. The right question to ask is, I left my bed 16 hours ago, did I live a meaningful life in the middle? And yeah, maybe I did. Maybe I'm going back to bed and I'm not all smiley, but I know that I did something good all day. And that is the happiness that we're looking for. That's at least what I want in my life. Because the easy happiness I can have with a bucket of ice cream in four weeks on the beach. Yeah, I know for myself that the more tools that I got, the better I became at being more consistently happy and lending itself to always find things in the positive. Because let's face it, positive people are happy people are attractive people. And I have people in my life who could use a better outlook on things, who could use some better tools, but letting them know that exposing that is a very tricky thing because no one wants to learn that they have been living in agony or pain or anger and that they were the primary, well, they were primarily responsible for feeling that manner. And how easy, how influential would it be if you up that 40% if you started working on that and got it up 40%, that would be a game changer for everyone out there. Yeah, and you can paint your experiences any way that you want. And as we learned in last month's theme, once you begin doing certain behaviors and actions, you're only doomed to repeat them unless you bring those actions and behaviors to a conscious level and actively change them, which means you have to awaken yourself to having this choice, bringing it to a conscious level. If you've already programmed yourself into taking the negative, then you're gonna be more prone to do it and your brain is not going to wake up unless you decide that you need to change that behavior. So if he's been doing it 20, 30 years, well, why change now? You've programmed yourself in. In fact, it's your programmed in and doing what you're programmed to do. So of course you think you're making the right decision. That's what you've been doing your whole life. Why change it? The only way you're gonna change it is to have to admit that you've been wrong. So if your worldview that you have meticulously put together, is it true, is wrong? You're not gonna feel very safe, are you? No, definitely not. Yeah, but you don't have to change everything. You don't have to change your entire life around in one go. You can realize that you wanna change something and then coming back to the month of habit building, one thing at a time, baby steps, setting the foundation with the first thing, then the next thing, then the next thing. Maybe just put on a smile when you come out of bed as you drink that first cup of coffee and leave it at that and then you can live the rest of your day grumpy as always, but make that a habit and then build on it and build on it and bring in those 40% of happiness to the maximum. Johnny, by the way, there's something that I feel I need to point out with all the research that we put into this month of happiness. So when I was talking about the study that showed that 10% happiness is based on the environment, 50% is genetic and 40% is mindset. Now the important thing to note here, and I know this is a detail, but you can show off when you tell this to your buddies in the pub for all you listeners out there. So we're not talking about the variance in happiness here. We're not talking about concrete happiness. So what do I mean by that? When you say, when you sit at home and you say, okay, my happiness right now is at a five, zero to 10, it's a five. That does not mean that 2.5% are genetic, 0.5 are environment and two points are mindset. That's not how the study works. But Johnny, if we were to talk and I say, Johnny, right now, my happiness at a five and you say, oh, Michael, mine's at a 10, I'm awesome. Now we have five points difference and those we can break down that way. There we can say, okay, Johnny, the reason we have five points difference in our level of happiness, 2.5 is genetic, 0.5, so you're in sunny LA and I'm in Louisiana. And two points, that's just, you have a better mindset than I do. Wow, I like that. And that's great. And those two points, how much better are you gonna feel putting those two points to that five? Which is great. Now you're at 70%, how rad is that? So as you can see, happiness is not just a synonym for pleasure and comfort. It means living a meaningful life. And that's something that you can purposefully design, right? It's, you can create this. You can sit down, you can create it. Okay, that was a lot of stuff, Johnny. And we just really want you to take away from that conversation that happiness is not pleasure, it's not comfort. It comes down to leading a good life. So if happiness comes down to leading a good life, well then we wanna start to design that good life. And we wanna work towards happiness, not just in the moment where it's fleeting and we're chasing it, but we wanna start to build to a year of 2019 that's full of happiness and a lifetime that's full of happiness. Well, and also if you can get to those moments, those fleeting moments where you are present and feel in that manner to make those breaks and those spots more consistent and drawing them out so you can be in that moment more. Well, who wouldn't wanna be in that moment more? Absolutely not. Well, you know, that is why I chase and have always chased music. Now for myself, and I think everyone has these moments for a musician, there isn't for those of you who perform out there, there is that moment on stage where you transcend everything else that's going on. There is no past thoughts. There's no anxiety of thoughts in the future, what we were talking about earlier and this might even roll with back to Jesse Itzler in that monastery, but there is a moment where all of a sudden none of that matters but you actually transcend even, well, you could say for some people, it's almost a spiritual thing of feeling as if you are now not human, you're now part of the music. And when those things, when those moments happen, what's like, well, how do I get back to that? It's like, well, I need to put on another show, we need to be playing. And the grander that is as somebody who's done a lot of performing, it's one thing at a club level and a theater level, you couldn't even imagine what it might be like at a stadium level. And of course in that moment, there is, it's not as if you would feel immortal because you don't even feel human, what is that to somebody who's transcended life in and of itself, you're now a musical note, you are now that music. And I think sports fans or athletes find those moments when everything comes in, what is that saying? They're hot, right? Flow stay in the zone, we've all heard that. And there's no other thoughts except that being present in that moment. Everything else fades away. And here we had spoke to Sugar Ray Leonard a few months ago and how about that flow state? And how long did he chase that? How many times did he come out of retirement to being that moment again? And now we look at it and what is he after? Well, a life with purpose, right? That's what this comes down to. When we start to design the good life, it boils down to purpose. And last month, Charles Duhigg said, you, when you find purpose and you start asking the right questions, you can make anything meaningful. You can make driving your kids to school sitting in traffic meaningful. Absolutely. And the reason is you're transcending your limitations as a human being because what you're doing is bigger than you. Right, it's no longer, oh, I'm stuck in this car, stuck in traffic. It's I'm providing my kids an education opportunity that's gonna go on and lead to success in their life. And that gives me greater purpose than, oh, I'm honking the horn, I'm stuck. I'm pissed off at the world because I gotta do this commute. And that's such a beautiful thing to allow yourself to be a part of something bigger than you. And for myself, I had found that, luckily I had found that early in life with music to understand what that felt like. And then of course, when that mission changed and it became the art of charm, I knew it straight away what that felt like because I've already had it with music. And I think that's the one thing that we hear in conversations with our clients coming through the programs and even the questions in the show is like, how do you find that purpose? How do you find that meaning? And to your point, we both got lucky, right? Whether it was music and now moving to the art of charm. I know in graduate school, I did not have meaning or purpose. I was beaten down. I was certainly not happy in that moment. And it makes every day that much more difficult when you don't have that under you. When you have that purpose, you're like, well, I don't care what's happening today. I'm rolling on because this is bigger than me. As you know, as we've been doing this, how that has made this road that after 12 years, we look back and laugh, but it was not easy. And then we have a road ahead that is not easy. But when you distill it down to that purpose, right? And for a lot of us, it's going to come in service of others. I know for me, the second I got involved in the bootcamps and involved in the coaching and then seeing the change, the transformation in other people's lives, even when I was struggling to make the transformation myself, talk about having some purpose and letting a fire under you. To this day, I bounce into Tuesday's lecture, still so fired up and excited because the purpose is there. I'm helping people take control of their social life, build meaningful relationships, repair broken relationships. And ultimately, as we've talked about numerous times, the more connected we are as humans, the healthier we are, the happier we are. Well, and of course, for those guys to now feel a part of something that is bigger than themselves and which is the AOC community and on a different level. So we got to start designing this good life with intention. And when it comes to purpose, well, let's talk about this gradient that we dubbed Vice Joy Dedication Gradient because a lot of us may not fully understand where we fall on this gradient. So we're gonna break down what we mean by vice which obviously, as Johnny was talking about, that could be tipping the bottle, that could be doing some things that are harmful to your health to chase that minute of pleasure. That could be joy, which would be going on a date with your partner, going out with your friends, being on stage, getting a whole and one on the golf course, right? Those all obviously resonate with us. Dedication maybe not something we thought about with happiness, right? Dedication for a lot of us, that doesn't necessarily jump to mind when we're thinking happiness. Well, once again, it plays a larger role than the moment that you're in in that second. And that's tied to that purpose, right? If we have purpose and meaning, then it's okay for us to lean in and start to have that dedication to something bigger than us, something greater than us. And I think that as part of the charm with the myth of Sisyphus, right? He has now, he has now sentenced to eternity to push this rock up this hill every day. And when you think about it, you know, to be having this as what you're gonna be doing for the rest of your life to push this rock up and when you reach the top, only for it to roll down the back of the bottom of the hill and you get back to push it. Now, of course it's terrifying thought to have that as what you're gonna be doing tomorrow. That is, that's treachery to know when that's the wake up to. But what is, what was the twist to that and the secret of that is that he had found meaning and pushing that rock up that hill. Can I do it better than the last time? Can I do it faster? Can I get more out of each push than the push before? And all of a sudden, he started smiling of now there is meaning and purpose in what he is doing and what the thought of this internal hell that he was put in has now become his life's work. And think about that. How amazing is that when you can have these things working to your advantage and now you have a greater purpose that it doesn't necessarily feel like every day is treachery pushing the rock up the hill. When we can have dedication with pleasure, now we're moving into the joy side of things. Vice is just pleasure for the sake of pleasure. As we know, you're gonna wake up tomorrow with a hangover at a minimum. You're not gonna be feeling your best. It's stealing happiness in the long term. Joy, on the other hand, is something that gives us pleasure but has greater meaning to us than just that fleeting, oh, I gotta get another drink, I gotta go party, I gotta go celebrate. Now, we obviously can't spend all of our life in vice. We can't spend all of our life working on pleasure. You know, I think a lot of us have tried as long as we possibly could to stay in vice. Some have held on longer than others as we even heard from Sugar Ray. Absolutely, but, you know, when you're 20, vice is great because those hangovers aren't so long. You bounce back quite easily. You wake up, you even have something of a headache, you shake it off and grab another beer, get back in there. But as you get older, your body needs more time to recuperate. And then when I think about the cost analysis to it, night of drinking now, I don't think about tomorrow morning. I have to think about all of tomorrow and possibly the day after that. That's a big commitment. Now you're opening Pandora's box. Yeah, and with everything that we have going on here and all the meaning that we've worked so hard to build for ourselves in doing this, well, now that decision takes away from the real happiness. And now that decision's very easy. It's like, well, looks like I'm not going out this evening because I want to wake up early and hit my notes and have a conversation with AJ. So we come into the studio fired up so that all of you on the other end of this get a great show. And that's where the dedication comes in, right? If we're just focusing on the fleeting, vice-driven pleasure, we're not ultimately happy. And that's not just drinking, right? We can talk about binge eating ice cream. We can talk about binging Netflix, right? Sitting there for six, seven hours watching all law and order episodes or catching up on your favorite Netflix show. Well, it's going to drive you a little bit of pleasure. Sure. So it's a lot of pleasure. So is that Big Mac. But it's not happiness, right? We don't want to conflate the two. So moving away from pleasure on this axis, on this gradient, we want to start moving towards dedication. And when we can live a life filled with dedication with greater meaning and purpose, now we're hitting that happiness sweet spot. And obviously there are various ways we can be dedicated. We can be dedicated to our health, working out. We've talked a lot about how that increases your mental health and happiness. We can be dedicated to charity work, right? Being in service to others. You can be dedicated to your job and find meaning and purpose in that and ultimately happiness. Now, this is the gold mine for happiness. When we talk about dedication, you know, how many times, Johnny, have we looked back over the last six months now and thought about all those trainings that we went through for the half marathon, all the sessions with Chris that were, in a lot of ways, whether it's pushing a rock up a hill or flipping a tire. But some days it certainly felt like that, right? But there is that idea that, wait a second here guys, dedication. Like I don't understand how we're getting to happiness here. And when you pile up all those moments and look back to achieving that goal of finishing the half marathon, there's immense amount of happiness that comes along with that. There's immense amount of joy that comes along with putting in the hard work, reaching your goals. Well, and how important that is to, and I could use the word, to our human soul, right? We yearn for it. I mean, you and I were just talking about a guy we read about online yesterday. Yes, who journeyed across and art ago. An article, right? It took him 59 days. He had a loved one and I believe he had a wife. Yeah. Some of the ridiculous posts that I had saw from him that he, that they put in the article, was nothing that I want to experience. No, or the guy who swam around the UK, right? Battling jellyfish and everything else in his wetsuit. A lot of people look at that and go, happiness. I don't see any happiness in Antarctica. I don't see any happiness in the water swimming around the UK. Why do human beings constantly put themselves in what some of us would call insanity, pure chaos? Why? Well, because they have dedicated themselves to a higher purpose where that training, that treasury, being in the middle of Antarctica where the only other color that you're going to see is what you're wearing, when the sky, the picture. Talk about white out. That picture they showed with the overcast sky meeting at the horizon of just the snow that you're trouncing upon. White on white on white. For days on end, right? And so how do you drive anything amazing from that? How do you drive joy, dedication from that? Well, the dedication is, if you don't continue going, there ain't going to be anything else. But you've also, you've signed up for something that is larger than you. And the minute you do that, right? What is it, when you find a why, you'll figure out you can get through anyhow? Absolutely. And when we have that why, we're starting to actually get into the happiness that we're talking about here. Not the fleeting ate a bowl of ice cream happy that lasts a few minutes until that stomach ache, but the happiness that gives you greater meaning in your life. And if we look at all the people we admire, right? What do they all have in common? Dedication. Dedication. Dedication, whether it's their sport, whether it's their company, whether it's their career choices, whether it's their athletic prowess, not even sports, right? Talking about tackling Antarctica, swimming around in the English Channel. All of these people that we admire, that we look up to who've accomplished great things, in order to accomplish those things, there had to be a level of dedication. So when we talk about happiness, we wanna move away from just the sheer pleasure, the fleeting happiness that we're talking about. We wanna move on that gradient towards dedication. That's where we actually start to have that joy and happiness that we're all looking for. Johnny, you have a great circles analogy that I'm sure our audience will love. Well, one of the things that I always talk about when we're in class is the purpose and the reason for working on yourself to be a high value person and what that means and why it's so important. And so these is the way I can describe this. And I'm gonna try to make it easy for all of you who are listening because there's a visual that goes along with this, but it's not too difficult. And that visual is, if we would take a sheet of paper and we would just put a bunch of circles on that sheet of paper and let's put hundreds on that sheet of paper and let's make the middle one somewhere in the middle there. Let's make that red, okay? And that red circle is gonna represent us. And now somewhere else on that sheet of paper, we wanna have a larger circle that basically is your life defined as a life it is worth fighting for. What is the dream life that you've always wanted that you would go to war for, that you would throw yourself in a harm's way because that is the ultimate goal. Yeah, what's your Antarctica? Exactly, I love it. So now the thing about it is any direction that you would move to get to that life, you're gonna have to encounter other circles. Now, meaning people, people, right? And that's the resistance that you're gonna create that's in your way. Now, that resistance of each circle determines how it sees the world and what it has going on. So if a circle has a negative disposition, then you can imagine that as an uncooperative person that you have to deal with getting to your goal. It may work against you, who may fight you on your way to that goal. Yeah, there's plenty of those people out there. And then some of those other circles are very friendly. They have a positive disposition in life and they don't offer too much resistance. They open the door for you or they help you out, they give you a job and hey, so. And of course, now when you're looking at that man, it's like, okay, well, I wanna encounter positive disposition people because that's gonna make getting to what my desired life is here to get to. Well, that's not so easy because here's the thing about it. We're not quite sure who's negative and who's positive. You can't touch a book that's covered, you have to engage to find out. And there's another set of circles, which is circles that depending on how you engage with them will turn to positive or negative. So if you have a negative disposition and you run in a circle, you just cause more resistance for yourself. And here's the thing, how long can you continue going out to build your dream life, running into negative disposition to people who slowly start chipping at your resolve to where you become a negative circle as well. It doesn't take too many. How many times can you get taken advantage of before you say, fuck that? Yeah, it's gonna be very frustrating. Very frustrating. And it's one of the main reasons that we sit here having this conversation, right? When we talk about becoming charming, we're talking about taking those circles that haven't quite become a plus or a minus, a positive or a negative and working together, being cooperative to move them closer to the positive so that we can start moving towards our greater circle that goal. Absolutely. And the thing about it is, you don't know what circles are which, some who you might think are positives are actually negatives and sometimes you get so caught up on what you're doing is you accidentally cause some to turn negative rather than positive. It's a whole mess. So how now do you go about doing this? Well, obviously the more you can stay positive in the face of any negativity, the better off you're gonna be because you're gonna continue running into positive circles or turning circles to positive and you'll sustain damage from the negative Nancy's out there. But if you could keep your head up, you can venture on. But, and here's where it gets difficult and this is where it becomes a greater purpose. In order for you not to have your resolve chipped away by all the negativity and the resistance that you meet out there, you have to cultivate a high value character within yourself and you just can't go out and be nice. That is, that service level is not through and through. You'll eventually, that'll be chipped away. You have to cultivate it from the inside and you have to do that through education, through purpose, through meaning, through helping others and it's all the times that you wake up in the morning and you hit the gym and you're going out and you're giving value out to others, you're slowly brick by brick building and cultivating a high value mindset that then allows you to go out there and be impenetrable, to allow you to go out there and give value and when you run into a negative person, you don't flip out. You don't lose your momentum. Exactly. You say, oh, ran into a jerk onward and you continue to roll. That is the fastest way that you are going to reach and build the dream life that you've always wanted for yourself. And that is why we have this show. This is why we talk about the things that we're talking about and though it's not easy, that journey of cultivating that can be a lot of fun. Now, I know, Johnny, every single time we talk about meaning and purpose, we hear from our listeners. I hate my job. I don't get an opportunity to run an awesome podcast or get in front of the room and coach people. I don't have meaning and purpose right now but I'm stuck in this job. I need the paycheck. I need to get by, I got bills. How can I find meaning in what I do? You know, it's not as if I've never been there and it's not as if you've never been there and it's not as if everyone who is, who've reached and built that life for themselves haven't found themselves in a situation that is exactly what you've just described. Yeah, and we had Alex Benayan on last year who interviewed amazingly successful people and he heard the same thing too. They all have struggled. They've all been in dead-end jobs. They've all been unhappy. Whether it's Bill Gates unhappy at Harvard, it doesn't matter. People who are successful that we admire have gone through moments where they didn't have meaning, they didn't have purpose. So let's talk about how do we find that? And Charles Duhigg last month started to talk about this with asking the right questions. Yes. And we love Angela Duckworth's book, Grit and she suggests you ask why. What a question. Why are you doing what you are doing? And the important thing is not to just ask this once, right? If you just ask it once, you're not actually following the exercise. We want you to ask this again and again until you arrive at that top level goal. So why, why, why, why? This is what we're asking here. When, let's say you're just sitting at McDonald's and know, Johnny, you had a fast food job, I had a pizza job growing up, working in a pizzeria. My, that was one of many shit jobs I had. Making food, it's difficult to find purpose and meaning in that. I'm not going to lie. When you're not happy flipping burgers, but let's, let's take this to its conclusion. Why are you doing this job? Well, I need the money. Well, why do you need the money? Because I got to pay for college. And why do you got to pay for college? Because I want to get a degree in engineering. Why do you want a degree in engineering? Because I want to develop sustainable, because I want to develop sustainable sources of energy. Okay. Well, why do you want to develop sustainable sources of energy? Well, because I want to save nature. I care about the environment. Why? Well, because growing up, I loved going to the lake with my family. I had a lake house. It was amazing being out in nature, actually seeing the stars. How incredible is that? And I'd love future generations to be able to experience stars. Wow, that got pretty big, didn't it? So we just went from flipping burgers to a deeper meaning in our life, finding that why and starting on the Y train until you get to that top level meaning that we're talking about here. And when you ask yourself why, this is something that we were talking about with Lisa. It's about turning on the prefrontal cortex. If you just, you're waking up, you're, why am I here? You're turning that on rather than just going asleep at the wheel, doing what you've always done without questioning it. And you will be surprised what you find out. You would be surprised to know why you're where you are. And all of a sudden, wait a minute, there's now choices that are be had if you wake yourself up. And that's really important because if you, there's other roads to get to where you need to go. And if you're not asking those questions, you're not going to find them. One of the most difficult jobs that I have ever done. And I talked about this class all the time. I worked construction. I was framing houses in North Carolina. Million dollar homes on 12, 12 pictures. I can't believe they trusted you with a hammer. Oh my God. Wow. There was a lot of guys on that job site that did not want me with a hammer. I know, I've seen your parents share. They didn't even want me there, first of all. They named me Sally May in 10 minutes on that day on that job site. Now, you know, I had done that job for two years, but I remember being asleep at the wheel, going there every day for about two weeks, this was going on. And I'm just getting my ass kicked and I'm just pissed off and I'm 21, you know. Sounds lovely. Yeah. And this is, and I'm experiencing, this is what I just moved to North Carolina. It's June. I mean, You're fired up. I'm getting it all, right? And I remember just getting yelled at every day and there was no purpose in it. And I started asking myself questions. Well, why are you here? Well, I'm here because I want to play music and this is what was great about this because North Carolina Chapel Hill at that time in the mid 90s had a budding music scene and I've always wanted to be a part of something like that. So I had the opportunity to move down there. And okay, so at night I'm going to go to see shows during the day, I got to go to work. And I remember how difficult that was. And I remember thinking, well, I just can't quit because quitting this job means that I don't have a job. And I'm going back to Greensburg, Pennsylvania. And if any of you who've out there who've grown up in a small town know that you need to reach escape velocity are just going to get sucked back in. It's very difficult. Especially when people just don't come and go as they do in a metropolitan area, you know, little town, that's where you are. And everyone you know just grows up in Dizer. It was difficult. So I wanted to get out. So now that I'm out, not getting shipped back. So I need to work this job. And I remember thinking, well, I can't leave it then. And so I have two other choices and it was accept it or change it. Well, first it was easy to accept because, well, I'm here. I'm in it. I'm sadly me. I got a hammer and they're yelling at me. So I'm accepting it. And I remember thinking, well, I can also change this job. Talk about Sisyphus, right? It's like all of a sudden I have a job building houses. I have no idea how to build houses. Oh, I know. You still have no idea how to build houses. So I decided, you know what? I have this opportunity because every day I gotta be here. I might as well get something out of this. When am I gonna get out of this? Well, I'm gonna learn how to build a house. So that night I couldn't even go to sleep. I got so excited because all of a sudden I had this new opportunity of this job where I'm gonna learn how to build a house. Why did that not happen for two weeks? Well, sometimes it takes you a little while. But when it hit, it hit. And for that whole day, when that day ended at that shift, I was upset that we were going home because I was having so much fun contributing to this project that was bigger than me. And for a second straight night, I couldn't sleep because all I wanted to do was work on this house. And it was once those things clicked, then for me at that time, it was an amazing experience. And I turned the whole thing into an adult-sized jungle gym. I'm swinging from rafters, climbing up rickety scaffolding. And at 21, summer, North Carolina, this was an amazing experience, an opportunity. However, I had to get there through a series of questions because I was asleep at the will until then. And obviously we work with a lot of millennials. I may or may not be a millennial based on science. I've straddled a line between Gen X and millennial. And one of the things that comes up again and again with our clients is, OK, that's great for you. But what can I take from this? And so many of us now have started to realize that your career is going to be changing and shifting. And you're not like your parents or grandparents going to just start that job out of college, work your way up from the factory floor to the executive suite with that same company, get that pension plan, retire comfortably. So one of the biggest lenses or frame shifts that I always preach, whether it's when I'm myself looking at all the struggles that I've had, is what skills can I learn from this? What can I take away from this job, even if this job sucks, that I can take that skill set and move it and work it towards my overarching goal? So I may not be happy working at Best Buy, slinging computers, but what can I take out of that? Oh, sales, sales skills. Well, those are extremely valuable. So when you start to zoom out a little bit and take a different lens, and that's why I love this why thread, when you ask why, why, why, why, why, you get to that greater meaning or purpose. And one of the things we talked about a little earlier is those challenges and the pursuit of excellence. That is another great way to find meaning. Whether you're walking across Antarctica, you're David Goggins running an ultramarathon, 200 miles, wanna beat your time when you are in that pursuit of excellence. That's a great way to find that purpose, to find that joy, to get to that place of happiness. And listen, we understand that a lot of the stuff that we talk about are unique, amazing opportunities to us, but every single one of us has an opportunity for excellence. Whether it's writing code, whether it's building houses, whether it's taking on that half marathon, it doesn't just have to be physical, but when you align yourself with the pursuit of excellence, I wanna be the best coder, I wanna be the best programmer, I wanna be the best doctor, I wanna be the best cancer biologist. Now we are creating greater purpose than just us, greater meaning. And before people get lost, when they start thinking about the best and everything, and be like, well, I can't be at David Goggins where I'm never gonna be this guy, it's not about comparing yourself to others, it's about being the best one that you could be. Right, it's excellence for you. It's not excellence comparing myself to Elon Musk, it's not excellence comparing myself to an ultra athlete like LeBron James. Well, compared to Elon, I could smoke a joint better than him. I don't know. I don't know, he's had memes, yeah, he's had memes made out of his smoking style of excellence. Now, in Cal Newport's book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, he writes that you should do any task with as much excellence as you can muster. And I know, Johnny, we love the saying, how you do anything is how you do everything. Yes, and you know, even having that in the back of your head it makes you start to approach things a lot differently. And understanding that we're always on the pursuit of excellence. We're trying to get better on this show. We've been asking you, our audience, to give us reviews, to give us feedback, to let us know how we're growing into the show and making it our own. That pursuit of excellence, that's longer than six months. It's longer than training for a half marathon. It's a lifelong goal. I mean, and some would even see it as a trap, but not to the person who's working through it. I want to give up the example of one of my favorite podcasters. I know you love them as well. Dan Carlin, we'll just give Dan props. If you're not a fan of hardcore history and it's something you should check out, everyone. I would say the who's who in podcasting certainly know Dan Carlin. They understand excellence. And Dan is now at a point where he's, he might be doing one episode a year because that is where he has gotten himself into trying the top, the last one. And the thing about it is, no one's gonna shake Dan's tree and get him out of this because at the end of the day, he has to be content with himself of what he just accomplished. And that's his legacy. Now, in these moments, right? So instead of thinking about, oh, I'm flipping that burger, I want to make it the best tasting burger this customer's ever had, right? I want to build the most beautiful house in North Carolina. When you flip the frame, chasing excellence becomes purpose, meaning, and again, that sweet spot for happiness that we've been talking about. Now, the last one we want to talk about is task-focused attention. Now, this is a great study done. And Dan Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth in 2010, they studied the effect of daydreaming on one side and task-focused attention on the other. And it's aptly titled, A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind. 2,250 participants in the study received an app that randomly throughout the day asked them what they are doing, what they were thinking and how they felt. On average, they reported being less happy when they were daydreaming. The exception to that was daydreaming about a happy event in the future, in the past, right? That idea of thinking about your trip to Mexico, sitting on the beach, sipping your pina colada, as you can imagine, that would evoke some happiness. But in general, daydreaming makes you less happy. Now, it's a double punch, because daydreaming not only makes you less happy than task-focused attention, you're also missing out on life on top of that. Yes. When you're sitting there daydreaming, life is passing you by. So we now understand that when we have a task that we are focused on, we're putting our attention towards it, we can start to cultivate happiness. And does it just end there? Guess how much time they found people spent daydreaming, Johnny? It's a lot. 50% of our waking lives, we are daydreaming. Hell, hell of a too much. 50%. Now, daydreaming doesn't make you happy, and yet we're spending half of our lives awake doing it. So you can understand how it's compounding this whole idea of how I'm unhappy, I don't like where I'm at, I don't feel like I'm achieving, I don't feel that I have meaning or purpose. And if you really wanna get depressed, think about if on top of the 50% of daydreaming, the amount of time spent on junk food entertainment and just passively consuming content. Yeah. Well. But getting anything out of it. Anywhere you go, whether it's your device, whether it's the car, whether it's your computer, you're gonna have a steady stream of entertainment to put you in that daydreaming mindset, which is not creating happiness. So as we started the show, looking at happiness is not about just that pleasure, and certainly it's not about vices, because you can't do that for the rest of your life. Understanding that when we have greater purpose and meaning and dedication, we start to move towards that joy gradient, and all of a sudden we're creating happiness throughout our lives. We also focused on understanding when you are in the pursuit of excellence, trying to be a better you, better than yesterday, we can start working towards that happiness, as well as when we ask why, why, why, why, to find that greater purpose in anything we're doing, we can unlock happiness in our life. It's a great question. And lastly, when we have task focused attention, understanding that we're present, we are mindful, we are not thinking about future anxieties, we are not living in our past, we're not eating that junk food entertainment, whether it's video games or even this podcast, we can start to find happiness in our lives. And we covered a lot today, Johnny. Certainly have. We covered how happiness is not the same as pleasure, and it's not the same as comfort, which is big. Pleasure and comfort are only a small part of it. Meaning and fulfillment play a much more important part, that's where we wanna put our focus, and hopefully we allowed you to add some meaning to your life, even if you're not happy in your current role, even if you're not happy in your current job. Asking the right questions can start to develop that meaning that we're looking for and put us on the way to happiness. Now, we have a question for you, our audience. What is your purpose in life? What gives you and your life meaning? Let us know. We're always excited to hear from you. You can email us at questions at theartofcharm.com. You can also submit audio questions now, theartofcharm.com slash questions. You can also hit us up on social media, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. As always, we'd love a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast. Look it up The Art of Charm and drop us a line. Let us know how you dug 2018. We are excited to kick off 2019. We will see you next week. See you guys.