 Well, thank you for joining us today, Kristoff, and Johnny and I, in the prep for this show, were fascinated by this concept around happiness that you would introduce us to. This whole month, we've really focused on what is the meaning of happiness, how do we find happiness, and the core idea behind your work is that happiness is like a muscle that you can train, and I found that so enlightening. Can you explain that a little bit for us? Absolutely. It's one of the most empowering messages there is, that happiness is not a destiny, it's a muscle that you can train, just like your body. If you want to train your body, what do you need, you need consistent practice, and it's the same with happiness. You will not get happier because you had your wedding, you will not get happier when you have an amazing career breakthrough. Happiness requires work, it requires you to exercise, and you can do that, and it is possible for you to train your happiness, about 40% of it is actually down to our habits and down to our mindset, and we can train it effectively. Now there's many paths to happiness, the one that we are choosing is called savoring or gratitude journal, and it's actually very simple to get into, it only takes you around five minutes a day and answering one question, and that's what's the best thing that happened to you today. It's not super, super simple, but some people struggle to get into this, but what this does to your brain, when you frequently ask yourself that question, that over the days you will notice that your mind starts to focus on the small good things that happen in your life, and that's exactly what's required for you to change your perspective, right? So over time, you will not only notice one good thing happening to you, you'll notice five or ten, and that's when you really know, oh my god, this is really working, and as far as studies show that this can actually improve your happiness by up to 25% in just a month. That's quite amazing, and we've seen this with our users, it works really, really well, and that's the basis of what we are doing, and we just put a twist on it, which I'll share with you later. That's really remarkable. I think all of us would love to be 25% happier in 30 days or less. And certainly with all the, we understand journaling and we understand appreciation, and it's very hard to take a step back and look at it from an objective opinion, and the more we can do that, certainly it's the more happier we're going to be, and that takes training. Right, and I think a lot of us don't realize that just because we're feeling unhappy today doesn't necessarily mean that tomorrow has to lead to more unhappiness. If we can train our brain to focus on the right things, like a flashlight shining it on the bright spots on the day, we start to reorient ourselves and not focus on all those things that may be holding us back. I know a lot of us may feel like the world is ending at times, and it's tough to pull yourself through. But a simple practice like that, a habit built around happiness can really lift your mood. Well, and everything around us is geared to set up the idea that happiness is a destination or a purchase. I mean, it's all around us. It's through advertising. It's the stories that were told through entertainment. It's everywhere. And of course, why Kristoff is here, it's in our technology. Now, you say something really interesting in that response that, you know, thinking about weddings, promotions at work. Why is it this big misconception that big life events, big moments that we all look forward to don't actually impact our happiness? That's actually quite simple to answer. If you use the muscle analogy, right? If you're going to an event where they do weightlifting and you watch that once, does that going to make you an athlete? And does it train your muscles? No, right? If you miraculously take that barbell and lift it up, that really heavy one, once, does this train your muscle in the long term? No, it doesn't, right? So these events, these big life events are going to be great for you. Your wedding is going to be fine. Your promotion, that's going to be great. But it doesn't change the fact that in order to become happier, to practice happiness, you've got to be consistent, right? So it's better to have one small moment a day than having a big moment once a year. And it makes sense when you just use the training metaphor. And something else there is all those things, all those events, they're not the end, they're the beginning, right? So a marriage is a new chapter. It's a new story. Getting the promotion you always wanted is a new chapter in your life. It begins a new story. It's not the end. It's the beginning. Yeah, what I found so fascinating is that when they look at Olympic athletes, they look at the gold medal winner, the silver medal winner and the bronze medal winner, the bronze is actually the happiest because the bronze can look at the perspective of, hey, I've made it to the podium. The silver is beating himself up because he didn't reach gold. And gold is thinking, where do I go from here? The journey has just begun. So we're always forward-looking. This is what we see. Absolutely. It's so right. This is what we see with gold medalists. Many report that feeling of emptiness after they have achieved that goal. Because here comes another truth pill, I would say, that success doesn't make us happier. We know it's the other way around. If you're happy, you're going to be successful. But success does not automatically make you happier. If you chase after promotions for the sake of the promotion or for the sake of a number increasing on your bank account or for medals, awards and these things, they are not going to make you happier. That's just not happening. You're going to get there and then you're going to have the question in your head and now what? Right? We see this, for example, with step counter apps. Right? And these are cool because they get people to move around and then they reach 10,000 steps and now what? You have a brief moment of satisfaction and then you want it up to 11,000 steps, 12,000 steps and something like that. So quantifying things doesn't make us happier. And these big life moments and these achievements, they don't. What does make you happier is when you enjoy the process of becoming the best version of yourself. And if this includes a promotion, then amazing. It's the difference between external and internal, right? When we chase that external event to make us happy, we don't actually feel it. We need to focus on the internal. And that's why this app is a great exercise in training our happiness muscle. Now, we have a great listener question. This is our Q&A for the month episode. And Chris sent us an email saying, guys, my girlfriend of five years broke up with me, saying that her feelings changed and she wasn't sure about me anymore. I respect her decision and I want her to be happy. But I don't know how to let go and move on. So everyone knows that a break up is probably a life event that's not going to make you happy. It's going to be something that's fraught with some negative emotions. And obviously pushing through those can be difficult at times. Absolutely. I mean, I can just add here, I can. This is a tough one, Chris. I'm very sorry to hear that because what we know about breaks ups and love sickness is that it's really an actual pain. That can be compared to having a toothache. So everyone who is not currently breaking up should probably understand the feeling that someone has who goes through it. It's like to it's like having toothache. It's an actual pain and that hurts. And there's basically very little that we can do because love in some ways like an addiction in our brain. It forms like that because, you know, it involves a lot of neurotransmitters like oxytocin and serotonin and these things. And and and getting off that it takes time for the brain to adjust. Now, maybe what helps and I don't know in his situation because what I love to hear is that he sees he wants her to be happy. And that's that's good, good to hear because the worst thing you can do is start obsessing about the person and chasing after them and maybe stalk them. Maybe some perspective helps. Right. There is this is surprising. We we, of course, there's no indication that romantic relationships are actually making us happier. We know that good romantic relationships do that, but not all relationships romantic relations are good for us. So it's like basically what Socrates said, marry or don't marry, you will regret it. What I want to to say to all those single people out there is that sometimes you think you are kind of like because you're solo, you haven't figured out life and you're like on the first step of being a good human. And up here is the last step that's having a relationship. But you can be in a really shitty relationship. And that's much, much worse than being alone. And if you're happy with yourself, then being alone is OK. Yeah. So that perhaps helps other than that. I don't think there's a shortcut to letting go of these feelings. I think they take time. It's usually what people say is OK, hit the gym. It's definitely time for some self-improvement and find the things that you might not have had the time to do. But still, if it was a long relationship, how many years did you say? Was it like a couple of years? Looks like five years. Yes, five years. Yeah, this it's going to take some time and that's good. The good thing is, I think with every relationship that we had, if it wasn't a complete disaster, our heart grows. It doesn't break, it grows. And I hope this kind of like perspective will help Chris. I definitely feel like, number one, allow yourself to process those negative emotions. I know a lot of us, when we're going through something traumatic like that, we want to brush it under the rug. We want to sweep it aside. We want to do everything we can to distract ourselves from that hurt. That loss. But that's normal. After five years of being together, you've built comfort. You've had habits now that you've built together, looking forward to those moments that you share each and every night. And it's going to be a little jarring. It's going to be uncomfortable to have that ripped out of your life. But part of processing it is not running away from it and distracting yourself, but it's giving yourself space to actually heal. You bring up a great point. This is something that is a great opportunity for us to grow. We can look back through introspection and say, hey, these are the parts of the relationship that I really loved and be honest with ourselves. These are some of the things in the relationship that I didn't like. And think hard about war. Those things that I did not like, something that I was responsible for was I playing an active role. Was I being distant in this? I would definitely recommend go back and listen to our emotional bids month. We talk a lot about validation. The reason being Dr. John Godman in his research on healthy, happy relationships, he finds that when we do not respond to our partner's emotional bids, we actually turn away from those emotional bids and we don't validate their emotions. They start to feel distant. And I would imagine that that's something in a breakup that we can learn from in our relationship and the way that we were communicating with our partner. To understand that it is a real pain and that you can even equate it to something of a toothache. This thought sound like anything that, you know, a lot of people would want to have, right? Yeah. And then on top of that, how easy then does it make it to turn to things that will take that pain away and easily become addicted to the drinking or to the binging and medicating right after that to replace that dopamine and serotonin that we are getting in our relationship. And, you know, as Kristoff said, and we always thought I'd be working out is going to be the best thing that you could do for yourself. And if it's got to be to go into two days or like whatever it is and to strengthen yourself that way and come out of that feeling good about yourself, because you are going to go through some some turmoil. The other thing I would say is be very careful about just rushing into the next relationship. As we talked about in our habits month, we're not breaking bad habits. We're simply swapping habits. So we're replacing one habit with another. And a lot of us, when we feel really connected with a partner and we lose that immediately, the next person that jumps into our life that can replace that connection we fall head over heels for. And a lot of times we're not in a place to make a sound judgment on that next relationship. So giving yourself the space to really explore what are those passions and interests that maybe you didn't have time for in your relationship. We know when we have a committed partner, we're sharing lives together. We're probably sharing friends. We're sharing activities. Now you have an opportunity to hit the reset button and really explore those things that you've been meaning to, whether it's travel, pick up a language, grab a guitar, take on some new hobbies or even try a new sport. This is a great opportunity where you have more time in your life to explore all those things that you're passionate about. And the best part is those passions will shine through in future interactions and allow the next partner to walk into your life. Now, up next, I think that or eating chocolate and binge watching Netflix, right? That's a choice. Hey, give yourself some time to do that as well. I I honestly feel like the healing process for each of us should not be about beating ourselves down into submission, but we should be allowed to feel some pleasure along the way in our pursuit of happiness. Absolutely. Now, we know that you love to refer to a very interesting study that was done by Sonya Lubomirsky and Carl Tucker about how happy and unhappy people really don't have lives that are so much different. Could you explain the findings of this study to our listeners? Yes, this was really fascinating because our intuition says that there must be a difference between happy and unhappy people in terms of what they experience in their lives. We assume that happy people have a lot of happy things happening to them. They're going going to get invited to weddings. They get these promotions, these things and unhappy people. They're just unlucky, right? You have a lot of, you know, funerals to attend instead of weddings and a lot of misery happens in your life and bad health. And what that study that you just pointed out, it was a very fascinating finding that there was no difference in the amount of good and bad life events in either of these groups. Happy and unhappy people had the same amount of good and bad things happening to them. The difference was just how these individuals, these two groups, view these things where they put their mind to. So really focusing on good things is kind of like how you can kickstart your own happiness. Some people have that naturally. I certainly didn't a couple of years ago when I started that journey towards happiness and so I had to learn it. And for all those people who are with me, who don't have that inborn quality to look at the good thing, to look at the bright side. That's why we build high moment for it. It's that famous saying put on those rose colored glasses, right? It's a matter of perception and you can look at things in a negative light or you can look at things in a positive light. Even when we're faced with challenges, whether we're happy or unhappy, we know that life has suffering. There's no getting around it. We're on this earth. There's going to be highs. There's going to be lows and our ability to bounce back from those lows and perceive those lows in something that is a growth opportunity, is a chance for us to reset, is a lesson. All of those things are a lot more beneficial to our mental health and happiness. Well, for myself, I remember getting into self development. And one of the first things that I learned, I think a lot of people hear it was that happiness was a choice. And when that hit me, I was like, well, what the hell have I been doing up until this point? So now it's like, OK, well, if that is a choice, what are the things that I can do to maximize that? And of course, going down the self development trail and look at all the things that would boost that happiness and which has led to, you know, now at 45, waking up at five in the morning, hitting the gym, like it's it's interesting. And of course, when you look at these things from a at the perspective of a 20 year old kid, you're like, well, I'm certainly not waking up at five in the morning. I'm not hitting the gym first thing. And you'll try to do things in your own manner. You know, those things will slowly start grinding you down as age sets in and you stop growing, right? Like when you're growing, everything feels good. You're moving. There's progress, right? But after a certain age that those things slow down and then they start to regress and the day to day of life starts to settle in and you have to start to think, well, now because I'm not growing, we need to be figuring out other ways to grow to continue to grow. And I think more than ever, obviously, we talk a lot about how technology leads to this false sense of connection leads to some of our some of our negative mental health issues. And when we think about all these things online that trigger us that remind us of what we don't have, that we're not traveling, that we're not driving fancier cars or living a more posh lifestyle, all those things that allow us to look at the negative and compare ourselves to others work against us. And it takes some effort and it's a challenge, but I like this idea of training it like a muscle, working on it every single day. The end of 30 days, you're going to start seeing things in a lot better light. You're going to start seeing things a lot clearer instead of being clouded by some of these negative judgments we're placing on ourselves. Absolutely. And I also love that Johnny emphasized growing because when we look deep down into the brain what happiness is. And at the end of the day, it's a reward for learning something new. Yeah, it's not an end to itself. It's a reward for learning. So the minute you stop growing is the minute you stop becoming happier. Well, I think why that's why with youth, it's it's it's easy to be happy because you're just physically just growing that is just the part of it. But that's going to stop at some point and you have to find unique and other ways to continue that growth or everything starts to start shutting down. Your happiness gets started. It's going to get more and more depleted and you become more and more upset. And that you're looking around and you start to see that each day, if you don't, if you're unable to grow is only going to get bleaker, it gets worse. And Johnny, how true what you're saying? Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm chiming in. I just wanted to say that you're absolutely right about the youth thing. When we look at happiness by age, we can see a U bent curve of happiness, which means your happiness is high when you're young. Yeah, and it's declining and reaches its lowest point around the age of 55, something around that. And and goes back up from there. The good news is that we'll find the highest level of happiness usually during old age. So there's a way out from there for all of those people who are just stuck in that valley of tears right now. But certainly you don't have to wait until you're older to make some changes in your life and to start building some positive happy habits about your happiness. See, Johnny, you're almost through the trough. Almost. Now, how happy are you on Sunday after the half marathon, Johnny? Oh, it was, it was glorious. How happy were you on Monday? It was what's the next challenge? Right? The happiness faded fast. And, you know, everyone in our so in Christ, you'll get a kick out of this. So AJ and I over the summer decided to do a half marathon. It's an opportunity to do something new and focus and put some goals up. And we're really excited and we were laughing because we even said this is gonna be we'll this will be great content for the show. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about the training we'll talk and and then we'll have weeks and months to reflect on it. Yeah. And of course, it was a few days after and I'm like, Oh, we got to find something else to do because it's it's gone. And I don't want I don't want to continue living in the past. Right? That's not going to help grow. And and of course, our staff was like, well, we thought you guys at least get taken a month off. Nope, couldn't do it. We because because of how much joy we had gotten from that and and it's easy to see how people get so addicted to physical goals like that and and such and and also mental learning as well. And how did this journey start for you? How do you decide to sit down and build a happiness app? Well, this this is a this is quite an intense story. But basically at the age of 27, I had reached all the goals that by then I had defined for myself. I had an expert position at a very good company. I had lots of stuff that I thought I wanted to have which included a nice house and driver and cooks and these things. I was deadly miserably miserable in that time. That's what I learned. So having reached my goals did not give me any satisfaction. And when I finally admitted that to myself, that's when I went on that path towards more happiness. Of course, it took a little bit more than that, because I was like unhappy and knew about it. So I went up to the mountains to meditate. So I had a tent and five days of like just water, no food. And I thought that's when enlightenment is gonna hit me. What happened was that there was a thunderstorm directly above me on the first day. And now then it almost literally hit me. I was about to die. And when you realize that, okay, it's now really serious. This is the part where my life should, you know, flash by. And then there was nothing positive in that flashback. That's when you realize, okay, if I get down from that mountain and out of that storm, I should change something. So it was basically an enlightenment, but in a different way. And that's how I started to go on that journey. And the science behind happiness that that you've researched, how has it impacted your life? I know a lot of our listeners haven't necessarily been to the mountain top, realized that they're unhappy with reaching success. Well, I hope it doesn't have to be as dramatic for everyone as it was for me. But I hope that the effects of happiness will be as dramatic. So if I look at my personal life, then and now, it took me around 10 or 15 days for the methods that I developed to really start start working and the difference couldn't be it couldn't be it couldn't be more different than than what it is. It was from seeing problems and challenge obstacles everywhere to to to being like, Oh, this is this is so great. This is a great, nice little moment. So that shift of perspective brought energy to my life that I had not experienced in a long time. So that was the first effect that you noticed instantly, you have more energy. Now what you do with that energy, you put that energy to work, right? You put it into growing and learning. Happiness brings a growth mindset almost automatically. You don't you don't judge other people anymore. Yeah, you don't you're not jealous of their success. You congratulate them you you want to help them. And so there's a spiral up that starts with being happier. That's just amazing. The next thing I did was noticing that I'm not so happy with with my fitness level. So what you start doing that and it shows that when you're happier, it's much easier for you to just do that to stay on course, because, you know, then you go running and then you don't focus on Oh, my God, I need to finish 10k today. You focus on, you know, I had this amazing run. And I had this amazing thing happening at the run where I saw a wild fox somewhere and it was brilliant. And so that's what gets you running again. So whatever it was that I did after I decided to become happier, it just was easier and better. And here I am. A couple of years later, I left that job that while it was paying me well, well, it made me very unhappy. And I dived into something I never thought I would do, which is becoming an entrepreneur, because I was scared as shit to do something like that and to put my ideas out there into the world. But here I am right. So it was a very tough time. Setting up this company was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. But because happiness is a form of courage. It was just much easier to do and to endure. And we're now in at around a million dollars in seed funding. And we're making 40,000 people happier right now. And that just feels great. So I couldn't be happier about deciding to become happier. And I encourage everyone to seek the same. I love what you said there about how courage is in happiness or intertwined. And obviously, if you're gonna have a growth mindset, you need courage in order to go into the unknown. And I think that is where a lot of people find their sticking point. Because of course, everyone wants to be happy. Of course, the idea of growing sounds so good. Why wouldn't everyone do it? However, it's the it's the well, the excuse is going to be because going out there, I'm going to be uncomfortable. And if you haven't gotten excited about being uncomfortable, then you'll come up with every excuse in the book why you don't need to be uncomfortable. And in our experience, happy people attract happy people. And disappointed and depressed people tend to clump together and attract like-minded people. So a lot of us need to change our environment too. And we don't realize the influence that our network and our friends are having on our own happiness. You know, we talk about, okay, putting on those rose colored glasses. Well, that's pretty hard if all of the friends in your social group are looking at the negative are catastrophizing and are telling you you can't run that race, Johnny, what's wrong with you? You're a smoker. You're a drinker. You don't exercise. What are you talking about? You're going to run a half marathon, right? All that self doubt that your friends put on you creeps in and all of a sudden, you're starting to feel unhappy. So a lot of this reset also is looking at your environment and saying, Hey, are the influences in my life having a benefit on my mental health or are they detracting from what I need to accomplish to be happy? And of course, that also gets attached to well, if I give up the friends that I have, then I'm going to be lonely. But much like with Christophe, we were talking about these relationships earlier, it's better to be alone than in one that's toxic or holding you back. And, you know, just to have a friend to go to the bar to drink with, so that you have somebody to be around is not a good reason. Right, a warm body is not enough for happiness is what we're saying. And of course, that is whether that is romantic or platonic. It's the same thing. They're going to those relationships are going to affect you in the same manner. We got another question here from a listener Thor from Denmark sent us this email. Hey, guys, I'm a 32 year old father of three. I had my children at a young age. So I didn't complete any formal education above high school. I work in construction as a quality inspector and an assistant to my boss. Plus I have middle management experience from a few other jobs. Here's my situation. I want to shift my career into people management or some kind of leadership based role in my career. I'm qualified and I'm going to school for business leadership on the side. However, my boss tells me that there's no point in doing this. He thinks that I don't have what it takes to be a leader, even though I do his job and mine whenever he's on vacation. I'm applying for other jobs and management, but the lack of formal education is a big obstacle. Do I try to convince my boss that I'm qualified and that he should give me a chance to lead at this job? Or should I start from scratch at another company? Wow, there's a lot going on. Wow, that was a ton. Wait, so Thor, Thor's boss. By the way, that's a great name. Thor's boss says that he doesn't have what it takes to become a leader. That exactly because for me, that's a very good sign that Thor's boss doesn't have what it takes to be a leader. Really, really shows that he doesn't because I mean, leadership is, I don't think it's such an art that, you know, only a selected few can really do and us mere mortals can do. I think that's what people say who are leaders and want to be unique about that. That's, it's definitely something that we can learn and get better at and not everyone is going to become the greatest leader of all time. But there's certainly room for that. The first thing I would ask for is why does he want to, why does he want to be a leader? Why does he want to move up in management? Because I think it's very important. We talked about this before, like, what are the reasons for it? Is the reason that he wants to make more money? In this case, I would say that's the wrong reason to go into it. We talked about this before, right? Just just having success for the success is not going to make you happier. And the same is true for money. We learned that the point where more money doesn't make you happier starts a lot earlier than we think, right? It's at around 60,000 US dollars annual salary, any additional money doesn't make you happier. So earning 60K or 600K doesn't make a difference. So if becoming a manager means more responsibility that you don't like, more tasks that you don't like and seeing less of your family, then I wouldn't do it, not for the money at least. And my personal experience with having been in that situation at 27, a managerial position that I didn't like, proves exactly that, right? It didn't make me happier. Does he want to do it for status? Does he want to do it for success? We learned that winning a gold medal, the highest level of success in sports, doesn't make you happier. It leaves you empty. Also a bad reason to want to become a leader. If you want to become a leader, it's for one reason, it's because you want to help other people. I think that leadership, the task of a leader is to help other people succeed, right? You don't have to do it yourself. You have to create an environment so that other people can succeed. And if you don't like doing that, and if you don't have the skills to do that, then it's not for you, right? And certainly Thor's boss doesn't sound like a person who wants Thor to develop, right? So I would be concerned. Absolutely. I agree with everything you said. I want to add a few things based on his situation. Number one, there are a lot of ways to practice and work on your leadership skills that do not involve going to school and do not involve formal training. You could be a leader in your church community. You could be a leader in your run group. You could be a leader in your public speaking meetup. Whatever the case may be in your personal life, what excites you, what invigorates you, step into a leadership role, organize, bring people together, help them reach their success in whatever that endeavor is if it's teaching a cooking class. When you start to build your leadership skills in your personal life, you can bring those into any job interview and you can talk about them just as well as you could talk about getting that advanced degree. A lot of us get caught up in our own way and think, well there's only one path to success and I have to stick to this path and oh there's a roadblock so now I'm stuck. Really successful people will find other paths to get through that roadblock and if school is not for you then there are other ways to demonstrate in a job interview setting that you have the leadership ability and I would also say you could definitely lean heavily on your experience of being able to not only handle your role but be the person that your boss asked to take over when he's on vacation. I know if I was interviewing you for a position at the Art of Charm and you brought up that to me and without having to say anything about your boss, that to me would demonstrate that this guy is a leader. He steps into a role that is outside of the scope of his work, is outside of what he was asked to do originally. So I think you unfortunately have a boss who's forcing some negative mindsets and views on you who's obviously detracting from your happiness and I do think a change in that work environment would be beneficial to you in the long term. In the short term I think you can build up these leadership skills in the ways that I'd outline outside of work involving some of your personal habits and hobbies and interests and take in to account the fact that when we're bringing people together, when we're elevating people like Kristoff said, that's when we're being a leader and unfortunately your boss is not being a great leader right now, he's not being a great influence on you. Yeah, there's not much to add to that except, you know, the only thing that I'm kind of curious about is did his boss flat out and say that or does Thor feel that way that his boss would say that because he hasn't stepped up to it or and there was another thought that I had here is perhaps he can to show his boss to ask his boss to give him some small projects that he can do and to show that he's ready for this this role. Well, I think the other thing is, you know, based on what he's saying with his boss taking this negative view is, you know, not to go around your boss's back but look to the rest of the team and find ways that you can support them that are outside of the scope of the work that you're already doing. I know even in the art of charm environment we have a lot of team members who are in their own foxhole. They're working on their own projects but they have skill sets and things to bring to the table that maybe are not being utilized in that current role. If you take an hour or two and you support a team member on their projects and help the company reach goals faster or exceed those goals, those are the same leadership skills that you get in upper management. So we talk a lot about this, Johnny, lead from the seat that you're in. Yes. And when you treat the people around you respectfully and you show up and you're the first one there and you're the last one to leave and you're giving it your all and you're supporting team members who are struggling by being attentive and listening to the needs and the goals of the company, now you're exhibiting these leadership skills that don't involve you asking your boss to take leadership training. You're just exhibiting them and if your boss can't see it at that point then a change in that career, a change in where you work, would be beneficial. And to also go with what Kristoff was saying, you know, let's just say that Thor's reasoning to get this job was because of money. And I was laughing because Kristoff mentions whether you're making 60 grand or 600 grand, you know, it's your happiness is still the same. And I'm sure there's a lot of people listening going, yeah, right, you know. And because that's an easy thing to not be able to see, right? And why would Thor want to be making this raise this money? Oh, I think a lot of people say, well, I want to travel because I like to learn about new cultures. You can do that in any city. You can do that anywhere. And so, you know, to experience different things, to experience different cultures, you know, here in Los Angeles, which one do you want? Which, and he let's just say that even if you lived out in the suburbs, there's a place near you where you're going to be able to experience those things. And of course, maybe not in the be in the depths of living or spending time in Spain, but you can find that culture and you can find that experience pretty easily. I agree to that. I really, it's the small things, right? It doesn't involve big travels to somewhere. You really can find it in your own city. And if you spend some time being like a tourist in your own city, you're approaching it with new eyes and you see new things and you see small things that you haven't seen and that's basically the magic around it, right? I wanted to add something which is, well, let's say Thor's boss really is this arrogant person who doesn't want Thor to grow. Then there's still a way to get him on board, which is to appeal to his own arrogance, is to say, hey boss, can you help me with some feedback and some advice too so I can one day become like you, right? And as soon as, this is a trick of the mind, as soon as we ask someone for their help, they and we acknowledge, oh, you're so great, the person will change their opinion about you because, you know, if I tell you that you are great, then of course I must be great too because it takes a genius to recognize a genius, right? So what happens then, and I've used this before, is I wouldn't care so much about the feedback of the boss if it was not good feedback, but the boss will do everything or he or she can to promote Thor, to help him out and even spread the word in the company and say, you know, this is kind of like my student and I'm very proud of him. So by just giving him that throne that he or she desires, that might be a trick to get it done. I love that. Elevating him to a mentorship role changes the dynamic from being someone who maybe is cutting you down or judging you very harshly to now, who someone sees you wanting to become them, it changes the frame entirely. Now, Kristoff, we're on the tail end here of our Happiness Month and what's really struck both Johnny and I, and I'm sure our audience, is just all the misconceptions we have around happiness and just how divorced from reality it is. What in your mind is contributing to all of this disinformation around or all of this misinformation around happiness? I think Johnny mentioned it before, it's basically the way our entertainment and our news kind of like work, always pointing out these big things that are happening and that are supposed to make you happier. It's also a very material idea of happiness that we're promoting with it and I think that that's one thing. I mean we never learn how to be happier, that's another problem. There are abundance of factors and I'm afraid that it's not going to get better. In fact, if we look at the numbers, we're in a serious crisis of happiness these days. We are seeing an unprecedented rise in mental health problems and it's basically a result of where we put our attention to, especially the minds of young people. So, when we look at the influence of, especially social media is having on people, then we see that it's really devastating. In Europe, for example, we see an increase in psychiatric diagnosis of teenagers of 400% within five years. Just imagine that. We can point that really to that time when the age limit of certain social media apps was lifted from, I think, it had to be and when kids actually got cell phones and had permanent access to social media. Yeah, I just saw, Jonathan Haidt had been mentioning that in the research that he did for his book, The Coddling, The Coddling Mind and yeah, it all corresponds with those dates, those times and the minute you start to realize that and or at least you can see it. I know and I even, it's funny, even this morning before coming here, I got, I was on social media and I got mad and I had already, Facebook and Facebook Messenger has already been taken off my phone. That has been done. Don't tell Zuckerberg, he's not happy to hear that. That it's been done for over a month now and that has allowed me to be a lot more happy and not have these fits of rage than but now and today I realized that Twitter's got to go to that thing is out of here. That's the next one. That's getting deleted probably the minute I'm finished up with this interview and that's going to leave Instagram and that's hanging on by thread as it is as well and it's awful but you know it's really, I don't know when we're going to get to a point of, and you even mentioned we're in crisis mode, when will the schools, when will we stop trying to dig ourselves out of this with more technology and then get and get back to those things that do allow us to focus on our happiness? Well I don't think we're learning the tools to deal with this epidemic of social media and we call it an epidemic because it really is forcing comparisons on us and I would love to hear your thoughts on this Kristoff. How do we combat the comparisons that are endless at this point? I mean I can now compare myself to someone living in South Africa, in Australia who just got done surfing and it's summer and I'm sitting here in rainy LA. How do you deal with this endless amount of comparison that's just zipping around the internet? Well I think the troubling thing to find out about social media is not just that it makes you addicted, but it does so intentionally. This is an intentional function of these applications, they're designed to to make you addicted because being addicted to it means you will come back, right? It becomes such an habitual thing and we just think about this, we now have two billion people using social media, that's two billion brains that are constantly fed a kind of like digital drug that releases dopamine in large quantities and that's a huge difference and I predict that in a couple of years we'll see a difference between people using social media and people who don't, on the larger scale that we do see now, but it's already starting with young brains of course because those are still molded in a way. Now when I say that this is done on purpose I'm really not joking. One of the co-founders, one of the early co-founders of Facebook admitted that they found some sort of psychological weakness in people and used that for their end. That's, we have that on paper, that's Sean Parker saying that so he's very very much not happy about having started this thing, of course it made him rich, but it's problematic. Now how does this happen? Why, why does it happen? You already mentioned the keyword, it's comparison. Now we're all worried about our privacy on Facebook, I think we should be much more worried about that comparison and how it's being utilized. So if you say have 365 friends on Facebook that's, that means that every day you have your life compared to the life of 365 people. That's exactly 365 days versus your day. It's basically comparing your day with one year worth of moments of other people's lives. So if that, that, you just get that metaphor in. You're comparing yourself to one year of someone else's life and of course if you have one year, the span of one year there's always something. There's a wedding, there's a holiday, there's a promotion, there's a birth of a baby, depends on how old you are, but there's always something good happening within one year. And what was your highlight today? Maybe you had an avocado toast or something like that, right? Now I'm here and what we're doing is say it's super important to that we share stuff with ourselves because that avocado toast as is significant as it was, focusing on that feeling of that positivity, that's actually very good for you. While feeding kind of like something where you have this giant one year of worth of life experience that's never gonna work, what we're doing in order to get all these this attention, these likes that are you know actually fueling our addiction so much is we're making our lives better than it actually is. And I don't know anyone who hasn't confessed to me that you know what, sometimes I'm actually not feeling that great but I'm still you know smiling all the pictures and saying oh my god my life is so great. It's kind of like what's expected and it's it's made by design so that also means when you cheat the system it makes everyone else feel even more miserable because again if you're not even honest to the people around you then they will feel even more insignificant. You know two things I think most people who live in Los Angeles I think their happen is depends on the quality of the avocado that day. That is very important here as well as how many likes that avocado toast photo gets. Exactly. But the other thing something interesting that you mentioned and I've been thinking about this as well and you mentioned that we're in the future you see it that we're going to be at a point where there's going to be the people who are on social media and the people who aren't and I I've been curious if that rift was going to happen you're saying that you see it happening I don't know if enough people can put it down to get away with it but if they do much like anything else it's not only are they going to put it down they want nothing to do with those who will be. I think it is happening. You think it's happening. I think we've seen it in our boot camp participants I mean even our free Facebook challenge group we've found that people will sign up for the challenge they want the emails delivered but they don't actually want to hop on Facebook and be a part of the group which you know four years ago when we started the challenge we never heard that. Yeah true. But we've had the feedback of why does it have to be delivered through Facebook why do I have to go on to Facebook to get this information. We could be at the beginning throws of that huh. And you know I think Johnny you actually sent me this article there was an influencer recently who came out and admitted that she's basically starving herself on drugs and tapas miserable on the inside but every single photo she's posting is smiling in a tropical destination and it's very easy for us to not understand the algorithm that's running behind this right the only photos that are getting liked are the ones of her in beautiful places they're not the ones of her looking sick after skipping a meal or the crappy tapas that she choked down because she had to eat something they're only the photos of beautiful destinations beautiful people etc so everything in our feed that's being elevated is not the story of our friend getting food poisoning it's not the story of someone having something miserable happen to them it's the story of their highlights their best moments. You know it's kind of funny because when you think about the news that we had all grown up on before all this like the regular channel 6 it's the news and it's just death destruction miserable and then we get social media it's like here's all my happy stuff it's like one or the other there's nothing nothing you're in the middle you're like well I have a normal day how do you even work yourself they'll see that for for what it is and the other thing is you're unable to make a decision unless you bring it to a conscious level so by just passively consuming stuff you're being influenced in so many directions that you are unaware of so of course you're going to be conflicted feeling lost upset and feeling inadequate. I think one of the most interesting things about that I can still add is 2017 for the first time so an evaluation of how online dating is influencing our happiness specifically was a app the app that's very popular called Tinder and for me this is really a night because the algorithm that they use to show you matches on Tinder they got those from one-armed bandits so the same thing that hooks you on gambling is the thing that hooks you on that and people who use Tinder frequently are way more conscious about their body show higher levels of anxiety of stress and depression than people who don't use it and again that's not an accident that's on purpose because what this app is doing beautifully is the same thing that one-armed bandit is doing you get in there and the first thing that you get to see is beautiful people that's the price that's like the cash price that you have on the one-armed bandits right so of course you're like I want this right and you get a kick out of it every single time you say yes I want to meet that person for anyone who doesn't know what a one-armed bandit is it's the slot machine in the casino oh the slot machine sorry yeah that's how we call it yeah it's a good name for it yeah it is because that steals your money that's how we call it I'm so sorry I didn't so anyway here's the fascinating thing any app needs to show you within a minute or maybe two minutes maximum that it does magic to your life right and the way that Tinder does that is by giving you maximum exposure in the first two minutes of you on being on there which means you get seen a lot which increases your chances of actually getting matches and they actually show you people who actually liked you already first so that means the first two minutes of this are going to be amazing and that's the start of a journey towards addiction because just as they give you this exposure they can take it away and they can steer that exposure very well to their to so that you stay on because you're going to get frustrated because the matches are going to decrease they're going to decrease they're going to decrease yourself forward is decreasing alongside that but just before you're about to say no no more money in the slot machine no more swipes you get another another match and they figure this out brilliantly and I have to say as a data scientist I respect them for that but as a happiness scientist I have to say that's very problematic right well you just convinced me that's the next app going off my phone I was gonna say Johnny you've been on there longer than two minutes so I feel a little check it although I think some of our listeners might be excited they might be swiping to get a match Johnny there we go I would just suggest you can use it if you want but don't take it seriously and don't think that this app helps you to validate yourself here's here's another insight from from the usage of it on Tinder the top 20 percent of women are chased the top sorry the top 20 percent of men are chased by the top 80 percent of the women so there's a couple of men who get a lot of attention and the rest the 80 percent of the men on the lower level they are fighting over the 20 percent of the lower tier on the profile scale for the female part so it means that the automatically what happens is a couple of people very few get a lot of attention but most of them don't see anything and then you take yourself worth and put it into the hands of this app it's the worst thing that can happen if you think this is a nice fun game and you can chat with people meet someone that's great but just don't put yourself worth into it it's too to to get upset over Tinder or bum or any of these apps you're it's going to be it's going to be brutal if you take it seriously and do you know what I mean how when when you look at I mean how serious can you take something that is only on service level of hot or not it's just like good picture no not a good picture and it's you can't to take something seriously good however every all the social media is so surface value well the most popular photo on Instagram is an egg we're taking this stuff way too seriously eggs are are out are getting more likes than the Jenners I think we should we should delete Instagram as well Johnny that's the next one off your phone it's going we got one last listener question I really think that your chances of finding a date are way better when you're happier than using Tinder I can really say that there's another study showing that happy people are more attractive so rather than trying to find a date try to become the person that other people want to date and I think you have an app that we should download to help our happiness yeah for sure you can you can use that I'd be happy to have you on there it's by the way happiness is free you don't have to pay to get happier and that's something that we take very seriously now what we do also do is we have we can use the same method that we're using for happiness also for other things in your life basically we can help you build other mindset like confidence boost your relationships romantic or platonic work on your self-love or on your fitness and these things and for that we charge a small monthly fee but if you just want to work on your happiness which is the basis for all of the other things you can do that for free that's fantastic one last listener question here this is actually a revisiting of December's theme habit building Josie from Salt Lake sent us this question hey AJ and Johnny I have a question about habit building and an overzealous temperament when I set out to build new habits I tend to set too many goals at once I know I do this because I'm all about self-improvement and being my best self but I feel like I'm also sabotaging my success when I try too many habits at the same time do you have any tips to help reign in my enthusiasm and pick just one habit to focus on well I think the biggest thing that we talked about last month is the power of chaining habits together habits can be linked and all we need to do is figure out that initial queue so let's say you have a big lofty goal of completing a half marathon right in that goal we know we're going to have to run 13.1 miles but most of us can't get off the couch and just dart out the door 13.1 miles so how would we small chunk it to become that person who could run 13.1 miles well we got to get our first mile in then we got to get our second mile in what we're doing is we're setting ourselves up for success incrementally well I know that I'm not going to get my running in in the evening work beats me down work is stressful so it's hard for me to then put on my running shoes and get excited to go running and I've never been a runner so I know that I need to get up early in order for me to even get my running shoes on so when I start looking at habit formation I'm looking at what's that first domino that will get me out the door and what's the one before that it's the routine that you put together to make sure you get the bed so you can get up early in the morning right so the habit that I would actually start with is turning off my devices in the evening the queue that I know doesn't lead to restful sleep if I'm staring at my phone if I'm swiping Instagram I'm going to end up staying up a couple extra hours which means I'm going to be dragon ass in the morning it's going to be very hard like Johnny I'm going to need three four cups of coffee and even then I'm probably not going to get my running shoes on so when I'm looking at my habits and what I'm trying to do all those lofty goals I want to break down into smaller goals and find the one queue that I know I can rely on that'll get me moving in the right direction and that queue as Johnny said is getting to bed earlier once that habit of a nighttime routine is built then all of a sudden the morning routine shifts and now I have that extra hour to get out there and get my shoes on and get running so when we think about habits and all these different goals that we have we want to pick our one big lofty goal and and you have to settle on one first you can't settle on four I know we're overzealous but from that one lofty goal look at all the steps it's going to take to get you there and think about all those queues that Charles Duhigg went over with us that can lead to habit formation find the initial queue and all of a sudden those dominoes will start to fall into place I think this is really interesting I mean you obviously the experts on the habit building part but what I found curious is that to me it seems more and more that when you talk about habits the way you talk about them it's kind of like the antithesis to the traditional goal setting methods that we have where you have like a big goal and then you live in a state of failure until you've reached that goal and that's just not going to work out and now add to that several goals and there you have it that's just not how it's being done so replacing that with saying okay for example if you want to get happier it's not about I want to reach that point where I'm going to be happy it's about I want to take five minutes every day to say what Christoph recommends which is to think about that one question what's the best thing that happened to me today then that's a much more successful strategy yeah and we talked about willpower as well and willpower is like a battery it drains so when we try to form seven different habits at once we're going to drain that battery we're going to need to go to the apple store to get it replaced we're not going to be able to do all those different habits that we're talking about so when we're fighting that initial queue and if it's the night time routine as we said then we're also thinking about okay how can I link this to the next habit once I get this this habit in line and all of a sudden you chain a few of those habits together and that big goal doesn't seem so scary I will tell you this Amy and Amy's told me all about the science behind multitasking we are terrible multitaskers humans in general are awful at multitasking very very very very few of us are actually good at multitasking and if you think you're one you're probably wrong I know I used to self-identify as a multitasker it's very very very challenging so when we're thinking about all these habits and all these goals that we have we want to orient ourselves on one first get those steps in order get moving in that right direction before we go chasing another thing you know to to continue on this happiness thread and what you were just saying I know that in the past that I think we can all get caught up in multitasking especially in a world that we're living and now where there's plenty to do but when I read the science on that it was easy for me to go well the science is telling me that I can't do it and if I'm going to be the one of the ones that I'm the special snowflake I know that's not the case so I'm going to stop multitasking and my happiness quotient went up the the day I stopped trying to multitask and to see of one task two completion just allowed me not only to be much happier but also to get more done because while I was multitasking A I wasn't getting anything done nothing's crossed off that to-do list and the things that were done were done terribly because I was doing other things at the same time and to add to that then I didn't feel good about the things that I completed because I know that they weren't done to the best of my ability so it was a dominant sound pretty unhappy to me it was awful it was yeah it was the hamster will so where can our audience find your app I know they're very excited to start working on their happiness well you find them in the app store as I said for free it's out on Android and iOS so both platforms unfortunately Windows phone users can't get happier with us I'm sorry about that but you find it in the app store it's available and it's free and I'm really really want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to present it here because for me the the the thing that makes me smile and that makes me the happiest is to make other people happier so it helps me a lot to to get the message out well I know what I got from this conversation which is the apps I'm deleting after this conversation the app you're downloading the app I'm downloading so hopefully we've cleared off enough space in our phones to download the app thank you for joining us we really appreciate you taking the time I love that you delved into the science of happiness and gave us a technology-based tool that actually increases our happiness unlike some of the tools coming out of Silicon Valley well thank you very much for having me once again