The first day of school is next Tuesday up in Toronto and with it comes the usual squeaky brakes and sharp turns as we try to get back into a rhythm and flow. To that end: I was just interviewed by Forbes magazine about some of my happiness practices and beliefs. I thought I'd share it with you below as a way to examine or refresh some thoughts as we get into the September groove.
Of course, the goal with everything I share is not to be perfect—I'm certainly not!—but just a little better than before. Think of these as little mental adjustments to help us live slightly more happier lives, Neil
P.S. If you know someone who'd like to get my bi-weekly blog posts they can sign up here.
Happiness Really Is Within Your Reach
Interview by Rodger Dean Duncan
Rodger Dean Duncan: In our stress-filled world, what factors seem to take the biggest tolls on people’s happiness?
Neil Pasricha: A lot of things! I'll mention two: loneliness and cell phones—especially social media. And I do feel they're related. On cell phones: We have to remember they're still fairly new for us culturally, and yet University of Bologna professors published a report in 'Sloan Management Review' showing that anxiety spikes when students don’t have their cellphones for even a single day. Another study found when cellphone users couldn’t answer their phones while those phones were ringing, they experienced increased heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety. So we crave our phones! And what are we doing on them? Well, a tremendous amount of time on social media. Even though adolescents who spend more time on phones are more likely to report mental health issues. Social media feels like connection—and yet it gives us the feeling of comparison, of not being good enough, of forever robbing us of joy. I think we need to raise the age of social media from 13 to 16 and ban cell phones from classrooms, and I've been working with my local school board in Toronto (one of the largest boards in the world) to help turn these into policy. Perhaps it's no wonder we're seeing such a spike in loneliness, which is worse for our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In 2023 Dr. Vivek Murthy put out a Surgeon General's Warning about loneliness calling it the next big epidemic. I feel the solution to much of these issues is the same: carving out more in-person time with those we love. Connection with friends and family is the number one driver of long-term happiness.
Duncan: A lot of people these days seem to regard themselves as victims. What advice would you give them?
Pasricha: My mom was born in British Colonial Kenya in 1950 to an East Indian family that moved from Lahore to help build the railroad. She wasn't born the "right" person for her location or her culture. What do I mean? Well, she wasn't white, and she wasn't male. White people ran the country, and men were prized in her family's culture. My mom has told me that her life had a fatalist feeling of finality before she'd even gotten started. There was no sense of possibility, no options other than getting married and serving her husband's family. There was no … dot-dot-dot. Just a full stop. We all have this fatalist feeling of closure in our lives sometimes, which can sometimes lead to seeing ourselves as a victim. The question becomes: what do you do when you see the future you're walking towards but you don't like it? Sometimes the hardest thing is to keep going, to see past the period, to add a dot-dot-dot. Just keep moving. Take it day by day. Stay in the game. Keep going. Add a "yet" to any sentence you find yourself mentally beginning with "I don't", "I can't", or "I'm not" so you're saying things to yourself like "I don't qualify for that job… yet", "I'm not creative… yet", "I'm not social… yet." I think overcoming victimhood means seeing the free will that exists just past the period.
Duncan: You hold the view that life is 10% what happens and 90% how we react to it. If that’s true (and research seems to support it), a lot of people apparently didn’t get the memo. What’s the key to taking personal responsibility for our own happiness?
Pasricha: That comes from the research of Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. She wrote a wonderful book called 'The How of Happiness' and posits a model which says 50% of your happiness is based on your genetics, 10% of your happiness is based on your circumstances, and 40% of your happiness is based on your intentional activities. Your genetics are of course part of how you react, but it's that 40% of intentional activities that can make a big difference. The first step to taking personal responsibility for our own happiness is just realizing that what you do in the world is four times more important than what’s happening to you in the world. What can you insert into that 40%? So many research-proven, happiness-inducing activities: Exercise! Journaling! Nature walks! Reading fiction! Phoning a friend! Dancing! You are so much more powerful than you think.
Duncan: How does an attitude of gratitude seem to affect a person’s ability to deal with adversity?
Pasricha: Gratitude has a big impact on our ability to deal with adversity. Back in 2003, researchers Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough asked groups of students to write down five gratitudes, five hassles, or five events that happened over the past week for 10 straight weeks. What happened? The students who wrote five gratitudes were happier and physically healthier than the other two test groups. Physically healthier! And they didn't even go to the gym. By far and away the single best happiness and resilience practice for me has been writing down 1 awesome thing—a small pleasure, a tiny joy—every single night since 2008. For the first four years I posted them on 1000 Awesome Things and now I send them out at midnight every night. I recommend this practice to anyone. I always say that if you can be happy with simple things then it will be simple to be happy.
Duncan: What does research say about the relationship between personal happiness and lifespan?
Pasricha: Connection, personal happiness, and lifespan are directly related. Robert Waldinger, Director of the 1938 Harvard Adult Development Study, the longest study ever on happiness, says: "… it’s not career achievement, money, exercise, or a healthy diet. The most consistent finding we’ve learned through 85 years of study is: Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period." And the US Surgeon General's Warning on loneliness cites research showing that "data across 148 studies…suggest that social connection increases the odds of survival by 50%." Make more friends, be happier, live longer. I'm not saying it's easy to do, especially in a world with algorithms incentivized to keep us fuming at each other, but it is the way. If it feels hard, start small: join a bridge club, a softball team, or a local cycling group that welcomes beginners.
Duncan: You say external goals don’t help people become better people, only internal goals can. Please explain.
Pasricha: There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is internal—you’re doing it because you want to. Extrinsic is external—you’re doing it because you get something for it. Studies like a 1999 meta analysis from Deci, Koestner, and Ryan show that when we begin to value the rewards we get for doing a task, we lose our inherent interest in doing the task. The interest we have becomes lost in our minds, hidden away from our own brains, as the shiny external reward sits front and center and becomes the new object of our desire. But when you’re doing something for your own reasons, you do more, go further, and perform better. You have to keep measuring yourself against your internal scorecard. I've written a longform piece describing this effect in more detail here, too.
Duncan: What effect does people’s use of social media seem to have on their happiness?
Pasricha: I knew we'd come back to this! Social media causes four problems. And they all start with P. The first is psychological: it encourages us to compare the director's cut of our lives to everyone else's greatest hits. The second is physical: strained thumbs, spines, and eyes. Looking down at our phones adds sixty pounds of pressure to our spines! The third is physiological: our sleep is disrupted by looking at bright screens within an hour of bedtime—our brains literally produce less melatonin, the sleep hormone, overnight. And the fourth is productivity: 31% of our days are now spent bookmarking, prioritizing, and context switching instead of doing what we actually want or need to do. Every one of these alone would decrease happiness, but most of us are getting a dose of all four every day.
Duncan: You write about ikigai (pronounced like “icky guy”), the Japanese word that roughly means “the reason you wake up in the morning.” What effect does a person’s ikigai (sense of purpose) have on his/her happiness?
Pasricha: Ikigai is your purpose, the thing that drives you the most, your reason for getting it of bed in the morning. We just talked about intrinsic motivation, and ikigai fits into that perfectly. Your ikigai will help you be more creative, produce higher quality work and, as Toshimasa Sone and his colleagues at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine showed in a 2008 study, be happier and live longer. Sone's team studied the longevity of more than 43,000 Japanese adults over seven years and asked every participant, “Do you have an ikigai in your life?" People reporting an ikigai at the beginning of the study were more likely to be married, educated, and employed. They had higher levels of self-rated health and lower levels of stress. At the end of the seven-year study, 95% of the folks with an ikigai were alive. Only 83% of those without an ikigai made it that long. I change my ikigai a lot but I always keep it written on a little cue card beside my bed. For some time it may be something lofty like "helping people live happy lives.” Sometimes I'll get tactical: "Give time, love, and energy to my sick 5-year-old.” Sometimes … I'll forget! As always, the goal is not to be perfect—just better than before.
Duncan: Retirement, you say, is a broken concept. Please explain, and tell us what you’ve observed in “senior citizens” who are genuinely happy.
Pasricha: Our modern concept of retirement is relatively new! Retirement was invented by Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century and age 65 was a number created arbitrarily when the average lifespan was 67. The UK, US, and Canada all copied this number but meanwhile we've tacked 20+ years to our lifespans. I think retirement is a Western invention from days gone by that’s based on broken assumptions that we want—and can afford—to do nothing. We view retirement as a reward for years of hard work but in reality it creates loneliness and health risks. I say people don't actually want to do nothing—they want, and need, the 4 S's instead: Social (a place to see and connect with friends), Structure (having a reason to get out of bed in the morning), Stimulation (always learning something new), and Story (being part of something bigger than yourself.) You mentioned seniors! Well, according to the Okinawa Centenarian Study, people in Okinawa live an average of seven years longer than Americans and have one of the longest disability-free life expectancies in the world. You know what they call retirement in Okinawan? They don't! Literally nothing in their language describes the concept of stopping work completely. Instead they have the word we talked about before—ikigai—and so we see the happiest and healthiest seniors are those still doing something they're passionate about.
Duncan: For many people, busyness has become a habit that—if not managed well—can lead to burnout and other debilitating conditions. What’s your advice?
Pasricha: The world is endlessly dinging and pinging us and most of us have alerts, notifications, and alarms going off on our phones all day. I have a lot to say on busyness in 'The Happiness Equation'—including my Time versus Importance matrix which is meant to help force the decisions we're making into four buckets: things we can Automate, Regulate, Effectuate, and then, finally, Debate. But one concept that's not in that book, and which I've started putting into practice in my own life to help, is this idea of Untouchable Days. These are days when I am literally 100% unreachable in any way…by anyone. My productivity is about 10 times higher on these days. I know on the surface this idea sounds completely impractical and I mostly get scoffing and head shakes when I start talking about it. But, I also get more emails from people successfully using this concept across a vast array of ages and careers. If it sounds too hard, there’s nothing wrong with starting with an Untouchable Lunch. Leave your phone at your desk and get outside for an hour where nobody can reach you.
Duncan: What question do you wish I had asked, but didn’t … and how would you respond?
Pasricha: You've had great questions! One question I tend to get asked about is this idea of "How can I read more books?" I'm always talking about how reading books is a great driver of happiness but, of course, everyone says they don't have time. So I'll close with a few tips to get more reading in:
2. Read on something that can't get texts. Too many people are reading on bright screens (which, as we discussed, hurt our ability to sleep) and which also endlessly interrupt our focus.
3. Unfollow all news feeds. Unsubscribe from all newspapers, too. You'll surprise yourself and still know what's going on but you'll dedicate more time for books.
4. Put your bookshelf by your front door. And move the TV to the basement!
5. Turn your phone black and white to make it less appealing. Remember cell phones are designed like slot machines. Go out of your way to turn it off, keep it in airplane mode, and yes, leave it in black and white.
6. Quit books you don’t like unapologetically! Don't let a book you don't like get in the way of the next one you're going to love.
And finally, 7. Practice the Japanese art of tsundoku—which means leaving books lying everywhere in your house. Create a culture of reading just by leaving books throughout your home.
There you go! A few tips to read more books which is one of many practices we discussed to nudge us into a little more happier lives. Thank you so much for the questions.
Read the full two-part article on Forbes here and here.
Learn more about the history of retirement and why you should never retire!
Want an even bigger happiness boost? Here are 7 science-backed ways to be happy right now.
Sign Up for a Dose of Inspiration:
Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays, or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!