Welcome to the Happiness Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. I want to ask you a question. If I offer you a

coin flip where heads you win $120, but if it lands on tails, you lose $100. Would you take that bet?

Compared to the odds at Vegas, and mathematically, it's a really good bet. Psychologically,

most people would refuse. Why? This may sound like a simple question, with though a surprising

answer, a not very important answer, but the truth is, this propensity in us can radically shape the outcome

of our lives. This was such an important study that the researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos

Tversky won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their Prospects theory.

What they discovered was, though we think we are logical creatures, we are actually biological ones.

They found that the psychological pain of losing something is mathematically twice as powerful

as a pleasure of gaining something of equal value.

Why are we like this?

It goes back to our caveman brain.

Evolution built us this way.

For our ancestors, gaining an extra day's worth of food was nice, pleasurable. But losing a day's worth of food

meant starvation, death. Our brains evolved on the savanna for survival, but that same brain

we're now trying to use to find happiness in the modern world. But here's the problem with that.

Prioritizing safety over growth keeps us alive,

but it doesn't make us happy. As a clinical psychologist working in private practice now for over 30 years,

I've seen a lot of people surviving, but sadly, very few people actually thriving. I really love the people that I work with, but so often I want to reach over and say,

please stop doing what you're doing. It isn't making you happy, but they feel safe. They feel secure, even though their lives are a mess,

but it's a mess they know. It's what they're used to. It's their habits. Maybe life is very

hard for me right now, but it's predictable. I know it's coming. If I take risks,

...