Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

People have been talking about happiness for, you know, in the last decade, I feel like I've seen lots of books out there.

There have been other, I guess, happiness educators, teachers, experts, whatever we want to call it.

Why is this picking up with so much steam in lots of different platforms?

One answer is like nothing's new about this, right?

I mean, Harvard had a class on the Science of Happiness taught by this guy Talban Shahir over a decade ago. Also, Sean Acre, another famous happiness researcher, was part of that class. And so in some ways, like, every time somebody does this, it kind of goes a little viral. You know, we've been worried about happiness since, I think since we've been human, right? Like, basically, you know, chimpanzees aren't out there worried about happiness, but probably we are, right? You know, it's in the Declaration of Independence. Like Aristotle was talking about you, Diomonia, back in the day. Like, it's, in some ways, it's just super not new. I think what is new is that a lot of us are focused on this right now because I think things are pretty good, you know, like on the internet, this idea of like first world problems, right?

And that's the problems that a lot of us face, right?

We feel like, you know, we have food on our table, we have a roof over our head, we have good jobs and good families, you know, great internet and Netflix, but something's missing.

And like, and that when you're feeling those first world problems, I think it's even more profound because you're like, everything's supposed to be fine, right? Everything's supposed to be perfect. Like, why do I not feel like everything's right? Why do I feel like I'm not flourishing? Why do we feel that way? Well, I think the problem is that our mind kind of sucks. We have these really bad intuitions about what makes us happy. I mean, people who are in that state are also thinking, oh, if only I could be like that 19 year old lottery winner, everything would be perfect, right? So people are doubling down. They're playing the lottery. They're spending more time at work. They're investing in all this stuff thinking reasonably based on their intuitions, thinking it's going to improve happiness, but we're just going about it the wrong way.

And that's why I think the class can be so powerful. It's not like we don't know what to do to be happier. We have these strong theories. It's just the science suggests they're wrong. Like, it's not like you're not putting the work in. We're putting the work in in the wrong stuff. It sounds like you've had this experience with a thousand different students you've worked with.

Imagine a student right now is feeling... work in in the wrong stuff. It sounds like you've had this experience with a thousand different students you've worked with.

Imagine a student right now is feeling so overwhelmed and so insecure about everything they do in their life.

They're mentally struggling.

They don't feel like they fit in with friends.

They don't feel like they feel like they've got so much

class work and they're just struggling and every day is a battle of how to find a joy in the

smallest things but they can't find any joy where does a kid like that start of actually being

happy like what's the even starting process when you're in that situation?

Yeah. Well, I feel like step one is to just realize how not alone you are if you're in that situation.

That's why I start this class with the stats, right? Like, oh, you feeling overwhelmed? Great.

87% of your college peers are feeling that way too. You know, feeling really depressed,

like actually probably a quarter of you are admitting that you're feeling that way, right?

...