Hello and welcome to the Being Well Podcast, my name's Forrest Hansen.

Today we're going to finish our focus on the strength of gratitude by taking a look at being happy for others, how we can use authentic

experiences of altruistic joy for others as a way to become happier and more resilient

ourselves.

So joining me to feel a little bit of altruistic joy is Dr. Rick Hansen.

In the book Resilient, in the section on Being Happy for Others, you refer to it as the

happiness which is always available.

Yeah. So why is that?

It's the idea that if you're happy that others are doing well.

As the Dalai Lama put it, you can always be happy, since always somebody is doing well.

Yeah. It could be someone you know, it could be someone you don't know, it could be someone you simply

imagine, but if you can find a fundamental kind of sympathetic joy or altruistic joy, it's called,

at how others are doing, that's a wonderful opportunity to feel good, have positive emotions, and even be grateful.

Grateful for the good fortune that has led others to do well, and grateful for the fact that

you can be happy at any time by being glad about

what's happening for other people. So it's sort of purely altruistic reasons,

you know, it's good to feel good for others. What are some of the

benefits of feeling happy for other people psychologically? Yeah, when we're

glad for others, first of all, we're experiencing positive emotion and as we've talked about here and Barbara

Fredbick Center and others have researched positive emotions in general confer many

benefits they strengthen the immune system they protect the cardiovascular system against stress,

they lower the wear and terror of ongoing stress upon us, and positive emotions also tend to

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