Escape the Happiness Trap

The Art of Manliness

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies. Yet all this focus on happiness doesn’t seem to be making people any happier. In fact, the more they try to be happy, especially by fighting to get rid of bad feelings and cling to good ones, the more unhappy people often become.

My guest would say that the first step in escaping this negative cycle is redefining what happiness even means — thinking of it not as a state of feeling good but of doing good.

His name is Russ Harris and he’s a therapist and the author of The Happiness Trap.

Today on the show, Russ explains how struggling against difficult feelings and thoughts just makes them stronger — amplifying instead of diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness — and how simply obeying your emotions doesn’t work out any better. He then unpacks the alternative approach to happiness espoused by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. With ACT, you allow both hard and pleasant feelings to coexist, and unhook from the latter so that they no longer jerk you around. This allows you to focus on taking action on your values to create a meaningful, flourishing life, or in other words, real happiness.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So as we head into the holidays, things have gotten extra busy than the K household.
0:03.2	We got basketball games, school events, church activities, and all the end of year chaos that somehow hits at once. Most nights, we barely have time to sit down, let alone cook and clean up. And we don't want to eat fast food either. That's where Factor Meals comes in. We've been using Factor Meals, take the stress at our dinner time for a while. these are chef-prepared, dietitian-approved meals that show up ready to eat.
0:23.6	There's no prep, no mess. They take two minutes to warm up. You just heat and enjoy something that actually tastes good and supports health goals. Right now, Factor has more meal variety than ever, including premium options like salmon and shrimp at no extra costs. They've also added Mediterranean diet meals plus bold global flavors inspired by China and Thailand.
0:41.0	A few of my favorites lately have been cilantro chicken.
0:43.1	It's pretty spicy.
0:44.0	I like that.
0:44.6	They also have the Pente Rosee meatballs.
0:46.7	Really good as well.
0:47.6	They also have another spicy southwestern dish that I like.
0:51.4	Spicy Southwestern style turkey and macaroni.
0:53.7	Very, very good.
0:55.0	So if your schedules is packed as ours, eat smart at factormeals.com slash manliness 50 off
1:00.0	and use code manliness 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for a year.
1:06.2	That's factor meals.com slash manliness 50 off.
1:09.1	So that's M-A-N-L-I-N-E-S-S-5-0-O-F, and use code Manliness-F-E-O-F-E-O-F to get 50 off your first box plus free breakfast for a year. Offer valid for new customers only with qualifying auto-renewing subscription. Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break this week from a new episode. It's Christmas. this. We're going to spend time with our family, eat a lot of food, open presents. It's going to be great. So we're going to rebroadcast episode number 868, escape the happiness trap. And while I got your ear, let me tell you about the strenuous life. The strenuous life is an online program that we created to help you turn your intentions into actions. We've done that by basically creating Boy Scouts for men. We have 50 different badges based around 50 different skills.
1:44.7	A lot of stuff we've talked about here on the AOM podcast and over on the Art of Manlyness website. You'll get weekly challenges that are going to push you physically, mentally, and practically. We have check-ins for your physical fitness, doing a good deed, and you have opportunities to meet up with other TSL members in person. In fact, I just had a meet up with some guys here in Tulsa.
2:00.4	We had dinner, talked about what we did in the past year, our goals for the future.
2:03.7	It was a lot of fun. Enrollment for our winter session opens up December 30th, and the next official Strenuous Life Challenge kicks off on January 3rd. Whether you want to move more, read more, or just stop drifting, the Strenuous Life gives you a roadmap, a community, and a kick in the pants to start living with more grit and direction.
2:19.4	Go to strinianeouslife.co and put your email on the waiting list so you're one of the first to know when enrollment opens on December 30th. Spots go fast. Make 2026 the year you stop thinking about things and actually start doing them. go to strenuouslife.co. Get your email on that waiting list.
2:37.3	Strenuouslife.co. I hope to see you on the strenuous life.
2:49.0	Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
2:53.8	Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies.
	...

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