What allows us to be happy? But Seligman and his crew were interested in what is the psychology of happiness and what they started to do was they sponsored all of these clinical studies in different places

where they interviewed people and they really focused on which people had the telltale signs of peace of mind

and a sense of happiness in their life, purpose, joy, and which people

were overall dissatisfied.

And due to this work in the aftermath, there's now across the globe what's known as the World

Happiness Report where they do massive, massive studies of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, and they crunch out variables that have nothing to do with what is under our control and they try to see,

you know, variables that have nothing to do with what is under our control and they try to see okay why are we happy and why are we

not happy in life what makes us have peace of mind and what creates suffering?

Interestingly enough, again and again and again, whether it's the work of Seligman or Daniel Kahnman who won the Nobel Prize for his research,

they keep finding the same results. And pretty much there's only two factors and if you think

I'm going to say meditation, nope that's not it.

If you think I'm going to say finding a job that pays enough that we can have a lot of you know explore the world or travel or things like that

nope that actually doesn't factor in human happiness.

What they found over and over again is that there's two factors

that lead us to be happy in life.

The first factor is, and this is what we'll be focusing on largely today, is the ability to feel one's emotions and to express those emotions to people that are close to us in a way that's healthy for ourselves and safe.

That one ability to simply know what mood or state we're in

and to be able to communicate it was found again and again and again to be

one of the two most important factors in human happiness.

The second is to have a livelihood or work that we believe benefits the greater good.

In other words, not to have work that in some way makes money or provides a lot of security,

but having work that allows us to make just enough that we can

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