Darren Brown's specials on Netflix are nothing short of fascinating. They are what happens when someone who was obsessed with

human behavior, instead of choosing a career path in psychology or

psychiatry, decides to become an entertainer. And it's that obsession that I wanted to tap into

so I could better understand what it takes to be happy.

This is a bit of optimism. It's very nice to meet you, I have to say.

Oh, well, very nice to meet you.

Oh, well, very nice to, very, very nice to meet you. You and I are both interested in

happiness. Yeah. But not the pursuit of it. Which is ironic.

Yes, it's one of those big nouns which is better off living as a verb as something active

rather than just this sort of thing.

As the moment you see it as a thing you start to think well I'm entitled to it or

it's something that other people have and I don't or it's some kind of birthright or it's something you're going to know when you achieve it and all of those which turn out not to be true.

I think it's an activity isn't it?

Something you're constantly grasping at.

Yeah. Maybe hold on to it for a second and then it leaves. I like this idea of happy as a verb to happy.

Yeah, I like that. I I happy with my friends this afternoon. It was really fun.

I think generally we should unpack nouns into verbs as much as possible because life is

complex and messy and all those nouns are us trying to reduce complex and messy things is something, you know, that our ego can

neatly stack away and move on and we obviously need to do that in order to navigate this

strange world, but every now and then unpacking those things, particularly

when it comes to partners and relationships, you know, that's really important, isn't it, not to just

see them as a kind of a thing that is you know contained and you've worked that out

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