Jonathan Rauch on The Happiness Curve

The One You Feed

Eric Zimmer

Education, Self-improvement, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Buddhism, Mental Health

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the author of 6 books (and many, many articles) and is a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His latest book is The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. See what you think about the trends of happiness in your life compared to the tendency he describes in his book and this interview. It may be that the emotional peak of life is different than when you’d expect.

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In This Interview, Jonathan Rauch and I Discuss…

His book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
Connection to others
Generosity
The factors that most contribute to our happiness
The U shape curve of happiness in life
The emotional peak of life
How our expectations change as life goes on
That our values continue to change
The fact that our brains change over the course of a lifetime
How the effects of connectedness are cumulative and durable
The hedonic treadmill
What to do to be happier at the bottom of the curve
The suffering that comes from social comparison
Staying in the present moment
Internal criticism
Guilt vs Shame in mid-life
The benefits of being other-directed, other-oriented
How the voice of impulsiveness isn’t our friend

Jonathan Rauch Links

Homepage

Twitter

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Transcript

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0:00.0	As we age, we're kind of biologically gradually reprogrammed to focus less on climbing the
0:06.7	greasy pole of social competition and more on community and connection with other people.
0:21.2	Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
0:26.4	the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
0:33.5	and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend to read negativity,
0:39.5	self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that
0:46.2	hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes
0:52.8	conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how
0:58.5	other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
1:17.6	Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Rausch, a senior fellow at the
1:22.5	Brookings Institution in Washington. He's the author of six books and many articles on public policy,
1:28.6	culture, and government. He's a contributing editor of the Atlantic and a recipient of the 2005
1:34.1	National Magazine Award. His latest book is The Happiness Curve. Why Life gets better after 50?
1:40.4	I also wanted to remind everybody that listener support is the heart of what makes this show work,
1:45.7	and there's so many ways you can support us. You can go to OneYouFeed.net,
1:50.1	slash support, and make a contribution. You can also go to OneYouFeed.net, slash Amazon,
1:56.6	and buy all your purchases through there. And finally, you can go to iTunes and subscribe and
2:00.8	leave us a rating in review. That's really helpful for us as well. If you'd like to connect to the One
2:05.6	You Feed community, you can also join our Facebook group at OneYouFeed.net slash group.
2:20.1	My life gets better after 50, and we will jump into all the details of the book in a moment,
2:27.2	but we'll start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with
2:32.5	his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves that are always at battle. One is a
	...

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