Good evening, everybody. How you all doing? Welcome to the show. I've got a great show plan for you.

We're going to talk tonight about something very important, probably something that people would at some point, if not always deemed to be the most important factor in life, their life in the world.

Drum roll. It's the H word happiness. What is this thing that we are talking about,

seeking, always trying to achieve, reach, live in? I'm going to talk about a bunch of research

in happiness studies, aka the science of happiness. I'm pulling together a lot of different

work from a lot of different sources.

So what a journey we're going to go on. But this is stuff that's really important and meaningful.

And just to kind of frame it, I think it's really important for us to have a working definition of what is this thing that all of us culturally hold so dear. It's something that everyone

talks about. It's something that's equated often very much with happiness, but even more so with a life well-lived, you know, with quality of life.

In fact, and I referenced this once prior, there is a, there is a place, a far-off place, baton, and of course they, you know, they have have their own issues but they have the gross national

happiness index what yes that's right they care about the happiness of those that live there

more so than the gross domestic or national product money income capitalism productivity

yeah it's a beautiful thing. So what is this happiness?

The thing about happiness is that the way we've culturally really gone about seeking it is wrong.

It's the wrong goal, the wrong path, and it's a severe misunderstanding of what happiness is

really about. So we're going to drop deep into that.

It's going to be good stuff.

The thing is, is when we talk about true happiness, it's not something that's dependent

upon circumstances.

Now, again, as always, mental health is about neither denying or illegitimizing emotions and feelings.

It's also not about the amplifying, dramatizing, or acting out of feelings either.

It's about the middle. So it's not a denial that things will happen, but at its core,

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