What’s the Point of Happiness, Anyway?, with Dr. Bill Von Hippel

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Business, Investing

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#371: Psychology professor Bill von Hippel explains the evolutionary science behind how we’re hardwired as humans. We’re wired to be social, to connect, to communicate and cooperate. We’re wired to want to learn and teach, to build a collective body of knowledge that stretches beyond what any single individual could ever learn in their lifetime. We’re wired to feel surges of happiness that fade, so that we’re intrinsically motivated to keep repeating behaviors that lead to additional surges of happiness. Once we understand the evolutionary science behind what makes us happy, Dr. von Hippel explains, we can apply this knowledge to making better decisions for our work, money and lives. Bill von Hippel is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan. He’s currently a psychology professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He joins us to share his insights into the history and science of happiness. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/shownotes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can afford anything but not everything.
0:11.3	Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else and that doesn't just apply
0:14.4	to your money.
0:15.4	That applies to any limited resource that you need to manage, like your time, your focus,
0:19.6	your energy, your attention, saying yes to anything.
0:24.0	Caries an opportunity cost.
0:25.8	And that opens up two questions.
0:27.4	First, what matters most.
0:29.4	What are your default priorities handed to you by society?
0:33.2	But what genuinely is a priority in your own life?
0:37.7	And stemming from that, the second question is, how do you translate that into action?
0:43.5	How do you practice the type of decision making, both short-term and long-term, that fuel
0:51.5	that which matters most?
0:54.2	Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice.
0:56.5	And that is what this podcast is here to explore.
1:00.1	My name is Paula Pat.
1:01.1	I'm the host of the Afford Anything Podcast.
1:03.4	And today, Psychology Professor William O'Van Hippell joins us to discuss the evolutionary
1:10.6	science behind why we are wired to be social, why we are wired to cooperate and communicate,
1:19.2	and what makes us happy.
1:21.6	The Afford Anything Community is overwhelmingly comprised of people who aspire to grow
1:28.0	their wealth or their net worth to such a point that work becomes optional, work for the
	...

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