Live Healthy Longer with Dr. Jim Polakof

Discover the Secret Formula for Daily Happiness!

• Dr. James Polakof • Season 1 • Episode 69

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Unlock the Secret Formula for Daily Happiness!

Have you ever wondered if it's possible to be happy every single day of your life? Well, the answer is yes—and we're here to show you how!

Join renowned happiness expert Dr. Jim Polakof as he sits down with Professor Lorraine Besser, the brilliant author of the award-winning book The Philosophy of Happiness. In this insightful podcast interview, Dr. Polakof and Professor Besser delve deep into the principles and philosophies that can help you unlock the key to a fulfilling, joyful life.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

⭐The core philosophies that underpin daily happiness
⭐Practical strategies you can implement to cultivate lasting joy
⭐How to overcome obstacles and challenges that hinder happiness
⭐Discovering the Art of Interesting

Whether you’re looking to improve your mindset, find peace, or boost your overall well-being, this episode will provide you with powerful tools to live a more joyful and meaningful life. Tune in to uncover the secret formula for daily happiness and take the first step toward a brighter, happier you!

📺 Watch now and start your journey to a happier, healthier life!

🔗 Learn more: https://www.JamesPolakof.com
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Dr. Lorraine Besser: 
Website: https://lorrainebesser.com/
📲 Follow Dr. Lorraine Besser:
Twitter: @LorraineBesser
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraine-besser-0a980212b/

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Speaker 2:

Welcome to another episode of Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim, and in this episode, let's explore if you have enough happiness in your life. This episode is supported in part by Amazon Books. Their slogan is everything from A to Z, and I'll have some great reading recommendations for you at the conclusion of this podcast. Now here comes our host, healthcare specialist author and very popular podcaster, Dr Jim.

Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Jim Bullock-Hobb, and it truly gives me great pleasure to share some happiness with you. So let's begin by asking my listeners are you happy? Could you be happier Now? Would you like to find happiness in your life each and every day? Well, happiness has many definitions. For some, it's a sense of well-being, for others it's joy, and then there are those who would simply be pleased with contentment. Regardless, it's at the core of human nature to simply want to be happy.

Speaker 1:

Now, having said this, the United States does not feel like a happy country. In fact, a recent Gallup poll revealed that, when it comes to happiness, america is ranked way down 23rd in the world, following way behind such countries as Australia, canada, even Costa Rica and Kuwait, and we're also way, way behind Finland, which is ranked first in a population of very happy people. So the question is why? Why are we, as Americans, unhappy? How can this be in the most prosperous nation in the world? Studies show that in the United States, unhappiness is both a political state as well as a mental health crisis. For example, anxiety affects one in five adults and more than 20% of teenagers have seriously considered suicide. We're simply unhappier than we should be. Definitely, our political climate plays a major factor in our unhappiness as a country. Sadly, we've become a disoriented people unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are literally cut off from one another. An analysis of the most recent election demonstrates that many people feel left behind, not listened to, misunderstood, and, of course, their vote was an expression of this discontentment.

Speaker 1:

So what's the solution? Now you're going to hear from my guest Professor, lorraine Besser, in just a bit about her take on happiness, but here's what my research reveals. First, we have to start listening to each other. The 2024 World Economic Forum used the term generous listening, and that's what's needed. That's what's required to bring us together. Secondly, we need to return to the spirit of openness and positivity, if for no other reason than our health and well-being. A recent study by John Hopkins Medicine found that people with a family history of heart disease, who had a positive outlook on life, were one-third less likely to have a heart attack or a stroke than those with a negative outlook. Yes, you can bet your life that a happy state of mind can protect your health.

Speaker 1:

So what does Finland, the most happy of all countries, have that America doesn't? The first reason is very simple to wrap our heads around, the Finns have a welfare policy which provides free health care and education for all. This serves to level the playing field, where everyone is on an equal footing and feels completely secure. And you know what, while Finland's taxes are higher and their GDP will only grow by 1.6% compared to the US projection of 2.3%, it's a very small price to pay for happiness. Where Finland comes out way ahead of America is in the country's high levels of social cohesion, which means the people feel a sense of connection to one another. This is something we're really missing as Americans, and if we're going to become happy again, we need to really listen to one another and realize there is more in common that unites us than divides our country. Without question, there's a lot we can learn from the Finns, but for now, let's get another perspective about happiness.

Speaker 1:

My special guest for this episode is Dr Lorraine Besser, a Middlebury College professor and a leading expert on the nature of happiness and well-being. Her first bestseller is the Philosophy of Happiness, and Dr Besser's new book, the Art of Interesting, is getting rave reviews. So it's time to get happy. Welcome to Live Healthy Longer, professor Lorraine Besser.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, james, I'm really excited to be here Now.

Speaker 1:

You make an interesting comment that people are so often fixated on pleasure. But let's talk about the term happiness Now. Happiness can have different meanings to each of us, and often it can be an illusive, shall we say, pursuit. How you envision happiness?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you. You know, as you mentioned, we use happiness in so many different ways. I think it's really important we can use the word however we want, but I also think it's really important to be clear about how we're using the word, especially if we want to increase our happiness, and so one of the things that the way I approach happiness is to follow along with the way that happiness is studied within the empirical sciences, which is where they take happiness to be this state, this very discrete state marked by positive affect and pleasure.

Speaker 1:

And we're talking about a scientific approach, correct? As opposed to, you know, just coming off the line of being happy. This is actual science speaking.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, and so empirically right, it's really important to have a really well-described object that you are studying, and I think that there is. What we find within discussions of happiness is that there is this distance between the longer term, broader sense of happiness that we use all the time in ordinary language and what gets studied and called happiness within the sciences, and so I find it more helpful to think about happiness as one part of the good life, and so one of several things that we ought to be pursuing and other things that we have to pursue include meaningfulness and interestingness, and oftentimes the broad sense of happiness includes these tones. Right, we often hear about authentic happiness or something like that, and again, that that's fine, but what the real key, important thing is for us to be able to really know what it is, which sense is being used. Otherwise, how are we supposed to know whether what we're reading about or the information we're getting is really relevant for our pursuits and interests?

Speaker 1:

That's important your first book on the subject, which is called the Philosophy of Happiness. It actually reawakened a longstanding philosophical question Can happiness really be measured or, for that matter, successfully pursued? So can you describe and I use the term basics can you describe the basics you convey about happiness?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So in that book what I do is explore basic fundamental philosophical understandings of happiness, which certainly precede the scientific research on it, and then I consider what we've learned about happiness from the various disciplines that have now began studying it, and I found that there were similar issues raised throughout interdisciplinary research. One of them is that happiness, again studied as this state of positive affect, is very short-lived state and so that when we get it and we experience it right, we experience it as something really good and we want it to continue, of course. Yet our physiology is such that it naturally adapts to these high levels of sensation, and so it really makes the pursuit of this kind of sustained happiness a really elusive kind of goal for us.

Speaker 1:

Well, you mentioned short term, which is interesting, I think, in a sense, because short term does that mean it's kind of like a high, we're on a short high and then all of a sudden we come down off that high. Is that what you're talking?

Speaker 3:

about pleasurable states, right? They really describe this kind of this high right, this kind of way of experiencing that is marked by these higher levels of good feelings. But, as most of us know, good feelings come down, right. It's just not part of our system to be experiencing these increased states of pleasure at all times.

Speaker 3:

One way I like to think about pleasure and happiness is really as a reward, right? So pleasure originates physiologically as the reward for the crop that kicks in to kind of reward us for doing the things that we are supposed to be doing. Eating feels really good, and it feels good because we get a sense of pleasure that rewards us for nourishing our body. But in order to function as a reward, the feeling has to go away. We can't eat once and then be good forever, right, we have to eat once, get rewarded when we do it, and then that feeling has to go away in order to motivate us to do it again. So, by its nature, pleasure, these senses of positive affect, they operate as this reward systems that you know originate by doing what things we're supposed to be doing. They've expanded, of course, since then, but fundamentally they are physiologically wired in the same sense. They're rewards. And for rewards to work right. They can't last forever.

Speaker 1:

So I guess, how can we enjoy the highs unless we also experience the lows is really what it boils down to, and the reward, of course, gives us that high. But then we've got to work at it, don't we?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. So the reward gives us the high and then we return to some kind of whatever our default state is, but when it fades away, we should just remind ourselves that that's expected and really just be okay with that. There are other ways that we can enhance our lives and there are other ways to add things that will satisfy us and that we'll find enjoyable, that go beyond just these pleasant sources of pleasure being content with who we are, where we are and obviously experience those highs, but be content with the rest of our life, even though it may not be constant highs.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, and I think certainly I mean I worry about too much of a blanket endorsement of contentment, because I think there is a lot that we can do to enhance our current situations, think there is a lot that we can do to enhance our current situations. I just don't think pursuing pleasure is going to be our best bet to enhance our current situations. So I think we should be content in the sense that we have experiences of pleasure and they go away, and we should be okay with that, right. I definitely worry about punishing ourselves or feeling that there's something wrong with us when our happiness, or feeling that there's something wrong with us when our happiness fades away. There's nothing wrong with us, that's just part of how it works. And the more that we can accept that and recognize it, then you know, the less hard on ourselves we'll be and the more that we can find space to do other things that'll enhance our lives and deliver to us a good life.

Speaker 1:

I like it In any case. Your latest book, by the way, which is, as you know, getting brave reviews, is called the Art of Interesting. Now, of course, interesting means different things to different people.

Speaker 3:

What does it mean to you? I see interestingness as just as important as pleasure. You, I see interestingness as just as important as pleasure. Both describe the quality of a certain range of experiences, and both are really important in our lives, and we haven't talked that much about the interesting, and so that's what I'm here to do.

Speaker 1:

So. But if we find something interesting, does that mean we're happy, that we found something interesting and therefore we're in a state of happiness, or does interesting mean something provocative, it means something else other than happiness, or do they both coincide?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I think that the interesting is certainly different and distinct from happiness understood as a state of positive affection. Happiness understood as a state of positive affection and part of my research originated within a collaborative work I did with a psychologist, shigehiro Oshii, who became interested in the question of whether or not our current ways of understanding the good life, which is in terms of happiness or meaning or some combination of those, whether those really exhausted all there is to a good life, and so we began working on this project, studying this concept, or developing the concept of psychological richness, and trying to understand what it is and why it's really important to us, and one of the things first and most important things we found was that psychological richness, this state, is distinct from happiness and meaning, and what that essentially means for us is that where we don't find happiness, or where happiness is really not kicking in, perhaps because we're experiencing complex emotions, we can still have valuable experiences that are rewarding and that enhance our lives, and those are the interesting experiences. What we know about psychologically rich states is that their nature is such that they really arise under conditions of challenge, complexity and novelty, and these are all conditions that trigger this robust form of cognitive engagement. You'd also notice they're not all situations where positive feelings are always flowing. Gosh, one of my favorite examples is also generates painful feelings for me, but I will share it.

Speaker 3:

So, thinking about snakes for me, like I am really scared of snakes and I'm not scared of many things, but snakes I'm really scared of it and so I can think about snakes and be actually really interested in thinking about them. Where I live in Vermont, we're across the lake from a place where there are rattlesnakes in the mountains, and there's a lot of folklore about these rattlesnakes, right? Such as that they follow these boundaries, so like they go only to a certain point around the mountain, but they don't cross over any certain lines. There's also people who claim to see them swim, and I find this kind of these stories about these rattlesnakes very interesting to think about. Right? How can a snake follow a boundary? How can a snake swim, right? All of these things I find really interesting to think about. Yet place that I want to be in, even though it makes me shake it and have uncomfortable feelings, right.

Speaker 1:

So you find snakes interesting, but you're not happy when you're around them. That's what it is yes.

Speaker 3:

Nor am I happy when I'm thinking about them.

Speaker 1:

No, I sure am not myself. I don't know what it is about snakes and I don't think it's biblical, but when I see one it scares me. If it's coming towards me it really does. I know that I could probably handle the situation, but yes, I find them very interesting, what they do, the different types, varieties, so yeah, I do see the difference. Very good point In your book, the Art of Interesting, you discuss what we're missing. What are we missing?

Speaker 3:

I think we're missing psychological richness.

Speaker 1:

Can you describe how we go about enhancing our psychological richness?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and so the way to go about thinking about how you can really develop more psychological richness within your lives is to really think about the conditions that it's correlated with and then to put yourself in those conditions. Right, so it's not the kind of thing that we can plan to pursue directly, right, because that takes away all of the interesting parts of it, but what we can do is look at the research. So here's what we know that psychological richness is primarily correlated with. So it crops up in situations of novelty, complexity and challenge. So we can develop more psychological richness in our lives by allowing ourselves to be in challenging positions and seeking out the complexity in the world, and also by seeking out novelty or discovering novelty around us.

Speaker 1:

Should we be reading more? Should we be watching a little bit more PBS than on television, as opposed to watching the serials that we have that are shoot-em-ups and all of that? I mean, are we going in the wrong direction as a society, where we're focusing on the wrong things rather than enriching our minds? Is that kind of what you're saying?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think there is that sense in which, as a society, we do tend to focus on the wrong things, but I also really believe and I think you started out with this right that what each person finds interesting is very unique and specific to them, and so I'm hesitant to say that. There's one thing like start reading more, find documentaries. These are all sources, potential sources, of psychologically rich experiences, but it also depends on what's really activating the individual.

Speaker 1:

Good point. Now there's something you mentioned in your book that's interesting, because we face daily obstacles, things that really bother us, things that challenge us. You mentioned in your book turning obstacles into adventures. Can you explain that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. So obstacle, like thinking about something in terms of an obstacle, it really just shuts you down. Right, you put all these expectations on it, these bad expectations, and it's really gonna, you know, close off any possibilities for you. But if you stop just seeing it as an obstacle and instead just bring openness to see what happens, then you'll be more apt to have a psychologically rich experience.

Speaker 1:

So is this, by any chance, where the power of positive thinking comes in? Let's say, an older adult who's facing some serious illnesses or medical challenges, so to speak? As we age, obviously more things come into our life that become obstacles, really big obstacles. So the utilization of the positive thinking approach is this helpful in those situations?

Speaker 3:

You know the positive thinking approach. It certainly can be helpful, right. But I think we ought to be really aware of the potential for toxic positivity to creep in, and by that I mean a form of positivity that really refuses to acknowledge the challenge itself, right? So there's a way in which we can interact and it's a tempting way and it's always motivated by a great place where we think it'll be more helpful for a person to just not think about the challenges or to say that you know, no, it's actually not that bad and you know, really, we can, we can think of it this way. Or even just like for people to engage with, people with, with someone who's suffering, and not even recognize that suffering because we think that'll that'll hurt them somehow. We think that being positive will, will help them somehow. I think that approach can be very hurtful to someone who is suffering, right, if someone's suffering, we need to recognize their suffering. We don't want to.

Speaker 1:

We need to acknowledge it. To overcome the obstacle.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, we need to see it first. Right, and we don't, you know, we don't want to erase it for them, don't you know we don't want to erase it for them. If they're suffering, they probably, you know they can't erase their challenges, and suggesting that they do is, I think it can be problematic.

Speaker 1:

I understand. So, in conclusion, Dr Besser, let's get back to the theme of happiness. Professor, let's get back to the theme of happiness. Can you summarize your vision of achieving happiness on a daily basis? I mean what's required to achieve happiness to keep life interesting.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I think that on a daily basis, what we can do is really be aware and more conscious of what we're experiencing. So simply by being aware of, you know, when we feel positive affect blooming right, and then to let it go right and be really experienced in the moment as it comes. And likewise, I think we can really pay attention to things that are stimulating our minds and allow that to happen and allow psychological richness to develop out of that and reminding ourselves of when we're stuck and that you know there are moments, even when you have a pressing deadline, you're still driving to work. You can look around your environment as you drive to work and take in something new, bring some curiosity to it, have an interesting experience. You haven't done anything different, you haven't really sacrificed any real mission or plan, but you've given yourself a moment to really enjoy and experience something that is rewarding.

Speaker 1:

You've opened your eyes and your mind.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes exactly.

Speaker 1:

Well, dr Besser, I really want to thank you for sharing such enlightening information with us, and in a moment, we're going to let my listeners know where we can learn more about you and your great books, such as the Philosophy of Happiness and the Art of Interesting, and I'll be right back to discuss foods that make you happy.

Speaker 2:

You can learn more about Dr Lorraine Besser and her best-selling books, the Art of Interesting and the Philosophy of Happiness on our website, jamespolakoffcom. You can also visit Dr Lorraine Besser's website at lorrainebessercom. And here are three excellent books you can read or buy on Amazon. Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim is written by our own Dr Jim Polakoff, and don't forget to read those terrific reviews for Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim on Amazon. Also, check out the Real you Only Better giving you the inside look into plastic surgery and how you can make certain your inner beauty blooms. Plus, savor a fun and romantic story about two above-par lovers intertwined in the world of golf. It is called Love in the Pines. You can find all of these terrific books on Amazoncom. You can also visit our website, jamespolakoffcom. That's James P-O-L-A-K-O-Fcom. Now back to Dr Jim.

Speaker 1:

I again wish to express my appreciation to Dr Lorraine Besser for sharing her enlightening perspective on happiness and, what's interesting, she certainly imparted some good advice. So let's go ahead and accelerate our happiness by discussing healthy foods that make you happy. Now, did you know your body has feel-good chemicals? Yes, there are two, namely serotonin and dopamine. Now, serotonin regulates your mood and it promotes sleep, while dopamine manages motivation, attention and emotional reward. For example, the satisfaction you feel when accomplishing a goal is partly due to your dopamine rush. So what foods can we turn to to activate these feel-good chemicals?

Speaker 1:

First of all, it's back to fruits and veggies. All vegetables and many fruits contain complex carbohydrates, which are important for stabilizing your mood. Complex carbs can help in the production of serotonin. Other sources of complex carbs include whole grain bread, brown rice, whole grain pasta, beans and oats, for example. Now, as a nutritionist, I also recommend oily fish like salmon, trout, mackerel, even sardines fish like salmon, trout, mackerel, even sardines. These are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and these are important for brain function, along with communication, which are stimulated by serotonin and dopamine. There are many more tasty tips to stimulate happiness, so I suggest read my latest blog Healthy Foods that Make you Happy. Simply come to our website, jamespolikoffcom and click on blogs, and remember that a new episode of Live Healthy Longer is available each and every Wednesday. Every week, I'll be covering important issues that affect our well-being, including our bodies, mind and soul. This is Dr Jim Polakoff. Thanks for joining me and permit me to offer this salutation. Let's vow to live together, with understanding each other, in good health, filled with happiness and longevity, so you.

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