Keys to Happiness 🔐

All right, here we are. Another live stream. Let's see if this one works better this time. Anyways, we'll give it a sec, see if we can get some more people in as the beacon goes out. But in the meantime, I am Evan. I'm your resident mental health and addiction therapist here, and I'm super excited about this topic. It is super fascinating to me, not only as a therapist, but as a fellow human being trying to find happiness in their life. Because that's what it's all about, right? Especially as a therapist.

It's like, my job is to help people find fulfillment in life, to be happy. And there's often this negative focus in therapy, for good reason. All right, we got Alec and Carrie here. Awesome. In therapy, there's a negative focus because often people are coming in not just because they're, like, happy and want to maintain that. It's because there's often maybe a mental health disorder going on, or stress or trauma or whatever that may be. And my job is to help remove the negative and then increase the positive.

But it's often very negative focused. But either way, at the end of the day, my job is to help people find fulfillment, happiness in their life, have a better quality of life. So you'd think it would be important for me to know what makes people happy. Now, we all have a general sense of what that is, but just like in any form of psychology, we're not always correct, right? Sometimes what we think is best for us is not always what is actually best for us. That's why in this live, I'm going to be using the word actually a lot.

So what actually makes us happy? Even though my grammar app would probably ding me and say, take that added word out. But no, it's important because often what we think makes us happy is not always what it is. So how do we know? Well, there's actually some very good research about this. There's a lot of very good research that shows some certain variables of what typically everyone is different. But what typically is most associated with happiness, health, and longevity. These things are often very combined.

We cannot always separate the physical health from the mental health. These things are very intertwined. For example, when people come into therapy, we have to look at things like their environment and circumstances. We're going to talk about those in some of the variables, but changing people's circumstances, that often leads to people being healthier and happier. So I'm going to go through this one particular research study that I find to be really interesting, that illuminates a lot of these variables, and there's also many other studies that back these up because no study is perfect.

And we'll talk about why this one is not perfect, but very good and interesting. So are you all ready to hear the keys to happiness? Right? So I'm giving the secret to life here. So it's probably pretty important. Right. I want to know what those are. So anyway, let's go ahead and talk about the study. And if anyone is still in here, please shoot a comment. Please shoot some questions. In the meantime, let's have a little bit of fun, and I want to hear what you have to say. And let's go ahead. Let's do it.

All right. First, this study was done by Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist and researcher at Harvard who's known for his study on adult development. So this study has actually been going on for 80 years. And I guess I don't fully understand because this guy's not like 100 years old. He's not even 80 years old. But I think maybe he took over this study. So 80 years ago, they found two group of men. So that's one of the limitations. This is men from Harvard or from one of the poorest neighborhoods of Boston.

Right. To get a comparative sample between these two groups. So at least you have some variation. But there's probably not a lot of other variation in the intersectionality of it all as far as gender, sex, race, all that kind of stuff. But in many other studies that are done internationally around the world, they show very similar variables. All right, this is the loudest garbage truck of all time. There we go. Much better. All right, so is anyone still here? All right, so let's talk to some folks and see what we got.

So if you are ready, let's go ahead. Had enough buildup? Let's talk about some of the keys to happiness that he found in this study. Let's go. One of the first ones that is most interesting to me as a therapist, and that is emotional regulation. This one is interesting to me because that's what we work on, right. When we have people who are struggling with mental health disorders are in a tough place in their life or going through a lot of stress. Well, some people are better able to handle stress than others or those automatic thoughts and emotions.

Sometimes people just have more negative thoughts and emotions, whether it's just genetically, how they're built and their personality, or through their environment, or mostly always a combination of both. So regardless what we do as therapists is we teach people how to have a different relationship with their thoughts and their automatic emotions that they don't necessarily have control of whether they come right. We can't always control if these negative thoughts or emotions come up. If we could, that would be great.

If we just turn the dial down not to feel anything negative, but we can control our relationship with those. And essentially that that is the relationship with ourself. So having a better relationship with ourself, and you could see why, clearly, this would lead to more health and happiness. So that's one thing to work on. Now, when it comes to all of these, one of the reasons I bring it up is cause, okay, let's say we know all these, then what? This is all about giving you ideas of where you can invest your time and energy in your life so you're not just running on a hamster wheel chasing things that you think are gonna make you happy, but are just illusions.

So where do I put my time and energy? One of those things being emotional regulation is anyone else? All right. The other is resilience. So I'm bringing this one up because it's kind of in a similar vein. But some of the things you work on in therapy can also help with resilience. They can help, basically, your ability to bounce back from setbacks and having a healthier relationship with yourself, with your emotions, that is also something that is going to be beneficial, leading to more happiness, and again, therefore, health.

All right, let's hop into another variable. Which one should I choose? All right, this one's interesting. Healthy behaviors. So, Waldinger found that people who engage in healthy behaviors, such as regular exercise, diet, getting enough sleep, tend to be happier and live longer. Now, that may be obvious that if you're healthy, you're going to live longer, but that's also something that is associated with better mental health. And that's one of the first things I work on as a therapist is, okay, let's see what your behaviors are in your environment.

So sometimes that could be the relationships you choose to be in and engage with. But that is also those things like diet, exercise. I mean, something especially like exercise, is one of the best immediate things you could do for your mental health to reduce anxiety and improve mood. I mean, if you aren't doing that already, it's equal or better to a lot of, like, the different medications you can take. So that's really important. All right, Cadre is here. Maybe that's Alec under the valve Cadre.

So that's good. We got some people commenting that is working. So, yeah, those healthy behaviors and I'm also going to talk a little bit about that longevity piece because I think it really associates. So not only are these things leading again to happiness, but leading to living a more fulfilled, healthy, and therefore long life. So a lot of these things are also associated when you look at people who live the longest. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Cause that's like really fascinating to me as well.

So another one is career satisfaction. So having a satisfying career can also contribute to happiness and longevity. So people who find meaning and purpose in their life work tend to be happier and healthier. So if you have a job that you hate that is stressful, at the very least, that is going to be a big weight on you because about half of your waking hours, maybe a little less than half. And just with how much people work now, it could be more than half your waking hours are spent doing work.

And if you do not find fulfillment, if you have stressful relationships with boss, co worker, that is going to negatively, it's pretty obvious. And why that would be. So I don't think everyone necessarily needs to have, like, their dream job, you know, like working with puppies or something like that. But I often tell people when counseling them on, like, careers, like, find something that you know you're good at and that you don't dislike at the very least, and then find your purpose outside of work because that's a huge one.

And we know that finding a sense of purpose in whatever you do and having that in your life is associated with so many positive outcomes, including happiness. You didn't necessarily include that here, but you'll see that a little bit more in the longevity study. And I bet if I dug a little deeper, but I mean, he did talk about that. It does reference that sense of purpose. And, like, if you think about what one of the more famous books on this man's search for meaning, that's the whole premise of the book, right.

Written by a psychiatrist who went through the concentration camps and talking about how having that sense of purpose helped people get through that and actually survive and get through one of the most difficult things someone could possibly go through. So that makes sense. So we said emotional regulations. This one's interesting, too, and also relates with therapy. Right. Personal growth. So we found that people who have a sense of personal growth and development tend to be happier and healthier.

This includes having a sense of purpose. There you go again, learning new things and engaging in activities that challenge and inspire them. Well, hey, welcome to Cadre. That is what we're all about here is about personal growth and development in many different areas in your life. Not just like the mental health sense, but, you know, having things like financial coaches, people work on, trauma, parenting, all of these different things. If you are able to grow, you decrease stress and you find more fulfillment and purpose in those things, therefore leading to more happiness.

So that's why personal growth is extremely important. And that's what this app is all about, at least in my humble opinion. Another one, positive thinking. So people who have a positive outlook on life tend to be happier and healthier. He found that those who are optimistic have a positive attitude towards life, tend to have better physical, physical and mental wellbeing. Makes sense. And some people, I mean, again, we come out of the box with certain personalities. And just about any parent who has multiple kids could kind of tell you, because I think sometimes we put my personal opinion, we put a little too much on environment sometimes because it's often close to 50 50 in just about any variable.

But as you know, like your kids start develop personalities despite you and what you do with them, right? Just like when you get a dog, you know they're going to have certain personality characteristics. And so sometimes. So that means is we have different temperaments and some people are just going to have more negative thinking or more negative outlook on others. But just like anything else, we can develop and work on having a more positive outlook. And that relates with that resilience piece and the emotional regulation piece that I brought up.

If we're better able to do that, we're able to reduce stress and work on these other areas, we're naturally going to think more positively. And that is something you can learn how to do, right. Having a better relationship with yourself, your emotions and your thoughts. So that makes sense. So we hit all those and probably the most important. So I saved these for last, even though these were listed at the top two, is relationships. So first of all is having close relationships. According to Waldinger, social connections are key to happiness and longevity.

People who have strong relationships with family, friends and community tend to live longer and happier. That is so important. Having community and having social close relationships. This is probably the number one key to happiness from what I've seen. We are social creatures. We need that we cannot feel isolated. There's so much negative as far as if somebody develops without having a close parent or caregiver that is attentive to their needs. This really has a negative, profound impact on psychological and emotional development.

So that's just an example. But later in life, being sure to find those, have those things. And part of it too is often, you know, people who are like, married tend to live longer, right? Especially if they're in a healthy relationship. And that's a really big predictor if someone's in a fulfilling relationship. So they could go either way. But if you're in a fulfilling relationship, you tend to be happier, healthier, live longer, and that may be because your spouse is like being like, you need to go to the doctor, you should probably stop eating that.

So maybe there's something to that too, but a lot of it is just overall fulfillment. So then, yeah, not just closeness of relationships, but quality of relationships matters. You found that people who have supportive, long loving relationships with their partners and friends are happier and healthier. So again, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So regardless of your physical health or mental health, I don't know which is the goose or the gander, but if you have positive, if you have good mental, psychological well being, you're going to be physically healthier and vice versa.

They have a very strong relationship. Now let's talk about a couple other ones that weren't talked about, and this one is pretty interesting. So this is from a different study is what about money? Money, money. So does money buy happiness? And this is super interesting and fascinating to me. So I don't know if anyone is able to comment, what do you think? Does money buy happiness or does money have, what is the relationship between money and happiness? Right? If you have more, is it automatically correlated with being more happy?

Or does it have no relationship whatsoever whatsoever? Or does it have a negative relationship? They say no money mo problems. Is that actually worse to have more money? So if you are able to comment, let's see what you think. I'll give you just a little bit of time and let's see what you have to say before I go ahead and talk about this relationship with money. Do do do do do. Alright, I can only wait so long in the silence. Maybe I could do some elevator music or sing for you. Well, I know some people are having a little hard time commenting at the moment, so why don't I just go ahead and tell you why not?

So the relationship between money and happiness is a complex one, and so the studies we look at usually have mixed results. However, research has consistently found that people who live in poverty or struggle financially are less happy than those who are financially stable. However, once people's basic needs are met, the relationship between income and happiness becomes less clear. Because some studies have found that there's a positive relationship between income and happiness to a certain point.

However, beyond a certain income threshold, it doesn't necessarily matter after that. So the threshold is often referred to as the satiation point or the happiness plateau. So money equals happiness. However, it gets to a point, then it kind of levels off from there. So a study published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the optimal income for happiness in the united states was around 73%, 75,000 per year. The study suggested that people's emotional well being increased as their income grows up to 75k.

But beyond that point, higher income did not lead to higher levels of happiness. However, it's worth noting that optimal income for happiness can vary depending on factors such as cost of living, cultural norms, individual preferences, etcetera. Right. So again, these are all just broader generalizations. So thats interesting, because again, a lack of money could equal more stress. If you have more stress, thats one of the biggest variables. And when you look at those other variables, you could see why having positive or negative value in those leads to more stress.

And thats one of the biggest things, is having constant stress. Hormone release is extremely horrible for your health. And thats why people not just cause access to healthcare and stuff, often have poor health outcomes. So there's the access to healthcare, but even so, having more stress. So getting to a point now, maybe in New York, it's like having 150,000 or California, and maybe it's less than that if you're in Mississippi, but somewhere around that seventy five k mark, wherever that is, where you don't have that same level of financial stress, that you could get your basic needs met, that maybe you could go on a vacation, you could have a little bit of disposable income so that you could partake, and the hobbies and interests you have, and those things that give you a sense of fun, happiness, purpose, and maybe better quality of connection, doing activities with other people.

There you go. That makes sense. And I find that to be super interesting. Now, real quick, I got to get going soon. Let's just talk real quick about health. This is fascinating is that if I want to know how, one of the best ways to know if I want to live to 100 is, well, who are people who live to 100 and how did they do it? All right, so, for example, there are things called blue zones. And in the blue zones is where people live the longest, where you have the highest concentrations of centurions.

And these are the blue zones. One, Okinawa, Japan. Two, Sardinia. In Italy, Nicoya Costa Rica, Icaria, Greece, Loma Linda, California. Community where many residents are 7th day Adventists. Okay, so what connects all these things? And they don't really list this, but they all seem to be warm places, so that's interesting. So I kind of looked into this a little more. So I'm like, okay, well, where does Minnesota rank, because it's so d*** cold. But Minnesota actually ranks pretty high in life expectancy of, like, around 80 years, when it's normally about 76 years in the rest of the country.

So I think it's ranked number eight. So you could still do it in a cold climate, apparently, but these places are far higher. So maybe we want to live to, like, an isolated peninsula or island or somewhere warm. But what really connects these things the most are diet. A diet high, low in saturated fats. Fish. People eat a lot of fish. Japan, tofu, whole grains. A lot of times, too, people are more physically active. They walk a lot. Sometimes, if you're a marathon runner, that could actually not be healthy.

But walking is a very big one, so count those steps. But these folks, grains, lean proteins, they have lower rates of chronic disease, even regardless of how much healthcare they have. A lot of this is preventative medicine. So I think this is important to learn. And it has shown that these people are generally have more of a strong sense of community and purpose. Therefore their physical health and their mental health come together. And so I think, again, in conclusion, look into this a little more.

If you're like me, you find it super fascinating, but this is also really good information on where to invest your time and energy. Right? Don't chase the money, the press, because those things, again, are running the treadmill now. It's okay to do that. Some people does make them happy, chasing them, whatever. But in general, investing in these other areas of life. So hit me up, too, if you want me to send you this list. Or I could give you a link to the study or some of these general findings.

Feel free to hit me up. I'll send that over to you. But again, folks, it's been great.