hey guys it's practical psychology and in this video I'm gonna be talking to
you about the happiness equation now the happiness equation is so far my absolute
favorite read unhappiness the stories in it were super fascinating and Neil did a
wonderful job integrating studies and facts with his own stories so the author
starts off the book by showing the most common flowchart for happiness first
most people work really hard then they think that they will become successful
because of the hard work and then they think once they're successful that will
cause them to be happy so you train then you win and then you be happy well the
author points out that's a misconception and actually causes a lot of unhappiness
similar to the happiness advantage he shows that most people work better when
they are happy and better work leads to a higher chance of success which
reroutes the flowchart backwards now right into the first couple of chapters
Neil gives seven ways to be happier in just a couple days one of them is to
write down or journal whenever you feel happy not only will this extend those
happy feelings but it will also give you something to read when you are feeling
unhappy another tip he gives is to perform a random act of kindness in fact
he quotes Martin Seligman we scientists have found that doing a kindness
produces a single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any
exercise we have ever tested so try it out perform five random acts of kindness
this week and don't forget to write about him for double the points one last
tip he mentions is to come up with five things that you're grateful for now Neil
turn this into a business creating a blog and eventually a book by listing
1000 things from wearing underwear fresh out of the dryer to writing on someone's
shoulders when you're a kid but before he goes any further in the book he wants
you to understand why it's important to be so happy so he pulls out a study
about nuns now some researchers found a whole bunch of handwritten
autobiographies of nuns who join convinced in the 1930s so what do these
researchers do they read all the notes all the autobiographies and sorted them
in the two groups based on how positive the attitudes were the cool thing about
this study is that this study had no outliers most of the variables were the
same none of the nuns drank smoked had children married and also they all lived
in the same city and ate around the same type of food so the relative happiness
must be closely related to their attitudes so what are the researchers
find on average the happiest nuns lived ten years longer than the grumpy ones
also by age 94 54% of the happy nuns were still alive but only 15% of the
least happy ones were this famous nun study helps us realize how important it
is to stay happy something I found relatively useful in this book is to
change the way you think about goals now a lot of people pick goals they can't
specifically control for example I want to lose 10 pounds
I want to reach 1 million subscribers I want to reach $1,000 a month in my sight
hustle so here what your goal should actually look like I want to work out
three times a week I'm going to upload high-quality videos every week I want to
publish twelve ebooks this year those are the things that you can actually do
to whereas gaining a million subscribers depends on other people it depends on
how much food you weight it depends on the YouTube algorithm it depends on how
people react to your writing so let's move on to the next study and this is
one of my favorite man I get so excited about this topic so there's an island
called Okinawa and what's special about it and what's special about it is that
the people that live there live the longest
ever without disability here's some examples there's a 96 year old man who
defeated a 30 year old boxing champ a 105 year old man killed a snake with a
flyswatter so yeah obviously some pretty cool stuff happens here anyway
scientists were interested in this so they started studying these people and
they found out a couple of things the first one is they found that they ate on
average smaller meals than most other humans do number two is that they found
that they stopped eating earlier when they are around eighty percent full
number three is that they were born into social groups and stayed in that social
group until they died and number four is the big one is that they did not have a
word for retirement in fact they never retired they just never stopped working
see the Japanese have this word called a key guy or a key guy which means a
reason to wake up in the morning so do you have one here's some examples that
the book gives one guy's purpose is to teach martial arts and keep the art
alive and he's currently 102 years old there's also a hundred-year-old
fisherman and his reason is to catch fish and feed his family
oh yeah there's also a hundred two-year-old woman and her reason is to
hold her great-great-great granddaughter that would literally require six
generations of family that's nuts what an amazing goal that is so the
moral of this story is to find your purpose find your a key guy and you'll
live longer a key guy it I think it key guys sounds better also
Neill points out three things about retirement that you might want to
consider one it's new nobody retired before the 18th century ever - it's a
Western idea now there's nothing wrong with this but it doesn't necessarily
encourage as much contribution to family and society as a whole like most Eastern
civilizations did and number three it's broken it's based on three flaws one
it's based on the fact that we enjoy doing nothing as opposed to being
productive - it's based on the fact that we can afford to do nothing for decades
and three it's based on the fact that we can afford to pay others for doing
nothing for decades so I feel 100% more fulfilled when I'm doing something
productive as opposed to doing nothing and it's probably no coincidence people
say the two most dangerous days in your life are the day you're born and the day
you retire now let's get on to how you can make more money than a Harvard MBA
first of all let me show you this graph so that you can understand it without me
saying a whole bunch of words and trying to explain it let's compare the salary
of a Harvard MBA an average retail assistant manager and a teacher with
salaries of 120,000 70,000 and $45,000 a year respectively now add in vacation
now let's calculate how much each person actually works per year by multiplying
how much they would work per week by how many weeks they work in a year now you
just divide their total salary by how many hours they work and with these
numbers they all come out to $28 an hour each one of these professions earned $28
an hour a Harvard MBA graduate just works more hours per year and that means
they earn more even if the rate is the same so would you rather work an average
of 81 hours a week or an average of 30 hours a week that's the difference just
how long each person works one more big idea that I got from this
book is that happiness well self satisfaction anyways is when what you
think what you say and what you do are all in harmony and in my past video on
outwitting the devil I didn't really understand this but maybe that's what
Napoleon Hill was talking about when he talked about harmony the last thing I
want to leave you guys with is that some of the best advice Neal gave was not to
follow other people's advice or common sayings he found that many common
slogans are just catchy and they're not always true here's some contradictions
birds of a feather flock together a contradiction of that is opposite
attracts absence makes the heart grow fonder is opposite of out of sight out
of mind you get what you pay for it is basically the opposite of
the best things in life are free and good things come to those who wait it's
contradicted by the early bird gets the worm or the second Mouse gets the cheese
it just matters what context you put these in anyways I really really enjoyed
this book and I hope you guys enjoyed my review if you want to read this book
I'll put a link in the description and if for some reason you want a free trial
to audible to listen to this book while you're doing other stuff there's a link
for that too thank you guys for watching and I hope you learn something