What Rock Bottom Taught Me About Happiness
that’s been making the rounds on the
internet and it’s been attributed to
john lennon i think
and uh you may have seen it it says
when i was five years old my mother
always told me that
happiness is the key to life so when i
got to school
they asked me what i wanted to be when i
grew up so
i wrote down happy they told me that i
didn’t understand the assignment
and i told them that they didn’t
understand life
now this is you know most likely not a
quote by john lennon
it’s just a cheesy anecdote but it is
one of the most shared ones on the
internet you know it’s been posted
several million times why
well for one because it does take a
clever swing at authority and we can all
relate to that
but you know it also gets
at a deeper truth that all of us
can intuit happiness really is the key
to life
but you know you might walk away with a
pretty satisfied smirk on your face
after reading this like oh hey you know
pretty clever kid he showed them then
but
what you probably don’t ask yourself is
how
how is he gonna be happy because even if
happiness is the key to life it eludes
pretty much all of us
so you know while we’re at it let’s ask
the big scary question
what is happening well actually you know
maybe we should
take it a little smaller because you
know it is only
humanity’s biggest question and today is
a saturday
so if i asked you
tell me about a time when you felt
happy what would you tell me perhaps
you would tell me about that perfect day
at the beach
or about the first time when you held
your child in your arms
or you know the day when you got
that award that you worked 10 years for
or something as simple as just you know
savoring your favorite ice cream
or i don’t know jumping out of an
airplane
well actually maybe that’s not on
everybody’s list
so these things are all pretty different
you know there’s a wide range
of what we call happy and we could use
very different words for them as well
you know we can call them joy
euphoria excitement pleasure bliss
it turns out that this you know there’s
quite a lot of nuance to this happiness
thing
and the reason why there’s so much
diversity is because we have four
different chemicals
in our bodies that make us feel good
the first one is serotonin and that’s
the most famous one you know the one
that’s usually associated with happiness
and it’s actually responsible for for
inner balance you know for that sense of
peace and sense of calm
then you have oxytocin that’s called the
love chemical
and you get it from touching from
hugging your loved ones from laughing
with your friends
then there’s endorphins and that’s your
body’s natural anesthetic
and you know when you exercise very
vigorously
um you get kind of that you know that
high the runner’s high
that’s um endorphins and
the last one is dopamine that’s the
reward chemical
so um you know when you’re accomplishing
a task and you
feel that sense of satisfaction that’s
dopamine at work
and what’s even cooler is that you can
get
you can you know these chemicals mix up
with each other and also with other
chemicals that we produce in our bodies
and they produce this kind of cool
amazing hormonal cocktails
for example if you take dopamine and
oxytocin
and you throw in some adrenaline which
is associated with fear
then you get crazy in love
or according to your ex just crazy
so which one of these is happiness is it
all of them
can we maximize them you know can we
just crank them up
so that we feel like this all the time
and is this what happiness is
this is just chemistry is it just a
bunch of feel-good states
before i attempt to answer some of these
questions
i want to tell you why i’m so interested
in this topic
four years ago i had a complete rock
bottom
and i had depression and i had ptsd
that’s post-traumatic stress syndrome
and it sounds bad and it was bad i was
absolutely miserable
and i was as far away from happiness as
you can possibly imagine um and i
decided i was going to
throw all of my resources into getting
myself out of this
you know dark place and
you know i i did and turns out you know
it
put me on a very interesting life path
and i turned it into a career
that’s a topic for a completely
different talk
um but the point is that you know i was
doing so many things therapy alternative
medicine
meditation like you name it i was doing
it
and this stuff worked you know i was
feeling better
and better and at some point in my
healing journey
i stumbled upon a state that
i had never encountered before at least
not
in my adult life i felt this
this joy and this peace and the zest for
life
you know and i didn’t have to do
anything for it i would just wake up in
the morning and i was in love with life
and i was completely confused and so
i went to my therapist and
i was like i feel absolutely amazing
what the hell is this and he was like
well
you know that’s inner happiness the
that one you’ve been you’ve been reading
about this whole time
and i was like oh really
i thought that was just something that
they put on greeting cards that’s a
thing
and he was like yeah it’s a thing
and of course i didn’t believe him
i do have some trust issues but good
thing is i am
in therapy so i was like
okay i’m gonna research this
and i went to read
accounts of monks of yogis
of you know mystics from across all ages
and across all faiths turns out
it is a thing they said it’s a thing so
you know they all talked about
experiencing it and how they get to it
and i was still not convinced
so i was like okay i’m gonna go to
anthropology
there is this idea that you know man
had a sort of golden age that there was
this time
when we lived kind of in a real garden
of eden you know hunter-gatherer tribes
kind of the
um the time before the agricultural
revolution happened and
everything went downhill these people
actually you know lived in that primal
human basic state
and i was like okay i’m going to read
about these hunter-gatherer tribes
right about all kinds from different
continents
turns out they all had this you know
amazing zest for life
and joy and that was their their kind of
primal basic state
and finally i was like okay so it’s a
thing
and i got so angry
i was like how is it possible
that i lived 35 years on this planet
this is supposed to be you know the
primal
state of of humanity and it took a
complete rock bottom
and it took dozens of hours of therapy
and you know meditation and all this
hard work
for me to end up feeling what was
supposedly my birthright
well actually if you think about it it’s
not surprising that i hadn’t felt that
before
you know society the way it’s designed
it’s meant for us to chase happiness you
know from a very young age
um we’re constantly looking forward to
the
the next toy the next ice cream um
the next party you know the your first
car
your first promotion your first love
whatever you know goes on and on and on
and that’s life
and we’re constantly looking for rewards
and looking for stimulation
and we’re all kind of addicts in our own
way
even the kind of bliss that you get from
meditation
even that’s a state that we end up
chasing
but this kind of inner happiness that
i’m talking about
it’s not the kind of happiness that you
can get from chasing
it actually only shows up
when you stop chasing you know when you
let go of all of society’s programming
when you heal all of the shoulds and the
have to’s and
i’m not enough when you finally decide
you know to completely belong to
yourself
to love yourself exactly as you are
that’s
when this happiness shows up so
you’re probably thinking amazing
so you discovered this and now you feel
this all the time
no i mean you know as much as i would
like
to say that i discovered some sort of
nirvana
that’s actually not how it works um you
know unless you’re willing to give up on
the world
live as a monk on top of a mountain
and you know spend your time meditation
no feel-good
state is meant to last and it’s not
designed to
you know happiness is not a destination
it’s not going to happen
when you get that degree or when you
sell the company
or when you marry the love of your life
it’s not even going to happen when you
love yourself fully
no you don’t get to happiness and stay
there
happiness is an ecosystem what’s an
ecosystem
you know in biology it’s a bunch of
organisms that are interacting together
and with their environment so your
happiness ecosystem is made
of a bunch of elements you know the
usual suspects
relationships um community
having a sense of purpose having
financial stability
having meaning you know you know these
guys
and here’s the key insight ecosystems
are
in dynamic equilibrium what that means
is that they’re constantly moving you
know there’s an ebb and
flow within ecosystems and
all of these elements within them are
interdependent
and this means that you can’t focus on
any one of them and expect them to bring
you happiness
you know you can’t just say oh you know
i’m just gonna choose the lions and the
savannah cause they’re kind of cool
and i’m not interested in any of the
other stuff
it’s not going to work you know your
lions are not going to
thrive they’re not going to do well at
all because they need the gazelles and
the grass and
everything else in the savannah in order
to thrive
and
you know at the same time
does this mean that we’re constantly
having to rush around
to balance everything you know going
crazy like
oh are the lions okay and are the
gazelles okay
and is the grass growing or doing
whatever
grass is supposed to do no
that’s the whole point of this dynamic
equilibrium
you know it’s it’s constantly moving
it’s constantly changing
so you know sometimes you will have more
lions and sometimes you will have less
and sometimes the gazelles will have a
phenomenal year and
you know maybe sometimes there’s going
to be a locust invasion
or even worse there’s going to be a
pandemic
and then your ecosystem
will suffer and you’re going to feel
pain
but pain is not the opposite of
happiness
pain is actually part of happiness
it’s part of the ecosystem and pain
is an amazing alarm mechanism that is
meant to show you
when you’re stuck when things aren’t
going well
and it motivates us to keep moving to
grow
to look for a new equilibrium point one
where you know your relationships will
be
more fulfilling and you will have more
passion and a better sense of purpose
and your community will be more vibrant
and maybe some of you are thinking right
now
you know what actually i’m not
interested in this whole happiness thing
i just want to be filthy rich
you know who you are here’s how it works
pretty much every single thing that any
human does on this planet
is in pursuit of happiness except that
we don’t necessarily know that’s what
we’re doing at least not explicitly
we buy so much into the what you want to
be when you grow up
that we end up devising these really
complex ways
to obtain happiness you know for example
oh i’m gonna become a doctor and i’m
gonna save a bunch of people
and my parents will be very happy and
then i’m gonna be happy
or i know i’m gonna start a tech company
and i’m gonna become a billionaire and
i’m gonna ride in private jets
and then everybody will admire me and
then i’ll be happy
or even worse i know
i’m gonna become a crazy dictator then
everybody will be afraid of me
then i’m not gonna feel so small and
powerless anymore
and then i’m gonna be happy we get so
caught up in the pursuit and we end up
believing that’s what we were after all
along
what if we openly acknowledge
that happiness is what we’re actually
after
what if every single one of you went
home today
and asked themselves the question
if that’s what i’m after how will i
behave differently
you know asking an open question like
that can
really completely
change your horizons maybe you will
invest more in your relationships make
time to listen to your partner more
maybe you will read to your kids at
night
maybe you will finally quit the job that
you hate
and start that business that
everybody tells you that is stupid
or actually quite on the contrary you
know maybe finally you decide that
you are actually not interested in
startups and you were just doing it
because
you know everybody thought it was cool
and what you really want
is a job that other people will find
boring but that’s really satisfying to
you and you really want to just go
fishing every sunday
the effect that asking this question
every single day for months
and months will be astonishing it will
have a ripple effect throughout your
whole ecosystem
it will have an impact on every single
person in your life
and eventually it will completely change
the way you live the way you love
the way you do business and next time
when a smart ass like me comes along and
asks you
hey so do you know what happiness is
you’re gonna be able to tell them yeah
i know what happiness is
it’s a life well-lived on my own terms
thank you