Video: Leadership Series with Kelly King #3

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Hello, and welcome once again to the Truist Leadership Series. Our guest today is bestselling author Tal Ben-Shahar. He is an outstanding individual. He is the author of several international bestsellers, including Happier, Being Happy, Choose the Life You Want, Short Cuts to Happiness, and he's the co-author of The Joy of Leadership.

As a former professor at Harvard, Tal's classes on positive psychology and the psychology of leadership were among the largest courses in the history of Harvard. Tal earned his own bachelor's degree in philosophy and psychology and his PhD degree in organizational behavior from Harvard. For the past 16 years, Tal has been teaching leadership, happiness, and mindfulness to audiences all around the world. Tal, welcome to the Truist Leadership Series. We're really glad to have you with us.

Thank you, Kelly. It's great to be here.

Well, I'm looking forward to this discussion because I really believe it's going to help a lot of people. We live in extraordinarily challenging times. I mean, who would have thought, just a year ago, we would find that we were in the midst of a global pandemic, a global economic collapse, substantial and important discussions on racial inequality and social injustice?

People are just really unhappy now. I've been reading the suicide rate is up, drug use is up. I even saw something a couple of weeks ago that they've done a study, and people are gaining weight. It was like 40% of the people in the United States had gained weight. And the average weight gain was 29 pounds.

So I keep hearing people all the time, Tal, say, I can't wait for this to be over so I can be happy again. And I ask myself the question, can't we be happy even in the midst of a storm? Now, you're an expert on happiness. And so this is mostly, I believe, the most important issue of our time. You've written these books. You understand it. So let's start with just a definition to set the foundation. Can you define, for our audience, happiness?

Sure. So Kelly, unfortunately, we are living in very difficult times. And you mentioned suicide rates. The same applies to depression. Anxiety is skyrocketing. And the question is, what can we do about it? Now, when we look at happiness, many people think, oh, happiness is just for sunny days when we can literally go to the beach or have fun, play.

The thing, though, about the science of happiness is that it can also help us in difficult times. It can actually make us more resilient, better able to deal with hardship. And the question is, how? So when we define happiness, we need to look not just at mere pleasure. That is, of course, part of happiness, but it's a small part.

Another important part of happiness is the element of meaning and purpose. Physical well-being is an important part of happiness. Intellectual well-being, learning also contributes to our overall happiness, as do, of course, relationships and our ability to deal with emotions, deal with painful emotions and cultivate pleasurable ones. So it's these elements of meaning, physical well-being, intellectual well-being, relationships, and finally, emotions. These constitute a happy life. And these are also the elements that we need to think about as we think through dealing with these difficult times.

That makes total sense. And I was struck by one of your books where you talk about choosing your life. And people, I think, don't understand this. But can we choose to be happy?

In fact, we have a choice at every moment to be happier. Many of the choices that we have are what I've come to call rhetorical choices. Rhetorical choices are like rhetorical questions. We know the answer. They're obvious. For example, if I ask anyone, would you want to take the good things in your life for granted, or do you prefer to appreciate the good things or the people in your life, everyone-- no exception-- would say, yeah, of course I don't want to take things for granted. Of course I want to choose to appreciate the good things in my life.

And yet, most people, most of the time, fail to appreciate what they have, the people in their lives, the positive elements of their existence. Why? Not because they don't know how to make the right choice. Because they forget. Because they're not mindful. They're not aware of the fact that they have a choice.

And what we need to do is we need reminders. We need constant reminders to, for example, appreciate the good things in our lives, for example, to be kind and generous, for example, to take a deep breath once in a while. And all these small choices, small rhetorical choices are essentially the building blocks of our life. And when we choose wisely, they are the building blocks of a good life.

Yeah, exactly. Tal, I've told people sometimes, the way to think about the choice in life is-- I say, think about, you're the 100% owner. You're the chairman. You're the CEO of this company called You. You get to call all the shots. So just go ahead and decide to be happy. Related to that-- this is an important topic. I watched one of your interviews on the Today Show. You said something to the effect of, success does not necessarily lead to happiness. Can you explain that to our audience?

Yeah, that's a very important topic to discuss in the context of happiness. Why? Because it's one of the misunderstandings, misconceptions that people have and that lead to a great deal of unhappiness. Specifically, most people believe that the path to success is through happiness, meaning if you will succeed, if you will achieve the next goal, if you will get this house or this car, or if you will climb this mountain, then you will be happy.

The thing, though, is that more and more research shows that-- what I've come to call the arrival fallacy. The arrival fallacy is about the illusion that people have that when they arrive at a certain point, then they'll be happy. Yeah, when we arrive at-- achieve our goals, reach the peak, we are happy for an hour or two or maybe a month, and then immediately we go back to where we were before. In other words, at best, it leads to a temporary high.

If success did lead to happiness, then our most successful movie stars and singers and celebrities would be the happiest people out there. They're not. Why? Because success doesn't lead to happiness. However, while success doesn't lead to happiness, happiness does lead to more success.

What we do know from more and more research is that if you increase levels of well-being even by a little bit-- we're talking 2%, 4%. When you increase levels of well-being, you also improve levels of creativity, innovation, engagement levels, motivation, teamwork or relationships in general improve, not to mention the fact that we're also healthier and live longer. In other words, while success doesn't lead to happiness, happiness does lead to more success, and a lot more. In other words, happiness is a good investment--

Exactly.

--as you pointed out, for the company called You as well as for organizations and families and schools in general.

Yeah, and one of the other problems is that even if it was certain that when you achieved a certain level of success you would be happy, sometimes those markers, those points of success might be months or years down the road. So I'll be happy when I'm successful, and success is when I save enough money to retire. Well, you may be waiting 40 years to be happy. That's not a good way to live life. So I think you made the point very, very well.

I want to talk about this acronym that you coined-- called a SHARP in your book called The Joy of Leadership-- great book, by the way. I recommend it to the audience. And this acronym, S-H-A-R-P, stands for Strength, Health, Absorption, Relationships, and Purpose. And you talk particularly about something with regard to health that I was just really intrigued by. You talk about what you call blue zones, where people live long, full, happy lives. You indicate that while genes are important, where and how we live matters a lot, also. Can you explain that?

Yes, so the blue zones are the areas in the world where people live the longest. And by the way, they don't just live the longest. They also live the best, meaning very often, these are also the happiest places in the world, in many cases. And what was discovered about these places-- that it's not about their genes. Because people who move out of these places actually don't live longer than average. So it's mostly about the environment that they have.

Now, the question is, what makes those people live the longest? What are the environmental factors? And here are some of them. They're actually pretty straightforward. For instance, there are physically active. They move a lot. They don't necessarily go to the extreme when it comes to diet, but they eat pretty healthy food, and they eat in moderation.

There's a custom, which I really like and have adopted most of the time, from Okinawa, Japan, which is one of the blue zones, where before every meal they utter a short prayer to their ancestors asking for the ability to eat until they're 80% full, in other words, not to stuff themselves until they can't eat anymore, until they're 80% full. And I think this is a very good guideline for us.

Even when we have the opportunity to eat as much as we like, moderation is the way to go. So that's another of the blue zone's habit. They also very much focus on relationships, whether it's family relationships, whether it's relationships at work. And another element which is common to the blue zones, to those people who live the longest-- they have a sense of meaning and purpose, a reason to wake up in the morning.

Well, if I'm going to adopt the 80% rule, Tal, I'm going to have to have two-- I'm going to have to block it about 60% on the main meal, leaving 20% for desserts.

Easier said than done, Kelly.

So let's stay with the acronym. Let's talk about the A, which stands for Absorption, which we might refer to as slow or living in the moment, immersing ourselves in the work at hand. How does that work?

Yeah, today, we are living at an extremely fast pace. And while the pace has changed, human nature has not changed. And we pay a very high price for it. And it means that we fail to enjoy what we're doing when we're doing it. I'll share with you a study, one of my favorite studies by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.

And what Daniel Kahneman did was he looked at the experiences, the emotional experiences of professional women throughout their days. This applies, by the way, as much to men. He just did his particular research on women. And the most surprising results of his study-- when he looked at their emotional experiences when they were at work, when they were with their partner, when they were shopping, when they were with their best friend, when they were with their kids, when they were eating, whatever it is throughout the day, the most surprising result was that these women did not particularly enjoy spending time with their kids.

Now, this was surprising. But when he delved deeper, it wasn't that these women did not love their kids. For most of these women, the kids were the most important part of their lives. So why didn't they enjoy spending time with them? Because when they were with their kids, they were not really with their kids, meaning they were on the phone at the same time or working or thinking about what they have to do later or what they did earlier. In other words, they lived at a very fast pace.

And even though each one of these activities may have been wonderful and enjoyable for them, being with their kids or working or being with a friend, when all these things came together, it was too much of a good thing. And quantity of experiences affected quality of life. And this is the way most of us lead our lives today, multitasking, trying to fit more and more into less and less.

And that would be similar to taking two pieces of music and playing them simultaneously. We wouldn't enjoy it. It would be noise. And this is modern life for you. And what we need to do is not eliminate multitasking. It's impossible, certainly not if you're working and/or raising a family and/or involved in the real world. We have to multitask at times. However, what we need is what I've come to call islands of sanity throughout the day. These islands of sanity are times when rather than multitasking, we're single-tasking. Rather than being all over the place, we're in the here and now.

That's really important. That reminds me of one of my five great books called Chasing Daylight, which was written by Eugene O'Kelly. Eugene O'Kelly was very successful. At 43 years old, he was the CEO of KPMG, one of the top four international accounting firms. And he started having headaches and was diagnosed with incurable, inoperable cancer.

And they said he would be dead in 90 days, which he was. But he still had purpose, and he chose to write this book. He wrote the whole book except the last chapter. His wife had to write the last chapter. But in this book, he really caught my attention because he described what he called consciousness of the moment, which is exactly what you just described, living right now in the now. Don't worry about yesterday. Don't wait for tomorrow. Focus on what's important.

And he said, 90 days may sound like a short time, but it's a long time if you apply it well. So that's a very, very important book that reminds me of exactly what you're talking about with regard to absorption. The key I think, though, Tal, is, how do you keep up with it? How do you make it a habit so that-- every now and then, I'll think about it, and I'll focus, and I'll get really good. And then three weeks goes by, and I haven't thought about it. Have you got any advice on how to make absorption a habit?

Yeah, Kelly, this is advice for change in general and, in particular, making absorption a habit. When it comes to bringing about change, it turns out that philosophers had it wrong and theologians had it right. In other words, there is a great deal that we can learn from religion when it comes to bringing about change.

So if you look at philosophers, the father of Western philosophy is Socrates, who was the teacher of Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle. And what Socrates said 2,500 years ago-- he said that, to know the good is to do the good. So if you know what is good for you, if you know what is just, if you know what is healthy, if you know what is moral, that's enough because that means you'll do it.

Now, unfortunately, in this case Socrates, as smart as he was, which he was-- he was wrong, not a little wrong, but very wrong. Just knowing the good is not enough. We were talking a few minutes ago about rhetorical choices. We know what the right choice is. We're talking about absorption. We know that it's right for us to be absorbed, present, to live each moment as if it matters, because it does.

And yet, most people, most of the time, are distracted. And what we need to do is not just know that it's the right thing to do, as Socrates reminds us, but rather to draw on the approach of religion. Religion essentially is about the three Rs, what I've come to call the three Rs of change.

The first thing, the first R is about Reminders. We need ongoing reminders of the importance of the important things in our lives, for example, a reminder of being mindful and being absorbed, or a reminder to be mindful, or a reminder to be appreciative rather than take for granted, or a reminder to move or to take deep breaths. We need those reminders. This is the first R.

The second R is Repetition. We need to do it over and over again. It's not enough to just be reminded once or twice. We need to be reminded continuously and do, commit to those actions over and over again. And the third R-- Rituals. It's when we are reminded and repeat an action or a behavior or a thought pattern over and over again. That's when it becomes a ritual.

Now, a ritual literally is a neural pathway that is formed in our brains, a habit that makes something easy, accessible, that helps us do it over and over again. For example, it's a ritual for most of us to brush our teeth every day. We no longer need the reminders. We no longer need to embed it in our neural pathways because it already is, because mom reminded us and we had to repeat it many times as kids.

We need to create reminders, repetition, rituals. Religion does that. That's why people utter the same prayer day in and day out or week in and week out. That's why we have the holidays reminding us of important values over and over again. And that's why we have rituals. Again, whether we subscribe to a religion or not, we need to take these lessons and apply them to our psychological well-being, to our families, to our schools, and to our organizations, the three Rs of change.

So when it comes to absorption, remind ourselves consistently to be mindful. Do it over and over again, whether it's a daily meditation, whether it's a daily prayer, which is a form of meditation, whether it's just returning to the present moment when we're at work at 11:00 AM and again at 1:00 PM. And then, finally, it will become a ritual, second nature, a habit. John Dryden, the British philosopher, said 400 years ago, we first make our habits, and then our habits make us. How do we create healthy habits, positive habits in our lives? That is the challenge.

Wow, that's really, really helpful. I've read about-- I think it's called neuroplasticity, where we can actually change our brain, like you just described, where we're connecting those synapses so that they become a neuron that allows us to retain that way of thinking. That's very, very powerful. Thank you for that. I really appreciate that.

Let's stay with the Rs. I want to go back to an R in the acronym SHARP. And this R stands for Relationships. And I was intrigued. I think you said social media friends or relationships don't count. So are you implying that face-to-face relationships are most important? And if so, if you could maybe comment on, what about relationships at work?

Yeah, so I want to start, again, by sharing a very important study that was initiated back in 1939. So back in 1939, a group of Harvard researchers started to study hundreds of students from the university as well as hundreds of community members from around Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they followed them for 75 years. This is one of the most extensive studies ever conducted in psychology. And they studied them with whatever means they had.

So initially, it was through questionnaires and observations. Later, it was physiological measures, neurological measures as the years went by. And they collected, quite literally, millions and millions of data points. Now, after 75 years, most of the participants in the study were no longer alive. But after 75 years, looking at all the data that they had collected, they asked the following question. The question was, what is the number one predictor of happiness?

And there were a few predictors, but the number one predictor of happiness was relationships. Now, the interesting thing is, it didn't matter what kind of relationships, or rather, with whom. For some people, it was the relationship with a partner they had been with for 20 years or 50 years. For some people, it was their friends. For some people, it was colleagues at work, extended family, as long as there were relationships that were supportive, that were close, that were intimate.

Now, they asked the same question after 75 years regarding physical health. What is the number one predictor of physical health? Now, of course, physical exercise is important. Of course, nutrition is important. Most important? Once again, relationships, and once again, it didn't matter with whom, what kind of relationships, as long as they were close, intimate, supportive.

So relationships matter a great deal in our lives for our well-being, psychological well-being, physiological well-being. They also matter a great deal, as you know, for the success of an organization. Because today, in the 21st century, we need relationships in an organization so that we have effective, efficient, healthy teams. Productivity goes up, creativity, innovation go up as relationships improve.

Now, the thing is that if we were speaking, Kelly, let's say, a year ago, I would say, yes, it's all about face-to-face interactions. It's all about in-person relationships rather than virtual. But in today's world, when social distancing and other limitations on our interactions exist, is there something that we can do? And the answer is yes.

Rather than making the distinction between in-person or virtual relationships, it's important to make the distinction between shallow and deep relationships. Because even if I'm interacting with my parents, whom I haven't seen for a long time because of the COVID-19 pandemic, even if I'm interacting with them through the phone or on Zoom or Webex, I can still have a deep conversation with them, or they can do the same with their grandchildren.

In other words, we shouldn't forego deep relationships simply because we have to forgo the day-to-day interactions in the office, or going to a restaurant together with our close friends, or inviting people to our homes. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, ideally, we do want those in-person interactions. We want to play in the same sandbox together. And hopefully, soon, we'll be back there. But in the meantime, we can still cultivate deep relationships, have deep conversations and interactions.

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