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
